Neil Gregor
To the Victor, the Spoils
The Deluge: The Great War and the Remaking of Global Order, 1916–1931
By Adam Tooze
Allen Lane/The Penguin Press 640pp £30 order from our bookshop
Might it have turned out the other way? By the start of 1917, the Central Powers and the Entente had fought each other to a bloody standstill at Verdun and the Somme. By the end of the year, the Russian revolutions had produced a Bolshevik regime seeking peace at any price, the Italians had been routed by Austro-Hungarian forces at Caporetto and half of all French army units had shown signs of mutiny. In November 1916, meanwhile, President Wilson had been re-elected on a pledge to keep the United States out of the war.
Victory thus seemed in reach for the Kaiser’s armies. Even as the Germans faced grinding hunger at home and at the front – the consequences of the brutally effective Allied naval blockade – they roused themselves for the Ludendorff Offensive in early 1918. The Russians had made their peace at
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'As we examined more and more data from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters ... we were amazed to find that there is almost never a case for permanently moving people out of the contaminated area after a big nuclear accident.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying
'This problem has dogged Labour’s efforts to become the "natural party of government", a sobriquet which the Conservatives have acquired over decades, despite their far less compelling record of achievement.'
Charles Clarke on Labour's civil wars.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/comrade-versus-comrade
'Lamb has always attracted admirers ... Yet, as Eric G Wilson observes, "Dream-Child" is the first full-scale biography in over a century.'
Edward Weech on the life and work of Charles Lamb.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-man-with-the-golden-pun