Victory through Coalition: Britain and France during the First World War (Cambridge Military Histories)

Description

Marshal Foch once commented during World War I that since August 1914 he had lost much of the respect that he had once had for Napoleon. Foch reflected that all the Emperor's victories were achieved when fighting coalitions and since Foch had worked closely with the British almost from the opening campaign, he now knew what that meant. Elizabeth Greenhalgh, a professor at the Australian Defence University and co-editor of the highly regarded journal War and Society, has produced an essential study of the key military relationship on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918--that between Britain and France. In her story, the Russians are an unseen presence just off stage while the Italians and Americans have small speaking parts toward the end. Deeply researched in French, British, and Australian archives, the book provides both a succinct description of the personalities and machinery of liaison between the Allied armies and the high politics of coalition diplomacy and the very senior people, politicians and soldiers, who practiced it. Interestingly, the French leaders, Clemenceau, Joffre, and Foch, appear very much to advantage to their British counterparts Lloyd George and Haig, who Greenhalgh catches doctoring his diary after the war to make himself look better. Petain, however, is almost as parochial as Haig, but then their positions as commanders of their respective national armies in the field almost guaranteed that they would adopt a narrow view of things. Among the senior British commanders, Plumer was perhaps the most adept at working with the French with minimal friction. It is at the level of liaison that the British are most competent, and the French for the greater part of the war were ill-served. This is a volume that any student of World War I will want to read and ponder. It is also one that students of World War II will want to consider, particularly the author's discussion of how Foch organized his headquarters once he became the Allied coordinator in 1918. It became both a model (for MacArthur in the Southwest Pacific Area) and a starting point for something rather different in Europe. In addition to everything else, the author writes very well--but then you would expect no less from an editor. Highly recommended.