Clif Hostetler's Reviews > A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

The one hundred year anniversary of the end of World War I recently occurred, and I decided if I didn’t tackle this book at this time I never would. I’ve had my eyes on it for some time while dreading the investment of time required to get through it. It’s worth the time and is well written with a narrative that provides an easily understood description of a complicated series of events. Chapters dedicated to background information are interspersed throughout the book which provide frequent relief from the other chapters filled with accounts of unbelievable suffering and death. I also found these “background” chapters to be the most interesting parts of the book. Most of the excerpts included at the end of this review are taken from these chapters.

The irony of WWI is that it was unnecessary but yet inevitable. It was made inevitable by a combination of personalities of those in power, an arms race utilizing new technology, dissatisfaction with recent negotiated settlements, multinational mutual defense treaties, and complicated mobilization plans. The traditional initiating cause of the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The real cause (IMHO) was the ultimatum issued by the Austro-Hungarian government to Serbia in response to the assassination. The impossible nature of the ultimatum was prompted by their fear of losing parts of their empire in the Balkans. The failure of Germany to restrain the Austro-Hungarian government at that point can be traced to Kaiser Wilhelm’s immature bluster. Then the tangled combination of mutual defense treaties converted the local Balkan conflict into a world war. Many other factors made the magnitude of death and destruction worse than anyone anticipated.

The first three military mobilizations were by Austro-Hungary, Russia, and Germany. It's interesting to note that in all three instances the possibility of a limited mobilization was explored, but in all three cases the military officials insisted that narrowing the focus of military action was impossible. In Austro-Hungary the possibility of advancing to Belgrade and no further was explored. The Russian Czar wanted to mobilize for war against Austro-Hungary but not Germany. And the German Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to mobilize against Russia but not France. Military officers in all three cases and in three different nations said that it could not be done. The Chief of the German General Staff said, “If his majesty insisted on leading the army eastwards, he would have a confused mass of disorderly armed men.” The Schlieffen Plan called for mobilization against both Russia and France—there was no alternative.

It is hard to understand how some generals maintained their optimistic belief that their next offensive would achieve a "break through" even after trying the same tactics over and over and failing to achieve meaningful results. One could make the case that some evil spirit must have caused various people to make stupid blunders and mistakes such that it was impossible for either side to achieve victory for four years assuring that maximum slaughter would occur. And then when the war did end, conditions were such that WWII happened twenty years later.

The following are some excerpts from the book that I found interesting. Before each excerpt I've included my introductory comments:

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is famous in history as being the cause of WWI. This book provides a personal story about Franz which carries with it a bit romance. Franz had married for love, against the preference of his uncle the Emperor, and consequently his wife had to live in humiliating disregard from others in the royal court. But the couple were looking forward to their trip to Bosnia because they were free of the royal court and could be seen in public together:

"[Franz Ferdinand] was also the eldest nephew of the Hapsburg emperor Franz Joseph and therefore—the emperor's only son having committed suicide—heir to the imperial crown. He had come to Bosnia in his capacity as inspector general of the Austro-Hungarian armies, to observe the summer military exercises, and he had brought his wife, Sophie, with him. The two would be observing their fourteenth wedding anniversary later in the week, and Franz Ferdinand was using this visit to put Sophie at the center of things, to give her a little of the recognition she was usually denied.

"Back in the Hapsburg capital of Vienna, Sophie was, for the wife of a prospective emperor, improbably close to being a non-person. At the turn of the century the emperor had forbidden Franz Ferdinand to marry her. She was not of royal lineage, was in fact a mere countess, the daughter of a noble but impoverished Czech family. As a young woman, she had been reduced by financial need to accepting employment as lady-in-waiting to an Austrian archduchess who entertained hopes of marrying her own daughter to Franz Ferdinand. All these things made Sophie, according to the rigid protocols of the Hapsburg court, unworthy to be an emperor's consort or a progenitor of future rulers.

