The First World War By John Keegan
Hardback, 475 pages. Published 1999 by Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN: 0–375-40052-4
The First World War By Hew Strachan
Hardback, 364 pages. Published 2003 by Viking. ISBN: 0-670-03295-6
Hew Strachan and John Keegan are unquestionably among the foremost British military historians of our day, and both produced single volume histories of the First World War in the years approaching the centenary. While Strachan’s book takes a more stratospheric view of the war (and consequently comes in over 100 pages shorter), Keegan relies on a number of personal vignettes and more detailed tactical and operations descriptions to tell the story–not surprising from the author of The Face of Battle. Ultimately, both books’ strengths are also their failing: the Great War ranged too far and wide, with too many disparate actors, for a single volume of manageable size to capture. Keegan’s book in particular serves as a useful jumping-off point for a more detailed study of the war, but beyond the trenches of Flanders and France and the Pripet Marshes, it merely whets the appetite without fully satisfying it. Strachan, oddly, covers the German African campaigns in greater detail. Neither does justice to the campaigns in the Middle East or Italy.
While Strachan takes a less tactical approach, Keegan’s book is more successful at tying together the various theaters into a holistic narrative–demonstrating the ways in which campaigns on the Eastern Front, in Serbia, and in Italy were tied to the central campaigns in France and Belgium. As usual, the naval war is barely a footnote.
For the student wishing to better understand the cataclysm of 1914-1918, largely overshadowed by the even greater tragedy of the Second World War, these volumes are valuable but should be accompanied by a “further reading” list covering the various campaigns ranging from the Ukraine to the North Sea and central Africa.
James W. Vizzard 