The Marne, 1914, The Opening of World War I and The Battle That Changed The World, Holger H. Herwig, 2009 review

I’ve been fortunate that my local library continues to purchase new books and from all sorts of different subject areas. I subscribe to their RSS feed to see what new books are coming in and put holds on the ones I’m interested in. Lately, the past 6 months or so, I’ve been trying to read about other time periods in history. The library has been getting a few books on World War I, and since I know so little about it I pick them up.

The Marne was very detailed in that it started at the initial mobilization of troops that the many different countries that fought in the first months of World War I underwent.
The Marne primarily talks about the battles from the standpoint of the leaders and the commanding generals that fought up to and in the Battle of the Marne.

Holger H. Herwig says that much of his research includes sources that were locked behind the Iron Curtain until the fall of the German Democratic Republic in 1989-1990.

The Germans had hoped that they would mobilize faster than the French, attack them and eliminate them so that they could then focus on the war against Russia as it was felt they would take even longer to mobilize.

The German Armies were able to very quickly fight their way almost to Paris. Herwig goes over what some felt were the mistakes made by some of the German commanders that deprived them of victory. He doesn’t hold any punches back on the failings of the French and British Army commanders that nearly lost the war by their own severe mistakes.

Now there was something strange with this book, it spent 2/3 to 3/4 of its pages leading up to the Battle of the Marne, and then suddenly the battle was over and the post analysis was made by Herwig. Maybe I’m just not clued into the intricacies of what is completely considered the Battle of the Marne.

I did find the book interested for its high level view but I do prefer the books that have the foot soldiers view of the battle more.