The Trap of War

THE GUNS OF AUGUST (511 pp.)--Barbara W. Tuchman--Macmillan ($6.95).

World War I should have begun with kettledrums, trumpeted fanfares, and a giant curtain rising majestically across the boundaries of Europe. It was the innocent, hideous war that ushered in the modern age. The bloody pageant had been in rehearsal for years. Never before had so many nations so thoroughly plotted the destruction of their enemies. When the fighting finally began, in the long, hot summer of 1914, the great armies moved eagerly onstage to take up their long-assigned positions. In The Guns of August, Historian Barbara W. Tuchman (The Zimmermann Telegram) tells how, in the very first month of World War I, all the dramatic plans disintegrated into four years of wasting disaster.

The Jackstraws. "Europe was a heap of swords piled as delicately as jackstraws," writes Author Tuchman; "one could not be pulled out without moving the others." Germany's battle plan was drawn by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the German general staff from 1891 to 1906, a monocled Prussian with a mind that slashed through argument like a dueling sword. Schlieffen promised victory in six weeks by a massive, right-wing attack that would pivot across Belgium and fall on the flank of the French armies before Paris. Knowing of the scheme, France devised Plan 17, calling for a two-pronged offensive against the German center that would neatly snip off the German right wing and end the war in a hurry. By the spring of 1914, French officers knew what billet every battalion would occupy when war came.

Germany moved into Belgium on Aug. 4--and the mistakes began soon thereafter. Until his death in 1913, Schlieffen had reiterated: "Make the right wing strong." But his successor, General Helmuth von Moltke, was a Christian Scientist, a cello player, and a cautious man: he weakened the right wing to strengthen the line elsewhere. When the preposterous Russians, unequipped, untrained and unafraid, invaded East Prussia, Moltke forgot Schlieffen and diverted two corps from the Belgian drive to the Russian front. The two corps were never needed; General Erich Ludendorff routed the Russians at Tannenberg before his reinforcements arrived.

A Little River. Mistakes piled up on both sides, The French gallantly launched Plan 17 and were slaughtered; elan was no match for heavy artillery. When Moltke hesitated despite this victory, a general named Alexander von Kluck took matters into his own hands on the right wing, although his troops were exhausted. "They look like living scarecrows," noted one of Kluck's officers in his diary. "They drink to excess, but this drunkenness keeps them going. If we used too much severity the army would not march." Kluck decided to disregard Moltke's order to hold back; he would cross a little French river called the Marne.

As he crossed, Kluck exposed his flank to the astonished eyes of the French generals. General Joseph ("Papa") Joffre, the French commander, had been regrouping his armies for a stand on the Seine. Now he had to decide whether or not to risk everything with an attack on Kluck. Throughout a long afternoon, Joffre sat in the shade of an ash tree, a ponderous figure in black tunic, baggy red pants, and army-issue boots, and faced the problem. "Gentlemen," he said finally, "we will fight on the Marne."

"No Turning Back." Author Tuchman ends her long account with only the briefest mention of France's "miracle of the Marne," where the French at long last halted the German armies, weakened by the loss of the departed two corps and sorely needing the reinforcements Moltke held back. Her book does not capture the roar of battle that rumbles through Gallipoli, by Alan Moorehead, or In Flanders Fields, by Leon Wolff.

What Barbara Tuchman does accomplish is to knit all the personalities and plans of the opening battles of World War I into a colorful, fact-filled narrative. "The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world," she writes, "not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies ultimately win the war, but because it determined that the war would go on. Afterward there was no turning back. The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive."

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