The Guns of August

I've never experienced war.

I know almost nothing about battles.

For the last four months, I've been reading Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Guns of August.

The Guns of August tells the story of the outbreak of World War I. It's absolutely mesmerizing to read, seeing the lies told by the Germans to justify their invasion of their fellow Europeans, the brutality of the Germans as they occupy and take over other countries, as well as the missteps of the unprepared Belgians and French and British and Russians.

It's also been a vocabulary-enriching experience to read this book. I've learned lots of war words. Some of these I've heard and I had a vague idea of what it meant, but none were clear to me before I read this book.

corps. a main subdivision of an armed force in the field, consisting of two or more divisions.

regiment. a permanent unit of an army typically commanded by a colonel and divided into several companies, squadrons, or batteries and often into two battalions.

platoon. a subdivision of a company of soldiers, usually forming a tactical unit that is commanded by a lieutenant and divided into several sections.

division. a group of army brigades or regiments.

flank. the right or left side of a body of people such as an army, a naval force, or a soccer team.

pennon. a long triangular or swallow-tailed flag, especially one of a kind formerly attached to a lance or helmet; a pennant.

front. the foremost line or part of an armed force; the furthest position that an army has reached and where the enemy is or may be engaged.

shrapnel. fragments of a bomb, shell, or other object thrown out by an explosion.

bayonet. a blade that may be fixed to the muzzle of a rifle and used to stab an opponent in hand-to-hand fighting.

artillery. large-caliber guns used in warfare on land.

billet. lodge (soldiers) in a particular place, especially a civilian's house or other nonmilitary facility.

infantry. soldiers marching or fighting on foot; foot soldiers collectively.

I can't resist sharing some of the great quotes from the book.

The mentality of the time: ‘War, he stated, “is a biological necessity”; it is the carrying out among humankind of “the natural law, upon which all the laws of Nature rest, the law of the struggle for existence.”'

‘Character is fate, the Greeks believed. A hundred years of German philosophy went into the making of this decision in which the seed of self-destruction lay embedded, waiting for its hour. The voice was Schlieffen's, but the hand was the hand of Fichte who saw the German people chosen by Providence to occupy the supreme place in the history of the universe, of Hegel who saw them leading the world to a glorious destiny of compulsory Kultur, of Nietzsche who told them that Supermen were above ordinary controls, of Treitschke who set the increase of power as the highest moral duty of the state, of the whole German people, who called their temporal ruler the “All-Highest.”'

The German war machine: “From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.”

“With their relentless talent for the tactless, the Germans chose to violate Luxembourg at a place whose native and official name was Trois Vierges. The three virgins in fact represented faith, hope, and charity, but History with her apposite touch arranged for the occasion that they should stand in the public mind for Luxembourg, Belgium, and France.”

‘Sir Edward Grey, standing with a friend at the window as the street lamps below were being lit, made the remark that has since epitomized the hour: “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”'

‘Next day, with the assault on Liège, the first battle of the war began. Europe was entering, Moltke wrote that day to Conrad von Hötzendorff, upon “the struggle that will decide the course of history for the next hundred years.”'

“The impetus of existing plans is always stronger than the impulse to change.”

The Germans executed Belgians who resisted them. ‘...the executions were meant as an exercise in frightfulness according to the theory developed by the Emperor Caligula: “Oderint dum metuant” (Let them hate us as long as they fear us).'

“The prodigal spending of lives by all the belligerents that was to mount and mount in senseless excess to hundreds of thousands at the Somme, to over a million at Verdun began on that second day of the war at Liège. In their furious frustration at the first check, the Germans threw men recklessly against the forts in whatever numbers would be necessary to take the objective on schedule.”

‘He (William the Crown Prince of Germany) had made himself the patron and partisan of the most aggressive militarist opinion, and his photograph was sold in the Berlin shops carrying the inscription, “Only by relying on the sword can we gain the place in the sun that is our due but that is not voluntarily accorded to us.”'

“When the Battle of the Frontiers ended, the war had been in progress for twenty days and during that time had created passions, attitudes, ideas, and issues, both among belligerents and watching neutrals, which determined its future course and the course of history since. The world that used to be and the ideas that shaped it disappeared too, like the wraith of Verhaeren's former self, down the corridors of August and the months that followed. Those deterrents—the brotherhood of socialists, the interlocking of finance, commerce, and other economic factors—which had been expected to make war impossible failed to function when the time came. Nationhood, like a wild gust of wind, arose and swept them aside.”

Thomas Mann's thoughts about Germany: “Germans being, he said, the most educated, law-abiding, peace-loving of all peoples, deserved to be the most powerful, to dominate...“

After Germany cruelly leveled Belgium, the sentiment was strong against Germany. “To the world it remained the gesture of a barbarian. The gesture that was intended by the Germans to frighten the world—to induce submission—instead convinced large numbers of people that here was an enemy with whom there could be no settlement and no compromise.”

“When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.”

Even if you are like me and you know little to nothing about war, reading The Guns of August put me right there with the generals making the decisions, with the soldiers in the trenches. I marveled at the ability of author Barbara Tuchman to tell this powerful story.