During the Second World War, in one of his many letters to English Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt quipped, “It is fun to be in the same decade with you.” When Neville Chamberlain offered his resignation to King George VI in 1939, the king asked Chamberlain to name his successor, as was customary. Chamberlain immediately recommended Churchill for the job. As John Keegan puts forth in his 2002 biography, Winston Churchill, it was perhaps the best decision by any member of the Allied governments during the war. Churchill was the only head of state who recognized Hitler and what he represented immediately. He warned against Hitler’s repeated promises of “last territorial demand” as he crossed into one sovereign country’s border after another. It was Churchill who offered hope and steely resolve to the British people when they quite literally stood alone against what had rapidly become the strongest military the world had ever known.

Churchill, a poor academic student, wanted to live a military life from an early age. It took him three tries before gaining admittance to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. He saw action in what is now Pakistan, as well as the Sudan and South Africa. To augment his military pay he became a war correspondent, offering his accounts to various British newspapers. Captured during the Second Boer War in Pretoria, he managed to escape from his prison camp, and found his way back to England. The trek made him a national celebrity, and also served to open the door to politics.

Keegan describes Churchill’s incredible strength prior to and during World War II, and his unwavering belief that democracy would England and her allies would prevail. Keegan puts particular emphasis on Churchill’s speeches, which are heralded as some of the greatest of all time, and provides a comprehensive picture of Churchill as politician, writer, soldier, husband, war leader, and ultimately as a man.

You can find more information about Churchill at The Churchill Centre.

There is a terrific article in the June issue of The Atlantic by Christopher Hitchens in which he details the involvement of a woman named Gertrude Bell in the early formation of a country whose name every single American recognizes. Friend to both T.E. Lawrence and Winston Churchill, Bell was a British diplomat and spy who many say was almost single-handedly responsible for the founding of modern Iraq. Educated at Oxford, she was one of the Empire’s leading Arabists at the end of World War I. She rode camels with the Bedouin, was fluent in Persian and Arabic, and even founded an archaeological museum in Baghdad.

Hitchens, as always, provides an intriguing and spellbinding account of this truly extraordinary woman.

Enjoy.

Note: Ralph H. Echols was born in Houston, Texas, on January 12th, 1922. He died on May 5, 2006. His obituary states: “ECHOLS, JR., RALPH H. Born on January 12, 1922 and died on May 5, 2006. Survived by his beloved wife of 50 years Phyllis Lesh Echols; daughters, Carole White, Barbara Kieschnick; son, Ralph Echols, III; grandchildren, Kelle and Brandon Kieschnick, Courtney Kieschnick Smith and husband Matthew Smith, Matthew White and Paul Echols. Ralph served in the US Army Air Corp. during WWII with the Flying Tigers as a P-40 Captain. He also received the Distinguished Flying Cross and other medals. Ralph graduated from SMU after the war. After graduating from SMU he went to work for ARCO as an electrical engineer.”

I was in the Army Air Corps, 14th Air Force in China. I enlisted in January of 1942, and I was discharged in the Fall of 1945. No injuries, except I do have a bum knee that I got from jumping off of a tent, of all things. I was trying to fix a stove, and those tents were made out of 2×4′s, and as I came back down, I jumped off, and that’s where I got my knee.

4 Air Medals, 2 Distinguished Flying Crosses, maybe 3.

I first heard we were at war at A&M.. I was playing touch football. Some idiot came out and said that Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. Well, I had never heard of Pearl Harbor. There was never any question- I was ready to go to war after being down there… We were all raised to go to war down there at A&M.. I was a freshman at A&M, 19 years old, no money. Tuition was 5 dollars. When the war started, I was ready to go to war… they had beaten my ass enough down there.

When I first got to boot camp they didn’t have any instructors, rooms, planes. It wasn’t until March that I got to Lackland in San Antonio. So that’s where we started. And we stayed there 3 or 4 weeks, and they drilled us, etc. I had never seen an airplane- none of us had ever seen an airplane- I’m serious about that. But I knew that I wanted to fly; mainly because you got 50% more pay, instead of $200 a month, you got $300 a month. That was a lot.

First time I went up in a training plane it was frightening I guess, but not overly so. The instructors were all old cropduster pilots; we did not get the cream of the crop, so to speak. I remember my first instructor would tell me “kick the stick”, which really meant to position the stick in a certain way. Well, I didn’t know that, so I would literally kick that stick. But everyone wanted to be a fighter pilot. At least half washed out, though. I was fortunate; actually I was pretty bad. I was on the brink of being washed out at least twice, maybe three times. And they knew my grades weren’t the best. Thankfully, we were given a check ride by an Army guy who knew what he was doing. And so, I passed.

After San Antonio, we went to Oklahoma City at Cimarron Field, and that was the beginning of flight training. We were there about two months. Each stage was about two months, except basic which was 6 weeks or so. I got to learn how to fly P-17′s.

I took my tactical training, after I got my Wings, in Tampa Bay. Mostly the guys down there were flying B-26′s. We were trying to ship us out as soon as possible. I originally thought, and thought that I was really suited for, going down to Panama. I had all the training for that, but then we really didn’t know where we were going to go. One morning they woke us up at 4:00 am, put us on a plane, and off we went on a plane to Brazil. We were on Ascension Island, then off through Chad, then on to India. As soon as we got to India, we were sent to Harachi, Pakistan. The real Flying Tigers- I wasn’t a real Flying Tiger, I was one of the guys that came in after the Flying Tigers- were coming out, out and we were coming in. Well, I don’t know if they arranged this or not, but we got a chance to be with those guys for about three weeks. We flew with them, talked with them about what they did, got a lot of insight and good advice, which was great. I really, really enjoyed that.

I really don’t remember my first mission; I remember most of them, but I don’t remember the first. One I do remember… I got the nickname “Dud” towards the end of the war. I had two or three nicknames during the war, but that was one of them. I bombed a place in northern Burma- kind of a fortress-looking thing, and my bomb went straight down a well- I mean right down that thing, and a big plume of smoke came right up, believe it or not. Just right up in the air, a big smoke ring, and everyone kidded me about that and started calling me Dud.

Most of the things I did were against the Japanese in northern Burma. It wasn’t a bad deal there- plenty to eat… if you notice, whenever I talk about China, we didn’t have much too eat over there. But it was OK in Burma. We were in there for a while, through the summer of ’43 we moved up to the Bama Kutra River, and stayed there though the late summer. Then we were all transferred, as a group, to China. This was about early Fall of ’43, down to Yun-Yang-Yi in China.

I flew P-40′s. Typical flying day in China started with us all reporting down at the flying line at 4:30 for instructions.. I don’t know why the hell we had to wake up that early, but we did. We didn’t have anything like radar, but we did have a fairly sophisticated radio system, which was actually operated by the Chinese, they would report what was going on- a plane spotted here or there, or troop movements, etc. Anyway, we would go eat breakfast after being briefed, and we would eat eggs. Not powdered, I mean fresh eggs. In fact that’s all we ever ate in China were goddamn fresh eggs! To this day, I can’t stand fresh eggs! We would go to the mess hall- it was pretty nice… we didn’t have electricity, but we had coal stoves. This was about 8-9k feet, so it got pretty cold. Lived with a constant headache the whole time we were there.

Depending on whether or not we thought we could catch a convoy or something early, we would take off pretty early when it was still dark. The P-40 has the ability to hold a single bomb, and we would use an electric switch to release it. Lots of times it just wouldn’t release; not mine, but it did happen to others, and we would lose those guys. We could carry up to a 500 pounder. Sometimes we would need to carry a gas tank underneath the plane if we were going far enough.

70 years before Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in search of a water route to Asia, the Chinese were exploring the Indian Ocean and western Pacific with seven maritime expeditions that solidified themselves as the major power in Asia. In 2005 China celebrated the 600th anniversary of the first voyage of the navigator and explorer Zheng He.

