Blogging The Great War: Intro

A few months ago I was wandering a bookstore aimlessly and ducked into the history aisle. For some reason I turned to the shelf with books on World War I and ended up pulling John Keegan's The First World War from its spot and purchasing it. I'm not quite sure why I suddenly wanted to learn about WWI but I did. Keegan's text had all kinds of excerpts from positive reviews on it indicating that it was the best single-volume history of the conflict so I went with it. Plus it was from 1998 and so elements from modern scholarship would no doubt be included.

The book languished on a shelf of my own for some time until I cracked it open this past weekend. This was partly due to being in the middle of other books and wanted to finish them first and also due to the broadcast of the multi-part series The First World War on the Military Channel. I thought it would make a nice long-form bit of blogging to comment on the war as I read a book on it and watched a documentary as well. This would also afford me the chance to include pictures!

My dad was a big World War II buff (especially the Pacific Theatre) who had shelves and shelves of books on the conflict. Thusly it's no surprise that my brother and I became interested in the subject. But there were few, if any, texts on World War I. Books describing the genesis of WWII never failed to mention The Great War, especially how the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI, made Germany fertile ground for the deadly nightshade of Nazism. I entered high school knowing all about Pearl Harbor, The Battle of Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, etc., but virtually nothing about WWI. My history teacher was a big Civil War buff so we spent weeks covering it. When the early 20th century came around, we spent maybe a day on WWI and got the usual lectures – the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand which got the whole thing going; the introduction of new weapons such as the submarine & mustard gas; the Battle of Jutland and the trenches which set the scene for Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front; the United States entered the war largely due to the sinking of the Lusitania and so on. As I type, I'm 3 chapters in and have watched the first of ten episodes of the documentary. I can tell you that I've learned an extraordinary amount thus far. I have newly learned, for instance, that war didn’t break out until about a month after the assassination. So this should be a great learning experience. Also, I hope my girlfriend, who refuses to watch any of the documentary with me, reads the posts as I think there is much here to engage her.

Let me end with a couple technical notes and a song.

Firstly, the documentary is based on Prof. Hew Strachan's The First World War Volume I: To Arms. At 1250 pages, it is a lengthy tome and it is but the first of a planned trilogy which promises to be the most complete and the gold standard history of the conflict when finished, at least in English. His one-volume The First World War is said to stand along Keegan's work as a definitive book for the layreader. Considering that Strachan has devoted an entire book to how the war was financed and another to the overlooked campaigns in Africa, he is probably the English-language authority on the war. And so, I have some direction if I care to pursue the topic further.

Lastly, a song. Folks familiar with my podcast know that I love me some music and that I am a progressive rock geek. And while WWI is not exactly well-worn ground for prog bands, IQ did write a song about it. They had a live version recorded in 2004 up at their website until very recently. Since they were giving it away, I shall do the same.

"Common Ground (live)"