Review: Military Affairs: The Short-War Illusion
| Published date | 01 December 1974 |
| Author | H.W. Koch |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070207402900422 |
| Date | 01 December 1974 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
670
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
hero,
and
the
refutation
of
Hankey's onetime
opinion
that
things
would have
worked
out
much
the
same,
whoever
had
been
prime
minister.
It
was
a
great
performance, full
of
substance
and
show,
marking
the
end
of
British
power.
Mr
Lewin
writes
well,
with
economy,
directness,
and
a
fine
display
of
supporting
evidence.
His
reading
has
been
wide.
He
shows
an
agreeable
awareness
of
American
perspectives.
Canadians,
however,
will
note
that,
with
the
exception
of passing
references
to
McNaughton
and
King,
they
remain
the
unknown
partner
in
the
enterprises
over
which
Churchill
presided.
On
them
both
bibliography
and
text are
quite
silent.
John
C.
Cairns/University
of
Toronto
THE
SHORT-WAR
ILLUSION
German
Policy, Strategy
&
Domestic
Affairs
August-December
1914
L.L.
Farrar
Jr
Santa
Barbara,
Calif:
ABC-CLIO,
1973,
XX,
207pP,
$14.75
cloth,
$4.75
paper
In
most discussions
of
the
short-war
illusion
the
Schlieffen
plan
has
come
in
for
substantial
criticism
not
only
recently
but
virtually
from
the
moment
it
miscarried.
Most
of
it
is
based
on
the
view
that
Schlieffen
in particular
and the
German
General
Staff
in
general,
having
planned
for
a
short victorious
war,
were
therefore
all
the
more
ready
to
go
to
war
when
circumstances
apparently
still
favoured
the Central
Powers.
Moreover,
besides
violating
Belgian
neutrality,
it
put
the
conduct
of
German
diplomacy
at
a
moment
of
crisis
under
the
considerable pressure
of
railway
timetables.
It
is
a
great
pity
that
L.L.
Farrar,
in
his
excellently
written
study
of
the
short-war
illusion,
has
not
set
out
to
question
old
assumptions,
to
reinforce,
qualify,
or
reject
them
according
to
the
evidence.
If,
to
take
one
theme
of
the
book
as
an example,
one
attributes
the short-
war
illusion
to
the
German
General
Staff,
then
this would
require
the
qualification
that
it applied
to
the
campaign
in
France
only.
The
very
essence
of
the
Schlieffen
plan
was
-
and
this
is
frequently
overlooked
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