From My Bookshelf: The Best Book on the French Army in the Great War

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By Michael Hanlon, Editor/Publisher

In 2018 those of us interested in the history of the First World War lost one of our finest historians. Australian Elizabeth Greenhalgh (1944-2018) was the author of three essential works on the war, all published by Cambridge University Press: Victory through Coalition (2005), Foch in Command (2011), and The French Army in the First World War (2014).

To me the most important of these—since it is the only comprehensive treatment on its subject in English—is the last.  As reviewer  In fact, as reviewer Richard Fogarty puts it: 

The French Army in the First World War  is indispensable more broadly to the history of the First World War, and to the history of modern France. One of the author’s primary arguments is that English-language historiography all too often underplays the critical importance of the French army to all aspects of the fighting, from the war’s beginning to its very end. After all, “France provided moral leadership” to the Allied coalition “by supplying the largest army of the belligerent democracies”  , and the decisive western front lay almost entirely in France. . . Greenhalgh’s handling of operational military history is masterful, but her efforts to link this history with the broader context within which it took place make the book far more important and impossible to ignore for historians of the First World War and of modern France. 

The French Army in Action

Fogarty's review justly points out  that the book is not without its flaws. Greenhalgh misses a number of details like confusing the Paris Gun with Big Bertha, and she seems to overstate the contribution of the colonial forces and sometimes confuses their origins, designations, and organization. Those flaws, however, are vastly outweighed by her grand summary of the politics, operations, and personalities of the—ultimately—victorious French Army of the Great War.  I hope readers of Roads to the Great War get an opportunity to read this work.

Other Important Works by Elizaberth Greenhalgh

Sources: Bibliothèque nationale de France (colorized photo);  Richard Fogarty: Review of  Elizabeth Greenhalgh's The French Army and the First World War. H-Net Reviews. May 2018.