The more he studied World War I, George F. Kennan wrote, the more he came to see it as “the great seminal catastrophe of this century.” Now as Europe seethes with long-suppressed ethnic and national hatreds, it is valuable to get a fresh look at the roots of that catastrophe, for in some ways the hatreds are the same. In “Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War,” Robert K. Massie recreates events leading to the war, in the epic style that he began with “Nicholas and Alexandra” in 1967 and continued in 1980 with “Peter the Great.” It is a rich but flawed work.
The argument could be summarized something like this: Britain dominated the 19th-century world because of the Royal Navy. It was an island nation, isolated in temperament as well as in geography. Its Army was laughable. But sea power gave it command of the world’s shipping lanes and control of a vast empire stretching from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia. Germany, not even a unified country until 1871, came late to the game. To a succession of proud and humorless German leaders, this was intolerable. As the country grew rich and its Army more formidable, British eminence seemed almost an offense to the natural order. In 1898, Kaiser William II, a grandson of Queen Victoria, said Germany had “great tasks … outside the narrow boundaries of old Europe.” This threatened the continental balance of power. The result, Massie writes, was a naval arms race that led to the guns of August 1914.
The vehicle for this argument is a narrative of almost suffocating detail. Beginning with the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), which established Britain’s naval supremacy, Massie follows the long and twisted course of European politics in the new age of nation-states. Much of this discussion is necessary: no one can grasp the final breakdown of the European system without a grounding in the rivalries British diplomacy always sought to exploit. The writing is solid, too; Massie has a good ear for the revealing quote and the illuminating anecdote, as in his aside that the premodern Royal Navy so disdained gunnery practice that in an actual bombardment in 1881, eight British battleships fired 3,000 shells at Egyptian fortifications and scored only 10 hits.
But Massie’s biographical bent leads to over-reliance on a series of individual life stories. Every important figure from Otto von Bismarck through John (Jacky) Fisher, the admiral who personally hauled the Royal Navy into the 20th century, receives extended treatment in these pages. Along the way we learn a lot we don’t really need to know, such as the year of manufacture of the cigar King Edward VII gave a German envoy during one fateful meeting. There is even a set piece on the American Civil War engagement between the ironclads Monitor and Merrimack (Virginia), even though this adds nothing to Massie’s discussion of the era of British sail. It’s amusing to read that the Sultan of Turkey awarded diplomats’ wives the Order of Chastity (Third Class), but enough is enough.
“Dreadnought” embodies what the English scholar E. H. Carr once called “The Bad King John theory of history,–the notion that the character and behavior of individuals are the decisive forces behind historical events. In this case, the result is a pro-British slant, if only because the English leaders seem to have been more attractive as human beings than their German counterparts– wittier, more flexible, less prone to bombast. It also produces tunnel vision. Massie gives short shrift to structural causes of the AngloGerman rivalry, such as commercial imperatives. He barely mentions the underlying ideological conflict: English liberalism versus a German fusion of nationalism with divine right of kings. And he slights the Franco-Russian relationship that Kennan made a linchpin of what he called “the decline of Bismarck’s European order.”
“Dreadnought” takes the reader up to the last day of peace. Massie’s next book is about the war itself. His competitors there are formidable, among them Barbara Tuchman and A.J.P. Taylor, who covered the ground with high readability. In less than 200 pages.
title: “Anatomy Of A Catastrophe” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-17” author: “John Malone”
As “Dead Ahead” tells it, Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the grounded tanker that spewed 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989, is the least of this story’s heavies. The real blame falls on those who could have prevented most of the damage. As the slick spreads, nearly everyone responsible for containing it-Exxon officials, the Alaska pipeline consortium, government agencies, even the coast guard-leap to protect their jobs, reputations and turf rather than the half-million birds and mammals destined to perish. The upshot is an orgy of bickering and finger-pointing that borders on panic-and fatally delays the cleanup.
It’s a provocative take, but viewer caution is advised. One of the script’s prime sources turns out to be the film’s only bona fide good guy. He’s Dan Lawn (Heard), an environmental watchdog for the state of Alaska who battles heroically against the forces of inaction. Lawn, it should be noted, was later demoted. If he’d had an ax to grind, it may well have undercut this docu-drama’s credibility.
Still, the accumulation of damning revelations is grimly fascinating. To win permission for its pipeline, we’re told, the oil consortium promised an adequate containment plan for such spills and then failed to deliver. And Exxon allegedly exaggerated its ability to handle the cleanup to keep the government from stepping in. This is “The China Syndrome” after the meltdown. What’s missing, however, is that movie’s smart dialogue. The lines here run to such grabbers as “Frank, we’ve got big trouble.” But the acting never falters, especially Rip Torn’s turn as a glowering, jowl-shaking coast guard commandant. It’s his Richard Nixon impression, last seen on the miniseries “Blind Ambition.” It seems fitting.
“Dead Ahead” ends with a troubling warning: catastrophic spills like this will happen again unless big oil is willing-or forced-to pay for better emergency plans, which means everyone else must be willing to pay more for their oil. Cut to a masked sanitation worker tossing the glop-covered corpses of birds, seals and otters into a billowing bonfire. The docu-drama’s most searing moment requires no words.
