Battle of the Marne

[Guest Steve M]

Greetings from the Great White North (current temperature –14 C)

I though the battle of the Marne was a single battle where the Germans were defeated and pushed back ?

The book I am reading (The Myth of the Great War) said that it was in fact five separate battles and that the Germans won each one in turn.

After the last battle the Germans withdrew to defensive positions, due to over extension of their lines and the failure to capture Verdun. The Allies simply filled the gap as the Germans left and claimed it as a victory.

Can anyone confirm this ?

Steve M

[paul guthrie]

Steve the problem is you are reading the most inaccurate book on WW1 I have ever seen. Mosier is not a historian and all he says is complete crap. There is no better example than the one you cite, it's utter nonsense to claim Germans won 1st Marne. In fact they had NO other plan after Schlieffen failed. My source ? Hew Strachan, posssibly the #1 authority alive today.

He is just as mistaken in his overall theme, that the USA won the war militarily. Go to the Western Front Association site and to articles and see mine on that question.

[Guest Johnsonm]

Steve ,

Agree with Paul re Mosier . I loathed the book and it is a nonsense to suggest that the Germans won the Battle of the Marne 1914 . There were many reasons for the German withdrawal . Victory was not in question . There are quite a few books you could read that give a more balanced view - The Battle of the Marne by Henry Isselin and the First Battle of the Marne by Robert B Asprey . I don't claim that they are definitive but would rather read them than Mosiers account . See what you think after reading the WFA articles as Paul suggests .

[paul guthrie]

My article, at least the one I refer to above on the WFA site, is not on Marne 1 but whether or not USA won the war militarily as Mosier claims. It's titles America Enters the War and I will ask again title be changed since that's not what it's about. God what crap Mosier writes, he is really ignorant about his topic.

[andigger]

Though I am familiar with the battle and the opening events of Aug/Sept 1914, I have not read that many book specific to the battle itself. I will defintley look into the sources sited in the above posts though. My own two cents is that the current book I am reading, The Marne by Georges Blond, while not definitive, gives a good sense of the battle and the preceeding events from the French perspective. I would recommend it. Andy

[duckman]

"God what crap Mosier writes, he is really ignorant about his topic."

Having just read the book, I'll say I found it intriguing. It also has - and here I disagree with Paul - a great deal of truth in it. Mosier is not so much ignorant as woolly headed. Unfortunately, he has an hopelessly superficial idea of what constitutes victory and defeat. He sets himself up for a fall by asking the wrong questions. The thesis goes something like this.

1. (Questionable assumption) - The Germans suffered fewer casualties in every battle up to 1918 than the BEF or French.

2. Therefore they won every battle (apparently body-counts are all that matters).

3. If they were winning all the battles they must have been winning the war.

4. In the finish, they lost the war.

5. What changed? - the Americans arrived.

Conclusion: The only difference between August 1916 and August 1918 was the Americans. Therefore, the US won the war.

Both aspects of that thinking - the the Germans won all the battles and that the US won the war - are deeply flawed. And he then proceeds to write the most lopsided - and yet strangely compelling - view I have ever read. He rewrites history to suit his thesis, and his rewrite of the Marne is the most egregious of the lot. I flipped through this book before buying it, and eventually did so despite expecting that I would be outraged. Instead I was just bemused. If 200 pages of sloppy thinking was all I had to show for 20 years research, I be a bit sad...

[Guest Steve M]

Thanks Gents, I will recycle this book before I get any further.

Always pays to post and get feed back.

Cheers

Steve M