March 27, 2017
Lloyd (Hundred Days), reader in military and imperial history at King’s College London, confirms his position among the best young scholars of WWI in this comprehensively researched, convincingly presented analysis of the still-controversial 1917 battle of Passchendaele. Lloyd asserts that Passchendaele was less an ill-fated farrago of total incompetence than “in some respects, one of the ‘lost victories’ of the war.” He demonstrates that British civilian-military relations were confused and that the result was a British failure to develop, even at this late date, a “detailed and considered appreciation of how the war was to be won.” Had an approach of measured, limited advances—based on timing and firepower, and well within British capacities—been pursued systematically from the beginning instead of on an ad hoc basis, Lloyd suggests, “a major victory could have been won in the late summer and autumn of 1917.” He supports this position with a careful analysis of Passchendaele’s deleterious effect on the German defenders. Instead, a knockout blow was sought amid the grind of attrition. Britain and the Dominions paid the price for high-level strategic dissonance and the culpable amateurism that sustained it. Lloyd’s thesis is controversial, but his scholarship makes it impossible to dismiss. Maps. Agent: Peter Robinson, Rogers, Coleridge, and White (U.K.).
April 15, 2017
The French hamlet of Passchendaele became the location of one of the defining battles of World War I. A combination of poor weather and poor coordination with the British High Command caused a failed effort. Lloyd, reader of military and Imperial history at King's College London, retells the story of this infamous conflict with fresh knowledge and newly available materials, including letters, diaries, memoirs, and official reports from both British and German perspectives. The German side of the story, also explored in Richard Rubin's Back Over There, is largely omitted from previous accounts of the events at Passchendaele. While Rubin offers a softer version, with personal travels in the Alsace region, Lloyd fully fleshes out the details of combat during the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele was the last battle of this campaign). With a few breaks favoring the British, this series of battles in 1917 could have pushed German forces back into Belgium; it was the lost victory. VERDICT Lloyd succeeds in recasting the Third Battle of Ypres, from a struggle that should not have occurred to a lost victory. Recommended for World War I historians and serious students of 20th-century history.--Harry Willems, Great Bend P.L., KS
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