Description
Book SynopsisFalling between the War of Movement in 1914 and the major attrition battles of 1916, 1915 was a critical year in the First World War. As France failed in ever-larger offensives to break through the German trenches, Britain shifted its strategy from defence of empire to total commitment to the continental war.
In the second of three planned volumes, Roy Prete analyzes the political and military policies and strategies of Britain and France and their joint command relationship on the Western Front in 1915. The opposing strategies of the two governments proved to be the main determinant in the sometimes ragged relations between the French commander-in-chief, Joseph Joffre, and his British counterpart, Sir John French, as they sought to drive the German army out of France and to aid their hard-pressed Russian ally. With an impressive marshalling of evidence, Strategy and Command demonstrates that the increased British commitment to the continental war, manifested in sending
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“As Prete demonstrates, both the British and French appreciated early on the value of coordinated operations in waging a shared war on a global stage. The story of their command relations that he relates is one of finding the golden mean between the level of coordination that would bring about victory while retaining the maximum amount of national sovereignty. That Prete so effectively shows why it took so long to agree to a unified command is not the least of his achievements with this book, which with its preceding volume offers a superb study of the difficult and awkward command relationship between British and French leadership.” Canadian Military History
