Der Grosse Krieg: Deutschland und Frankreich im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1918 by Jean-Jacque Becker and Gerd Krumeich (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Der Grosse Krieg: Deutschland und Frankreich im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1918 by Jean-Jacque Becker and Gerd Krumeich Roland Spickermann Der Grosse Krieg: Deutschland und Frankreich im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914–1918. By Jean-Jacque Becker and Gerd Krumeich. Essen: Klartext, 2010. Pp. 354. Paper €24.95. ISBN 978-3837501711. It is striking that national histories of World War I are rarely informed by one another, despite the great potential of such comparisons. There are exceptions, of course, such as Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert’s Capital Cities at War (Cambridge, 1999), which examined the wartime experiences of London, Paris, and Berlin. The work under review here is another effort at such comparison. The fruit of a cross-national project, it juxtaposes German and French perspectives on major issues and interpretative themes regarding the war. The two French and German authors divide their study into five thematic sections. The first looks at antebellum Europe and tries to place the prewar Franco-German rivalry into a larger context. It focuses on each country’s motivations and perceptions, examining diplomatic and public opinion before the wars (i.e., national perceptions of the same crisis), as well as both countries’ responses to the Agadir crisis of 1911 and the “July crisis” of 1914. What is remarkable is how little the leadership and public of both countries took into account how the other side perceived the developing situation. [End Page 443] Though certainly not unique to these crises, the discussion of the specific dynamics involved here is illuminating, particularly for historians specializing in only one of the two countries. The second section, of special interest to social historians, compares the domestic fronts during the initial war years. It pays attention to a comparison of the Union sacrée and the Burgfrieden, as well as to the relationship between the civilian and military authorities in both countries. This is followed by discussions of war culture and the gradual development of the idea of a “home front” in both France and Germany. Not surprisingly, the study notes one salient difference between the two countries: a spirit of national unity was easier to maintain in France because of the desire to expel the enemy from French soil. The third section looks at the gradual adaptation in both societies to “total war”: the intensification of recruitment, the rising levels of control over war-related industries and how this was implemented in each country, as well as the portrayal of civilian atrocities (in Belgium and East Prussia, respectively) as a motivational factor during the war. The fourth and fifth sections deal more specifically with military and strategic considerations, examining the changing expectations of both sides over time, which helps explain why both sides reacted as they did to shifts in the war. The fifth section looks at how both countries perceived and responded to American involvement and Russian collapse, as well as to the final weeks of the war. There are fewer historiographical surprises here, but the summaries of the course of the war on both sides, and of each side’s estimations of the prospects for victory, are admirably concise. Surveying their work, the authors preemptively note the fallacy of thinking of the Great War as a European “civil war.” The war did affect Europe in ways that Europeans did not fully understand until 1945 at the earliest. But, as these comparisons show, the French and the Germans had decidedly different experiences and perceptions. The book does not intend to suggest such a “Europeanness.” But in an ever more specialized profession, such a synthetic and comparative work looking at two national historiographies is very welcome, both as a handbook for scholars and as an introduction for advanced students. This rich volume was also published in French as La Grande Guerre (Paris, 2008). It is a pity that it is not yet available in English translation. Roland Spickermann The University of Texas of the Permian Basin Copyright © 2013 The German Studies Association