"The accidental discovery that she and Franz Ferdinand were conducting a secret if chaste romance—that he had been regularly visiting the archduchess's palace not to court her daughter but to see a lowly and thirtyish member of the household staff—sparked outrage, and Sophie had to leave her post. But Franz Ferdinand continued to pursue her. In his youth he had had a long struggle with tuberculosis, and perhaps his survival had left him determined to live his private on his own terms. Uninterested in any of the young women who possessed the credentials to become his bride, he had remained single into his late thirties. The last two years of his bachelorhood turned into a battle of wills with his uncle the emperor over the subject of Sophie Chotek.

"Franz Joseph finally tired of the deadlock and gave his consent. What he consented to, however, was a morganatic marriage, one that would exclude Sophie's descendants from the succession. And so on June 28, 1900, fourteen years to the day before his visit to Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand appeared as ordered in the Hapsburg monarchy's Secret Council Chamber. In the presence of the emperor, the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, the Primate of Hungary, all the government's principal ministers, and all the other Hapsburg archdukes, he solemnly renounced the Austro-Hungarian throne on behalf of any children that he and Sophie might have and any descendants of those children. (Sophie was thirty-two, which in those days made her an all but hopeless spinster.)

"When the wedding took place three days later, only Franz Ferdinand's mother and sister, out of the whole huge Hapsburg family, attended. Even Franz Ferdinand's brothers, the eldest of whom was a notorious libertine, self-righteously stayed away. The marriage turned out to be a happy one all the same, in short order producing a daughter and two sons whom the usually stiff Franz Ferdinand loved so unreservedly that he would play with them on the floor in the presence of astonished visitors. But at court Sophie was relentlessly snubbed. She was not permitted to ride with her husband in royal processions or to sit near him at state dinners. She could not even join him in his box at the opera. When he, as heir, led the procession at court balls, she was kept far back, behind the lowest ranking of the truly royal ladies.

"But here in Bosnia, a turbulent border province, the rules of Vienna could be set aside. Here in Sarajevo, Franz Ferdinand and Sophie could appear together in public as royal husband and wife." (pg 3-5)

The size of the mobilization for war exceeded anything that had happened before in history:

"Russia's general mobilization ... called up the Russian reserves — a staggering total of four million men, enough to frighten any nation on earth. ...
(pg 74)

"This was war on a truly new scale; the army with which Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo had totaled sixty thousand men. ...
(pg 77)

The guns were also bigger than anything the world had previously seen:

"The Germans ... hauled into Belgium ... two new kinds of monster artillery: 305 Skoda siege mortars ... plus an almost unimaginably huge 420 howitzer ... produced by Germany's Krupp steelworks, [that] weighed seventy-five tons and had to be transported by rail in five sections and set in concrete before going into action.
(pg 127)

Early in the war many were enthusiastic. The young Winston Churchill is a prime example.

"Among the holders of high office, one man at least did not share the sense of glum foreboding: the ebullient ... young Winston Churchill ... he wrote to Prime Minister Asquith's wife ... 'I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment, and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.' "
(pg 133)

War may be hell, but trench warfare surely must be hell on steroids. The conventional image that comes to mind about WWI is one of machine guns cutting down waves of charging soldiers. But in terms of numbers killed, the machine gun was NOT the most devastating weapon used in WWI.

But in fact it was artillery that dominated the battlefields. World War I was the first major war, and it would also be the last, in which more men were killed by artillery than by small arms or aerial bombardment or any other method of destruction. Until late in the war artillery was the only weapon that, when used to maximum advantage, could neutralize the machine gun. It was the one weapon without which infantry, both when attacking and when defending, had almost no chance.
(pg 273)

The stress of anticipation of incoming artillery while hunkered down in the trenches probably caused the prevalence of a condition given the name of “shell shock.” Now we call it PTSD. It was a condition that apparently hadn’t been observed in previous wars.

"By 1916, the armies of Britain, France, and Germany were being diminished not just by the numbers of men killed and wounded but by something so new to human experience that the English had to coin a name for it: shell shock. By the thousands and then the tens of thousands, soldiers on the Western Front were being turned into zombies and freaks without suffering physical injuries of any kind.

