Opening Moves: August 1914 (Ballantine’s Illustrated History of the Violent Century: Campaign Book No. 19)

Lavishly illustrated in b&w with historic photographs. Lightning victory in the next war had been the dream of every general staff for fifty years before 1914. When war came, France and Germany raced to deliver the knock-out blow. The French war plan was a disastrous failure. The German war plan seemed a brilliant success. From the introduction by Barrie “It is not too much to say that the first thirty days of battle determined the future course of the war.. The German sweep to the Marne through the torrid heat of the cataclysmic month was one of the greatest parades of military strength the world has ever seen — and the amazing recovery of the shattered and disorganized French army which enabled them first to hold and then to throw back theGerman armies from the Marne was indeed the miracle it was named at the time.” This is Ballantine’s Illustrated History of the Violent Century, Campaign Book No. 19.