R30 Standard shipping using one of our trusted couriers applies to most areas in South Africa. Some areas may attract a R30 surcharge. This will be calculated at checkout if applicable. Check my rate
Free collection from
Lionviham, Cape Town
The seller allows collection for this item and will be in contact with the full collection address once the order is ready.
Ready for collection by Wednesday, 5 June.
Ready to ship in
The seller has indicated that they will usually have this item
ready to ship within 2 business days. Shipping time depends on your delivery address. The most
accurate delivery time will be calculated at checkout, but in
general, the following shipping times apply:
Genres: Nonfiction/World War I/War/Military History
From the acclaimed military historian, a new history of the outbreak of World War I: the dramatic stretch from the breakdown of diplomacy to the battles - the Marne, Ypres, Tannenberg - that marked the frenzied first year before the war bogged down in the trenches.
In Catastrophe 1914, Max Hastings gives us a conflict different from the familiar one of barbed wire, mud and futility. He traces the path to war, making clear why Germany and Austria-Hungary were primarily to blame, and describes the gripping first clashes in the West, where the French army marched into action in uniforms of red and blue with flags flying and bands playing. In August, four days after the French suffered 27,000 men dead in a single day, the British fought an extraordinary holding action against oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in history. In October, at terrible cost the British held the allied line against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres. Hastings also re-creates the lesser-known battles on the Eastern Front, brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia and Galicia, where the Germans, Austrians, Russians and Serbs inflicted three million casualties upon one another by Christmas.
As he has done in his celebrated, award-winning works on World War II, Hastings gives us frank assessments of generals and political leaders and masterly analyses of the political currents that led the continent to war. He argues passionately against the contention that the war was not worth the cost, maintaining that Germany's defeat was vital to the freedom of Europe.