Chasing the Great Retreat

Written as a sequel to the award-winning German Failure in Belgium, August 1914: How Faulty Reconnaissance Exposed the Weakness of the Schlieffen Plan (2019), which won the Tomlinson Book Award for best First World War English language book in 2020, this volume stands alone as the German army chases the well-documented ‘Great Retreat'. We focus on the German side of the retreat of the British ExpEditionary Force (BEF). We show that the Great War should have ended on 23 August 1914 but, due to the ‘fog and friction of war', as explained by General Carl von Clausewitz, it did not. So, ‘Chasing the BEF' was born. This is an incredible story of missed opportunities made more astonishing by the amount of propaganda extolled by some British authors. This propaganda line generally purported the story that British firepower dealt a great blow to the German army at the Battle of Mons. Clearly in their eyes, the British won that battle.