In 2005 China celebrated the 600th anniversary of the first maritime expedition of Zheng He (1371-1435), also known as Cheng Ho. Zheng He is China’s most famous navigator, making a total of seven expeditions over 28 years to 30 countries across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf and even the east coast of Africa. Some historians even argue that Zheng He’s ships traveled as far as Australia, some 300 years before Cook. He was born in the Yunnan province in 1372, about the time that Genghis Khan was defeated by the emerging Ming dynasty. His parents were Muslims who fought for the Khan, and at 10 he was captured by the Ming army and castrated. He became a servant to a Ming prince, who later rose to become Emperor. The new leader wanted Chinese to extend its reach and influence, and charged his loyal servant with the task of raising and equipping a large fleet for exploration.By the turn of the 15th century, China was already a highly advanced civilization, rich in culture, technology, weaponry, and sea navigation. The expeditions of Zheng Ho resulted in China expanding its influence over much of Asia, and spreading Chinese culture to many parts of the world. Soon after the final expedition, during which Zheng He died during a stopover in India, China became a closed culture, cut off from much of the world during subsequent reigns of emperors and dynasties. As China has begun to emerge from this 500 year period of relative isolation, the memory and legacy of Zheng He has awakened along with it.

For more information on Zheng He, his expeditions, and his legacy, here are a few links:

http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/intro.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He

http://www.islamfortoday.com/zhenghe.htm

India is a vast country of different cultures and sub-cultures, multiple languages and dialects, varying geography, and competing religions in Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity. The Mughals, a Muslim dynasty which ruled India from 1526 to 1858, lived in and fostered a society rich in architecture, arts, literature, and cultural diversity. Western Europeans had very limited exposure to and contact with this country up until the Portuguese began navigating the waters off southeastern India in the early 1500′s. Over the next 250 years the British and French made various attempts to ingratiate themselves into India culture and politics, with varying degrees of success. By the end of the 18th century, the two superpowers had broad designs on global domination, and the British, through the East India Company, made a concerted effort to thwart the French’s similar efforts within India’s complicated political landscape.

William Dalrymple’s “White Mughals” tells the true story James Kirkpatrick, an officer for the East India Company stationed in the Indian city of Hyderabad. As the title suggests, Kirkpatrick was a “White Mughal,” one of the many British soldiers and Company men who completely ingratiated themselves in Indian culture. Through extensive research of handwritten journals, letters, Company accounts, and books – many of which were written only in sanskrit – Dalrymple provides a detailed picture of what day-to-day life was like. This description extends to things like how the typical Indian household was managed, the design of and use of gardens, food preparation and cooking, sexual attitudes and mores, architectural styles, and much more. It also does a good job of illustrating the political landscape in which both the French and the British had to operate and attempt to advance their own interests. For a White Mughal, the fact that he immersed himself so deeply into the culture while at the same time serving as an officer in the Empire presented unique challenges.

But the most interesting pieces of the book center on the love affair and subsequent marriage between Kirkpatrick and a young Muslim princess, Khair un-Nissa. Through the spyglass of history, most people would see such a union as taboo, if not altogether scandalous from the 19th century viewpoint of both the British and the Indian Muslim perspectives (Kirkpatrick not only took Khair un-Nissa, a relative of the region’s prime minister, as his lover, but even converted to Islam to marry her). However, Dalrymple goes through great pains to provide many examples of how this type of “crossing over” and cultural mixing was not unheard of and, in many cases, encouraged before the British expansionist movement in India.

In the late 19th century, the desire for a means of traversing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans via an aquatic “bridge” was not a new idea.  From the earliest New World expeditions, the benefits of not having to circumnavigate what would become known as Cape Horn were well understood.  However, it was the California gold rush of 1848 that put the issue in immediate economic terms.  One of the greatest “enabling technologies” of modern history was the Panama Railroad, built to serve traffic across what was then a remote territory of Colombia.  In fact, before the railroad was built, numerous stagecoach companies sprang up to carry people and cargo back and forth from ships sailing to and from San Francisco and those serving the eastern United States and Europe.The first serious effort to understand what it would take to build a water canal to replace the railroad was undertaken by the French, specifically, Ferdinand de Lesseps. De Lesseps was part of the team that built the Suez Canal, and a hero of France for the engineering and commercial success of that project.  According to David McCullough in his magnificent Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914, it was the perception of de Lesseps and many of his colleagues that they already had a firm grasp of the scope of the Panama project, even before making a survey of the land itself.  The reasons for this vary from intellectual pride to greed, but nonetheless the French team was able to raise enormous funds from numerous public offerings for the project.  After years of toil and financial intrigue, de Lesseps and the company he built for the undertaking eventually went bankrupt, leaving the way clear for other superpowers to consider involvement.  McCullough makes very plain that the individual will and vision of newly elected president Teddy Roosevelt, more than any other American, drove the United States to pick up the existing infrastructure, machinery, railroad, and vast quantities of material already on the ground in Panama for a bargain.  Years later, it is clear that he even indirectly pushed for the revolution that removed Panama from Colombian rule and brought the new country within America’s influence.

