Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

by Max Hastings
Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War

by Max Hastings

Paperback(Reprint)

(Not eligible for purchase using B&N Audiobooks Subscription credits)
$21.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
    Choose Expedited Shipping at checkout for delivery by Wednesday, April 3
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

From the acclaimed military historian, a history of the outbreak of World War I: the dramatic stretch from the breakdown of diplomacy to the battles—the Marne, Ypres, Tannenberg—that marked the frenzied first year before the war bogged down in the trenches.

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. 

As he has done in his celebrated, award-winning works on World War II, 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307743831
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/13/2014
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 704
Sales rank: 257,290
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Max Hastings is the author of more than twenty books, including Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, Inferno: The World at War, 1939–1945, and Winston's War: Churchill 1940-1945. He spent his early career as a foreign correspondent for BBC TV and various newspapers, then as editor of Britain’s Evening Standard and Daily Telegraph. He has received numerous awards for both his books and his journalism. He lives in the English countryside west of London.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction
(Continues…)



Excerpted from "Catastrophe 1914"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Max Hastings.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Maps xiii

Introduction xvii

1914 Chronology xxiii

The Organisation of Armies in 1914 xxv

Prologue: Sarajevo xxvii

1 'A Feeling That Events Are in the Air' 1

1 Change and Decay 1

2 Battle Plans 25

2 The Descent to War 41

1 The Austrians Threaten 41

2 The Russians React 54

3 The Germans March 75

4 The British Decide 85

3 'The Superb Spectacle of the World Bursting into Flames' 103

1 Migrations 103

2 Passions 110

3 Departures 126

4 Disaster on the Drina 138

5 Death with Flags and Trumpets 159

1 The Execution of Plan XVII 159

2 'German Beastliness' 187

3 Lanrezac Encounters Schlieffen 194

6 The British Fight 200

1 Mons 200

2 Le Cateau: 'Where the Fun Comes in, I Don't Know' 219

7 The Retreat 239

8 Tannenberg: 'Alas, How Many Thousands Lie There Bleeding!' 259

9 The Hour of Joffre 286

1 Paris at Bay 286

2 Sir John Despairs 290

3 Seeds of Hope 298

10 The Nemesis of Moltke 313

1 The Marne 313

2 'Stalemate in Our Favour 342

11 'Poor Devils, They Fought Their Ships Like Men' 356

12 Three Armies in Poland 386

13 'Did You Ever Dance with Him?' 411

1 Home Fronts 411

2 News and Abuse 434

14 Open Country, Open Sky 442

1 Churchill's Adventure 442

2 'Inventions of the Devil' 455

15 Ypres: 'Something That Was Completely Hopeless' 463

16 'War Becomes the Scourge of Mankind' 497

1 Poland 497

2 The Serbs' Last Triumph 509

17 Mudlife 515

18 Silent Night, Holy Night 541

Acknowledgements 565

Notes and References 567

Bibliography 595

Index 605

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews