Or at least the first half

By Chris Acuff

The Guns of August is a non-fiction book by Barbara Tuchman about the leadup and first month of the first world war. It was published in 1962, and while it is arguable that some of its information is in need of modernizing, it is also arguable that it is one of the most important books of all time. The ideas expressed within may even have been key to the survival of humanity as we know it. 

The Guns of August is the swan song of Imperial Europe. A world born from the flames of Napoleon’s downfall has had a hundred years lacking the massive, devastating wars between major powers that were so common in “the long 18th century.” In that time they have conquered the world and divided it up into “spheres of influence.” The colonial project of that time was a way for these powers to compete against each other without direct conflict, but now, there was no world left to conquer. Divisions kept cold, and conflicts kept small, through the expert statesmanship of leaders like Bismark, were now bubbling over, fueled by rampant nationalism. Meanwhile, the leaders of many of these European states not only know each other, but were closely related. (As highlighted brilliantly by the beginning of The Guns of August, when many of these heads of state meet in London for the 1910 funeral for King Edward the VII- a funeral that is prophetic for the deaths of so many to come,)

This is a world without an EU, NATO, or UN. It is a world of a web of individual international agreements kept together by the personalities of specific diplomats and kings. It is a computerless world, the telephone only recently beginning wide adoption. It is a world of smokey factories and coal, the state of the art navies of the world only recently switching from coal to oil. It is a world of the Model T, and the transition of the industrialised cores from horses to motors. In America, Taft is president, to be followed by Wilson- an age of both progressive idealism and immense racism- not only in America, but in Europe where racial prejudice about the Ottoman Empire will eventually lead to the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. It is also a time of much higher trust in government and institutions. If the government of any of the major powers of the time said something, the average person would likely believe it to be fact. 

It is a world in which military technology has rapidly advanced, especially that of artillery and naval power, with war planes evolving during the war to come. It is a world in which a recently published book claiming that no war would be long because of how it would disrupt the massive wealth of the global powers would have a cult like following. Meanwhile the institutional thought inside the German military viewed war as not only inevitable but necessary for Germany to claim her place in the sun as a global power. 

The broad strokes of the tale is perhaps now well known, but Tuchman’s engaging and detailed writing lays the groundwork for the unfolding crisis and the slow response from leaders, along with their inflexibility due to reasons both personal and professional- such as both the German Schlieffen plan and the French plan XVII. Both of these plans sent the armies of the two great powers slamming into each other with such colossal force as to cause the single deadliest day in French military history: August 22nd, 1914. It is possible that neither of them would have fought, however, if it wasn’t for the ponderously slow Russian mobilization efforts, that they weren’t willing to interrupt, and their government run by a Tzar with little interest in governing and a military leader more interested in banging another man’s wife than his job. 

It is now fairly well understood that the individual leaders of each state did want to avoid falling into such a massive war, and while the public may not have understood just what a calamity it would be, many generals and leaders did. Still, despite their best efforts, no one was able to stop the turning of the gears. Each one was taking the action they thought they needed to, all while trying to find some sort of agreement or way to stop the others. The strict adherence to the rigidity of the war plans, the logistical technology of the time, and the political realities made it impossible. Each side was committed to the idea that the war would be Napoleonic, with maneuver and cavalry charges being the deciding factor- none of them, not even Russia, having not learned the lesson of the Russo-Japanese war which proved that manner of strategy obsolete. 

The book is a vital, glaring warning that no great leader, no great power, is truly as in control of events as they would like to believe. The forces of state and events have a way of taking control in their own way.

There are many elements of that world of over 100 years ago that may seem so alien to us now, but we should still learn from them. 

President JFK made his staff read the Guns of August after the Bay of Pigs debacle, and there is a part of my brain that thinks the book is partially responsible for preventing those tense days from going nuclear- as many of the pentagon’s generals wanted it to, and as the soviets had planned for. There was even a public red line that JFK made that the Soviets crossed. Were it 1914, war would have been set in motion. Instead, JFK was able to stop the gears. Had he sent the marines to land on the shores of Cuba, as his generals wanted, the Soviets were prepared to glass the beach with tactical nuclear warheads. One can easily imagine such an attack turning on the engine of war into an unstoppable train. 

With such a rich legacy, I heartily recommend reading and dwelling on this book, especially the first half which deals with the leadup to the war. The second half is still good if you are into military history, but it is more of a recounting of maneuver and war than the politics that got the world there. 

I think there are lessons here on avoiding rigidity in planning, in communication- especially to enemies, and that any organization should hear out the steel-maned arguments of the opposing side of a decision before it is made. There are some things, I fear, that may be impossible for humanity to truly learn, like the dangers of blind nationalism, of the nature of autocrats to double and triple down on bad decisions, and that war will never be as easy or as bloodless as expected, and once it starts, expect similarly matched opponents to bleed each other dry until one of the economic machines throwing all the human created value it can into destruction finally breaks. 

It is a book that seriously considers the roles of leadership and institutions within a reaction to massive events and I think can be a window into our own thoughts- the “institutional” preconceptions we may have and our ability to act in a situation. 

I wrote this initially as just a way to make a book report for my friends. But, to translate it to TTRPG’s, I think the imperialist world at the time would be a powerful setting to build into a game, where a party, perhaps seeing a prophecy of the oncoming destruction, must do everything they can to get in front of the oncoming disaster. 

But also, just go read the book. This blog post alone is not enough to convey the power of the ideas therein, nor is it nearly as brilliantly written.