The Great War
Graham Darby provides a timely reconsideration of why the conflict went on for so long and why the Central Powers lost.
'Home before the leaves fall and 'Over by Christmas' were just two of the misconceptions harboured by contemporaries in 1914. Perhaps knowledge of the American Civil War (1861-5), with its gatling guns and trench warfare, should have made people less optimistic. Yet German strategy depended entirely on the quick victory and one of the great misconceptions that led to this catastrophe was this false assumption by the German government that it could still win the war quickly in the year of 1914.
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