Her writing is incisive, prescient but above all, intuitively instructive. She writes “Human
beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in
manoeuvres – danger, death, and live ammunition. “
Opening with the death of Edward IV in May 1910, Tuchman sets the ground work for the
animosity and the “war is inevitable” mindset that was the magnet that dragged the
nations of Europe into the crisis of the First World War. The description in the first chapter
states that the funeral was attended by ten European kings to demonstrate how incredibly
bourgeois, urban, sophisticated industrial societies remained none the less monarchical,
with only France as a major Republican power. Militarism and court cultures intermingled
to an extraordinary extent. A generation would dedicate themselves and their schemes to
a war often desired and expected. Yet, when the opening volleys were fired and the
magnificent booms of modern artillery let loose on the soil of Europe, the war quickly
turned into something they did not intend.
The battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it
determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the allies ultimately win the war but
because it determined that the war would go on. In a stereotypical view, images of
trenches and gas masks, barren wastes of hollow holes and lingering bodies are what
comes to mind to a modern audience when discussing World War I. In many ways, who
can blame them, the horrors of that war, were nothing but scars of trenches running
across fields of central and eastern Europe for much of the fighting. Yet, to the minds of
the men who plotted this war, a war of attrition and of million-plus- men battles were far
from their thoughts. As Barbara Tuchman shows, the opening salvos of the war were wide
sweeping mobile armies marching across the countryside intent on doing battle in a
similar vain as did their forefathers. Yet, for all their planning, all their scheming, a
problem of action was created by the leaders of 1914.
The use of modern arms and armament against an inability to give up the plans, the glory,
and the experiences of the past drove the war in a direction opposite to “decisive battles”
and ”decisive victory” to which they aimed. The author argues, that how fixated were
French leaders clinging to Elan or German efforts to be viewed by the world as supreme,
that they ensured the war would go on far longer than initially intended. Draining much of
the world of men, material, and treasure over the preceding four years resulting in
apocalyptic carnage they hoped would cease all wars.
Much has been said about Barbara Tuchman’s work, making THE GUNS OF AUGUST her
most lauded of her books. I first encountered her superbly descriptive style in her immensework on the Black Plague and Serfdom. The clarity and prose with meticulous research
alone qualifies this book as the definitive discussion on the lead up and opening days of
the war. Vivid descriptions of the characters and setting prove invaluable in establishing a
true sense of the amassed details that make the reader a keen enthusiast. She deserves
the praise for documenting the kind of thought patterns that pervaded the many national
rivalries where irrational forces and their implications charted the future. More often than
not, trawling through The Guns of August feels like reading a fictional take or a historical
thriller. Its like experiencing the hot glowing barrels of German siege guns, the reading is
intense and impeccable written. Its simply hard to put it down.
