My War Memories 1914-1918

[Al Parsons]

Just wondering, folks. Is this volume worth getting?

What I really mean, I guess, is how much is just plain old bafflegab, designed to throw the unwary reader off the scent, and how much is really good insight into a side of the war that a lot of us have not read very much about? (Well, me anyway).

Bafflegab vs insight?

Would appreciate all opinions. Thanks in advance.

[Paul Hederer]

Just wondering, folks. Is this volume worth getting?

What I really mean, I guess, is how much is just plain old bafflegab, designed to throw the unwary reader off the scent, and how much is really good insight into a side of the war that a lot of us have not read very much about? (Well, me anyway).

Bafflegab vs insight?

Would appreciate all opinions. Thanks in advance.

Bafflegab, that made me smile.

Ludendorff's account does contain a degree of justification. There was quite a bit of finger pointing about who lost the war going on when most of these accounts were written.

If you take it for what it is, and read it with a critical eye, with other sources in mind, you always have something to gain in reading personal accounts--those one or two gold nuggets that can give you real insight into the man or his actions.

If you'd like to learn more about Ludendorff I would say read his memoirs. If you want to learn more about the German side of the war I would suggest "The First World War. Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918," by Herwig.

I consider myself a serious student of the Great War and the German perspective. I have read the war memoirs of Ludendorff, Hindenburg and Falkenhayn, but, but I do not own them--as references on the conduct of the war they are not the best sources.

Paul

[Halder]

Ludendorff's memoirs are probably the most interesting of the the three senior generals' post-war apologia, but that's not saying much. There are huge gaps within, very little, if any, original documents referred to in the text, and a lot of self serving.

If you read Falkenhayn-Ludendorff-Hindenburg, you can't help but get the impression that the three books were possibly ghost written by the same person (rather like Donitz's and Raeder's memoirs a generation later); they're not a patch on, say, Rommel or Guderian...

There's not really a truly great biography of Ludendorff in either English or German (unlike Falkenhayn), although Wolfgang Foerster's Der Feldherr Ludendorff im Unglück gives an excellent overview of Ludendorff's mental collapse in the latter months of the war.

Herwig's book is the definitive history of Austria-Germany at war in English and cannot be recommended too highly.