Published in 2014 on the 100th anniversary of the beginning of WWI, this is Max Hastings’ overview of the beginning of WWI from the assassination of Franz Ferdinand to the first Christmas of the war at the end of 1914. This was one of the volumes I picked from my grandfather John’s bookshelf after he died. His father, my great-grandfather, fought in WWI on the Western Front. I have his campaign medals. So there’s a family connection with the story. Hastings’ is a prolific historian of 20th C. war. I’ve read several of his books before. He writes in an engaging style, explaining grand strategy and the wide sweep of events, while at the same time weaving in individual lives and their personal reactions from being swept up by war. It is truly a terrible tale of unimaginable hubris and folly on the part of the statesmen who willed the war to happen. Hastings is in no doubt that the blame lies fully with first the Austrians for kicking the whole thing off, and then very much the Germans for both cheering them on and then launching their own attack on France. He’s dismissive of view that Britain should have stayed out of it, saying that it would have been very bad for Britain to have a continent dominated by an aggressively militaristic Germany. Of course, without being able to re-run history we’ll never know. On the battlefield it’s clear that nobody expected that the modern technologies of machine guns and long-range high-explosive artillery would give defenders such a huge advantage, and that the front would inevitably congeal into a bloody, muddy, killing machine that simply ground up soldiers by the thousands. It’s a testament to human resilience that most were able to endure it. The contrast between the jingoistic celebration by many at the outbreak, and the grim desperate reality of the trenches is stark. A lesson for all times. War is never glamorous or glorious, but sometimes must be endured.