Wolff (1914-91) was an American author who only wrote four books, of which In Flanders Field (1958) was by far the most important internationally. It set in stone the image of Earl Haig's incompetence during the Allied campaign of 1917 - "The greatest and most futile slaughter in modern times", like it says on the cover blurb.
Wolff is no academic. His account is down-to-earth, detailed and brutally factual. The notes and sources are here, as they should be, but relegated to the end so as not to interfere with the journalistic narrative. The literature review, with which most of us begin, is in the last chapter, which is about what happened to the main characters next. Usually I would shy away from that sort of epilogue but Wolff makes it eminently worthwhile as a means of highlighting Haig's fate. He got his earldom and a grant; otherwise he was ostracised from the corridors of power.
To show how powerful and important this book is, not just to academics and students but to anyone who cares about the issues of war, this is how Wolff handles the conclusion of hostilities:
It had meant nothing, solved nothing, and proved nothing; and in so doing had killed 8,538,315 men and variously wounded 21,219,452. Of 7,750,919 others taken prisoner or missing, well over a million were later presumed dead; thus the total deaths (not counting civilians) approach ten million. The moral and mental defects of the leaders of the human race had been demonstrated with some exactitude.
No comments:
Post a Comment