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The Journal of Military History 68.2 (2004) 622-623



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The Western Front: Battleground and Home Front in the First World War. By Hunt Tooley. New York: Palgrave, 2003. ISBN 0-333-65063-8. Map. Notes. Bibliography. Pp. 305. $24.95.

There are increasing numbers of introductory surveys of the Great War. Tooley's contribution to the European History in Perspective series is actually the second published by Palgrave, since Gerard de Groot's The First World War (2001) has already appeared in their Wars of the Twentieth Century series. In theory, Tooley's approach differs from de Groot's—though both are broadly chronological treatments—by concentrating on the Western Front and its relationship with domestic events. In practice, Tooley deals with both causes and consequences of the war as a whole, and finds it difficult to avoid mentioning events on the Eastern Front or further afield. At times, too, the attempt to link battlefront and home front directly is somewhat strained. The production of munitions is an obvious linkage, but to suggest, for example, that the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-21 and the subsequent history of Ulster after 1922 is "another battle front/home front connection" due to the different ways the war was commemorated in Ireland appears tenuous at best.

Tooley has some good points to make, his coverage of war finance and of war economies is sound, and the attention drawn to the effect of the war on a number of authors of juvenile literature such as A. A. Milne, Enid Bagnold, and Hugh Lofting, the creator of Dr. Doolittle, is interesting. Too often, however, Tooley notes that there are differing interpretations without really stating what these may be, or outlines debate in the broadest terms when the footnotes and bibliography are not sufficient to guide the reader further. In many cases, as in terms of Haig's reputation, it is by no means clear what Tooley himself thinks. On the question of the relative contribution of the allies to victory in 1918, he counters what he sees as the over-emphasis upon the efforts of the BEF in the Hundred Days, but some pages later acknowledges [End Page 622] that it was the smallest of the major armies yet took the most German prisoners. Some works clearly impress Tooley more than others, Tony Ashworth's arguments on the nature of the live-and-let-live system being repeated frequently and praise being lavished on Paul Fussell's profoundly unhistorical observations. Some more recent scholarship, such as the continuing debate on the nature of the Schlieffen Plan, is not reflected in the book, and Tooley would have done well to take account of Avner Offer's careful reassessment of the figures traditionally given for the number of German deaths from blockade-induced deprivation.

Unfortunately, Tooley's work is also marred by errors. Von Beseler, for example, did not command an army at Antwerp but a corps. The Territorial Force was not a militia and should not be confused with the Special Reserve, which did have its origins in the militia. The second Military Service Act came into effect in May 1916, not April. It did not rain continuously at Passchendaele. There were five German offensives in 1918, not three, and so on. In short, this is a rather disappointing book.



Ian F. W. Beckett
U.S. Marine Corps University
Quantico, Virginia


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