Warfare was changed forever (Social History Of The Machine Gun - John A. Ellis)

Member Name: Pamsy

Product:	Social History Of The Machine Gun - John A. Ellis
Date:	19/07/01 (531 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Appeals to varied interests

Disadvantages: None

Ellis uses the machine-gun as an entryway for a fascinating look at the persistence of customs, practices, traditions, and above all a way of thinking in the face of a drastically changed practical reality. The 19th Century's officers and commanders were accustomed to thinking in terms of human intrepidity and courage as the most important attributes of military success, and these men would carry their outmoded notions into a new kind of battle -- especially the higher-ranking, older officers who had cut their military teeth in an earlier age characterized by the huge but essentially still Napoleonic battles of the Franco-Prussian War or in small-scale colonial conflicts.

Machine guns were the first specific application of the technique and logic of the industrial revolution to warfare, and Ellis makes a good (and very readable) case for the idea that they are the definitive symbols of the machine age in military history, essentially a negation of the individual qualities of individual soldiers.

Nevertheless, as he points out, ingrained beliefs die hard. The military policy-makers of all major powers failed to see the handwriting on the wall and stubbornly clung to obsolete ideas and strategies that relied on romanticized notions of cavalry charges, war of maneuver, etc. In the Boer War, for example, one of the earliest conflicts in which the machine-gun was used (also barbed wire, trenches, and concentration camps) there was a surprisingly widespread sense among many high-ranking British officers that the Boer (excellent, resourceful soldiers) weren't quite fighting fair when they took to trenches to help offset their material deficiencies when faced with the industrial might of the British Empire. For those who understood it -- and there were some, just not many on the Imperial General Staff -- it was a preview of what would happen 15 years later in the First World War, but the commanders by and large stuck with archaic tactics and a be
lief in the offensive at all costs, a suicidal (or maybe homicidal, as they weren't charging into the Spandaus and Maxim guns themselves) form of denial in the face of ever-more-efficient machine-guns. The result was a series of appalling bloodbaths like Verdun and the Somme, where tens of thousands of Allied soldiers were killed on the first day alone by the methodical and merciless power of weapons like machine-guns and heavy artillery which did their execution in an anonymous, impersonal way.

This is a unique book, much more than a technical history of the machine-gun. The author shows us just how and why it was a weapon which revolutionized the battlefield and the military world, and in the process offers an unusual view of industrialized, mass-produced warfare.

It is a very readable, intelligent and well-illustrated book for anyone with an interest in the First World War, military matters, or the history of firearms, and offers in addition an unusual vantage point from which to consider industrialized mass society in the wider sense.

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