Most reviews by professional historians criticise the book heavily, though. 'Military Review' for Jan-Feb 2003 called the book "a disappointment" with "intemperate and unbalanced interpretations" and "a poorly conceived argument" whose "use of sources is sometimes curious and often irritating".Jestre wrote:I found "The Myth of the Great War by John Mosier" fascinating. Mosier uses German documentation and graves registries in addition to the normal western sources to support his claims of Anglo-French distortions as to casualties and effectiveness and does a good job of supporting his theory that the US intervention saved the Entente. Great read.
StephenT wrote:Most reviews by professional historians criticise the book heavily, though. 'Military Review' for Jan-Feb 2003 called the book "a disappointment" with "intemperate and unbalanced interpretations" and "a poorly conceived argument" whose "use of sources is sometimes curious and often irritating".
In particular, Mosier is accused of misunderstanding those sources he drew on. The German casualty records he used only list those soldiers actually killed on the battlefield, while the British and French casualty records also include soldiers who died in hospital of their wounds or were listed as "missing" rather than "killed". It's no wonder that he came to the conclusion the Germans did much better than the Allies...
The particular review I quoted was written by Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Stephenson, PhD, of the United States Army. I find it hard to believe he'd be the sort of person to be criticising Mosier on nationalistic rather than professional grounds.Random wrote:Mosier rubs European, particularly British, historians the wrong way
That's not what's happening. Mosier is counting all the Allied dead but only some of the German dead; that's why his methodology is criticised.attacking his exclusive use of dead (whose condition is statistically unambiguous) rather than wounded (the criteria for which varied considerably by nation) is unsound
How can it have been "hiding in plain sight" when it's been common knowledge generally accepted by everyone? The fact that the side which was usually on the offensive for four years lost more men than the defender isn't "uncomfortable", it's plain common sense.Since nobody has ever claimed that no German soldiers at all died on the Eastern Front, the problem for Western historians has always been to account for this uncomfortable fact that has been hiding in plain sight for over 90-years.
The particular review I quoted was written by Lieutenant-Colonel Scott Stephenson, PhD, of the United States Army. I find it hard to believe he'd be the sort of person to be criticising Mosier on nationalistic rather than professional grounds.
That's not what's happening. Mosier is counting all the Allied dead but only some of the German dead; that's why his methodology is criticised.
How can it have been "hiding in plain sight" when it's been common knowledge generally accepted by everyone? The fact that the side which was usually on the offensive for four years lost more men than the defender isn't "uncomfortable", it's plain common sense.
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