"The phenomenon appeared in 1914, and at first no one knew what to make of it. The medical services on both sides found themselves confronted with bizarre symptoms: men in a trancelike state, men shaking uncontrollably, men frozen in weird postures, or partly paralyzed, or (though unwounded) unable to see or hear or speak. By December British doctors were reporting that between three and four percent of the British Expeditionary Force's enlisted men and up to ten percent of its officers were displaying symptoms of this kind. Their German counterparts would record almost twelve thousand such cases in the first year of the war.

"The victims got little sympathy. Career officers were accustomed to separating soldiers into four groups: the healthy, the sick, the wounded, and the cowards. They were predisposed to put men with nervous and mental disorders into the last category, to order them back to duty and to mete out harsh punishment to any who failed to obey. But the number of men who failed to obey became too big to be ignored or to be put in front of firing squads; it has been estimated that twenty four thousand had been sent home to Britain by 1916.

"... Gradually, it became clear that ... the troops were cracking because they could not absorb what was happening to them, because they knew themselves to be utterly powerless (bravery had little survival value when one was on the receiving end of a bombardment), and because they had no confidence that the generals who had put them in danger knew what they were doing. Men whose courage was beyond challenge could and did break down if subjected to enough strain of this kind."
(pg 339-342)

On the subject of despair induced by war, it's interesting to note times when a leader begins to crack under its pressure. During the final years of World War I, Erich Ludendorff, a protege of Otto von Bismarck himself, was the commanding general of all German armies. He had presided over ten million casualties, and in 1918 his forces had begun to rapidly disintegrate. His staff begin to notice unusual behavior on his part:

"Things had never gone so badly for Eric Ludendorff, or gone badly in so many ways over such a long period, as they did in 1918. As his problems mounted, he grew visibly fragile.

"All his life he had displayed an insatiable appetite for work, but now his staff noticed him slipping away from headquarters without explanation. A member of the medical staff, writing of Ludendorff, would recall that at this juncture 'there were reports of occasional crying episodes.'

"Everyone was on pins and needles the day Hocheimer arrived, wondering how he was going to approach Ludendorff and how the general was going to react. Ludendorff was a stiff, distant man with no visible sense of humor and firm control over all emotion except the rage that could break out in moments of intense stress. An ugly explosion was by no means out of the question. What happened was more unexpected than that. It revealed the depth of Ludendorff's neediness.

"He was predictably impatient at being interrupted but consented to see the doctor. 'I talked earnestly, urgently and warmly, and said that I had noticed with great sadness that for years he had given no consideration to one matter — his own spirit,' Hocheimer recalled afterward. 'Always only work, worry, straining his body and mind. No recreation, no joy, rushing his food, not breathing, not laughing, not seeing anything of nature and art, not hearing the rustle of the forest nor the splashing of the brook.'

"Ludendorff sat for a long time without answering. 'You're right in everything,' he said at last. 'I've felt it for a long time. But what shall I do?'

"Hocheimer urged a move from Ludendorff's cramped quarters at Avesnes back to the more pleasant accommodations at Spa in Belgium. He recommended walks, breathing exercises, and a change in routine calculated to induce relaxation and the ability to sleep. Ludendorff followed these instructions conscientiously, even eagerly. As long as he continued to do so, his torments eased. He and Hocheimer continued to confer. The doctor's ultimate diagnosis: 'The man is utterly lonely.' ...

"Ludendorff was especially close to the youngest of his stepsons, who happened to share his first name. In March 1918 he received word that young Erich, still a teenager, had been shot down behind British lines, his fate uncertain. Not long afterward, with German troops advancing across France in the Michael offensive, Ludendorff was told of the discovery of a fresh grave. Its marker said, in English, 'Here rest two German pilots.' He went to the grave and had the bodies dug up. One was Erich's. It was temporarily reburied at Avesnes while arrangements were made for its transfer to Berlin.

"That was where Ludendorff was going when he began to disappear from headquarters: to brood at Erich's grave. That was when an army doctor heard 'reports of occasional crying.' Nothing could ever be the same. [His wife] Margarethe was broken, permanently in the grip of depression, grief, and fear. Ludendorff, in his own words, felt that the war had taken everything."
(pg 644-648)

The following is a link to some more quotations from this book:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes...