Reviews for The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968

The average rating for The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-04-01 00:00:00 STEVEN KIKER "Once the Germans began firing, the French could find no cover anywhere. They were hit with a storm of shells whistling in from an arc of ninety degrees. A hill might shield French soldiers from shells fired from one direction, but they lay naked to projectiles smashing in from other angles. Worse, shellfire burst among the trees, adding jagged splinters to the shrapnel and shell fragments tearing into French units. The one-sided bombardment exhilarated the German gunners, who drove in for the kill against no resistance. For their helpless French targets, who watched the German gun flashes draw closer and closer, the sights, sounds, and shocks of this artillery massacre became a horror beyond description. With six-pound shells bursting in their midst, the French troops dissolved in a great sauve qui peut headed for Sedan. There men tumbled into the ditches and frantically tried to climb the walls of the fortress…" - Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871 In my opinion, the most rewarding thing about studying history is that there is always a brand new story waiting to be discovered. Even if you devoted your entire life to exploring all the major events since the dawn of humanity, you could only cover a fraction. Everywhere you turn, there's something you don't know, and that's exciting. At least, it's exciting to me. When I tried to impress that nugget on my kids at dinner, they all looked down, squirmed awkwardly, and asked to be excused. I thought about that as I finished Geoffrey Wawro's thoroughly engaging The Franco Prussian War. This is a conflict that I had heard about in passing, mainly in my readings about World War I. Aside from its mere existence, though, I knew very little else. This book - a rather slim 314 pages of text - provided a wonderful crash course. Fought over a period of only six months, and started over a ridiculous squabble between Napoleon III of France, and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of the North German Confederation, the Franco-Prussian War was nevertheless quite impactful in terms of both European and world history. By the time it concluded, over 180,000 men had been killed, around 230,000 had been wounded, the French Second Empire had fallen, the Third Republic had risen, and the various German kingdoms - spearheaded by militaristic Prussia - finally joined together to form the German Empire. While this did not directly cause the First World War, it certainly helped set the table, causing France to lose face, along with Alsace and Lorraine, and turning the German Empire into a massively powerful continental force, which had learned an unfortunate lesson about getting what they wanted by invading their croissant-loving neighbor. For a newcomer to this subject, I don't think I could have picked a better book. While Wawro is not trying to present this as a Franco-Prussian War for Dummies, he approaches things methodically. The first chapter, for instance, is titled "Causes of the Franco-Prussian War," and distills the tension between Kaiser Wilhelm I, Bismarck, and their hopes for a fully unified Germany on the one hand, and Napoleon III, who was hoping to keep certain kingdoms, such as the Kingdom of Bavaria (which had actually fought the Prussians in the Austro-Prussian War) out of Bismarck's clutches. Just as helpfully, the following chapter is called "The Armies in 1870," and compares the strengths and weaknesses of the opposing forces. France had their veteran "Old Grumblers" and the chassepot bolt action rifle, but were led by leaders by turns hapless and traitorous, and had a reserve system filled with men who didn't want to fight. Germany's small arms were not nearly as good, but they had Krupp-manufactured breechloading cannon, an effective reserve system, and were led by General Helmuth von Moltke, who besides being good with an epigram, had a sound overall strategic plan (at least a better plan that von Moltke's nephew took to war in 1914). While these chapter headings sound pedantic, I can assure you, this is an enjoyable read. Wawro is serious about his research - as well as structuring it in a clear manner - but he also has a dry wit, an ability to get to the essence of a general's character, and is very good with the battle narratives, combining complex tactical maneuvers with solid descriptions and first-person accounts. The maps are not all that I would have hoped for - they never are - but there are enough of them placed throughout The Franco-Prussian War that I was able to follow along quite well. My only real criticism of The Franco-Prussian War is that while the first two-thirds are very detailed, with the major battles each receiving their own chapters, the final third feels like a summary that left my head spinning. In this rush to the finish, certain momentous scenes get shortchanged. For example, the crowning of Wilhelm I as Kaiser of the German Empire in Versailles's Hall of Mirrors is reduced to a single paragraph. Extremely bloody clashes, which earlier in the book had received maps and detailed descriptions, are dispensed with brisk and superficial explanations. Despite the weakness in Wawro's endgame, I left extremely satisfied. When you venture into a somewhat obscure corner like the Franco-Prussian War, sometimes the best that you can hope for is a book with grammatically sound sentences. I was thus happily surprised to be both educated and entertained. More than that, the education came from a guy who knows his business. Don't let the television-friendly looks or the fact that Wawro was host of numerous programs on The History Channel fool you: he is a history nerd with a very specific niche. Obviously, as I've admitted, I barely know what I'm talking about when it comes to this conflict, but Wawro's judgments seem nuanced and sound. The outcome of the Franco-Prussian War did not make anything afterwards an inevitability. Still, it tended to make certain things more probable. This was due to a couple circumstances. For one, Prussian military influence in the new German Empire would play an outsized role in the years to come. For another, it created a brand new player in the endless game of European blood-chess. As we all know, that new player would find itself facing a deadlier, higher-stakes rematch forty-three years later.