For the first time in a generation, here is a bold new account of the Battle of the Marne, a cataclysmic encounter that prevented a quick German victory in World War I and changed the course of two wars and the world. With exclusive information based on newly unearthed documents, Holger H. Herwig re-creates the dramatic battle and reinterprets Germany’s aggressive “Schlieffen Plan” as a carefully crafted design to avoid a protracted war against superior coalitions. He paints a fresh portrait of the run-up to the Marne and puts in dazzling relief the Battle of the Marne itself: the French resolve to win, and the crucial lack of coordination between Germany’s First and Second Armies. Herwig also provides stunning cameos of all the important players, from Germany’s Chief of General Staff Helmuth von Moltke to his rival, France’s Joseph Joffre. Revelatory and riveting, this is the source on this seminal event.

A detailed, illustrated account of The First Battle of the Marne, which saved France from defeat in the First World War and led directly the establishment of the trenches. In 1914 the Germans launched an offensive that swept through Belgium and into France, threatening to crush French resistance in one fell swoop. However, through careful maneuvering and stubborn resistance, the French Army, aided by the BEF, blunted the assault, winning an important strategic victory that kept France in the war. This victory ensured that Germany would have to fight a two-front war, and the Western Front descended into the stalemate of trench warfare. One of the most important battles in the First World War, the First Battle of the Marne would be the last battle of maneuver to be seen on the Western Front for several years to come.

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The First Battle of the Marne produced the so-called Miracle of the Marne, when French and British forces stopped the initial German drive on Paris in 1914. Hundreds of thousands of casualties later, with opposing forces still dug into trench lines, the Germans tried again to push their way to Paris and to victory. The Second Battle of the Marne (July 15 to August 9, 1918) marks the point at which the Allied armies stopped the massive German Ludendorff Offensives and turned to offensive operations themselves. The Germans never again came as close to Paris nor resumed the offensive. The battle was one of the first large multinational battles fought by the Allies since the assumption of supreme command by French general Ferdinand Foch. It marks the only time the French, American, and British forces fought together in one battle. A superb account of the bloody events of those fateful days, this book sheds new light on a critically important 20th-century battle.

On 7 August 1914 a French corps attacked towards Mulhouse in Alsace and was immediately thrown back by the Germans. On 14 August, two weeks before Tannenberg and three weeks before the Battle of the Marne, the French 1st and 2nd Armies attacked into Lorraine, and on 20 August the German 6th and 7th Armies counterattacked. After forty-three years of peace, this was the first test of strength between France and Germany. In 1929, Karl Deuringer wrote the official history of the battle for the Bavarian Army, an immensely detailed work of 890 pages, chronicling the battle to 15 September. Here, First World War expert and former army officer Terence Zuber has translated and edited this study to a more accessible length, while retaining over thirty highly detailed maps, to bring us the first account in English of the first major battle of the Great War.