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The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman
I heard this book being discussed in Radio National on Sunday 3 August 1914 , the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction for publication year 1963. It was quickly picked up by President John F Kennedy who was so impressed by the book that he gave copies to his cabinet and principal military advisers, and commanded them to read it so that they would not make the same mistakes that led to the First World War.
The book discusses the leadup to the Great War and re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world.
The opening paragraph of The Guns of August took Tuchman eight hours to complete and became the most famous passage in all her work. It reads
So GORGEOUS was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens—four dowager and three regnant—and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
I finished reading the book on 19 August 1914 and it was an eye opener. The rigid plans of the Germans, the heroic fighting of the Belgians, the initial shameful actions of the French supremo Joffre and the less than heroic performance of the British Expeditionary Force commander Sir John French were all factors ensuring that a long drawn out 4 years of trench warfare ensued.
The book highlights the many flaws of the major players
- Their unfounded belief in the short war - the major players each thought they could win the war within months.
- Over-reliance on morale and offensive fighting and unshaken belief that their soldiers were the best.
- An outdated view of war etiquette and the use of such things as mounted horse troops against machine guns and the like.
A quick scan of my library shows quite a few other books from around that era
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
August 1914 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
South Africa and the Transval War Volume IV by Louis Creswicke
The last one is a beauty. It is one of an 8 volume history of the Transval War, published in 1903. My wife Lois' grandfather had served in the Australian forces in that conflict and the book originally belonged to him. A couple of years ago, I saw the full set on sale in an antiquarian bookshop in Hobart but the price of around $300 was outside my price range. Perhaps one day!
And of course, I must mention a couple of superb songs by Eric Bogle that capture that period of conflict
and a special mention to a recent song along the same lines by my mate Rick Keam
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam by Barbara Tuchman
I was taking a daytrip around country Victoria with friends in January 2016 and we stopped for lunch at the Daylesford lake - and that meant of course a compulsory browse of the Bookbarn, that well known second hand bookshop on the shores of the lake. And what should I find but an original 1984 paperback copy of another of Barbara Tuchman's books - The March of Folly.
I immediately bought it for the princely sum of $6. Where The Guns of August had been written in 1963, this book was published over 20 years later, in 1984. In the book, Tuchman tackles the pervasive presence of folly in governments thru the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, she details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by Renaissance Popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain's George III & the USA's persistent folly in Vietnam.
I think that Tuchman is one of the most readable of historians - she brings the scenes to life with her lively prose and her way with words. However, in this case, I don't think that Troy should have been discussed - it is after all purely a myth and has no real historical basis in terms of the people and the facts of what happened. The other 3 cases are all valid and make you scratch your head as to why, why, why! Why do governments choose the wrong path even when they know it's the wrong path.
This was in fact her second last book. She published one further tome in 1988 and died in 1989, aged 77.
My favourite historical author. The words just flow.
