Book Review: July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

I have probably read 30-40 books exploring the origins of World War I in the past 5-6 years and I thought that just about everything relevant there was to be known about the events of the month leading up to the war were known and historians have just been stirring the ashes and finding trivia in trying to determine a more accurate chain of causation. July 1914: Countdown to War by Sean McMeekin disabused of that notion. This work has made me aware of several things about the critical month between the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the outbreak of World War I that I am amazed have not gotten wider notice in the literature on World War I’s origins. This book is superb diplomatic history that through tight, focused prose and in depth research manages to untangle the tangled web of events in July 1914.

The book itself has 406 pages of text separated into two sections of 25 chapters including an Author’s Note, prologue, and epilogue. There are extensive endnotes for each chapter with relevant footnotes inserted into the text where appropriate and a 10 page bibliography. The two sections of the book cover the immediate reactions of the Great Powers of the day to the assassination and the subsequent diplomatic maneuvering leading up to the war.

There are several revelations in the book and no time is wasted in introducing the first, which I thought was a bombshell. This is that the relevant Russian and French archives have almost no records of the activities of their respective ambassadors for the month of July. What records for their activities that do exist are all secondary sources from the other great powers such as Germany, Austria, and Britain. I find it amazing that this lack of records has not been more highly touted in books on the origins of the war as it was these ambassadors, Paléologue for the French in St. Petersburg and Izvolsky for the Russians in France that played a pivotal role in relations of the two countries during the period leading up to Russian mobilization and the coordination between the two Allies. Another interesting fact that has gotten short shrift in the literature thus far is the sequence of events and timelines surrounding Russian mobilization. It is widely known that Russia began mobilization before any other power, what is not so widely known is that Russia had apparently decided on war at the time she declared the pre-mobilization “Period Preparatory to War” which was just mobilization by another name to begin with.

I have thought for years that the ultimate responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1914 lay with Russia. McMeekin’s work tends to confirm me in that belief. The final decision for war lay with the Tsar and more importantly with Sazonov his Foreign Minister and Yanushkevitch the Chief of the General Staff, both of whom pushed for war. .As you read the narrative it becomes increasingly clear that Russia wanted war. Why is not perfectly clear although it is certainly plausible that Russia felt they needed to be assertive because they had been humbled so often in the decade prior to the war and that Russia was at risk of losing its status as a great power. There is also the element of Russian lust for control of the outlet on the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, which would give the Russians a warm water port and was something they had wanted at least as far back as the Crimean War. Russia wanted war and right up until the last minute they had the ability to avoid one, all they had to do was stand down and allow the Austrians to punish Serbia for their support of regicide. That, the Russians would not do and in the end they dragged the rest of Europe into a war that was unnecessary.

Sean McMeekin has taken an opaque subject like diplomatic history and shed light on the manner in which diplomacy was conducted in the month prior to World War I. He masterfully weaves together the various actions of all the powers of Europe and makes a very complex series of events clear and easy to understand. July 1914: Countdown to War is the best diplomatic history of the period I have ever run across and is certain to become a classic and the standard work on the subject. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in why and how World War I broke out. A very clear look at a very muddy subject.

Book Review: Death in the Baltic by Cathryn J. Prince

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own]

The Wilhelm Gustloff was a German built pleasure ship built by the Nazis to bolster their public image both at home and abroad in the late 1930′s. It is remembered today because when it was sunk by a Soviet submarine in early 1945 as it was evacuating civilians and wounded military personnel from East Prussia to Kiel its sinking became the ship sinking with the highest loss of life in recorded history. Nobody knows for sure but the smart money is that somewhere north of 8,500 people died when the Gustloff sank into the icy Baltic waters on January 30, 1945. This is a story that should have been told a long time ago as it is an event that is virtually forgotten outside of the families who lost relatives and historians. I would love to be able to say that Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by Cathryn Prince is the book to tell that story but there are so many issues with the book itself that I have a hard time doing that.

The book is 200 pages of text separated into eleven chapters with an appendix, notes for each chapter, a bibliography, and index. The chapters describe the war in the east, the drive for Germans to evacuate, the evacuation operation itself, the situation in the Baltic, and the sinking and rescue of the ship. The writing is for the most part very clear, though there were parts where I was confused as to what point the author was trying to make or what information she was trying to impart.

First, let me say that it is obvious that quite a bit of effort and research went into writing this book. That alone makes the glaring errors that appear regularly throughout the text so disheartening. All is not bleak in my review however. The book does an outstanding job of narrating the events surrounding the sinking and subsequent rescue attempts. I also found the stories of what the survivors did post war to be extremely interesting and well written.

