The War to End All Wars

" ΠΗ he First World War," writes military hisJL torian John Keegan, "was a tragic and unnecessary conflict." That, one might observe, is the understatement of the year. The mass slaughter that ravaged three continents from August 3, 1914, to November 11, 1918, claimed the lives of ten million people, ruined those of millions more, and led to a second world war twenty years later. It also, in the author's words, "destroyed the benevolent and optimistic culture of the European continent." The Allies (Britain, France, Italy, and Romania later joined by the United States) fought the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey) to a standstill in a war of attrition. Eventually the potential weight of the Americans, whose full power had yet to be felt by late 1918, convinced the Germans of the war's futility and brought it to an end. Despite its size and its· impact on twentiethcentury civilization, the First World War has been largely forgotten, overshadowed by its legacy, World War II. To remedy that, Keegan (whose other books include Fields of Battle and The History of Warfare) has set out to distill the elements of the war for readers to whom the