The Guns of August
Barbara Tuchman
The Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Guns of August, written by Barbara W. Tuchman in 1963 is one of the most recognized books on the Great War. World War One was to be the war to end all wars but at its demise resulted in more problems than before the war began. The world had metamorphosed from an agricultural farmland, to a booming industrial factory, the likes the world has never imagined. The Congress of Vienna subdued most conflict, as the years between 1815-1914 stayed relatively away from major conflicts. But the small conflicts that did occur helped build up tensions. These tensions condensed under the build up of continuous steam in a boiler room where there is no failsafe valve. The steam continued
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There is very little recordation of the accounts in Austria, Serbia or the East (apart from the battle of Tannenberg) The war ultimately was a battle of attrition and fought in the trenches. It was a series of battles that resulted in favor of the allies. Tuchman in this book divides the first month on the Western Front into the battle of the frontiers (which includes the German violation of Belgium), the significance of the burning of the library at Louvain (the Belgians and all people around the world saw the burning of the library at Louvain as an atrocity), the German turn to the south after violating Belgium and the trench warfare after the battle of the Marne.The Germans saw a strong navy presence in the British Channel and the Mediterranean. Where after Italy becoming neutral, forced the Goeben, a German Dreadnaught to take shelter in the Dardanelles and even gain the Ottoman Empire as an ally. However it seemed as if the Germans used their strong navy only for exclusive moments throughout the war. 5 August saw the battle of Liège where the Germans eventually won. On the Eastern German front the battle of Tannenberg saw a Russian defeat and one of the worst losses for the Russians and saw the apparent suicide of the Russian General Aleksander Samsonov rather than returning home to the