Jean-Michel Steg Livres

27,000 French people were killed on 22nd August 1914, the bloodiest day in French history. This is four times more than at Waterloo, and as many in total as during the eight years of the Algerian War. Even more than the Battle of the Marne, Verdun or the Chemin des Dames. How did these men perish? In what circumstances? Does this deadly cataclysm at the very beginning of the conflict reflect the consequences of poor individual and collective choices, tactical, strategic or organizational mistakes, or quite simply bad luck? A record number of deaths in a single day unprecedented in French history cannot be a mere statistical oddity. It is the ambition of this work to provide some explanations, as well as ideas for how military strategists of the twenty-first century can avoid the combat lethality of the previous century.

June 6th, 1918 saw more American soldiers fall on French soil than the famous 1944 D-Day landings. Why is this fact so little known?As well as providing a detailed account of this funereal episode, Lafayette We Are Here! looks at the reasons behind American involvement in what was primarily a European conflict. Why did a neutral government in 1914, driven by a largely pacifist population, end up joining the Allies in 1917?In this third installment of his trilogy concerning the deadliest days of the First World War, Jean-Michel Steg investigates a cataclysmic battle for the American Marines in a small wood in northern France, and presents an informative and accessible overview of the military strategy and geopolitical context.

On July 1st, 1916, it was in the Bay of Somme that the British lost the greatest number of soldiers in all of their why did they go there and what happened there? Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, Canadians, South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders – many soldiers from Great Britain and the Commonwealth volunteered in 1916 to attack on the front in Picardy, a much heavier involvement than in the previous years of the First World War. On 1st July 1916, more than 20,000 of them lost their lives on the battlefield of the Somme, coming to the aid of a French army exhausted by Verdun. It is the deadliest day in British history and the recognition of this sacrifice was then – and has remained since – relatively muted in France, as this grim anniversary is celebrated across the Channel, illustrating how much national collective memories differ. Comparing French and English archives to try to understand why and how so many men died, Jean-Michel Steg gives this episode its central place in the memory of the Great War.