Examines how, in the face of the devastating firepower advantages that modern weapons offered the Germans, the British army developed the means to reclaim the offense and break the stalemate of the western front to defeat their enemy
Albert Palazzo is a research fellow in the School of History at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Sydney, Australia.
"Albert Palazzo ... concentrates, in Seeking Victory on the Western Front, on the British use of chemical warfare. Let's not be squeamish, he insists. Victory went to those who accurately interpreted the situation and did what had to be done. That was the British more than anyone else ... Palazzo seeks to rehabilitate the British military leadership ... But despite his efforts, Palazzo is unable to rid us of the feeling that, by resorting to gas after the Germans had used it ... the British and the French lost some of the moral high ground they had claimed as theirs." Times Literary Supplement "Palazzo's excellent study of the last months of WW1 challenges the anti-Haig views of such critics as Denis Winter... and Tim Travers... Most historians emphasise strategy and tactics, but Palazzo points out that the new weapons that proved decisive required long-term planning and industrial organisation in which the British proved superior... Highly recommended for academic libraries with WW1 collections. Upper-division undergraduates and above." Choice "Albert Palazzo's fine contribution brings sound scholarship and welcome objectivity to a subject often burdened with emotional bitterness." Rod Paschall, author of The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917-1918 "A major contribution to the goal of rescuing the reputation of the army from the 'donkeys' school of historiography. Palazzo's examination of the way in which the army incorporated gas into its armoury underlines the conclusions of Tim Travers, Trevor Williams, Robin Prior and Paddy Griffith, that despite the obvious shortcomings of some prominent individuals, the BEF was remarkably successful at recognising the utility of new technologies and exploiting their military potential ...the author has examined a wide range of primary and secondary sources in Britain, Canada and Australia and they are carefully set down in his copious notes...It is squarely aimed at scholars interested in the war on the Western Front, but it deserves to be read more widely." The Journal of Military History "Palazzo's study is convincing in demonstrating that the British military command was not, contrary to the common belief, unwilling to adapt innovations in technology for use on the battlefield." Virginia Quarterly Review "Though World War I has been written about exhaustively, Palazzo offers a genuinely fresh dimension by focusing on the British Army's extensive and imaginative use of gas. The Germans may have pioneered its use in 1915, but the British developed it, devised and put into mass production the most lethal chemicals an provided their troops with by far the better gas masks." The Wilson Quarterly
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