The story of how the canal project was actually executed is a very complex one.  More than 20,000 men died during the four decades of surveying, excavation and construction.  Fortunes were made and lost.  McCullough does his usual magic of telling this extraordinary story in terms that are not only thorough, but exciting and interesting to read.

You can find his name in every major American city- street names, national and state parks, public buildings, statues, and even city names themselves.  The greatest of foreign-born soldiers in the Continental Army was a man George Washington himself held in the very highest esteem.  50 years after the founding of the United States, Lafayette made a return tour of the country for which he gave so much as a youth.  He was met with throngs of adoring Americans wherever he traveled.  Crowds cried out his name and even fought just to get a glimpse of a man that they felt was a hero of their recent Revolution. Yet most Americans have no idea who this man was, let alone the enormous contribution he made to our country’s fight for independence.Whether the Colonies would have had the necessary strength to implement the Declaration of Independence, let alone win the War, without the aid of France is a question we do not seriously consider in modern-day history classes. Certainly the leaders of the Continental Congress realized the importance of French assistance and began to seek out such help soon after the outbreak of the American Revolution. In the fall of 1775, the Congress appointed a Secret Committee of Foreign Correspondence. Early the next year the committee decided to send an agent to France to seek the aid of that Nation in the struggle against Great Britain. Silas Deane was selected for the task. Within a few months after his arrival in France, Deane, covertly aided by the French Government, obtained and sent to America clothing and arms in large quantities. At the suggestion of Deane, the Compte de Vergennes, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, obtained permission to lend America money. Until 1778, France continued to give America all aid short of actual military support. Lafayette had heard about, and became sympathetic towards, the romantic American cause, which to him represented an opportunity not only to distinguish himself, but also to pursue what he deemed a truly noble cause.  He made the passage to America, after seeking and gaining assurances by the American ambassador, Silas Deane, that he would receive a commission as major generals in the Continental Army. He arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in June, 1777, and traveled to Philadelphia to meet with members of Congress who welcomed him enthusiastically as he announced that he would serve without pay as a volunteer. In August he met General Washington and a friendship developed between the two men which lasted throughout the remainder of Washington’s life.  He spent the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge with the rest of the army.  It was there that Lafayette first demonstrated his value to the army in general, and to Washington in particular.  It was at Valley Forge where several of Washington’s subordinate officers conspired against Washington to have Congress relieve him of overall command.  However, they were unable to gain the support they expected. They tried to secure the cooperation of Lafayette, as well as Alexander Hamilton, but both men declined. Washington found Lafayette to be not only a loyal officer, but a devoted friend as well.

Washington’s confidence in the young Frenchmen was proven correct at the Battle of Monmouth. The command of the force entrusted with the attack against the British general Clinton was assigned to Charles Lee, Lee having the highest officer rank next to Washington himself. Lafayette commanded one of Lee’s divisions. Monmouth is famous for the high degree of disorder during the American’s retreat from the field (Lee was later chastised strongly by Washington for his unwillingness to engage the enemy).  It was Lafayette who sent a messenger to Washington urging him to come to the filed himself.  During the remainder of the battle, Lafayette commanded the second line of infantry. In early 1778 Washington sent General John Sullivan to Newport, Rhode Island, where the British had fortified a strong defensive position.  Sullivan was to later combine his forces with supporting troops from Nathaneal Greene Lafayette, as well as a highly anticipated French force. The Americans hoped that the French forces would provide the badly needed strategic tipping point required to defeat the British. Unfortunately the French fleet suffered serious damages during the voyage to Newport, and retired to Boston for repairs.  Lafayette was ordered to Boston to urge the French to get back underway as soon as possible.  Traveling back to Newport, with little rest, Lafayette found that the British had taken the initiative and attacked Sullivan’s forces, and the Americans were retreating to higher ground.  Lafayette immediately went to Sullivan and requested that he be given command of Sullivan’s reserve forces.  Sullivan agreed, and Lafayette brought the reserve forces to the front lines to combine with the main force, which subsequently forced the British to withdraw.  In his subsequent report to Congress, Sullivan noted Lafayette’s skills, whereupon on September 9, 1778, Congress passed a resolve formally thanking Lafayette for his commitment to the Revolutionary cause.  Soon thereafter, Lafayette returned to France where he received accolades from the French court for his devotion to the American cause.

