White Heat: The New Warfare 1914-18 (1982) By John Terraine
 
Terraine focuses on the considerable number of technological advances leading up to World War One and analyses how war leaders and commanders grappled with these new inventions.
 
He sets about attempting to prove his thesis with an impressively organised text (reminiscent of his The Road to Passchendaele) and some 100 photographs. However, by demonstrating so clearly that all the technological advances seen during the war had their roos deep in the innovation and productive capacity of the late nineteenth century he proves no more than the truth of the aphorism “war is the locomotive of civilisation”. Between 1914 and 1918 the locomotive ‘Great War” pulled the train ‘Western Civilisation’ rather haltingly into the twentieth century. The fire beneath the boiler may have reached a satisfying cherry red, but it certainly didn’t burn to white heat. For example, on the British side, even the creation of the Ministry of Munitions (in itself an innovative move) did surprisingly little to inject a sense of urgency into the development and manufacture of new weapons or improvements to old ones.
 
Hard Cover WIth Dust Jacket
352 Pages 
In Good Condition