Cataclysm: The First World War As Political Tragedy

The standard account of World War I says that the war happened because politicians lost control of events, and that once the war began, it quickly became an unstoppable machine. But in this major new work, historian David Stevenson shows that politicians deliberately took risks that led to war in July 1914, and that battle by bloody battle, their decision remained to continue the fighting. Cataclysm presents the disturbing reality that the course of the war was the result of conscious choices--including the continued acceptance of astronomical casualties.Rather than the standard Germany-vs.-England account, Cataclysm is a truly international history, drawing on previously undisclosed records from the Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Ottoman governments. From the complex network of secret treaties and alliances that eventually drew all of Europe into the war, to the way that World War I reconfigured how societies mourn and memorialize wartime dead, Cataclysm is a major revision of World War I history.

Cataclysm is a very professional and scholarly one volume history of WWI that covers all aspects of the war from the battlefield to the home front, including the economics and internal politics of the combatants. Even though the writing is dry it is quite readable and its separation into chapters devoted to topics rather than a time linear narrative make it an excellent source of reference.
Personally, I am more of a dilettante than a scholar and am more concerned with generalities than facts and figures. Therefore I found this book a little turgid with numbers and details that I could have done without, however if you want a very comprehensive, fact-filled general history of WWI this is most definitely the book for you.

I stumbled on this excellent book via a review in the Atlantic Monthly, and bookmarked it as a curiosity. Receiving it as a gift by surprise, I immediately put it in line behind other books on my shelf. For some reason though, the mood struck me to open it, I barely put Cataclysm down until I finished.

Stevenson interjects no sentimental pining for the time before the 20th Century's wars, and leaves no room for romanticized notions of warfare. He could be accused of cold rationality. But his objective and unsparing view allows for a great massing of facts and analysis in a compact but thorough history. The reader can sense the depth of understanding lying behind Stevenson's words, without having to wade through an historian's primary sources and two-handed waffling.

Having spent many an hour considering the Second World War and the Cold War, I now understand how "cataclysmic" the Great War was in its day. It was perhaps an even more important event in world history, in terms of the turn the world took from the past, than either of the later world wars. Further, I have new appreciation for how the First sowed the political, economic, diplomatic, military, and cultural seeds for the rest of the 20th century and beyond.

Stevenson has given us an important gift for understanding this critical event in world history. Don't miss it.

While my other esteemed reviewers rightly highlight the impressive scholarship into virtually all social, political, military and diplomatic aspects of the Great War, I think the real treat of this tome is the final chapters on the Versailles Treaty, rememberance of the war and its impact on later European developments. The author impressively argues that the Peace was not in fact a Diktat in practice, but largely the outcome of precedence and geo-political and social necessity. Likewise, the author rightly in my mind faults the Allies for abandoning France in terms of the enforcement of the peace, debunking the notion that Gallic torpidity and passivity caused French leadership to crumble at the onslaught of Facism. As insightful as the discussion of the war, its causes and the social aspect of the conflict, I think that his final chapters on peace and aftermath are truly revealing.

It has been a while since I've really gushed about a book, but I won't be able to help myself with this one. Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy, has to be one of the best books I have ever read on World War I, and one of the most compact yet comprehensive history books I've seen. It is less than 500 pages, but it covers every aspect of the war, from the strategy involved to the politics of starting, running, and, most importantly, ending the war. It goes beyond even that, though, by discussing the impact the war had on the post-war years, analyzing the years between the two world wars and even how memories of the war affected how the second one was fought. As a final thought, the conclusion discusses how the war has been looked at over time, how perceptions have changed, not only of who started the war, but also how it was fought.

All of this in under 500 pages? The coverage must be fairly superficial then, right? Not at all. Not only is Cataclysm thorough, but it's incredibly dense. This is not a book that you will read quickly. I am a fairly fast reader, and it took me nearly two weeks to finish the book, because it is extremely packed. Long paragraphs (sometimes almost a page long) abound, with the richness of the detail flowing off the page. Some books take this long to read because they are excessively dry, trying to stuff everything into the book but not integrating it very well. This book doesn't do that. Everything is related, and Stevenson draws the reader in with a lot of interesting information about whatever he is talking about.