But Lafayette’s service to America was just beginning.  Lafayette made numerous formal and informal efforts to secure additional aid from his government for the colonists. In June of 1779 Lafayette wrote Washington and expressed his desire to back with the army again. In 1780 Lafayette’s efforts (among others, to be sure) resulted in the deployment of French troops and supplies to America. So insistent was Lafayette for aid to the Americans that one day the Minister of Finance said in the royal council: “It is fortunate for the King, that Lafayette does not take it into his head to strip Versailles of its furniture, to send to his dear Americans; as his Majesty would be unable to refuse it.” The King appointed Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, the Count de Rochambeau, as overall commander of the force’s twelve battalions of infantry, with Lafayette to take command of the American division serving directly under Washington’s command.

Upon their arrival, Washington deployed Lafayette to the southern states to help thwart Lord Cornwallis’ movements.  By autumn of 1781 Cornwallis and his troops were penned into Yorktown, Virginia, where his position was made precarious by the arrival of a large French battle fleet.  After a long siege of the British positions, Cornwallis was compelled to surrender on October 19, 1781. After the British surrender, Lafayette again asked for permission to return to his native France.  Before he sailed Washington wrote Lafayette: “I owe it to your friendship and to my affectionate regard for you, my dear Marquis, not to let you leave this country without carrying with you fresh marks of my attachment to you, and new expressions of the high sense I entertain of your military conduct and other important services in the course of the last campaign, although the latter are too well known to need the testimony of my approbation.” Lafayette sailed for France on December 23, 1781, but before sailing he wrote Washington an affectionate reply: “Adieu, my dear General; I know your heart so well that I am sure that no distance can alter your attachment to me. With the same candor I assure that my love, respect, my gratitude for you, are above expression; that, at the moment of leaving you, I felt more than ever the strength of those friendly ties that forever bind me to you.”

Upon his return to France, Lafayette was hailed as a hero on both sides of the Atlantic.  In 1782, he was promoted to the rank of marechal-de-camp (major general) in the French Army by Louis XVI.  During the following 20 years, he aided the American government on numerous Franco-American political and economic issues. He also threw himself completely behind the questions of reform in his homeland. He was one of the first Frenchmen to advocate a National Assembly, and supported the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. He favored many radical positions for France such as the abolishment of formal titles, instituting trial by jury, religious freedom, and political rights for blacks. By the late 1780′s, Lafayette became one of the most popular and powerful men in France. On the first anniversary of the capture of the Bastille, Lafayette himself administered the oath of loyalty to “the nation, the law, and the king” to a large assembly of troops and sailors. But, being a fierce independent thinker, eventually he was attacked by both sides of the French political spectrum. Lafayette himself rescued Queen Marie Antoinette from the mob that stormed the Palace of Versailles on October 5, 1789.

In 1790 Lafayette was promoted to Lieutenant General in the French army, but resigned shortly thereafter. When war against Britain broke out in 1792, he prepared troops for war, winning the confidence of his men by, among other things, organizing mounted artillery. Against his wishes, he was ordered to move his troops to what is now Belgium even though they were not prepared. As Jacobin radicalists gained favor in Paris, he was unable to help his king and queen and bring his troops home to deal with the mobs now roaming Paris, and was summarily declared a traitor. He fled to Belgium with members of his immediate staff, but was arrested by the Austrians, who in turn surrendered him to the Prussians. For five years he remained in jail, despite English and American political pressure aimed at his release. Finally the Austrians turned him over to the U.S. consul in Hamburg.  He returned to Paris in 1800, his family fortune all but gone. He then turned his attentions to La Grange, his home just outside of Paris, where he apparently settled into a quiet agrarian life, the only major interruption being his refusing allegiance to Bonaparte himself during a visit Napoleon made to Lafayette’s home.

