The book concludes with a look at the battlefield today and suggestions for further reading. It then breaks out the French orders of battle and the German's opposing plans, the outcome of the fighting and the aftermath of the battle. This title presents the origins of the campaign, followed by a brief chronology, before detailing the opposing commanders and armies. Further attempts by each side to outflank the other led to the formation of a continuous front from the North Sea to Switzerland, which set the pattern for the rest of the war. Although not an decisive defeat, the battle was a strategic Allied victory. The conduct of the battle served to make and break the reputation of commanders and subordinates alike. Germany's failure to defeat the French committed her to a war on two fronts, which would lead to trench warfare and the war of attrition that the General Staff had hoped to avoid. Osprey's study of the Battle of the Marne, which was one of the decisive encounters of World War I (1914-1918), saving France from a catastrophic defeat that would almost certainly have knocked her out of the war. With its wide reach and unexpected conclusions, this book revises-and expands-our understanding of the legacy of the First World War. Nor may the decisive turning points during years of conflict be those that were thought to be so at the time.
While war is itself an agent of change, Beckett shows, the most significant developments occur not only on the battlefields or in the corridors of power, but also in hearts and minds. The book travels from the deliberately flooded fields of Belgium to the picture palaces of Britain's cinema, from the idealism of Wilson's Washington to the catastrophic German Lys offensive of 1918. Focusing on episodes both well known and scarcely remembered, Beckett tells the story of the Great War from a new perspective, stressing accident as much as strategy, the small as well as the great, the social as well as the military, and the long term as much as the short term.The Making of the First World War is global in scope.
In this provocative book, historian Ian Beckett turns the spotlight on twelve particular events of the First World War that continue to shape the world today. Nearly a century has passed since the assassination of Austria-Hungary's Archduke Ferdinand, yet the repercussions of the devastating global conflict that followed echo still.
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