The errors, I generally tab books that I read for review at places where there are errors or misinformation as well as passages of particular note. This book has plenty of the former and only one of the latter. Many of the errors are simple errors of fact that even a cursory search of Wikipedia or Google would show to be wrong. Some examples of this include: 1. pg. 17 – The claim is made that a sailor received a payment in Deutsche Marks in January, 1945. This could not be since in January, 194 the German currency was the ReichsMark and the Deutsche Mark was not introduced for circulation until 1948 and in the intervening Years occupation scrip and ReichsMarks had been used Post-War. 2. pg. 31 – The claim is made that German girls joined the Hitler Youth at the age of ten. They did not, German girls joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel, which was the female Nazi youth organization. This is corrected later and then the terms are used interchangeably, which they are not. The Bund Deutscher Mädel and Hitler Youth were two separate organizations with separate training programs. 3. pg. 40 – I was surprised to find out that the 6th Army that surrendered at Stalingrad only had 90,000 men. It would be useful to make it clear that that is how many men surrendered but that the 6th Army had upwards of 500,000 men on it’s roster and only 90,000 men survived to go into captivity. These are just a few of the examples of factual errors.

Chapter five discussing the tactical and operational situation in the Baltic Sea is thoroughly confusing in its entirety. Mainly because one gets the impression that the author does not have a good grasp of geography. She seems to use the terms Black Sea and Baltic Sea interchangeably or at least as though one were an extension of the other. That is certainly not the case as the two seas are separated by over 1,500 km on land and to get from one to the other by sea you have to travel through the Mediterranean, Atlantic Ocean, and North Sea.

There are many other similar instances of confused facts or outright misinformation in the first six chapters of the book. I found myself jarred every time I ran across one. Some are obvious editing errors such as misspelling Führer to errors that showed a lack of basic knowledge of the time. Not every reader will catch many of these mistakes, but that does not excuse them. I found myself wondering as I read it if any historian had proofread the book prior to publication? Almost all mistakes are amenable to simple fixes that can be fixed in subsequent editions.

This could be an outstanding book about a little known, obscure, but important topic. The author is absolutely correct that the suffering of ethnic Germans in East Europe has largely been ignored post-war. She is also correct that it is time these stories were told and told in such a way that it is clear that not every German was a Nazi but that all Germans ended up being painted with the Nazi brush.

Because of the nature and importance of the story told and topic covered I will reluctantly recommend this book. There are almost literally no other English languages sources for stories of the dislocation of ethnic Germans at the end of WWII. Readers should just keep in mind that the best and most important part of the narrative is that part surrounding the actual events just before, during, and after the MV Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed. The author has showcased her research and storytelling ability in these compelling chapters. I only wish that the same attention to detail had gone into the rest of the book.

Book Review: Dresden: A Survivor’s Story by Victor Gregg

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own]

Victor Gregg’s Dresden: A Survivor’s Story is a short work describing the author’s experience as POW who got caught in Dresden in February, 1945 when the Allies bombed the city in what would become known as the Firebombing of Dresden. The attack essentially destroyed the city center and killed an estimated 25,000 German’s. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the attacks that also discusses the controversy surrounding them that has grown up since the war. To sum up the controversy, general anti-war people claim they were a crime and so do Neo-Nazi’s. Both claim that Dresden was not a legitimate military target or that if it was the bombing did not hit them.

Back to the book. Dresden: A Survivor’s Story, is the story of what one man saw and did just before, during, and just after the bombing. Printed the book would only amount to roughly 40 pages. It is an engaging tale and the author writes with a witty sarcasm that keeps the narrative flowing. The events he relates surrounding the Dresden bombing seem fantastical but are probably accurate representations of what actually happened. There is no doubt that the bombing of Dresden and it’s aftereffect were horrific. Mr. Gregg’s narrative reflects this. The only part of the book I take exception to is the afterword which I felt was a poorly written attempted rationale for why the Firebombing of Dresden was a war-crime. I leave it to the individual reader to research it on their own and make the decision of whether a war-crime (A term I object to) occurred or not.

Editorializing: Personally, I find the whole talk of war crimes to be farcical. It would be comical if so many people did not take the notion so seriously. The term and the associated crimes against humanity, genocide, etc. Have been so misused that they no longer have meaning. The traditional Laws of War stood the Western World in good stead for centuries and nothing that was done in WWII seems to me to have mitigated against their use. What has happened in the last hundred years is a Quixotic attempt to civilize war, an activity that is inherently uncivilized. The right of the victors would have sufficed perfectly to put the perpetrators of the holocaust against a wall but for some reason, the West felt the need for legalized vengeance. Their invention of these crimes has subsequently turned around and bit them ever since. There was no need to justify the destruction of Dresden, it was an enemy city and thus subject to attack. The severity of said attack was and is irrelevant. There is no such concept of proportionality in warfare, nor should their be. Warfare is doing what you think you need to do to compel your enemy to submit; no more and no less.