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-10-06 00:00:00 Michael Haverty The Franco-Prussian War is one little read about, less often written about, and frequently forgotten. In fact, many Americans may not have even heard of it. This is unfortunate because along with other wars such as the Crimean War and American Civil War, it was a war in which modern technology met old tactics and foreshadowed the death and destruction of World War I. Like the Crimean War, it also helped set the stage for World War I. During this centennial of World War I, I have been looking for books to read on the war and it occurred to me that reading about wars that helped set the stage for it would be just as important as reading books about World War I itself. Along those lines, I just finished reading The Franco-Prussian War by Geoffrey Wawro. The war was a brief war but important one and to ignore the origins and the after effects of the war would have been a mistake. The Franco-Prussian War can be divided into three sections, one on what brought the war about, another composed of 2/3 of the book on the fighting, and a final section on the aftermath of the war and its after effects. Each section explores both the military and political/foreign policy aspects of the war. In the lead up to the war, Wawro explains how politics and foreign policy brought France and Germany to war and discusses the military readiness of both countries as well as the states of the armies and schools of thought on tactics and strategy. The contrast between the German Army and the French Army was stark. The Germans, under Prussian leadership, had a modern, forward thinking military that emphasized initiative and education. In the German army, not just the officers were educated, many of the common soldiers were literate. Not so in the French Army; it looked more to the past and there was a distinct cultural divide between the aristocratic officers and the illiterate lower class soldiers. The French Army looked more to the defense and lacked the flexibility at lower ranks that the Germans enjoyed. The Franco-Prussian War very much seemed to be contest between a disorganized and apathetic French Army and a well-organized and professional German Army. When it came to political leadership, it seemed Napoleon III was seeking to put the Prussians in their place after being diplomatically outmaneuvered and stumbled into a trap Bismarck had set to create an environment in which he could finish German unification. The section about the war itself doesn't limit itself to a discussion of the strategy and tactics employed by the generals but also how their political masters' actions shaped those strategies. Just as Bazaine and Moltke and the Chassepot rifle and the Krupp cannon were important militarily, Napoleon III and Bismarck were just as important politically, it was their actions and policy that impacted the decision making of the generals and the use of the weapons. Wawro discusses how the superior French Chassepot rifle shaped and the superior German Krupp artillery shaped the German tactics. He also discusses how errors by the French squandered their advantages and how errors by German leadership led them to take heavier casualties than they should have. Essentially, leaders on both sides committed many errors, but the errors on the part of the French leadership were more grievous and contributed toward their defeat. Particularly in the closing stage of the war, he shows how the political leadership of both sides and political upheaval in France shaped strategy in attempt to bring about each sides' desired outcome. Perhaps the most important part of the book is the final section about what happened post-war; Wawro writes about what the military leadership took away as lessons learned, how the war altered the map of Europe, and how the outcome of the war led to World War I. He discusses how the military leadership of both France and Germany (and the generals of other countries) came away from the Franco-Prussian War with a false reading on offensive tactics and how those false readings led to the massive loss of life in World War I. He tells how the landscape was altered through annexation and how Bismarck's humiliating terms to France primed the pump for World War I, much as the terms of peace following World War I led to World War II. It is easy to come away from this last section of the book that in the short term, the Germans won the war but that in the long term they lost it by setting themselves up for defeat in World War I. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was well written and well researched. Political and military histories can easily become dry but Wawro wrote a book that is easy to read and captures the reader's attention and touches on tactics, strategy, and technology without getting bogged down in minutiae. Perhaps it was because I was reading about a war that doesn't receive a lot of attention but I genuinely found this book hard to put down. Each chapter has extensive end notes; it's obvious that he did a massive amount of research. As usual, I read the Kindle version and it's important to note that The Franco-Prussian War has maps in their appropriate place - with the relevant text (see, it can be done!!). This made it easy to visualize the military maneuvers that Wawro was writing about. I enthusiastically give this book 5 out of 5 stars and I strongly recommend it if you are interested in learning about an overlooked yet historically important war.