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  • The Second Battle of the Marne
  • Douglas V. Johnson II
The Second Battle of the Marne. By Michael S. Neiberg. Twentieth Century Battles. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-253-35146-3. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 232. $27.95.

To my mind, Michael Neiberg's first book, Fighting the Great War, is the best single volume history of World War I yet published. The Second Battle of the Marne establishes a serious new framework for interpretation of the war's end, and of the French Army in particular

The standard interpretation of German planning for the FRIEDENSTURM Offensive – the fifth of the German 1918 offensives in the west – is that the Germans were intent on threatening Paris which they knew the French would move heaven and hell to protect. This would then denude the northern front and allow the launching of Operation HAGEN that would finally get through to the English Channel ports and cause the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force. Logistics is the new cast Neiberg places upon the entire campaign. Neiberg weaves a larger fabric of the logistical problems the Germans [End Page 301] and French confront in the larger zone of operations. He argues convincingly, that logistics determines both German planning and French counter planning. Lines of Communication become the coin of the planning realm here even as the German HAGEN plan too has a logistics-focus for operational/strategic effect formula. One rarely sees this addressed and less often with Neiberg's characteristic clarity.

I commend this book to those who study the Art of Command, especially the Art of Coalition Command. In this realm, Neiberg performs a particular service in focusing on the issues confronting Foch in his new role as something roughly akin to a generalissimo but without powers plenipotentiary. [See Neiberg's Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War.] The reader is constantly reminded that war is, if nothing else, a uniquely human event and thus responds to the full range of human idiosyncrasies. How could one expect to be prepared to deal with such a strong personality as John Joseph Pershing, who, unique among the military commanders, has all his country's representational as well as military authority.

I commend this book to those who make policy for a reminder that policy in war should be a live instrument responding to change with an accompanying mechanism that is established for the particular purpose of detecting those changed circumstances that call for policy revision or updating. One example is, of course, Pershing's insistence that American Forces will not amalgamate with allied formations nor serve directly under them in combat – except for training. He also insisted on shipping entire divisions rather than component parts – specifically infantry and machine gun units. Both eventually yield to the hard necessities of this war.

Without calling attention to the fact, Neiberg has been mining French military archives as few English-speaking and writing historians, Leonard V. Smith [Between Mutiny and Obedience] and COL (ret) Robert A. Doughty [Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War] in particular, have before him. Therefore, in this book we have increasing insight into that largely mysterious army that fought with strangely varying effectiveness during this war and somehow emerged from what Pershing saw as despair and defeatism to hurl back the Hun, and with its equally weakened and poorly trained sister armies defeat the Kaiser's men.

Neiberg's "Conclusion: De Quoi S'Agit-Il?" offers three points. As one should expect, the first point deals with Foch's command in difficult circumstances; the second point is the converse as Neiberg describes German myopia and loss of focus. The final, and in many ways most valuable point is Neiberg's reevaluation of the French Army somewhat along the lines described above. This is well worth the read and there is much to consider here. [End Page 302]

Douglas V. Johnson II
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
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