Official Histories of the Great War 1914 -1918

[MartH]

Received a copy of this book earlier in the week:

Official Histories of the Great War - A bibliography by Neil J Wells, ISBN:9781845749064, http://www.naval-mil...bliography.html Softback currently discounted at £19.95 plus postage.

It consists of 3 sections

1. Primary Official Histories

2. Reference section based upon Principal Events and Chronology of the War linking them to the relevant Official Histories

3. Appendices, Secondary and Diplomatic Official Histories

I should warn you that I too am a collector of Official Histories, Neil concentrates on the Great War, myself all English language except American World War 2 green books - house is not big enough.

Neil also has an introduction about Official Histories, the structure of the book and explains that it's a merger of his collection catalogue and his wants list plus additional work.

Its a very interesting book, even though some pages are repeated twice, sort of cut and pasted in the original manuscript.

The first and third part I am personally disappointed in, it could have been so much better, but as stated I too am a collector, so my views should be discounted... to a degree. For example and a flavour:

Not definition of the time period of the Great War - very important, defines what you include

The official history disclaimer brought about by Naval Operation Volume III is not explained

He appears to view Great War Official Histories isolated from the rest of the body of Official Histories, so does not mention for example how the writing of British Official Histories changes shortly before the Great War, and that probably the best the Russ Japanese Volumes where written before and after the Great War. So it could be done, nor does he refer to later series which touch upon the Great War often in their first chapters or have whole sections, such as The Army at War Series, History Of The Combined Operations Organisation, Defend the Realm : The Authorised History of MI5, Official History of British Signals Intelligence 1914-1945, etc....

Does not explain the process of how different countries wrote their Official Histories.

Countries such as India and Newfoundland are missing

Detail of small countries The Finnish ones mentioned are "Rolls of Honour" , the Official Histories are: Finlands Frihetskrig Ar 1918 6 volumes in Swedish and Finnish.

The reason for the second editions of Naval operation Volumes 1 to 3, my understanding is different it was to do with breaking the German naval cypher and Room 40 Jutland decrypts as explained in the Naval Review and other sources.

Biblophile nonsense, for example: The Blockade of the Central Empires, 1914-1918. the Confidential 1937 binding is different to the 1961 public release. (He does state that a purpose of the book is to explain the different bindings)

My understanding of the history and printing of Der Weltkrig Volumes 13 and 14 is different.

No reference to the French ones online (maybe they got digitised came out after printing)

These are all examples and not the complete list, but much is in the public domain on this very forum.

Now a complete change of tack: The second part should be of great interest for reference for anyone trying to find which Official History covers what action. I don't care if it's keying in the events and contents, and then a database search and list function, It's a work of real scholarship plus loads of labour checking etc and of great use to people who want to understand where to find narrative. Its done by individual dates and date ranges.

As a reference work for locating or as super index to Official Histories, "ones know and off the beaten track" its a fantastic work and Neil should be commended for this.

[Charles Fair]

Martin, Thanks for flagging this up. How many pages is it? The N and M entry is a bit light on details.

[MartH]

Charles, sorry just got back from Ypres.

The book is:

Introduction 20 pages

Section 1 148 pages

Section 2 156 pages

Appendices 107 pages

[Charles Fair]

Martin, thanks, sounds pretty meaty and worth the investment... I wonder is he will do a second edition? This is the sort of book that is bound to produce a lot of corrections and additions simply because of its scope and its a first in the field.