The flow of the book is logical, but it is not completely chronological. The first section discusses the outbreak of the war, giving extensive detail about what led to the war. He even gives a few details about the minor wars that happened in the years leading up to World War I, such as the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, and discusses what the world was like before the outbreak of the war. He uses all of this information to give insight into the thought processes and events that led to the almost inevitable conflagration that turned into one of the most horrific wars of our time. After this section, he discusses the widening of the war, the battles of 1915-1917, and then jumps back to cover other aspects of the war. This includes the home front, the political maneuverings in all of the belligerent governments, naval warfare, tactics, economics, and war aims, just to name some. He then moves on to the outcome of the war, how it ended, the politics of the ceasefire, and the collapse of the German army. Finally, he discusses the aftermath, and he doesn't just stop at the peace treaty. He goes all the way up to the end of World War II and beyond.

This is what I loved about Cataclysm. Stevenson doesn't just give us what happened. He discusses the purpose (or at least what the purpose was at the time, even if it doesn't seem to make any sense in modern times) of what happened, what the politicians were thinking, and what they were trying to accomplish. He delves into how the politicians managed to keep the civilians engaged in the fighting, and how limited any anti-war movements were until the war seemed to be an intractable stalemate. Stevenson even gives great detail about lesser-known campaigns, such as that in the Middle East which has produced much of the modern-day strife. He covers Austria-Hungary and their battles against both Russia and Italy, as well as the war with Serbia, most of which have been given short shrift in World War I books I have read.

The writing, as I have said, is quite dense, but it's not his prose which makes it a slow read. I did not see any superfluous text in the book at all, and almost all of it was interesting. I kept stumbling upon things that I didn't know, or I knew little about, and Stevenson covers it all in a depth that is surprising in a book under 500 pages. I did have to laugh at his introduction, where he says that he has deliberately kept the end notes to a minimum in each chapter. Then I discovered that there are many chapters with notes that run into the three digits. I think this is a good thing, as I love notated history books, but I did find it funny that he would say that. Cataclysm is thoroughly researched, and the number of notes reflects this. The bibliography is quite extensive too. All of the maps are at the front of the book, and there are definitely many.

The only minor fault was the use (or non-use) of commas, and this could just be a legitimate way of doing it that I have never heard of before. A number of times, I would read a sentence and have to go back and re-read it because a comma appeared to be missing, completely jarring my understanding of the sentence, or at least the flow of it. However, if that is the worst thing I can say about the book, it must mean the book is wonderful. And it is. This could be considered the definitive book on World War I and all its aspects. I do know that you won't find anything like this in as small a package as Cataclysm is. If you have any interest in the war, or just military history in general, you should pick this one up.

David Roy

This book is written by an economist rather than a professional historian and as a result the narrative structure is different. Rather than looking at the details of individual battles the book looks at the result of offensive periods and the phases of the war.

The continuing impression of the war is one of a long pointless stalemate in which incompetent commanders used young men as cannon fodder in pointless attacks against well-entrenched infantry. Something which caused so much disillusionment that the regimes responsible for the war, those of Germany and Austria collapsed as did other such as the Russian autocracy who fought the war so incompetently.

Much of that image of the war can now be seen as having some partial truth but in reality being wrong. The highest casualty rates occurred early in the war when massed armies met each other in the open field. The development of the trench system led to far lower casualty rates for most of the war. The trenches providing protection against artillery and machine gun fire. Over time both sides developed offensive skills which allowed for attacks to be more successful. The Germans developed storm trooper units who were heavily armed with machine guns, trench mortars and flame throwers and used infiltration techniques. The allies used tanks extensively and also developed the use of light machine guns, hand grenades, trench mortars and air support. Both sides developed the use of artillery so that it became more accurate and barrages were aimed at fire suppression rather than elimination of the enemy.

Despite the fact of German revolution and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy the next few years saw most of the belligerents keen for war again. Italy and Germany were taken over by nationalistic movements and the Axis did not consist of those countries alone. Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria and Slovakia were part of the deal. In reality the war pushed most countries somewhat to the right.

During the war both sides faced different problems and that was the reason for the long period of the conflict. Germany was somewhat better at warfare and throughout the conflict inflicted more casualties on their opponents. They were however outnumbered and had to not only to fight both France and Britain but also Russia. Their one real ally was the Austro-Hungarian Empire which had a poorly equipped army and whose leaders were incompetent. The balance kept subtly shifting through the war. The casualties suffered by France were offset by the development of a large conscript army by Britain and the entry into the war of Italy and Romania. The defeat of the Russians by the entry into the war of the Americans.

The book re-affirms the reality of German war guilt. Previous historians had seen the interlocking system of alliances combined with both sides mobilisation plans as something which lessened the ability of individual politicians to make decisions about whether there would be war or not. In reality this was not the case and the German monarchy could have resisted but saw war as inevitable at some point.

This book is probably the best single volume history of the war so far printed but it is not for those who are keen on a narrative history.