Invasion 1914

In Invasion 1914, Ian Senior has woven together strategic analysis, diary entries, dramatic eyewitness accounts and interview transcripts from soldiers on the ground with consummate skill. For close to a century, accounts of the German invasion of France and the opening year of the First World War have been dominated by histories of British troops and their experience in battle, despite the fact that the British Expeditionary Force comprised just four divisions, while the French and Germans fielded 60 each. This title is a remarkable new narrative history that for the first time focuses on the experiences of French and German troops in the long hot summer of 1914 as the outcome of the war hung in the balance, revealing how the defiant French opposition and failings in the German invasion plans ultimately foiled the German war machine and changed the course of the war.