Catastrophe 1914

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 gripping clashes in the West where French soldiers marched into battle in uniforms of red and blue with flags flying and bands playing. In August, four days after 27,000 French soldiers died in a single day on the battlefield, British forces fought an extraordinary holding action against German oncoming forces.