The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End Hardcover – November 15, 2016

So much of the history of World War I concerns the victors (US, Britain and France, primarily). Much less is written about the aftermath of the War in Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia and the Ottoman Empire. This very readable work tells the story of those who lost and the struggles of peoples and nations to reconstitute themselves in the wake of WWI. From the fall of the German Kaiser, the dissolution of imperial Austria into several smaller ethnic states, the ongoing effects of revolution in Russia, and the ethnic wars among the former Ottoman peoples, the author provides a history that is largely forgotten in the US. But by describing this history, we learn a great deal about WWI from the standpoint of the defeated, and why the War has continuing significance to this day. Highly recommended to those interested in WWI and the history of central and eastern Europe.

Gerwarth’s book examines the conflicts that continued well into the 1920s in the period after WWI. As he notes, most of these conflicts broke out in the nations that lost the war, and these lesser known wars set the stage for WWII; in fact, “between 1917 and 1920 alone Europe experienced no fewer than twenty-seven violent transfers of political power, many of them accompanied by latent or open civil wars.”It seems obvious, when pointed out, that WWI led to the disintegration of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires. As should have been expected, these were not peaceful disintegrations as various political elements within each empire sought independence for their segment of the empire, or sought to impose their view of a new political order caused by the post-war vacuum of power. In fact, even leaving out deaths caused by starvation and the influenza, over four million people died because of post-war conflict – more than the combined WWI casualties of Britain, France, and the United States.Gerwarth identifies three different types of “civil wars” that occurred after WWI. The first type was the more traditional conflict between new national armies such as Poland vs. Russia, Greece vs. Turkey, and the Romanian invasion of Hungary. Another type of “civil war” occurred within nations such as the well know conflicts internal to Germany and Russia, which saw Russia trying to regain national territories lost with the breakup of its empire. And the last type of civil war was social/national revolutions the truly manifested themselves in two radical variants – Bolshevism and Fascism. Of course, to complicate matters, these three types of civil war often overlapped each other within a paradigm of existential conflict to eliminate ethnic or class enemies."The Vanquished" examines many of the key conflicts that occurred during these year; the political and ethnic drivers of war along with the leadership. It should come as no surprise that a large part of the book covers the breakup of Russia and the impact of Bolshevism, and it looks at rise of Fascism; in fact the book also reviews the impact of political radicalism of the left and right and their impact on conflict and the suppression of democracy and minority rights. It also examines post war conflicts between Turkey and Greece, that lasted until 1922, Poland and Russia, Romania and Hungary, and Finland and Russia.We often think wars have clear beginnings and ends. This is certainly true of WWI when the war “ended” on November 11, 1918. But the reality is the end of the war created the conditions for years of civil war as the old order fell apart and political and ethnic hopes collided with each other. Gerwarth’s "The Vanquished" does an excellent job of analyzing and documented these forgotten wars that set us up for WWII and, in some ways, still cause problems today.

Irish historian Robert Gerwarth certainly proves George Kennan’s notion that World War I was “the seminal catastrophe of this century.” To most of us in the West World War I ended on November 11, 1918. However in the East the war would rage on through 1923 and even today nearly a century later we remain prisoner of the forces it unleashed.He also confirms the view of Ian Kershaw in his “To Hell and Back…..” that the Russian Revolution, an outgrowth of the war, paved the way for fascism by dividing the Left and hardening the Right. We see that at the outset where communists under the leadership of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht die in their attempt to seize power in 1919 Berlin. Similarly an attempt to form a Munich Soviet fails in that year as well. Put simply the Social Democratic government relied on the rightest Freicorps to put down the rebellion. In its aftermath Munich would become the festering ground for the rise of the Nazis. In Hungary Bela Kuhn, a communist, temporarily takes power only to be put down by a counter action from the Right. All the while the Russian civil war rages and within that there are the Russo-Polish and Russo-Finnish Wars, so much for the end of violence in November 1918.For the Jews of Eastern Europe and Germany the situation turns from bad to worse. On top of the latent anti-Semitism that already existed we have the conflation of Jews with communism as much of the communist leadership in Russia, Germany, Austria and Hungary are Jewish. Thus the way was paved to broaden the appeal of anti-Semitism to much of the middle-class.Where I think Gerwarth breaks new ground I think is in his discussion on the role of Mustapha Kemal’s success on Mussolini and Hitler. Kemal defeated the Greeks in Turkey and undid the toughest settlement against the Central Powers in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres which made Turkey a vassal of the Allies. In Kemal both Hitler and Mussolini saw his success in the ethnic cleansing of the Greek population in Eastern Anatolia by force and his willingness to stand up to the allies so much so that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne completely undid the Treaty of Sevres. By the 1930s those lessons were well learned.There is much more to Gerwarth’s book. He discusses why Italy ended up on the winning side; it still felt like a loser. And he discusses the chaos in the Balkans that we relived once again in the 1990s. Yes, World War I is still not over. Just look at the Middle East.

