Hart, Peter. The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
The First World War has one of the worst reputations among conflicts I can think of. From its evident failure to bring lasting peace in Europe to the miseries of trench warfare to its inciting motives of nationalism, imperialism, and balance of power diplomacy, the Great War remains difficult to understand for modern society and commonly labeled with some version of the adjectives “futile” and “pointless.” Peter Hart’s combat history of the conflict can best be interpreted in light of all this–an effort to rehabilitate the reputation of general officers and the operational-level command decisions that have become bywords for tactical obstinacy and uncaring, elitist sacrifice of the common soldier. In this, it succeeds brilliantly, but in doing so Hart falls into some of the worst traps of First World War historiography of a different stripe.
While its subtitle sounds like it might be more along the lines of a John Keegan-style “soldier experience” history, The Great War is in fact more an account of the methods through which the First World War was deliberated, planned, and fought at the grand strategic, strategic, and larger tactical levels. As the most famous and arguably most important theater of the conflict, the Western Front receives the majority of Hart’s focus, with the Eastern Front and naval operations coming in second and other theaters a distant third. Most notably, the repeated failure and cost of both sides’ offensives are placed back in their proper context of combatants learning from their mistakes and adapting their approach to give themselves a better chance of success–only for their opponents to have also adapted, and foil new offensive tactics that might have won the previous offensive with new defensive upgrades that stopped them in their tracks.
Where The Great War fails, however, is in its discussion of campaigns outside of Europe and the high seas. As Hart begins to analyze such “sideshows” as Gallipoli, Salonika, and Sinai/Palestine, it quickly becomes clear that not only does he (justifiably) believe the conduct of those campaigns to have been misguided or incompetent, but that their very existence were ill-advised, even going so far as to call them worthless, a waste of time, resources, and lives. Not only does this employ a high level of presentism and hindsight, refusing to deal with these topics on their own contemporary historical terms and explaining why they may have seemed a good idea at the time, it also ignores the eminently viable strategic principle of weakening one’s opponent on other fronts where they can’t put up as strong a fight–arguably the winning strategies of Britain in the Seven Years’ War and the United States in the American Civil War. It is hard to argue that the Western Front was not the most important theater of the war, or that the conflict could have been ended directly anywhere else, but it is equally hard to agree that an effort to knock out one of Germany’s allies or open the Bosphorous to Allied shipping in support of Russia were inherently bad ideas. Even more egregious is the decision to not include sub-Saharan African or East Asian campaigns at all. Hart uses lack of space as his justification for this, but with fully three chapters just on naval warfare, I can’t imagine he couldn’t have used at least some of that space to discuss the different nature of combat in those far-flung and lesser-known theaters.
For me, however, the strengths of The Great War ultimately outshine its weaknesses. Perhaps if Hart had embarked on a more focused effort, with the modified subtitle instead “A Combat History of the Western Front,” it might have been one of the best books on the First World War I’ve yet read, and I would use portions of it as teaching materials or homework readings without hesitation. It’s a shame the entire text couldn’t have reached those same standards.