Book Review by Douglas Porch of Early Trench Tactics in the French Army written by Jonathan Krause
Abstract
The Great War centenary has prodded a hornet’s nest of controversy, not least in France where le suicide d’Europe will be fêted in tandem with the seventieth anniversary of D-Day and the Liberation of France. This confusion mémorielle is in fact a reprise of 1964 when de Gaulle short-circuited the fiftieth anniversary of an event of conflicted memory and pain with the panthéonisation of Jean Moulin as the centerpiece of a narrative of liberation from the dead hand of a Great War generation symbolized by Philippe Pétain and national rebirth under Free France.
Description
Jonathan Krause, Early Trench Tactics in the French Army. The Second Battle of Artois, May-June 1915. Burlington, VT and Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. xiv + 180 pp. Maps, pictures, notes, bibliography, and index. $124.95 U.S. (hb). ISBN 9781409455004; £65.00. (eb-PDF). ISBN 9781409455011; £65.00. (eb-ePUB). ISBN 9781409474678.