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On a Knife Edge: How Germany Lost the First World War (Cambridge Military Histories)
£19.00£23.80 (-20%)
Was the outcome of the First World War on a knife edge? In this major new account of German wartime politics and strategy Holger Afflerbach argues that the outcome of the war was actually in the balance until relatively late in the war. Using new evidence from diaries, letters and memoirs, he fundamentally revises our understanding of German strategy from the decision to go to war and the failure of the western offensive to the radicalisation of Germany’s war effort under Hindenburg and Ludendorff and the ultimate collapse of the Central Powers. He uncovers the struggles in wartime Germany between supporters of peace and hardliners who wanted to fight to the finish. He suggests that Germany was not nearly as committed to all-out conquest as previous accounts argue. Numerous German peace advances could have offered the opportunity to end the war before it dragged Europe into the abyss.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, New edition (20 Oct. 2022) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Hardcover | 566 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1108832881 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1108832885 |
| Dimensions | 15.88 x 3.18 x 23.5 cm |
by Alun d
The basic premise of this book is that the outcome of the First World War was nothing like as clear cut for most of its duration.
It was, as the author says in his title, on a knife edge.
On balance, I think I agree with that premise.
What is different about this book from many others, is that it looks at the situation from a Jerben perspective.
With the research, the author has done, it is clear that both a German victory, and AP is much earlier than November 1918, was more possible than other histories have shown.
So if we agree that the outcome of the war, either in a German victory or an earlier draw was more possible at different points in time, then the book is a useful contribution to discussion about the First World War.
My only challenge with it, which is why I did not give it five stars, is that a fair bit of it is based on“if that happened “or “if the other might’ve happened “.
A bit too much surmising for a genuinely great work of history.
Well worth the read, though if you are interested in the first world war.
by Beheldspartan64
Disclaimer: Former student of Professor Afflerbach.
Undoubtedly ‘On a Knifes Edge’ will become a core text for any historian worth his salt researching WWI. The book provides a premise, that of Germany’s high chance of victory (or at least not a defeat), which directly challenges the often wrongly held mythos of the inevitably of German Defeat in WWI, after the commencement of the Schlieffen Plan.
Through his book, Holger demonstrates the culmination of his life’s work as he flawlessly weaves the events of the war, sentiments of the public and the importance of the individual to demonstrate, as the title of the book suggests, just how precarious the outcome of the First World War was even as it reached its epoch. Holger makes the most complex ideas so simple that it strikes the reader as so overtly obvious that to not have thought it previously seems an insult to oneself. He wastes no words as he takes you through 430 pages of indepth commentary of the journey of Imperial Germany during WWI making use of his prior research and unparalleled access to German sources.
The future will see that any historian, amateur or professional, who truly deems himself an expert of WWI will have this book at the cornerstone of their understanding of the conflict.
by A. Morgan
A fascinating, thoroughly researched and stimulating analysis. How close we came to defeat . . . .!!!
by Robert McColl Millar
This is a brilliant analysis of the politics and policies of the Great War from the viewpoint of Germany. While many of us have read about some of the issues of the period — such as Ludendorff’s abnormal psyche — this normally has been played out in relation to tactics; rarely have I seen the issue discussed in relation to politics.
the other fronts and Central powers are given much more prominence than I have seen before, not least in relation to how German strategy was dependent on and designed to uphold the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
by E. J. Webb
That Great War studies are still crucially alive more than a century after the event attests to the terrible event itself and to its relevance today – political, social, global. Surely no exaggeration to claim that the ‘long war’ 1914 – 1945 with the Cold War following remains, and will remain for some long period of time, the defining, seminal event of the third millennium: albeit nascent only when these horrors took off.
As for the book? Diligent, insightful up to a point but not wholly understanding the unease and sheer terror that German militaristic hubris excited amongst the essentially peaceable peoples whom they unwontedly confronted. Once aroused, those peoples’ justifiable determination that Wilhelmine Germany must be utterly smashed became a crucial feature of the ongoing conflict: just as a justifiable determination to do down at all costs Nazi and Japanese militarism in WW2 led on to extreme responses: the thousand bomber raids, Hiroshima. Horrible, but in context essential. And arguably deserved.
Not wonderfully well-written, often repetitive; too much dependence on references to make the argument. The translation largely OK but Granate (German) best translates in context as (artillery) shell, not as grenade: something which the otherwise admirable lady translators could not be expected to appreciate but which their editors – if any- at the CUP ought to have recognised and corrected: all the more so in a book concerned with the business of warfare.
by davidk
Fantastic brilliantly researched and written
by tolkein
Seeing the war from the ‘other’ perspective provides a fresh view, and things I didn’t know. I hadn’t realised that AH were, eventually, prepared to yield Trentino to Italy to keep Italy in the Triple Alliance! Nor that Matthias Erzberger, of whom I’m becoming a fan, was serious about no annexations, no indemnities. In the end the German leadership was only prepared to consider this when they were losing! And Brest-Litovsk showed them in their true colours. I think it refines my view of Fischer, but overall, the War I still lay at Imperial Germany’s feet, with a contemptuous glance at the AH leadership which went to war over Serbia and couldn’t even manage to beat them.
Very worth a read. Even had a nice hat tip to my old Director of Studies, Norman Stone. I’m reading Stephenson’s book on 1914-1918 as well.