This is the second Nick Lloyd work I have read--I reviewed his 2021 "The Western Front" a few weeks ago, and wanted to see if Lloyd's scholarship stands up in one of his more detailed studies of a World War I battle.

Passchendaele was (and still is) one of Great Britain's historical traumas. Controversy about the need for and costs of this battle that raged off and on from July to November 1917 began almost before it ended, and emotion about the battle still runs high as exemplified by the Last Post ceremony observed every evening at Ypre's Menin Gate. I was certainly touched during my visit to the city's "In Flanders Fields" museum, the Canadian memorial in Passchendaele itself, and the vast Tyne Cot cemetary. I was very interested in reading the newer scholarship on this legendary battle.

Nick Lloyd's work shows no surprises in outline and format. At 464 pages, the book is long enough to make its case. Lloyd begins his analysis with an introduction and a prologue, the latter dedicated to telling the story of the abortive French Nivelle offensive conducted in the spring of 1917. A British offensive in Flanders (towards which BEF Commander in Chief Douglas Haig was already inclined) was seen as necessary after the failure of the French offensive and the subsequent crisis in morale in the tired French Army. Lloyd unfolds his telling of Third Ypres, another name given this battle, in 15 chapters, arranged chronologically. Chapters 1 and 2 lay out the background for the battle and the why of Haig's decision to chose such a battlefield. The remaining 13 chapters focus on the battle that progressed in fits and spurts for the latter half of 1917. There is also an epilogue that ties things together, along with a bibliography, endnotes (called references here), a glossary, and an index. There is a small but excellent selection of photographs depicting personalities and events, while the author provides suitable maps interspersed with his text.

What really sets this work apart is Lloyd's use of German archival sources, long the bane of English language military histories. For the longest time English language authors satisfied their research needs on the German side with secondary sources that had been translated into English. Unsurprisingly, the results of such limited research led to unrealistic appraisals of both British and German actions and results. This led to a portrayal of Third Ypres as a lopsided British defeat. Lloyd's more complete research shows that the British were on the right track to defeat Germany had they been open to the idea of attritional warfare as opposed to seeking territorial gains, a fixation that drove Haig for his entire term as Commander in Chief. When the job was given to the best British army commander, Second Army's Plumer, an attritional victory that could have altered the trajectory of the war was possible. Hence the appropriate subtitle to this book: "The Lost Victory of World War I". Alas for Great Britain and its Commonwealth allies, Douglas Haig did not have the vision to take advantage of this hard won evidence of German vulnerability.

I highly recommend this well-written and researched volume, especially for those First World War historians out there. ( )

Passchendaele a New History – Still a History of Military Cruelty on Both Sides

Siegfried Sassoon recorded Passchendaele in his poem Memorial Tablet, when he spoke about on behalf of one of the victims. It has become a byword for the futility and cruelty of war and that is before we get to the mud and slaughter. Passchendaele, or officially, the Third Battle of Ypres, has been reassessed by Nick Lloyd, Nick Lloyd, Reader in Military and Imperial History at King’s College, who is also based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College.

There are no arguments that Passchendaele was a military disaster, and people often ask why the battle took place, the easy answer is because of French pressure on the British, at the same time we cannot overlook the fact that this was occupied France, and they wanted the occupiers gone, understandably. We know that there was mass slaughter in the mud for the allied forces, and it was just as bad for the Germans too. Haig thought that a breakthrough here would allow Allied forces to capture the German submarine base on the Belgium coast as well as making inroads into Belgium. This is rather a traditional argument that Lloyd does not dissent from, but he argues about the tactics used in this battle as he reassesses their use and futility.

Lloyd gives the reader an excellent account of the battle, does not sugar the pill about the slaughter on all sides and to me that is what attractive about this book. Lloyd does not just cover the story from the Allied view but also includes the German viewpoint, so we get a more rounded history and a proper sense of that the battlefield was like. There is no abstract view that historian of the past used, this is in your face realism reminding you there were two sides in this battle, and both suffered as much as the other. I like Lloyd’s view of Haig as a compulsive gambler, who was aiming to win, whereas usually he portrayed as unimaginative in his tactics and kept the battle going to long. But anyone can use hindsight to complain about tactics in the century after the battle, they were not in the heat of battle making the decision.

This one of the best researched and written histories that have been written during the centenary period of the First World War. I cannot recommend this highly enough, it will certainly be an excellent reference point for any historian. ( )