'Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914' by Max Hastings (2014).

Hastings, former editor of London's Daily Telegraph and former war correspondent who covered the Falklands conflict in 1982, has been a prolific and, at times, controversial historian. However this is the first time he has turned his attention to the Great War. 'Catastrophe' covers the lead-up to the outbreak of War in July 1914 and the four first months of the subsequent conflict August-December. Hastings makes it clear where he stands on one of the most polarising issues of First World War history-writing, namely who was chiefly to blame. In Hastings' view, it is Germany & Austria who bear primary responsibility for starting the conflict, allying himself with German historian Fritz Fischer and Italian journalist Luigi Alberti who were the first writers to assert that Germany was largely to blame for the outbreak of the conflict. In his stance, Hastings is at odds with other prominent historians who either level the blame at other nations (US historian Terence Zuber believes Imperial Russia was mostly to blame) or others, such as Christopher Clark, AJP Taylor and Barbara Tuchmann, who believe it was all a tragic series of errors and misunderstandings that caused all the nations to topple unwillingly into war. Hastings has no time for the belief of fellow Briton Niall Ferguson in the latter's book 'The Pity of War' that it was Britain herself that unnecessarily prolonged and expanded the conflict and that it would have been better for Europe if the former had stood back and let Germany occupy France & Belgium. In Hastings' view, Germany was the aggressor and that a Western Europe under German rule would have been unthinkable. Far from it being a tragic, meaningless conflict, Hastings asserts that Allies campaign to defeat Germany was morally justified and, like another recent historian Hew Strachen, he believes the war's result was a victory for liberal democracy. However Hastings does not dwell on the causes of the war, his main aim is to explore the conduct and the effects, namely through the letters, diaries and journals of participants and victims, both soldier and civilian. Although an outspoken political conservative (Hastings supported the Remain vote in the recent Brexit campaign), he has never been shy in his criticisms of the British army (or all armies for that matter). In his now notorious 1984 book 'Overlord' about D-Day and the Normandy Campaign in 1944, Hastings lavished such high praise on the German army and such criticisms on the Allies, especially the British, readers could have been forgiven for wondering how Germany ever managed to lose. One reviewer of 'Catastrophe' lamented 'Why does Mr Hastings hate the British army so much?' Anyone who has fully read or listened to Hastings would know that such an accusation is very wrong and that he has a deep, long-time admiration for the British soldier as an individual. Whilst being interviewed on TV's 'Parkinson', Hastings had to choke back tears as he described British Paratroopers offering to share their meagre rations with him during the Falklands war. But Hastings has always had strident criticisms of the British army as an institution, believing it to be fundamentally flawed. His own country's armed forces have not been the only ones to receive such scrutiny by Hastings- read his harsh criticisms of US forces in his book on the Korean War- but Hastings is one writer who can never be accused of patriotic bias. It is the commanders of all armies that come off worse in 'Catastrophe'- Germay's von Moltke is portrayed as a manipulative, conceited warmonger that the Kaiser could no longer control, France's General Joffre is a bloated, smug plodder who had an absurd over-confidence in his own army and British commander Sir John French had such a glass jaw, he panicked at the first sign of trouble, his lack of resolve largely responsible for the chaotic retreat of the BEF. Even Winston Churchill is not spared, his self-centred and reckless conduct in the ill-fated defence of Brussels only serving to make matters worse. Hastings gives equal space to all nations and all theatres involved, rather than a Brit-centric view that other historians have been guilty of. He highlights the relative tiny size of the BEF compared to the massive French, Russian and German armies involved. Although it is the latter battles of the Great War such as the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele that are traditionally remembered as the bloodiest, Hastings shows how September 1914 was, for the French army, the worst month of the entire war in terms of casualties. The French army, clad in bright blue & red uniforms like their forebears in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, lost men at a faster rate in the open countryside of the summer of 1914 than it did in the trenches in 1916. Hastings portrays BEF commander John French as having to be virtually dragged kicking and screaming to stop the retreat of the BEF and have it participate in the battle of the Marne. Although traditionally remembered as heroic rear-guard actions, Hastings believes that the 'huge' German losses at Mons and Le Cateau have been exaggerated and many of the German infantry apparently being 'mown down' were merely taking cover. Hastings also dismisses what he believes are numerous 'soft' VCs awarded to British soldiers in sometimes debatable or uncertain actions in 1914, the medals being handed out for political and public relations reasons in a desperate attempt to give a sheen of heroism to what was a humilating defeat. Hastings' book is a great read and he has assembled a huge amount of archival material from participants and eyewitnesses. Even if you don't agree with his viewpoint, the book is a fascinating depiction of the opening months of the Great War.