In 1818, after three years of seclusion at home, he was elected to the chamber of deputies, where he sat till 1824, as a leader of the opposition, opposing the censorship of the press, and voting for various liberal measures. In 1824 President Monroe invited Lafayette to visit the United States. He arrived in New York, and was warmly greeted by virtually everyone he met.  In  the course of the next fourteen months he traveled through the whole country, visiting each of the 24 states and all the main cities.  In consideration of his services in the Revolutionary war, Congress  voted him a grant of $200,000, and a Florida township of 24,000 acres. His sixty-eighth birthday (September 6th, 1825) was celebrated at the White House with then President John Quincy Adams.  He was the last surviving major general of the War of Independence.

Returning once again to France, Lafayette was retired until, at 73, he led an opposition movement to new restrictions on citizens’ rights. In 1830 he took part in his third revolution- he was offered command of the Army of National Guards that drove Charles X from France, but declined the popular demand that he be named president of a new republic.  Instead, he supported the ascension of Louis Philippe to the throne.  He remained a member of the chamber of deputies until his death.  It is interesting to note that Lafayette was truly unique among his French political peers; he refused to cooperate with the Bourbons, the Jacobins or with Bonaparte himself; and all three sides tried to discredit him for many years.  Yet his support from the populace, although inconsistent at times, remained substantial throughout his adult life.  Lafayette died in Paris on May 20, 1834.  When news of his death reached America, Congress ordered the Liberty Bell muffled.  He received a huge state funeral, and his remains were interred beside those of his wife in the cemetery of Picpus in Saint-Antoine. He left one son, George Washington, and two daughters.

Further Reading

Lafayette left a journal, which was published along with various ancillary materials (including letters to and from Washington) by his son George under the title “Memoires, manuscrits et correspondance du General de Lafayette ” (6 volumes, 1837-’38).

See also  Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger; The New Cambridge Modern History: Volume 8, The American and French Revolutions 1763-93 (The New Cambridge Modern History by A. Goodwin; General and Madame de Lafayette: Partners in Liberty’s Cause in the American and French Revolutions by Jason Lane.

Most people believe that World War II was largely the result of the “bad peace” negotiated at the end of World War I. Much unwarranted blame has been laid at the feet of Woodrow Wilson and his peers for the series of events which followed the truce signed by all parties in 1918. It is important to remember that most of the world turned a blind eye to Germany’s rise to war between 1933-1938. But a true appreciation of what happened cannot be gained without a thorough review of the first great conflict, the “War to end all Wars”, and the events leading up to August 1914. In this month’s read, we look at The First World War by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson.

The dawn of the 20th century found Europe under the influence of a variety of changes. Germany’s military and industrial juggernaut had firmly established itself as the dominant force on the continent. France still held bitter resentment towards Germany as a result of their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, which signaled the gradual rise of German power. However, given that relative peace had reigned over Europe for more than two decades, the various monarchs expected more of the same: little to no aggression towards one another, industrialization and modernization, and so on. However, changes which occurred during this period had laid the foundation for a much different century.Many scholars point to the web of alliances that spanned the continent as the primary cause of what became known as World War I. However, as masterfully laid out in the Introduction of The First World War by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, alliances have rarely ever been honored by countries when it conflicts with their true national goals and priorities. A strong case can be made that the true origin of the conflict can be found in Germany’s imperialistic ambitions. When viewed in this context, the “war to end all wars” perhaps was only a matter of time given that an entire generation of Germany’s entire military institution was trained for implementation of the “Schlieffen Plan”- the invasion plan for France first conceived by Germany’s hero of the Franco-Prussian War, Alfred von Schlieffen. Schlieffen’s overall strategy was to support the countering of a joint attack. His premise was that when (it was not really an “if” in the mind of the German general military staff) war broke out again with France, it was absolutely vital to kill off the French war machine in a lightning manner, before her allies Russia and England could rally to her defense. As France had a series of massive forts on their mutual border, his plan called for the bulk of Germany’s forces to simply move through Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg around the defensive wall. The French forces would be caught in a pinch as other forces would press the French from the east. The remainder of Germany’s army would stop any proposed advance from Russia. When Helmut von Moltke replaced Schlieffen as chief of staff in 1906, Moltke modified the plan slightly to press directly across Flanders (modern day Belgium) and Luxembourg only.

