War Studies

The Western Front, that cauldron of war, a bubbling, fermenting experiment in killing that changed the world. The Western Front would become synonymous with stalemate and mass slaughter, with indecisive, attritional struggles, amid a tortured landscape of barbed wire and mud. All the commanders of the First World War, whether leading the British, French or German, struggled in this maelstrom. Yet, for years the 'Generals' have been characterised as ‘donkeys’ or ‘butchers’: unfeeling military aristocrats fighting the wrong kind of war, unable to adapt or change to the new realities unfolding on the battlefield. In this episode, Professor of Modern Warfare in the Defence Studies Department, Nick Lloyd, counters this prevailing narrative, to provide a much more complex and nuanced understanding of these men, trying to cope with a war that had shattered their lives as much as any other. Discussing his book, The Western Front: A History of the First World War, he shares how the truth about the Generals’ perfo