A provocative economic, diplomatic and (just a little bit) military analysis of World War I causes and results

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	• The Pity of War: Explaining World War I Niall Ferguson Basic Books, 2000 - 608 pages average customer review:based on 53 reviews view larger image
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Brilliant and disturbing

For the sheer audacity and brilliance of his principle thesis, this volume has a place in historical studies. Unlike most other historians, who use the myriad 'facts' about the war to support a simplistic theory of 'good' vs 'evil'[just as the average Joe is into moral absolutes] --- the conclusion of Ferguson's breathtaking analysis can hardly be argued with: that the failure of England, France & the US to realize that the relatively new nation of Germany would be, at steady state, the dominant power on the continent --- and thus, what we call WWI AND WWII could have been averted. Of course, today's 'balance-of-power in the status quo' advocates will not learn much, if anything, from this brilliant book. The anointed moral superior (eg the US) is entitled to dominate. The truth: the US nor any other country is a morally superior agent.

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Niall Ferguson rattles another cage

Niall Ferguson has a knack for using command of the subject and ever-present wit to make arguments that can often only be denied on moral ideological grounds. This is no less true of this work, which, amongst other things, argues that Britain should not have entered the First World War. Instead, Germany should have been allowed to dominate Europe - to save many lives - while Britain focused her energies on maintaining the empire, which, as any reader of Ferguson knows, is important to him for a variety of other reasons. This may also have prevented the Bolshevik Revolution, he argues. But instead Britain pushed for war and was therefore as guilty as Germany. This book is hardly a "story" of the War. Instead, he systematically argues against all the held dogmas. Revisionist history certainly has its place, and in this case his arguments may have served to reignite the arguments that revolve around this "pitiful" war.

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A different look at WWI

Niall Ferguson is known to stir the pot on touchy subjects and Pity of War does not disappoint. Filled with statistics and theories, Ferguson gives us his view of why the Allies won and Germany lost. This question has produced heated debates ranging from ludicrous (John Mosier and Fritz Fischer) to well thought out and researched (Hew Strachan and John Keegan). Ferguson falls somewhere in the middle by providing some good arguments such as Britain failed to provide the pivotal advantage needed to end the war despite their superior economy because the workforce was sent to fight. Another point made is why Germany failed to win despite having a vastly superior army. Ferguson believes the failure to pursue their political goals via force of the military removed any clear objective to obtain and relegated the war to senseless violence. Due to the lack of objectives, the war was extended needlessly and subsequently lowered the morale of the soldiers as was seen on both sides in the later years.

Ferguson also adds what almost every war book lacks, the human element. He poses the question: why did the men keep fighting despite the carnage surrounding them.

One last issue I have with this book is in scope. Britain and Germany are covered extensively, leaving the other participants to be mentioned here and there. More information on the French, Russians, Americans would make the book a more rounded work. Inclusion of the African and Asian portions of the war would help readers who are not as knowledgeable, but this point is neglected by a majority of WWI authors.

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A provocative economic, diplomatic and (just a little bit) military analysis of World War I causes and results

If you expected the usual 'guts-and-glory' book then this is the wrong book for you. Being an economic historian allows Ferguson to innocently tell the World War I story from a different angle re-evaluating the World War I and challenging the pre-conceived ideas. He perhaps takes a clinical view of the factors leading up to WWI and the issues arising during its execution. Ferguson subjects all of these supposed 'truths' to rigorous analysis. However, I did find parts of the book heavy going - my knowledge of the workings of international finance is close to zero, and the book has big slabs of this as Ferguson discusses the financial world prior to 1914 and then the whole business of how to finance a major war for which you hadn't prepared. For me, one of the most dismal facts was how much it costs to take another human life in wartime. The Central Powers were far more efficient at killing than were the Allies - it cost the Central Powers $11,345 to kill an Allied soldier, whereas it cost the Allies $36,485 to kill a German soldier. Another dismal fact is that, far from the legend that has come down, how many people enjoyed the war and indeed got a kick out of killing other human beings.

Was World War I necessary after all? Mr Ferguson regards it as essentially history's biggest traffic accident. It was a war nobody wanted, but not only did it come but it also stayed for four years, in spite of the horrific cost in men and money. This is not a conventional battle-by-battle history; Ferguson takes an entirely different tack - he poses (and seeks to answer) ten questions:
1. Was war inevitable?
2. Why did Germany's leaders gamble on war in 1914?
3. Why did Britain get involved in a Continental war?
4. Was the war really greeted with popular enthusiasm?
5. Did propaganda and the press keep the war going?
6. Why did the huge economic superiority of the British Empire not inflict defeat on the Central Powers more quickly, and without US assistance?
7. Why did the military superiority of the German army fail to deliver victory over the French and the British on the Western Front?
8. Why did men keep fighting in the appalling conditions?
9. Why did men stop fighting?
10. Who won the peace?

The answers he comes up with are occasionally surprising. Small wonder the book has had mixed reviews in academic historical circles. But of course there can never be "right" and "wrong" answers to such questions, only opinions. But, in my opinion Mr Ferguson makes his cases very well. Many of the conclusions, insights and points of view are fascinating, and Ferguson, as always, writes with wit, clarity and style. Ferguson also looks at the great "what ifs". The British entry into the war (and it's clear that the UK government by no means felt obliged to uphold its treaty obligations to Belgium) made a continental war into a world war. If it hadn't, the result might have been the European Union 80 years early. Is this thought realistic? We'll never know, which is perhaps just as well. All in all, a long but interesting and thought-provoking book, and well worth reading but, for a more complete picture, it would be better to accompany it with some other books on the military topics of that war.

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The Best History of World War One

With charm and ease, author Niall Ferguson challenges the accepted wisdom about the causes and effects of WW1. Ferguson establishes intimacy at once with a reference to a family member who fought in the Great War. He goes on to lay out his thesis with elegance and precision. And then, chapter by chapter, he questions established beliefs and offers factual, fascinating answers. The book is distinguished by an alert, fresh, almost rhetorical style of writing which sets apart Ferguson from other authors. Ferguson is the Martin Daunton of history.
This is a book about War for those who loathe war, a book about economics for those who shun the dismal science and a book about human failure for those who still hope humans can learn to live in peace.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson makes a simple and provocative argument: that the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England?s fault. Britain, according to Ferguson, entered into war based on naïve assumptions of German aims?and England?s entry into the war transformed a Continental conflict into a world war, which they then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.That the war was wicked, horrific, inhuman,is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. More British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War; indeed, the total British fatalities in that single battle?some 420,000?exceeds the entire American fatalities for both World Wars. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with enthusiasm. Ferguson vividly brings back to life this terrifying period, not through dry citation of chronological chapter and verse but through a series of brilliant chapters focusing on key ways in which we now view the First World War.For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them, and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper nor more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson?s The Pity of War.

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