War and Social Change

Gordon Brook-Shepherd. November, 1918. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1981.461pp. Robert de V. Brunkow, et al., eds. World War II from an American Perspective: An Annotated Bibliography. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, Inc., 1983. 227 + xiv pp. N. F. Dreisziger, ed. Mobilization for Total War: The Canadian, American and British Experience, 1914-1918,1939-1945. Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981. 155 + xvi pp. Robert K. Griffith, Jr. Men Wanted for the U.S. Army: America's Experience with an All-Volunteer Army Between the Wars. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. 260 + xvii pp. Russell F. Weigley. Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. 800 + xviii pp. Twice in this century the Atlantic democracies of northern Europe and America have become involved in total war. They have won those wars but, in the long term, victory has had less effect on their societies and polities than had the national effort to produce those victories. Among the effects have been vast changes, as yet only hazily understood, in the relationship between citizens and government, with consequent fears for democratic ideals and responsible government. Except for France, the Atlantic democracies began the period with constabulary forces—armies designed to pacify distant colonial frontiers like the Northwest frontier and the Powder River country. Nevertheless, by 1918, Canada, Great Britain and the United States had experienced the political and social trauma of producing large conscript armies—something which Germany and France had been doing since the eighteenth century. Each had been forced to reorganize industry and society for total war. Moreover, each of them had to learn the diplomacy of total war: the pursuit of an international, rather than national, grand strategy and the techniques of shared command on the battlefield. Thus, when victory came in 1945, it was truly the work of an alliance. No nation could claim victory as exclusively hers. Nations could claim only participation in a victorious campaign

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