Quote Originally Posted by Peter View Post
I have the same view of pretty much every war. I am more interested in the causes and long lasting effects than I am the war itself.

WW2 is the exception as it is, by any measure, a genuinely exciting war. Had a bit of everything, real end to end stuff.

Good for the neutrals, as it were
Oh, I was the same. Fischer Thesis for WW1 and Hitler's long term plans as the causes of WW2.

But then I saw the BBC adaptation of Pat Barker's Regeneration {Owen and Sassoon together in the Craiglockhart officers' loony bin under Dr Rivers} and when I told my mum she said it was a trilogy and gave me the 2nd and 3rd books.

After I'd read those, mum asked if I'd read Goodbye To All That, and when I said no, she gave me a copy and I was hooked. Then I bought Forgotten Victory by Gary Sheffield. {He was one half of the two-person teams in a debate on WW1 at the Brit Library for the centenary of the start in 2014. The other on his team was the OU's WW1 head, Annika Mombauer who's one of the world's leading experts on the Fischer Thesis and organised the 50th anniversary Conf in 2011.}

Sheffield was a re-revisionist {i.e. going back to how the war was seen in the '20s} before the post-WW2 revisionism of Lions led by Donkeys {Clarke's The Donkeys} and Oh, What a Lovely War. Sheffield argues against the Blackadder Haig is a donkey thesis, and has changed the academic perception in this country.

{A decade or so ago, Field Marshall Lord Brammal started a debate in The Times' letters pages saying Haig was a great general. The debate raged all week and on Friday they had two final letters, one from each side and mine was the pro-Haig one.}

So while I'm like you with all other wars {though not interested in the fighting of WW2, only the causes}, reading Owen and Sassoon as a kid and then reading the Regeneration trilogy, then Graves, then Sheffield, then others, I got into the fighting in WW1, hence my MA in it.

Btw, re: WW2 being better for neutrals. I told my MA tutor - one of the country's current top WW1 experts - about a Viz letter which said: "Why is WW1 called the Great War when WW2, with its truly global nature and use of nukes, was much better?"

But yes, if your grandfather was in Burma, you really should read Quartered Safe. And GMF is such a good writer.