The Myth of the Great War
by John Mosier
2001, Harper Collins, New York
ISBN: 0-06-008433-2

The First World War is no longer part of our common experience. Like the American Civil War, the Boxer Rebellion, and the XYZ Incident, World War I is something that we read about in history books, a conflict from the the distant past. Even so, it still facinates both historians and laymen alike with question: how did this come about?

The author explores several notions about the Great War that he shows to be completely untrue. For example, the conventional wisdom was that the allies were winning, and that America's entry into the war simply ensured that the Armistice happened sooner. Mosier shows that in fact, before America entered the war, the Germans were actually winning in the Western Front. The allied general staff had been running the war in a way that could only be described as criminally incompetant. On top of this, they were able to hide what was really going on at the front by manipulating the press and politicians, so that only good news came out.

One can try to look for parallels with the present-day situation in Iraq, I suppose.

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