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The Journal of Military History 67.3 (2003) 961-963



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14-18: Understanding the Great War. By Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker. New York: Hill & Wang, 2002. ISBN 0-8090-4642-3. Notes. Index. Pp. 280. $24.00.

Reading 14-18: Understanding the Great War is like joining a conversation on a familiar topic only to have your interlocutors switch to a foreign language. That the book was written in French and reflects a certain style of French intellectual discourse contributes to its alien tone but does not excuse its doctrinaire style and sweeping generalizations.

The directors of a major Great War museum and research center in France, Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker argue that their museum experiences suggest a new tripartite approach to the history of the Great War resting on the rubrics of "violence," "crusade," and "mourning." But it is difficult for a military historian to read, "we have stressed that the violence of combat must be fully disclosed because historians have for too [End Page 961] long sanitized this aspect of the Great War, to the point of making it all but incomprehensible" (p. 37), without feeling insulted.

After insisting on the duty to study violence in combat, the authors then address the treatment of civilians, especially the long ignored experiences of the civilians under enemy occupation. The argument contains fascinating snippets of fact interspersed among too many general statements of the following sort: "The only worldwide coherence was that of violence, which swept everything along in its wake" (p. 61). What does it mean to say that "women became choice weapons in the total war" (p. 63), especially when they are described later as "the perfect targets in a total war" (p. 73)?

The second section, "Crusade," argues for the role of hatred in exacerbating the war's violence (p. 103). Although there is some discussion of "the diabolical purpose of destroying the opposing 'race' by waging total war," (p. 148) little is explained by the repetition of such phrases as "the perverse dynamic of total war" and the "perversion of total war," which are particularly grating when found on the same page (p. 142).

The section on "Mourning" combines such trite observations as, "without the lasting grief of bereavement, many descendants of those who lost a relative during the Great War would indeed have been different" (p. 181) with an evocation of important unexamined aspects of the Great War. For example, ritual mourning and commemoration centered on the military casualties of war, but no monuments acknowledged the sufferings of civilians, "the suffering of hunger, cold, forced labour, rape, being taken hostage, requisitioned" (p. 301). Nor have historians described the scope of bereavement created by the Great War, the sheer numbers of widows, orphans, parents, and other relatives of the dead.

14-18 concludes with a chapter condemning the Versailles treaty as hypocritical given that every nation had succumbed to the barbarity of "total war" (p. 230). "The paradox is striking: the accusatory, guilt-producing argument about Germany's treatment of defenceless enemies was used the better to punish, after which the defenceless victims were quickly forgotten" (p. 233).

Some of this is interesting, but the arguments are undermined by the book's didactic tone, imprecise language, and sketchy footnotes. For example, no evidence supports the description of the relationship between civilians and soldiers as "two diametrically opposed systems of representation both born of hatred and fear of the enemy" (p. 74), which contradicts, moreover, the repeated claim that the soldiers of the Great War were really civilians in uniform (pp. 71, 74). Such contradictions should not surprise in a book written by authors whose favorite word (after "total war") is "paradox." That the interned civilians forced to dig trenches behind enemy lines are described as "human shields," their position "morally unbearable" raises such questions as why one would put a shield behind the trenches and how to judge what another person will find "morally unbearable" (p. 77). How did Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker know that recaptured prisoners of war who became...

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