This is an excellent study of the various conflicts that arose out of the debris of World War I. It gives the lie to several myths that are popular in the UK such as:• Hostilities ceased at 11.00am on November 11th, 1918• Britain only got involved in the war to save France and Belgium from German aggression• The war was fought exclusively on the Western Front between Britain/France and GermanyI recommend reading David Stevenson’s With Our Backs To The Wall, an account of the last year of the “official” war first, then move on to this book. Stevenson’s book serves as an excellent introduction to Gerwarth’sm as it explores in detail the economic and social reasons for the defeat of the Central Powers – great background for understanding how their empires fragmented at the end of the war.Stevenson is also interesting because he has a different interpretation of events from Gerwarth, particularly regarding the sinister aspects of the United States’ involvement in the war. For example, Stevenson emphasises the US’s insistence on operating independently on the Western Front at a time when British forces were serving under the French Marshal Joffre as Supreme Commander. The US decision was odd given their dependence on the French to supply then with artillery and aircraft, not to mention their completed dependence on the French railways to get US troops to the front lines. Stevenson’s explanation is that the US plan was to build up their troop numbers and get some combat experience in 1918, then launch a major offensive against the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland, in 1919 or 1920. The US would then finish the war, claim all the credit and dominate the peace. Of course, Germany’s collapse in the autumn of 1918 thwarted this American plot. According to Stevenson, the US wanted Britain and France to win but to win “on their knees”, so weakened that their empires would collapse and could then be penetrated by US corporations. Gerwarth skates over this, though he does comment on how far apart the US, Britain and France were in their approach to the Paris Peace Conference of 1918. For example, he says that whereas the French wanted a heavily punished and perpetually weak Germany, Britain wanted a slapped wrists but prosperous Germany because of its close trading relationship with Germany before the war.However, Gerwarth doesn’t fully explain why Britain got involved in fighting the Ottomans in the Middle East. The potential threat to British rule in India is an obvious reason but surely Britain’s desire to reduce its dependence on the US for oil was a much more crucial reason. Did the author feel it was too obvious to mention? It shouldn’t have been. At that time Mesopotamia and Persia were the only known sources of oil outside the US. Churchill had switched the Royal Navy from coal to oil in 1911, realising that oil would be the major strategic energy source of the Twentieth Century, and no one of Churchill’s generation was comfortable about being dependent on the US for oil.I have another quibble. The author refers to the Irish War of Independence and Civil War of 1919 – 1922, but doesn’t go into any detail. I would have thought that this conflict deserves as much attention as events in Bulgaria, Greece etc. and I hope the failure to explore it is not due to the author’s being based in Dublin. Was it too hot a potato to handle nearly a century on?That said, this is an excellent book and I would recommend it to anyone seeking to understand why the Great War, sadly, was not the war to end all wars.

A very interesting and well written book. The style is clear, lucid and very readable despite the complex subject material. The author weaves the narrative skilfully and seamlessly between different events and countries. It is extremely well researched - I can't remember a book with such a proportion of the pages devoted to end notes - but it is not heavy going.One thing this book did for me was put into context some of the events and beliefs of the Second World War era, particularly on the Eastern Front. Things such as Hitler's 'Criminal Orders' and horrific events such as the Kaunas Garage Massacre in 1941 (for example) can be seem as dreadful aberrations of Nazism. However after reading this book they could arguably be seen as merely an extension of numerous horrific events in this part of the world through the first half of the Twentieth Century. This is just one observation, there are many more things that make more sense in 1930s and 1940s Europe after reading Robert Gerwarth's book. I was also left thinking how we have been blessed with relative stability and peace in the UK and we should be grateful for that.The only addition I would like would be a comparative timeline across the period for some of the key nations discussed. There is an awful lot going on at the same time in different places, though it is often inter-linked. Sometimes it would have been nice to have an easy, user-friendly way to compare the chronology.An excellent book, thank you.

The Central Powers expected victory after their successes in 1917, defeating Russia and with the near collapse of Italy. This lead to the perception of “being stabbed in the back” when, in November 1918, the war on the Western Front ended with signature of the Armistice.Peace terms weren’t negotiated but dictated by the victors, first in 1917 by the Central Powers over the defeated Allies, Russia and Rumania, then by the victorious Allies over the defeated Central Powers, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. Under the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost two-thirds of its former territory and 73% of its population.There was disease, disruption and malnutrition. There was revolution and counterrevolution. There were Civil Wars, in Russia and Finland. All this contributed to increased violence and reduced respect for non-combatants and just-enemies, viewed as criminalised and dehumanised, undeserving of mercy.Four continental Empires, all to varying extents multi-ethnic, were brought to an end, in Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. US President Woodrow Wilson, sought to replace them with “self –determined” successor states. However such self-determination was applied unequally. Military forces from successor states, Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Poland, expanded the areas they occupied before imposition of new borders. Greece and Italy expected to annex territory in satisfaction of promises made to them for joining the Allies and in recognition of the casualties they had suffered. Such expectations were thwarted, in particular with the resurgence of post-Ottoman Turkey.The Allies just didn’t understand the complexities of areas like Macedonia where there were intermingled ethnic groups.The result was variously ethnic cleansing and enforced population exchanges and creation of successor states which were themselves multi-ethnic and, to that extent, unstable.Thus the chaos of the period 1917 to 1923,with which WWI ended, sowed the seeds of WWII.One criticism I share with another reviewer is that Gerwarth refers briefly to the partition of Ireland and Irish Civil War during the period studied, without exploring how far this parallels what happened in Central and Eastern Europe.The product of prolonged study this book is recommended as a readable, but chilling, interpretation of Europe’s last century and its sources of further conflict.

