The Social History of the Machine Gun by John Ellis
The Social History of the Machine Gun by John Ellis
Hardcover
Publisher: Purnell Book Services, 1975
Used - Very Good+. This book is in very good condition. The cover have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. The page edges show some tanning. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. The book is protected with a Cellophane cover. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied.
Mr. Ellis has written a most fascinating and unusual book. His thesis contends that the invention of the machine gun ,and the failure of the military to recognize it significance in the decades leading up to WWI, considering it useful only against tribesmen and other "primitives", led directly to the horrific slaughter of WWI and the static warfare of the trenches.
Ellis looks in depth at the military subculture of Victorian England and how it was incapable of recognizing the significance of the machine gun-and how those who attempted to place the weapon into the British Army's scheme of things were sanctioned and gagged. When we finally get to the chapter on WWI it is akin to reading one of Shakespeare's tragedies. The inevitability of the butchery is made all that more terrible by the knowledge that the deliberate myopia of the British and French higher command ensured that their troops used outmoded tactics against emplaced German forces and their Maxim guns.
The author gives one case where two German machine guns annihilated a six-hundred man British infantry battalion in the space of a couple of hours with no casualties sustained by the Germans. In other words six German soldiers killed and wounded hundreds.
The final chapter covers the years following WWI as well as the role of the weapon in movies of all things. Some might disagree with Mr. Ellis. To consider that the invention of one device could be responsible for such sweeping changes in both social and military circles is unrealistic. However Mr. Ellis presents a very skillful work that states just that. If you are looking for a technical history of the machine gun then this book isn't for you, but if you are curious about the impact that the industrial revolution has made on humanity then this book will be a fascinating read.