Overall this is a well written work of personal reflection. I recommend it for people that would like a description of what it was like to be in Dresden during and immediately after the bombing. There is no great amount of detail here but it gives a good general description of what living through such an event was like.

Book Review: The Battlefields of the First World War: The Unseen Panoramas of the Western Front by Peter Barton

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Patrick Shrier

The Battlefields of the First World War: The Unseen Panoramas of the Western Front by Peter Barton is one of the most visually stunning books about WWI I have ever read. This work is more than just a history of British participation on the Western Front. It makes use of officially produced trench panoramas to illuminate conditions of trench warfare better than almost any other pictorial record of WWI I have run across.

The book itself is 358 pages in length with a bibliography, picture credits, list of further reading, and index. In addition, and one of the things that makes this book outstanding it includes two CD-ROMs that contain digital versions of all of the panoramas discussed in the book. The worst part is the prohibitive price of the book, anywhere from $369 to $900 on Amazon as of this writing, that means this book is only in reach of the wealthy or libraries. I got the copy I read from a library. All the panoramas used in the book and many additional ones are also available online at the Imperial War Museum First World War Panoramas Collection site. The photos included with the book are more easily searchable than those from the internet but the internet site is more accessible to the average person. The book is organized into eight geographically organized chapters that start at Ypres and work their way east to Cambrai, the furthest east extension of the British Sector of the front during the war. There are over 200 panoramas discussed in the book and each is numbered and available on the CDs.

One of the most interesting things about the photos used in the book is the amazing difference between the photos seen here and the typical image people have of the conditions of trench warfare. Most people, myself included prior to reading this, have an image of the Western Front fixed in their minds in which the battlefield is a barren wasteland full of corpses, shell holes, and mud, in which any greenery is absent. The photos here give the lie to that image. To be sure there are panoramas in which that stereotype is upheld, particularly those taken in Ypres sector during the great battles fought there. But even in those pictures, the band of destruction is relatively narrow and undamaged land can be seen just outside of the zone of fighting in almost every picture. What was most striking to me is how much greenery is to be seen in No Man’s Land in the photos and the sheer emptiness of the landscape. Besides some trenches, and the occasional helmet of a soldier poking above a trench there is no one to be seen.

The photos are illuminating for several reasons. One, many photos show exactly how close the opposing trenches really were to each other. It is one thing to read that No Man’s Land was only 30 yards across in places, it is something else to see that in pictures. Another thing illustrated by the photos quite well is how commanding German positions were across most of the front and how big a difference 90 feet in elevation can make. When I visited the Ypres battlefields in 2004 I was shocked by how far the view was from on top of the 95 foot height of Passchendaele Ridge. That is also illustrated in these panoramas.

The narrative text in the book puts each photo into perspective and places it within the the context of the war itself and the battles themselves. I have been to several of the battlefields in the book and the several photos from the same positions are included in the book. These then and now contrasts highlight how little the terrain has changed in the ensuing decades since the war ended.

The panoramas are the reason for this book and they make it worthwhile to read, even for those knowledgeable about WWI. Along with the narrative, they give the reader a whole new sense of the experience of life in the trenches. This is an outstanding book that I highly recommend. I just wish it was not so prohibitively expensive, which would make it available to a much wider audience.

Stasi Museum – Leipzig, Germany

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Patrick Shrier

The Stasi Museum in Leipzig, Germany. For those who have never heard of it, the Stasi was the East German Little brother to the Russian NKVD internal security Secret Police. The Stasi maintained a network of informers within both East and West Germany during the Cold War and also maintained dossiers on almost every German, even many in the West. In East Germany (GDR) the Stasi was the government organ responsible for internal security and ferreting out dissidents to the regime. They did this by doing some things that made the Nazi Gestapo look like amateurs.

Below are some of the photos I took in our hasty tour of the museum before it closed.

The exterior of the former Stasi building as you approach it on the street.

Mural of the Coat of Arms of the (Minsitry for State Security) Stasi just inside the entrance to the building.

Machine used by the Stasi to steam open personal letters so their contents could be read in the search for dissidents.

Machine used to seal envelopes that had been opened. The goal was to make it so that people did not know, or at least were not sure, that their mail had been opened.

This machine was used to back-light letters. According to the plaques next to it, this method could sometimes catch microfilm that had been glued underneath the stamp.