Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War ,Sir Max Hastings

-About this book

      In Catastrophe 1914, Max Hastings gives us a conflict different from the familiar one of barbed wire, mud and futility. He traces the path to war, making clear why Germany and Austria-Hungary were primarily to blame, and describes the gripping first clashes in the West, where the French army marched into action in uniforms of red and blue with flags flying and bands playing. In August, four days after the French suffered 27,000 men dead in a single day, the British fought an extraordinary holding action against oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in history. In October, at terrible cost the British held the allied line against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres. Hastings also re-creates the lesser-known battles on the Eastern Front, brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia and Galicia, where the Germans, Austrians, Russians and Serbs inflicted three million casualties upon one another by Christmas.

 Hastings gives us frank assessments of generals and political leaders and masterly analyses of the political currents that led the continent to war. He argues passionately against the contention that the war was not worth the cost, maintaining that Germany’s defeat was vital to the freedom of Europe.

   Throughout we encounter statesmen, generals, peasants, housewives and private soldiers of seven nations in Hastings’s accustomed blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts: generals dismounting to lead troops in bayonet charges over 1,500 feet of open ground; farmers who at first decried the requisition of their horses; infantry men engaged in a haggard retreat, sleeping four hours a night in their haste. This is a vivid new portrait of how a continent became embroiled in war and what befell millions of men and women in a conflict that would change everything.

-Contents

Introduction
1914 Chronology
The Organisation of Armies in 1914
Prologue: SARAJEVO
1 ‘A Feeling That Events Are in the Air’
1 CHANGE AND DECAY
2 BATTLE PLANS
2 The Descent to War
1 THE AUSTRIANS THREATEN
2 THE RUSSIANS REACT
3 THE GERMANS MARCH
4 THE BRITISH DECIDE
3 ‘The Superb Spectacle of the World Bursting 103 into Flames’
1 MIGRATIONS
2 PASSIONS
3 DEPARTURES
4 Disaster on the Drina
5 Death with Flags and Trumpets
1 THE EXECUTION OF PLAN XVII
2 ‘GERMAN BEASTLINESS’
3 LANREZAC ENCOUNTERS SCHLIEFFEN
6 The British Fight
1 MONS
2 LE CATEAU: ‘WHERE THE FUN COMES IN, 219 I DON’T KNOW’
7 The Retreat
8 Tannenberg: ‘Alas, How Many Thousands 259 Lie There Bleeding!’
9 The Hour of Joffre
1 PARIS AT BAY
2 SIR JOHN DESPAIRS
3 SEEDS OF HOPE
10 The Nemesis of Moltke
1 THE MARNE
2 ‘STALEMATE IN OUR FAVOUR’
11 ‘Poor Devils, They Fought Their Ships Like Men’
12 Three Armies in Poland
13 ‘Did You Ever Dance with Him?’
1 HOME FRONTS
2 NEWS AND ABUSE
14 Open Country, Open Sky
1 CHURCHILL’S ADVENTURE

2 ‘INVENTIONS OF THE DEVIL’
15 Ypres: ‘Something That Was Completely Hopeless’
16 ‘War Becomes the Scourge of Mankind’
1 POLAND
2 THE SERBS’ LAST TRIUMPH
17 Mudlife
18 Silent Night, Holy Night
Acknowledgements
Notes and References
Bibliography
Index

-Caractéristiques

Date de parution :2014

Editeur : HarperCollins publishers

N.de pages:705 pages

ISBN :  978-0-00-751974-3

EAN : 9780007519743

Poids : 0.525 Kg