THE MARNE, 1914

An exhaustively documented account of the Battle of the Marne, the outcome of which would define the course of World War I.

Leading up to this disastrous encounter, German officials believed that invading neutral Belgium would allow them to quickly surround the French army and attack Paris from the rear. The reality proved otherwise, as the Belgian army put up a strong fight, exhausting the German troops prior to reaching France. The Marne was a devastating loss for Germany and a galvanizing victory for France, as a French loss would have meant the fall of Paris and subsequent exit from the war. While Herwig (History/Univ. of Calgary; co-editor: War Memory and Popular Culture: Essays on Modes of Remembrance and Commemoration, 2009, etc.) acknowledges the larger implications of the Marne to European history after 1917, he attempts to debunk the commonly held perception that the Germans choked at a key moment and that the French rallied to a dramatic and decisive victory. With an incredibly detailed retelling of the battle, the author proves a more complex truth: The Germans were worn down by repeated failures of communication and a crisis of leadership as compared to the relatively cool-headed French effort headed by commander Joseph Joffre. Yet Joffre by no means ran a flawless campaign, and his failure to drive the Germans completely out of France at the end of the battle enabled them to regroup along what became the Western Front. Herwig’s painstaking reconstruction of the events subverts any deeper analysis of the complex interplay between the multitude of German, French and Belgian forces. That information is relegated to the epilogue, leaving readers to wrestle with the facts and figures and their larger implications on their own.

Like the war itself, a tough slog, but Herwig’s long-overdue revision of the history of the Marne will interest WWI enthusiasts.