In this article, the famous chaplain of the 165th Infantry (formerly the NY Fighting 69th) Father Francis Duffy (1874 - 1932) describes how the regiment was ripped to shreds in two offensives - hinting all the while that "somebody blundered":
"Since 1915 no commanders in the older armies would dream of opposing too strongly wired and entrenched positions [with] the naked breast of their infantry. They take care that the wire, or part of it at least, is knocked down by artillery or laid flat by tanks before they ask unprotected riflemen to [breach the line]. When the wire is deep and still intact and strongly defended, the infantry can do little but hang their bodies upon it."
More about Father Duffy can be read here...
Added to the growing pile of reviews that attempted to sort out all the various explanations as to why the war went so badly for practically all the nations involved was this 1920 article that presented a clear description of the 1914 drive on Paris as well as the disaster that was the Gallipoli campaign.
The books reviewed were penned by two of the war's principal players: The March on Paris by General Alexander Von Kluck (1846-1934) and Gallipoli Diary by General Sir Ian Hamilton (1853-1957).
"The story of the German onrush and it's memorable check can now be pieced together with accuracy. It tallies with the account of General Sir Frederick Maurice. We now know that the Germans failed through want of General Staff control, through inadequate "intelligence", above all, through striking at two fronts at the same time." The book reviewer for The New Republic, by Sidney B. Fay, summed-up his reading of the dethroned Crown Prince's (1882 - 1951) post-war memoir in this way:
"This is a remarkable book in at least three respects: it's literary cleverness, it's revelation of a new Crown Prince chastened by adversity, and it's vivid pictures of men and events."
Surprisingly, a British magazine published a terribly dry and unsympathetic review of My Memoirs by Kaiser Welhelm II (1859 - 1941).
Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.
Kaiser Wilhelm's recollections of his part in the First World War (reviewed above) was released in the Winter of 1922. Former French president Rene Viviani (1863 - 1925; leadership, 13 June 1914 – 29 October 1915) quickly responded with his own book that appeared the following spring - it was titled As We See It:
"M. Viviani's book is a direct answer to that puerile and invidious work known as the ex-Kaiser's War Memoirs. It is impossible to escape from the logic of Viviani's scathing denunciation of the ex-Kaiser's tacit inculpation in the events which preceded the world-wide cataclysm." The well respected arts journal, THE DIAL, published a very brief notice reviewing the post-war memoir, My Memoirs, by Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz (1849-1930). The Dial reviewer found the Von Tirpitz' memoir interesting as a psychological study: "My Memoirs, by Grand Admiral von Tirpitz is one of those elaborate vindications which carry the authentic conviction of guilt...If Germany was really, as the Grand Admiral estimates, a sheep in wolf's clothing, a few more memoirs like this will leave no regret about her fate."
Read an article about the many faults of the German Navy during the Second World War...
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