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1925frank -> RE: Still love this game! (2/13/2009 3:44:08 PM)
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I liked it a great deal. It's split into three parts, and each part is about 300 pages long. I liked the second and third parts best. So, after being about 300 pages into the book, I was only lukewarm about it.
What I liked about it was how he shows all the various options that were available to both the Allies and Germany during the course of the war. He sets out the pros and cons of the various choices. He doesn't try to hide which one he thought best. As a grand strategy analysis I thought it was fascinating. I've read other books that state what happened when and what the objectives were, but I hadn't really read one that showed what the other options were and what might have happened if those other options had been pursued.
I generally thought a WWI game wouldn't be that interesting because it was a war of attrition on a stagnate front. On a grand strategy scale, however, it seems to be a gold mine after reading this book. I'd want a game that allowed for history to take a wide variety of paths. There were a number of countries who vacillated on which side they wanted to fight, and there were a variety of factors that weighed on which side they eventually fell. Italy could have sided with Germany or remained neutral. Turkey didn't necessarily have to side with Germany. The various Balkan countries all played a high stakes game of Russian roulette. If Germany had not invaded Belgium, Britain may not have entered the war. If Germany had played its cards differently, the US may not have entered the war.
There were also a number of options about where each country wanted to focus its efforts. Churchill criticizes the Germans for focusing on Verdun in 1916 instead of on Russia, and he criticizes the Germans again in 1918 for lauching the March offensive. Churchill argues there were other options that were far less risky and which arguably would have proven far more profitable to the Germans.
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