57 pages • 1 hour read
Barbara W. TuchmanThe Guns of August
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1962A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 22-AfterwordChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 22 Summary: “Gentlemen, We Will Fight on the Marne”
Gallieni, recognizing Von Kluck’s turn, decides to attack. Von Kluck, thinking the French defeated, does not wait for his artillery, his supply lines, orders from command, or the chance for his men to rest. It is a fatal mistake, as his men are deathly tired from the fighting and forced marches. The German command also does not think the French can counterattack. Only Moltke, at headquarters, has misgivings. He tries to halt the German advance, but his orders come too late.
Joffre sends out orders that his army may attack; he needs to know if it can. He needs to know if the British will attack in concert. His men are in terrible condition and he wants more troops, but like Gallieni and many of the French officers, Joffre believes this is the only chance they have. His generals confirm their men can fight. He receives assurances the British will fight as well, though Sir John French countermands those orders.
Moltke sends orders to stop the German advance, but his orders are too late—Von Kluck is already on the move—so he sends a personal envoy to stop Von Kluck. Joffre also sends a personal envoy—himself—to the British. Throwing his arms wide, Joffre says the “lives of all French people, the soil of France, the future of Europe” depends upon the offensive (434). He also claims that the honor of England is at stake.
The battle will start the next day. The French proclamation neither asks nor demands exalted triumph: “After the first thirty days of war in 1914, there was a premonition that little glory lay ahead” (434). Rather, the countries are resolved to preserve the dignity of their cause.
Afterword Summary
In the Afterword, Tuchman takes a look at all the what-ifs she has been pointing out through the course of the book, including what might have happened if the Germans had not withdrawn two corps to send against the Russians, if the Germans had not committed too much strength to the left wing, or if the French forces at the Moselle had fallen.
She also summarizes the aftermath: how these first few weeks of the war assured its continuance and how so many other countries would become involved. She gives numbers of the dead and points out how an entire generation is lost to death or disillusionment: “The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit” (440).
Chapter 22-Afterword Analysis
Tuchman portrays the first days of September, as the French see a chance to stop the German advance and the Germans continue doggedly forward in their hope of the decisive victory that will prove their superiority to the world, as a mass of messages and confirmations and denials. There are also blunders, developing the themes of The Ripple Effect of Individual Actions and War Is Caused by Hubris, Not Inequity. Von Kluck does not believe the French can fight, so he continues to harass them. He sees what he thinks is a chance to end the war and does not consider failure an option. He exposes his flank—an action he has been constantly worried about—because he doesn’t believe there is a threat. His sense of German superiority—that Germany has the best army, that its battle plan cannot be defeated, that it should rule the world—distorts his thinking.
Once again, Tuchman meditates on how events might have unfolded differently. If Moltke had seen the French counterattack sooner, he might have stopped the German advance. If Von Kluck had seen the signs that the French were not in full flight but rather orderly retreat, he too might have stopped in time to rest and reform. If Gallieni had not been named defender of Paris and seen Von Kluck’s turn developing, Joffre might have waited too long to attack. Tuchman points again and again to these small errors and missed signs not only to suggest what might have been but to emphasize that history often comes down not to great battles but to individual people and the mistakes they make.
The Afterword sums up the overarching idea of The Guns of August: that the first offensive—the German rush into Belgium, the French rush into Lorraine, the idea that either could win the war in six weeks—sets the stage for what follows. The war will become one of attrition, combatants from around the world will enter the conflict, but most importantly, the war will continue. The military leaders’ entrenched ideas of what they wanted the war to look like don’t match what happens on the war’s stage, resulting in chaos and blunders at the highest levels of authority. The death of the decisive victory occurs alongside the deaths of hundreds of thousands of French and German people, and the world enters a new state of warfare that robs it of hope and results in disillusionment.
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