An astonishingly easy read of a complex subject. I am somewhat amazed how Professor Gerwarth manages to cover such a wide range of issues featuring the "vanquished" countries of the First World War and semi-winners such as Italy in under 300 pages. The greatest tribute I can pay to the author is that he doesn`t write like an academic i.e. there are plenty of quotes and notes, but they don`t distract from the narrative. This book is as good as The Dark Valley by Piers Brendon, a similar comparative history book. If you enjoy reading The Vanquished, I would recommend White Eagle Red Star by Professor Norman Davies, a book on the Polish-Soviet War of 1919 - 1920.

By the time I finished reading this book, I knew a lot more about the political and social unrest throughout most of Europe that followed the end of World War I. But I also had the feeling that I could have learned much more had the book been more accessible. In the edition I read, there was an Introduction of 15 pages, the main body of the book was from pages 19 – 247 with the epilogue between pages 248 – 267. The endnotes and bibliography covered pages 268 – 418. In other words, the body of the book was only slightly longer than the research material cited. There are 2 ways of reflecting on this. One is to commend the author for the depth of his research; the other is to ask if the volume of research did not support a longer and more descriptive analysis of the subject.In covering such a subject, the choice of dates is at the author’s discretion. In the introduction, he mentions the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 as bringing a “temporary end point” to the wave of violence and unrest that swept through Europe in the aftermath of 1918. I assume this was the reason for choosing that year as a limit for his study. But by doing so, he avoided including the Beer Hall Putsch and rise of Nazi-ism in Germany. This seems a serious omission. Any analysis of the events that led to WWII which fails to include Hitler’s rise to power ignores “the gorilla in the room” to use a US expression. The counter-argument is that its inclusion would necessitate extending the scope of the work to include resultant developments elsewhere in Europe. But I believe this would have benefited the balance of the book and improved its readability and impact.The sequence of the discussion follows roughly a geographical track, starting with events in Russia and the emerging Baltic States and ending in Eastern Europe with the fighting between Turkey and Greece. Little or no mention is made of political developments in France and UK which makes sense given how low-key such developments were when compared to those elsewhere in Europe. The impact of the imposition of the Treaty of Versailles is focused in a chapter in the second half of the main body of the book. It includes a telling comment on the selectivity of President Wilson’s principles. I would have preferred the discussion of Versailles to have been early in the book, if not the opening chapter which would still have allowed the author to develop his geographical discussion but with the addition of a pre- and post-Versailles discussion. In some cases, e.g. the Russian Civil War, Versailles had no effect; in others, e.g. the break-up up the Hapsburg Empire, it had a significant impact.This would have afforded a little more structure to the book without creating the impression that there was a straightforward causative effect. I disagree with arguments along the lines of ‘Germany caused WWI with the assassination at Sarajevo being the trigger’. There were a complex, interacting set of events, circumstances and people, all of which contributed to the outbreak of war. Systems theorists might argue that the outbreak of war was an unintended consequence of uncontrolled changes in the dynamics of the European political system as it was in 1914. Equally there was no direct, linear causative relationship between the Treaty of Versailles and the outbreak of war in 1939. To argue so would be to fail to heed to the arguments offered in the book. At the same time, had the Treaty been imposed differently, there might not have been a war. And, as commented above, the rise of Hitler and Nazi-ism cannot not be overlooked. Just as there were pivotal events in the build-up to August 1914, there were key contributors to the circumstances that led to the outbreak of war in 1939. The author’s analysis here would have been interesting.At a detail level, I would have preferred the maps included at the beginning of the book to have been used at the beginning of the chapter/section which they referred to. Also many of the names and individuals referred to were new to me and I found it difficult to keep track of some of them. It would have helped to have included a list of the leading figures and their roles, even as an appendix, for easy reference.As already noted, I found this a helpful, informative book from which I learned considerably but I believe I could have learned more had the writing not been so compressed. I may well re-read the book now that I am familiar with its structure and the themes covered to see if on doing so its arguments become clearer.