I've never read this classic before, but I was curious about it after finishing David Fromkin's Europe's Last Summer. I finished the long slog through today. It might have been shorter if I hadn't kept stopping to look stuff up in Wikipedia, since my knowledge of the specifics of the war are sketchy. (Today's fun fact: Gallieni definitely saved Paris [well, with a lot of help from von Kluck] and is definitely implicated in bringing trench warfare into play.)

The short version of the entry into the Great War is that the Europeans were all tied together by treaties and such and they just sort of fell into it. Fromkin argues that the Germans and the Austrians bullied themselves into it. And Tuchman...good heavens, the Germans were bastards. And everyone was f'ing stupid. The French moreso than the Germans, but wow, everyone was just way too wedded to their plans to turn around once they hopped into the track.

The march through Belgium was interesting; I had put the concept of "the rape of Belgium" as war propaganda, something to get other countries fired up to come to aid. No, actually a lot of it wasn't ginned up. In the first place, this was the first "modern war," and it brought along a lot of stuff that we take for granted, which wasn't back then. And, apparently, the Germans a) couldn't believe that anyone would resist without being told to by authority and b) they were actively engaging in a campaign of terror in order to move through Belgium and France faster. Despite learning that terror methods beget terrorists, or, in this case, franc-tireurs.

Still, there were points when I looked at the book and said, "Really, Barbara? You couldn't find a less inflammatory way of putting it?"

All in all, a very good book. I'd like to get a copy of my own so I can mark it up.