Passchendaele
The Untold Story
Yale University Press
3rd Edition
Published on 15. April 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-0-300-22121-3 (ISBN)
Description
No conflict of the Great War excites stronger emotions than the war in Flanders in the autumn of 1917, and no name better encapsulates the horror and apparent futility of the Western Front than Passchendaele. By its end there had been 275,000 Allied and 200,000 German casualties. Yet the territorial gains made by the Allies in four desperate months were won back by Germany in only three days the following March. The devastation at Passchendaele, the authors argue, was neither inevitable nor inescapable; perhaps it was not necessary at all. Using a substantial archive of official and private records, much of which has never been previously consulted, Trevor Wilson and Robin Prior provide the fullest account of the campaign ever published.
The book examines the political dimension at a level which has hitherto been absent from accounts of "Third Ypres." It establishes what did occur, the options for alternative action, and the fundamental responsibility for the carnage. Prior and Wilson consider the shifting ambitions and stratagems of the high command, examine the logistics of war, and assess what the available manpower, weaponry, technology, and intelligence could realistically have hoped to achieve. And, most powerfully of all, they explore the experience of the soldiers in the light-whether they knew it or not-of what would never be accomplished.
The book examines the political dimension at a level which has hitherto been absent from accounts of "Third Ypres." It establishes what did occur, the options for alternative action, and the fundamental responsibility for the carnage. Prior and Wilson consider the shifting ambitions and stratagems of the high command, examine the logistics of war, and assess what the available manpower, weaponry, technology, and intelligence could realistically have hoped to achieve. And, most powerfully of all, they explore the experience of the soldiers in the light-whether they knew it or not-of what would never be accomplished.
More details
Edition
3rd Revised edition
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Revised edition
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
16 pp. b-w
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 127 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-300-22121-3 (9780300221213)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
07/2016
1st Edition
Yale University Press
€24.79
Available for download
Previous edition

Book
04/2002
2nd Edition
Yale University Press
€16.08
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Persons
by Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson