The Pity of War, by Niall Ferguson

The Pity of War: Explaining World War I, by Niall Ferguson
Basic Books, 1999
462 pages, plus Notes, Bibliography, Index, and 32 pages of b&w photos
Library: 940.3 FER

Description
The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the group of huge impersonal forces.

That the war was wicked, horrific and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, more British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War. 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 little reluctance ad some enthusiasm. 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 or more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.

Table of Contents
Figures
Tables
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Notes on the illustrations
Introduction
1. The Myth of Militarism
2. Empires, Ententes, and Edwardian Appeasement
3. Britain's War of Illusion
4. Arms and Men
5. Public Finance and National Security
6. The Last Days of Mankind: 28 June - 4 August 1914
7. The August Days: The Myth of War Enthusiasm
8. The Press Gang
9. Economic Capability; The Advantage Squandered
10. Strategy, Tactics and the Net Body Count
11. 'Maximum Slaughter at Minimum Expense': War Finance
12. The Death Instinct: Why Men Fought
13. The Captor's Dilemma
14. Hoe (not) to Pay for the War
Conclusion: Alternatives to Armageddon
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Photos
-John Gilmour Ferguson
-George V and the King of Belgium with three unidentified men in uniform
-4 unidentified British soldiers walking on log in no man's land
-British officer and enlisted man in water filled trench
-unidentified German soldiers and peasants, Eastern front
-3 unidentified, nude German soldiers on horseback
-boxes of food stacked high
-unidentified British women making striking chambers
-British corporal checking shells
-6 unidentified British soldiers displaying shells on which they've written mottoes
-unidentified German boy in uniform, standing by shells
-unidentified dead German soldier on barbed wire
-unidentified dead British soldiers, the Leicesters
-dead German soldier in water-filled shell crater
-Dead Scot at Fosse 8
-various photos of dead British soldiers in trenches, all face down and unrecognizable
-18 unidentified British soldiers marching off to war
-5 Seaforths, Highland regiment, "devils in skirts" in trench
-Unidentified British soldier carrying wounded comrade
-unidentified British soldier, sleeping in trench
-6 members, unidentified, of German 16 Korpscommando, in recaptured Gorz
-2 British soldiers escorting 2 German POWs
-German POW behind barbed wire
-3 unidentified German POWs, battle of Menin Road
-4 German soldiers carrying in a wounded British soldier
-About 20 British soldiers in mufti, putting on a wartime concert party
-About 20 British soldiers in mufti, ditto
-2 British soldiers digging out wreckage of chateau Calincourt from the Somme



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