Passchendaele by Robin Prior
No conflict of the Great War excites stronger emotions than the war in Flanders in the autumn of 1917, and no name better encapsulates the horror and apparent futility of the Western Front than "Passchendaele". By its end there had been 275,000 Allied and 200,000 German casualties. Yet the territorial gains made in four desperate months were won back by Germany in only three days the following March. The devastation at Passchendaele, the authors argue, was neither inevitable not inescapable; nor perhaps was it necessary at all. Using a substantial archive of official and private records, Trevor Wilson and Robin Prior provide a full account of the campaign. The book examines the political dimension at a level which has hitherto been absent from accounts of "Third Ypres". It establishes what did occur, the options for alternative action, and the fundamental responsibility for the carnage. Prior and Wilson consider the shifting ambitions and stratagems of the high command, examine the logistics of war, and assess what the available manpower, weaponry, technology and intelligence could realistically have hoped to achieve. And they explore the experience of the men on the ground in the light - whether they knew it or not - of what was never going to be accomplished.
Robin Prior is head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defense Force Academy, Canberra. Trevor Wilson is professor emeritus of history at the University of Adelaide. Together they have written Command in the Western Front and Passchendaele: The Untold Story.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780300066920 |
| ISBN 10 | 0300066929 |
| Title | Passchendaele |
| Author | Robin Prior |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Yale University Press |
| Year published | 1996-07-24 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |