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The German Army at Ypres 1914 Kindle Edition

by Jack Sheldon (Author), Hew Strachan (Foreword) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 53 ratings
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The WWI military expert presents his authoritative study of the German Army’s operations during the First Battle of Ypres.

Soon after the First World War broke out in 1914, Allied and German forces attempted to outflank each other in a series of battles along the Western Front. Some of the most intense fighting came in Flanders, Belgium, at the First Battle of Ypres. It was during this battle that generals on both sides confronted the end of maneuvering as they became locked into positional warfare.

Historian Jack Sheldon is a renowned expert on the German Army during WWI. In this groundbreaking study of the First Battle of Ypres, he presents a tactical narrative of German operation at the regimental and battalion level. Focusing on the battles around Ypres against the British Expeditionary Force, Sheldon also analyses the fighting against the French and Belgian armies. This book also features the first complete account of German army operations in the battles north of Lille in the late autumn of 1914.

Drawing on extensive research into German sources, Sheldon presents the testimony of German participants, shedding light on the experiences of the fighting troops at regimental level and below. He supports this material with historical context and commentary, as well as evidence from senior commanders.
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  1. Print length
    711 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Pen & Sword Military
  5. Publication date
    June 13, 2011
  6. File size
    11725 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“…high quality research offers so much helpful (and deep) textual and footnoted documentation…a thoroughly excellent account of a key battle in World War I…highly recommended.”
Over the Front

About the Author

Educated at Inverness Royal Academy, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the Universities of Lancaster and Westminster, Jack Sheldon completed a thirty-five year career as a member of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment.

In 1982 he graduated from the German General Staff course at the Führungsakademie, Hamburg and went on to fill international staff appointments and to command an infantry training battalion. His final post before retirement in 2003 was as Military Attaché Berlin.

He now lives in France and has rapidly established himself as an expert in German First World War history. He was an honorary researcher for the Thiepval Visitor Centre Project, is a member of the British Commission for Military History and is the author of the highly acclaimed The German Army on the Somme 1914 – 1916, The German Army at Passchendaele and a number of Battleground Europe titles.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B009EE22PE
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pen & Sword Military (June 13, 2011)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 13, 2011
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 11725 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 711 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 53 ratings

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Jack Sheldon

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
53 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

88
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing perspective
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2014
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This book is nothing short of amazing,,,I have read hundreds of allied first hand accounts of the various battles of the 1st Great War but except for Ernst Junger I had no idea what is was like for the average German asked to go off and conquer the world for the fatherland,,,now I know and my understanding of the Great War and why people did what they did has greatly expanded.

German lives in 1914 were very cheap and German front line battle strategy was cheaper. Go over there, attack, and then do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next day....In this age that we live in we are used to grumbling over a few lives lost here and there, for the Germans they got used to 50%-80% casualties with little chance of a safe return from the attack. Brutal, but VERY informative and perspective enhancing.

I look forward to more Sheldon books as he is a valuable treasure to history buffs.
3 people found this helpful
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Paul
5.0 out of 5 stars The other side of the Hill
Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2014
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History is usually written about the winners and how bad the other side was. It was therefore refreshing to read about "The other side of the Hill"
They say the the BEF were Lions led by donkeys, well after reading this I'm afraid that the German's really gave no thought for the lives of their men and threw them away like so much garbage.
For anyone with an interest in WW1 I can really recommend this book
5 people found this helpful
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jrc griffin
4.0 out of 5 stars Germans at Ypres
Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2012
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i have positively reviewed the same author's book about the German experience at Beaumont Hamel. Like that one this edition about the fighting around Ypres is the best true "battlefield guide" I could find - and I looked at a lot of them.

If your orientation is toward the Allied side don't be put off by the title, it really is about the battle in general and the interchangeable experiences of all the soldiers that fought there.

Because the battles at Ypres were much larger, longer and complex the descriptions of the fighting in general is, of necessity, less in depth than other books by Sheldon but this is still, by far, the best battlefield guide book on this subject.
3 people found this helpful
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mullers1973
5.0 out of 5 stars another great job
Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2011
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once againanother great read and debunking of way so many myths l realize to parphrase John Ford in the Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance:" when faced with the truth or a legend always print the legend." the authour debunke so much the 'kindermortenschlag", british riflery, the all powerful german generalship and much more it is about soldiers caught up in the last fateful throw of the dice should be read in conjunction with the new book ____Hitler`s First Battle.
7 people found this helpful
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Patrick F.Purcell
5.0 out of 5 stars Jack Sheldon is very easy to read without getting tried of the subject
Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2016
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Currently reading this volume.. Very detailed and personal reports put the action in perspective from the angle of the officers and men in action.
Jack Sheldon is very easy to read without getting tried of the subject.
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars The German point of view.
Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2018
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Maps are inadequate. A glossary is needed for German words. BUT an excellent book of world war 1 from the German point of view with the soldiers' riveting accounts.
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Top reviews from other countries

