Cataclysm of Stupidity
WOLFE, HENRY C.
Cataclysm of Stupidity THE GUNS OF AUGUST By Barbara W. Tuchman Macmillan. 511 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by HENRY C. WOLFE Author, "The Imperial Soviets" When mobilization orders were posted...
...I am attacking...
...Alexander Von Kluck, commander of the German First Army, answered the question this way: "The reason that transcends all others was the extraordinary and peculiar aptitude of the French soldier to recover quickly...
...The poilus fought desperately on a long front that extended from Belgium to Switzerland...
...The Germans had their Schlieffen Plan, which called for a massive sweep through Belgium into France, seven-eighths of the Kaiser's forces to be used against the French while the other eighth held off the Russians...
...The public was confused, but there was little hatred (that was to come later...
...The French had their Plan 17, which called for crossing the Rhine at Mainz...
...When momentum propelled the nations into war, the soldiers felt confident of being home "before the leaves fall...
...He probably missed the irony of the reply: "I think that the Germans have come to the Meuse to fish...
...Photographs, maps, notes and a bibliography enhance the value of her story...
...Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, made his historic remark: "The lamps are going out all over Europe...
...The internationalism of the various Socialist parties...
...Tuchman points out, "amounted to more than 140,000, or twice the number of the whole British Expeditionary Force in France at that time...
...Some idea of the tragic losses among the flower of young French manhood is suggested by the fate of St...
...Apparently, few in any of the belligerent countries wanted war...
...Over the whole battle zone hung the stench of sweating, unwashed men, "the smell of blood and medicine and horse manure and dead bodies...
...French Premier René Viviani ordered his troops to pull back 10 kilometers from the German border in order to avoid chance danger "from the meeting of two patrols, from a threatening gesture...
...Why, it may be asked, did the Schlieffen Plan fail...
...Even so, a major war seemed impossible...
...This account, remember, was written only one month after mobilization...
...Her painstaking research has paid off brilliantly...
...It was Hermann von François, apparently, rather than Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, who deserves major credit for Germany's crushing defeat of the Russian invaders of East Prussia...
...What none of the grand strategic plans allowed for was human failure...
...And alongside the troops on the crowded roads of France, Belgium, East Prussia and Galicia stumbled hordes of panic-stricken refugees fleeing from burning homes and advancing armies...
...They look like living scarecrows...
...the supra-national connections in high finance...
...There had been warnings, to be sure, crises such as Casablanca, Bosnia, Agadir, Albania...
...the blood relationships among royal families...
...Reviewed by HENRY C. WOLFE Author, "The Imperial Soviets" When mobilization orders were posted that first week in August 1914, la belle époque—Europe's four decades of peace—came crashing to a sudden end...
...Untrained to study and with a mind closed to books French was less renowned for mental ability than for irritability...
...Of all the military leaders, the one who comes off worst is the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the uncooperative and excitable Sir John French...
...French casualties during those four days," Mrs...
...At the Marne the French rallied...
...Typical conditions were described in the September 2 diary entry of a German officer: "Our men are done up...
...The blunderers, the men of little vision, the second-raters, predominate...
...The diarist reports that his soldiers, covering 24 miles a day, "march with eyes closed, singing in chorus so as not to fall asleep...
...For years all the general staffs had worked on war plans—just in case...
...above all, the potential horrors of the submarine, the airplane, the high explosive, the machine gun—all these, plus the astronomical cost of war, made the very idea of such a catastrophe illogical...
...Not a single member of that class survived the Great War...
...They endured blazing heat, swarms of flies, clouds of white dust over the roads, inadequate medical care, blistered feet, lack of sleep...
...At the outset only a few politicians and intellectuals had any plans for Europe's future...
...King Albert of the Belgians shows up well...
...The tide of battle turned...
...It was a possibility not studied in our war academy...
...Many factors, of course, were involved...
...It was as if the French Army had been an adjunct somewhere in the offing...
...Cyr's class of 1914...
...Gallieni, the colorful, ailing Military Governor of Paris, mobilized a fleet of the capital's taxicabs to rush 6,000 men to a vital sector of the battle line...
...men ran out of ammunition and went for days without food...
...All the soldiers who fought during this period, whether in France, Belgium, East Prussia or Galicia, suffered a common agony...
...Early in the war were laid the "foundations of a myth," according to which the BEF "bore the weight of the blow" of the German drive...
...They stagger forward, their faces coated with dust, their uniforms in rags...
...The Kaiser, usually cast as prime villain, "never actually wanted a general war...
...But a British reservist was heard to say: "I'm a'goin' to fight the bloody Belgiums, that's where I'm a'goin...
...That men will let themselves be killed where they stand, that is a well-known thing and counted on in every plan of battle...
...The supply trains lagged behind...
...Dead horses, lying unburied in the towns and along the roads, "became bloated and putrid...
...In this veritable cataclysm of stupidity, a few figures stand out by contrast...
...A German officer leaving for the front said he anticipated breakfasting at the Café de la Paix on September 2. "Russian officers expected to be in Berlin at about the same time...
...In that single word will be summed up the liberation of the world.' " It was actually the French, of course, who bore the weight of the blow during the holocaustic Battle of the Frontiers, of which Mons was a part...
...In a lucid, dramatic and ironic account, Barbara W. Tuchman evokes the prelude to the Great War and its terrible first five weeks...
...She has not only re-created the onrush of events in that decisive period but also has introduced the reader to the strange assortment of men who controlled the destinies of the warring nations...
...Everybody hoped the other side would back down...
...He once asked General Lanrezac if he thought the Germans would cross the Meuse at Huy...
...Within four weeks after mobilization, Marshal Foch had lost his only son and his sonin-law...
...The French generals Joseph-Simon Gallieni, Ferdinand Foch, Joseph Joffre, Louis Franchet d'Esperey and Charles Lanrezac fought magnificently...
...And every army had that in abundance...
...It is a story in which heroes and villains are in the minority...
...Marshal Foch sent his famous telegram to French headquarters: "My center yields, my right is retreating, situation excellent...
...Yet, as Bismarck had feared, Europe was marching off to a conflagration ignited by "some damned foolish thing in the Balkans...
...The British major whose cavalry unit made first fighting contact with the Germans explained: "We were quite ready to fight anybody and would equally readily have fought the French...
...Yet this myth "was perpetuated in all subsequent British accounts of Mons and of the 'Glorious Retreat.' It succeeded in planting in the British mind the conviction that the BEF in the gallant and terrible days of its first month of battle saved France, saved Europe, saved Western civilization or, as one British writer unabashedly put it: 'Mons...
...But that men who have retreated for ten days, sleeping on the ground and half dead with fatigue, should be able to take up their rifles and attack when the bugle sounds, is a thing on which we never counted...
Vol. 45 • June 1962 • No. 13