On August 2nd, 1914, the plan was put into effect. The Belgian army, in a heroic effort that most likely salvaged the entire war for the Allies, stalled the German advance long enough for the French army to re-organize its defenses, and for the British to deploy an initial force across the channel. In a theme to be played out many times for both sides, things were made worse by the Germans overextending their forward troops- essentially they did such a good job of driving forward that they exhausted their ability to maintain momentum as supply lines lagged far behind. Together with an unexpectedly strong push by the Russians along the eastern Prussian front, the modified Schlieffen Plan was thwarted. A mad dash for the sea ensued over the next few weeks as both sides began to entrench their lines from the Swiss border all the way to the English channel.

Still, all across the military and political spectrum of both sides with little exception, everyone expected a short war that would be “over by Christmas”. Instead, the world was introduced to the brutality of trench warfare and stalemate all along the western front, with death counts in the millions. Russia was absolutely devastated which contributed, in some measure, to the Russian Revolution and the overthrow of the tsar in favor of the socialists. By late 1917 the United States, a British and French ally, was bringing hundreds of thousands of troops (the infamous “doughboys) to the field each day. An armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. Many believe that the treaty signed at Versailles illustrated the French and British desire to punish the Germans still further. However, Prior and Wilson make a good case that Germany was in fact not punished enough, that the German industrial machine was left virtually untouched.

The First World War is an excellent introduction to the conflict, its roots, and its aftermath. With liberal use of illustrations, maps and vintage photographs, the book offers a concise history of the subject, and feeds a desire to discover more about individual topics.

Further Reading

Two other great books on the subject include The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman and The First World War by John Keegan. Jeff Shaara’s recent historical novel, To the Last Man, offers an interesting perspective from both sides. The Web also offers three very good sources for articles, maps, timelines, photos, and even some vintage video. They include PBS’s site (http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/), the BBC’s site (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwone/index.shtml), and Michael Duffy’s personal site (http://www.firstworldwar.com).

Howard Zinn is perhaps best known for his landmark 1980 book A People’s History of the United States which offers a chronicle of American history from Columbus through Clinton’s presidency through the eyes of “the street, the home, and the workplace.” This popular book pokes holes in traditional history’s treatment of events and people and is, if nothing else, a unique perspective on our nation’s formation and rise to power. Here is this month’s read.

Originally published in 1980, Howard Zinn‘s A People’s History of the United States tells the story of America from a grass-roots level. Zinn, a historian and social activist whose other books include You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times, and The Twentieth Century: A People’s History, maintains that traditional American history is very one-sided because it is presented from the perspective of the powerful- from the first Spanish conquerors to modern-day capitalist aristocrats. As an alternative, Zinn provides a storyline from the “common man” perspective- labourers, immigrants, women & children, slaves, Native Americans, the poor, etc. who made and continue to make up the vast majority of the population.

Although the balance of perspective tips way too far the other way at times, this is truly a scholarly piece of research. Spanning Christopher Columbus’s arrival through President Bill Clinton’s first term, A People’s History combines a very diverse collection of letters, diary entries, newspaper accounts, and official records with commentary and analysis. This book caused some stir in academic circles because of its attacks on traditional views of American history. Nevertheless, this book offers an important ballast to any serious student of the subject.

If you enjoy this theme, you might also find Ray Raphael’s book A People’s History of the American Revolution of interest. With a forward by Howard Zinn, this book continues the theme of the common man’s history, but focuses exclusively on the events surrounding the American Revolution.