Victory 1918

by Alan Warwick Palmer

Book Overview

When an armistice was finally signed in the forest of Compiegne outside of Paris, the Great War had shuddered to an end, but not before it had been fought on three continents, three oceans, and nine... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871138034
• ISBN13: 9780871138033
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

...toying with beliefs....

Britain has always had her eyes wide open to keep the/her routes to India wide open exclusively for her commerce, and Britain acquisition of the Suez Canal and her subsequent colonization -1882 - (a so-called mandate) of Egypt was the culmination of such entrepreneurship. For the routes to India, Britain may have initially sold her soul more out of necessity than greed, but it was not long before the order was reversed. In fact, it was greed that served to signal the start of her acquaintance with the Middle East as the key to Britain's vast empire (some one million and a quarter square miles). She secured Afghanistan at India's northern hemisphere, and Burma to the far eastern side - third Burmese war in 1885 until Burma was absorbed into India - Britain also possessed Cyprus on the Mediterranean in order to protect India from Czar intervention. Russia; as far as Britain was concerned, had to remain encroached within the shores of the Black Sea; she was not permitted to gain access to the `warm waters'. Never! Britain toyed with the Ottoman Empire and used all possible nefarious means to ingratiate herself to despotic Sultans simply to keep away the Czars of Russia from repossessing Constantinople - once upon a time the center of Byzantine. France, too, had her eyes fixed on the Orient. Since the early days of the 1800's, Napoleon's politics had been built on an indoctrinated theory that the less exactness we offered the more room for maneuver preferred to leave as much unsaid as possible. The more of false hopes we gave, the less France would be obliged to oblige. For example Napoleon went to the extremes by declaring himself a Mohammedan in order to imbibe the el-Azhar (Moslem Shrine) to win over the Egyptians' support in his quest for supremacy over Egypt. Thus far, however, Napoleon had been able to stem the tidal wave of public outrage without dampening the soles of his shoes when he established secret channels with the Ottoman Sultan - the Caliphate. This competition between two major universal powers did its work like yeast in a lump of dough, it began to take effect and the political geography of the Middle East was one that one must not ignore the immense tract of mainly barren lands called the Arabian Peninsula. The Arabs, who for centuries had been `subjected' to the Ottoman autocratic ruling methods under the `banner' of `Islam', could feel the opposing (and confusing) schools of diplomacy between the French and the English in their approach to gain a permanent foothold in Arabia. The Arabs could see a radical difference between the character of the French and the methods of the English. The former will not hesitate to sacrifice the future for the fulfillment of present desires. The latter moves slowly weighing carefully all the facts, the pros and cons, and, before acting, determines what course of action will be most to serve Britain's interests in the end. They're not in a hurry and can wait and wait, until the opportune m

The End of WWI: Help in Understanding How We Got There

Firstly this was a very good history book of the Great War itself, not just the end, with insider type information of how decisions were made by the people in power throughout the war, although more so for the Western Powers than the Central ones. It's stance was to understand how the Victory in 1918 and the attitudes by all envolved came to be. It helped me understand Woodrow Wilson's stance while the US was not yet a combatant, his problems shifting gears once into the war, and the problems his more reasoned stance had once congress shifted away from his party to support a stronger war stance, undermining his ability to speak for America once the war was over. It helped understand the significance of the war on multiethnic empires ruled from atop, in contrast to Wilson's emphasis on nations being ruled from below, by the people ruled. This helps understand the rise of 20th century nationalism, especially in the breakup of the Austrian Empire and specifically Yugoslavia as an anti-Austrian Empire country, and its more recent problems with a multiethnic state vs. the nationalist wishes of some of its peoples. And of course it helped understand the unfortunate stance of the Allies after the war which lead to the pumeling of Germany in every way, as well as understanding the more pervasive negative tide of battle itself for Germany/Austria/Turkey in 1918, not the deadlocked exhausted end to the war presented by the Germans after the war. In all, a stimulating book with all kinds of information about questions I've harbored about the Great War, and some I didn't know I wanted to have.