Aussie Bruce
5.0 out of 5 stars Long overdue
Reviewed in Australia on July 16, 2015
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This a remarkably informative work. The murderous folly of industrial scale warfare was shared by all sides. This book well describes how the German General Staff threw away the patriotic wave of volunteers in a desperate ploy to decide the war after their failure on the Marne. How that 'slaughter of the innocents' was eulegised to try to give sense to the indefensible. Apart from the fascinating (at last) German perspective the book gives an insight to previously unrecognised pivotal decisions and actions. The Belgium decision to flood the coastal hinterland must have been agonising - the last sliver of unoccupied Belgium and prime agricultural land. The action stopped the German attack to the Channel Coast dead in its tracks and forced the campaign south, into the BEF. The book well describes the impact of those colonial war veterans on the attacks of the untrained German volunteers.
Another insight was the significant contribution of the Royal Navy. The impact of naval gunfire from the monitors commanded by Horace Hood was highly significant.
Well worth the 5 stars. I have recommended the book to fellow military history enthusiasts.
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Pj Andrade
5.0 out of 5 stars A triumph
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 26, 2011
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This is another "must have" book for anyone interested in learning about the Great War.

This is not only because it completes a quintet by Jack Sheldon, who has truly broken new ground in our perceptions of the conflict. The book stands on its own merits. If you read it, it will really make you appreciate the German dimension to what has been commemorated as the last stand of the Old Contemptibles of the B.E.F. in those desperate battles in Flanders in the autumn of 1914. More than that, you will understand how important the contribution of the Belgian and French soldiers was, too.

Some of the folklore of the battle is exposed as exaggeration or wishful thinking.
The preponderance of German sacrifice at Ypres was not born by university students who were cut down by long range volleys of musketry from British soldiers, who, it was thought, "..were firing a machine gun from behind every tree...". These battles were fought in claustrophobic farmlots and woodlands, in a patchwork of hedgerows and hamlets, where fire was delivered suddenly and at close quarters.

The narrative of the battle, sector by sector and day by day, is concise and disciplined, and based on first rate archival research.

There are anecdotes enough to keep the humanity of the thing to the fore. The photographs are very striking and evocative. One in particular tells us so much about the German experience of Ypres 1914 : twelve German officers from a Bavarian Reserve Infantry regiment stand for a photograph before the fighting. In a single battle, eight of the twelve were killed and two of them wounded. Thus the fate of soldiers improperly trained, poorly equipped and imprudently deployed into one of the hardest fought battles of the war.

Jack Sheldon has given us another masterpiece.

Phil Andrade, a Life Member of the Western Front Association
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mark mckay
5.0 out of 5 stars An authoritative and masterly work
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2014
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THE German Army at Ypres 1914 is one of six books which the acclaimed historian Jack Sheldon has written on the Germany army during the First World War.
A large portion of German regimental diaries and Great War archives from the period were destroyed during an RAF air raid on Potsdam in 1945.
But Sheldon has literally trawled through a plethora of largely unused and unseen documents in the Kriegsarchiv in Munich, plus scores of personal accounts, both published and unpublished to create this masterly work on fighting to the east of Ypres in 1914.
German hopes of a swift victory in 1914 were dashed when its forces were halted along the banks of the River Marne in September.
As a result, the new German Chief of the General Staff Erich Von Falkenhayn committed largely untrained volunteers and reservists in an all-or-nothing attack at Ypres which was Germany's last hope of gaining a decisive victory in the west in 1914.
Until now, most books in English have largely focused on the men of the British Expeditionary Force's ability to fire 15 aimed rounds a minute into the German troops, who would often advance shoulder-to-shoulder.
The so-called 'mad-minute' musketry of the BEF has taken on a mythical status, with some historians quick to put the ultimate failure of the German attacks down to the quality of British soldiering.
But Sheldon's work highlights that the Germans were repulsed at Ypres in 1914 by Belgian and French forces as well, and so in that sense it was an Allied effort, not just a British one.
The study of German sources also makes clear the startling deficiencies in command and control which beset the German - and indeed all armies - at this stage of the war.
Communications between forward troops, artillery and command posts were quick to break down, as was morale when rudimentary tactics failed.
All in all, this is a masterly and authoritative work which really opens the reader's eyes to how operations were carried out by the Germans, and what life was like 'on the other side of the hill'.
It should be read by all serious scholars of the Great War and I can't recommend this book highly enough.
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cchucke.arran
4.0 out of 5 stars Probably one of the best descriptions of life at the front in 1914
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 15, 2014
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Very detailed description of the first battle of Ypres from the German perspective but so detailed that it becomes monotonous as a "good read". Endless numbers of men being shoved into an endless series of advances towards a prepared enemy in lousy winter conditions - and few coming back.
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T. R. Wantling
5.0 out of 5 stars Did you know the German Army actually marched in Ypres........
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 31, 2015
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This has given me a greater depth of understanding of the strategic, operational and realities of events that has so often been expressed in a mere sentence as a RACE TO THE SEA.... thanks to this book I feel I've gain a depth ....a extra layer of understanding to the whole importance of YPRES ....... highly recommend.
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