Stuart Robson. The First World War. Harlow: Pearson, 2007. xiii + 173 pp. $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4058-2471-2.
Reviewed by Jesse Kauffman (Stanford University)
Published on H-German (May, 2008)
Introducing the Great War
Those in search of a good introduction to the Great War are well served, given that John Keegan and Hugh Strachan have written clear surveys suitable for specialists, undergraduates, and the public alike. Nonetheless, Stuart Robson's book will be of use to teachers wishing to combine a short general account of the war with instruction in how historians use sources to reconstruct and analyze the past.
Robson tells the story of the war primarily in the brisk style of classic military history "from above." Other topics, such as the war's cultural impact and its effects on the home front, are woven into the narrative, but Robson is best when he sticks to operational history. His main theme is that the terrible war of attrition that began in 1914 was one that no one had foreseen; the subsequent four years are best interpreted as a prolonged and desperate search, partaken in by all the belligerents, for new ways of thinking about both strategy and tactics that would lead them out of the awful stalemate. This leads Robson to judge the commanders who had to plan the battles more generously than many observers have. Douglas Haig, for example, he pronounces "much better than the pig-headed Presbyterian of later legend" (p. 37). One must always bear in mind, Robson justly reminds us, that these men were dealing with an entirely new way of war and had to figure out how best to fight it as they went along.
By conveying a pervasive and continuous sense of improvisation, Robson provides the essential context for making sense of the war's developments and thus provides undergraduates with a model of what it means to think historically. In a discussion of Germany's use of the submarine, for example, Robson not only connects this weapon with the British blockade, but also situates it within an ongoing international discussion, marked by a deep sense of uncertainty, about how submarines might fit in with the traditional tactics and customs of naval warfare. In addition, his fascinating discussion of how air power evolved during the war is full of details that will help to capture undergraduates' attention, particularly his brief discussion of the development of air-to-air weaponry from the small arms pilots initially carried to Anthony Fokker's invention of a device that allowed mounted machine guns to be fired through a propeller.
The distinguishing feature of the Seminar Studies series, in which this book appears, is its incorporation of primary documents into the books; these sources are appended at the end and are keyed to certain sections of the text. Robson's book contains eighteen documents, primarily from Britain, France, and Germany. Canada and the United States are also represented, a reflection of Robson's admirable determination to provide as comprehensive an overview of the war as possible within the limits imposed by the book's length. The documents mix both high politics and soldier's-eye views; thus Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg's infamous September memorandum on Germany's possible war aims finds a place alongside Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" (1917), and no fledgling student of the Great War can consider his initiation into the subject complete without having read that poem. Special citations within the narrative then direct students to these documents. A citation following Robson's statement, for example, that after the war people looked back to "a golden age the war seemed to have destroyed, an age of peace, prosperity, and tranquility," directs students to an excerpt from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night (1934) (p. 3). This linking of primary and secondary texts may be useful for stimulating class discussions on how historians use sources to build their accounts of the past.
The book includes a wealth of other material to guide new students of the war: a brief glossary of potentially unfamiliar terms, a chronology of major events, several decent maps, Who's Who entries that are brief and to the point (which may be more helpful to students than the often bizarrely detailed biographies found on Wikipedia), and an annotated bibliography that includes web resources. Robson's balanced approach enhances the book's overall quality. On war aims, for example, he writes that every warring state "formulated predatory [war] aims in private and noble aims in public. Yet these aims, noble and ignoble, were products of the war, not reasons for engaging in it in the first place" (p. 103), a refreshing departure from the still standard argument that Germany's aims were uniquely cynical and predatory.
Because it is so short, the book omits much; the omissions will no doubt trouble some readers, but the work gives a good framework within which teachers may then situate more specialized material. (Everyone, however, regardless of specialty, will probably wish to add something to Robson's discussion of the war's origins, which gives only a cursory mention of the Balkans and has very little to say about the prewar alliance system.) In sum, this book is eminently suitable for use in high schools, two-year colleges, and basic introductory courses at four-year colleges and universities.
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Citation:
Jesse Kauffman. Review of Robson, Stuart, The First World War.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
May, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14544
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