The last war of the 19th Century, the first of the 20th

"Victory in 1918" could easily be viewed as an ironic title. It was, as Palmer underscores, the insane (by contemporary standards) infliction of huge reparations payments on Germany by England and France that brought about the next war, that sponsered by Adolf Hitler.Similarly, "Victory in 1918" could be seen as a misnomer, for this book is little about the victory in 1918 and much about the antecedant years.But it is only through the events recounted and the concomitant socio-political attitudes so well painted by Mr. Palmer that the outcome can be understood. I had had a good bit of difficulty understanding the attitude of appeasement which characterized the Chamberlin regime in England in the 1930's. The French attitude was even more opaque. The nature of the horror with which both countries, with which the electorates of both countries viewed the recent past was brought home vividly in this work. Similarly, Palmer's recounting of the secondary theaters of war, the so-called "side-show," provides the link between the errors of the Treaty of Versailles and the 18th and 19th century European attitudes towards war and about the spoils of war going to the victors. Enlightening also were Palmer's depiction of the constantly shifting alliances of this war, and the acceptance of such motion, also left-overs from prior centuries.In sharp contrast to WW II, Rommel's Panzer Corp and Patton's daring raids was the strategic and tactical vision, or lack thereof, of the French and British generals. Understanding the "poilou's" loss of faith in their leaders became easy. British lack of execution in Turkey, complained about by Churchill, resulted in failure, blamed on Churchill. Palmer fleshed this out in greater detail along with the amazing lack of decision-making capacity within the government. British military activities in Egypt and the mid-east were presented in thorough detail. The effects of 19th century colonial attitudes which carried into this war with deletrious effects for the Allies were fully portrayed.Nor was the Western front given short shrift. Palmer presented a thorough, although not exhaustive, treatment. The futility of placing blame and the need for evolutionary thinking were made clear. The interaction between the Eastern and Western fronts, the changes that accompanied the Bolsheviks defeat by the Communists, and the general power elite fear of rebellion by the working class all are part of the calculus of the time. All are treated fairly by the author.Mr. Palmer's prose is quite readable. At times it is a bit difficult to keep track of what's going on, but that was due, I think, to the complexities of shifting alliances and my perosnal unfamiliarity with the need for a continually updating scorecard. The level of detail was good. While not inflicting constant resource counts on us, Palmer provides enough depth both to hold one's interest and to allow one to understand what was happening.An excellent book which shows, perhaps by acci

Terrific & Comprehensive Textbook on the First World War!

In this sobering, comprehensive, and highly detailed account of the war he claims determined the social and political direction of the 20th century, acclaimed author Alan Palmer leads the reader through the incredibly bloody trench warfare of the First World War with an authority and informed discussion of the causes, battles, and results of this long, disastrous, and momentous conflict. Unlike previous efforts by other authors, Palmer does not neglect the many fronts other than the well-discussed European theater of operations. Rather, he weaves a wide-ranging discussion successfully linking the conflicts along the eastern "Russian" front as well as in the Balkan area (where the initial tripwire was pulled by the assassination in Sarajevo) were an integral part of this first world war, and also discusses the significance of the Middle Eastern and African theaters of operation to the progress and complications of the overall conflict.This is indeed a serious, objective, and detailed look at the morass the civilized world slipped into as the chaos began in August of 1914. The author takes a country by country, front by front approach that illuminates and de-romanticizes the nature of the conflict, which according to the author was a blunt, indifferent and murderous affair, and one reads through pages of terrible detail full of hand to hand combat, the endless mud, virtual seas of rats and other vermin, and the sometimes overwhelming stench of decaying corpses. Palmer weaves the fact-rich text with a sense of the crushing ordeal for the men in the trenches, trapped by geography, terrain, climate and circumstance into a years-long stagnant war of attrition that was far more horrific than any large-scale warfare of the past. Of course, one of the key elements making it so terrible was the new weaponry developed with such precision in the new manufacturing facilities all over the otherwise "civilized" Europe. In this sense it was a frightening preview of what lay ahead for all the wars of the 20th century. Palmer also carves out some controversial territory for himself by handily challenging conventional wisdom on a number of issues, such as the notion that it was the final desperate surge toward Paris late in the war that tipped the balance in favor of the Allies and against France. The author argues that it was in fact the global nature of the war and the fact that the Allies had so critically damaged the ability of the Germans to sustain its far-flung empire that kicked the chair out from under the Germans. There is also a lot of interesting and relevant information provided concerning the diplomatic and political efforts of Britain, France and Germany in the months leading up to the onset of the war that I read here for the first time. This is a wonderful book, and while I am not entirely convinced by some of the author's arguments for a few of the controversial positions, I have to applaud the extremely

An exposition of the decisive "sideshow" fronts of WWI

Although the overwhelming majority of the fighting and dying was done in the western front of Belgium and France and the Eastern front between the Russian, German and Austria-Hungarian empires, the victors of the first world war were decided everywhere. Had the German submarines succeeded in sending more ships to the bottom of the sea, England would have been forced into a settlement, which would have ended the war, as France and Belgium could not have held the western front without her. The role of the other supposed "sideshow" fronts of Italy, Serbia, Gallipoli, Rumania, Mesopotamia and Palestine all served to tilt the balance of troop deployments so that the Entente could hold out long enough to exhaust the Germanic alliance. It is the emphasis placed on these theaters and their critical role in the outcome that makes this book so unique. Palmer articulates very well the role that these fronts played in the war. In the context of a stagnant battle line where hundreds of thousands of deaths moved the front only a few miles, a movement of several hundred miles was a psychological victory or defeat far out of proportion to the true significance. When Turkey and Bulgaria sought peace, the German supreme commanders knew that victory was impossible, although they could most likely had held out for some time. The most significant point of the book and one often left out of many historical accounts, is that the German leaders chose to end the war rather than drag the German nation down to ruin. Even when the peace terms were far more onerous than they had anticipated and probably should have been, they understood that further fighting was pointless. However, that did not cause them to speak up when a former corporal began blaming the guiltless political leaders as he began his own political career. The war that started in 1914 turned out to be the first round of a new thirty years war in Europe. A history that explains the critical role of the other fronts has been badly needed and this one does just that. It is one of the best histories of the great war that I have read. It also makes you realize how easily the outcome could have been different, both militarily and politically.