Klik op een omslag om naar Google Boeken te gaan.
Bezig met laden... Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-18door Anthony Clayton
Geen Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Verwijzingen naar dit werk in externe bronnen. Wikipedia in het Engels (18)Anthony Clayton is an acknowledged expert on the French military and his book is a major contribution to the study and understanding of the First World War. He reveals why and how the French army fought as it did. He profiles its senior commanders - Joffre, Petain, Nivelle and Foch - and analyses its major campaigns both on the Western Front and in the Near East and Africa. PATHS OF GLORY also considers in detail the officers, how they kept their trenches and how men from very different areas of France fought and died together. He scrutinises the make-up and performance of France's large colonial armies and investigates the mutinies of 1917. Ultimately, he reveals how the traumatic French experience of the 1914-18 war indelibly shaped a nation. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
Actuele discussiesGeenPopulaire omslagen
Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)940.40944History and Geography Europe Europe Military History Of World War I General Aspects Military Participation by Country European Countries FranceLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
All of this serves as an informative summary of the French military experience in the First World War, one that is enjoyably written and generally accessible for the interested reader. Yet the book is not without its flaws. Foremost is its predominant focus on the French military experience in northeastern France. While understandable, Clayton takes this too far by reducing his examination of the army’s involvement on other fronts to a single chapter and generally ignoring the broader context of French politics and society. Civilians are typically addressed only in terms of their direct interactions with the troops, while the heavily politicized world in which the French high command operated is treated often as background noise. Such a narrow approach deprives his analysis of critical elements necessary for understanding the forces at work in the French army during this period.
Also problematic is Clayton’s handling of non-European troops fighting in the French ranks. While acknowledging the presence of thousands of North African, Senegalese, and Indochinese soldiers, the author never gives them the attention he grants to conscripts from France itself, often offering little more than stereotyping claims of questionable veracity. These beg for a reference to Clayton’s source, yet there are no footnotes or endnotes, only a bibliography of the sources used. Such an omission minimizes the utility of the book, one that in the end leaves it to serve as a useful survey of the French army in the First World War and little more. ( )