Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/August 2015/Book reviews


 * By Nick-D

1864 is a history of the Second Schleswig War, which was fought between Denmark and an alliance of Prussia and the Austrian Empire, by Danish historian Tom Buk-Swienty. It focuses mainly on the war's key engagement, the Battle of Dybbøl, which ended in a disastrous defeat for the Danish forces. Unusually for a military history book, it led to a big budget TV series, 1864, which first screened in 2014.

This is an unconventional military history in a number of ways. An obvious difference is that the book is structured as if it was a novel - it starts with a lengthy description of the war as it stood the second to last day of the siege of Dybbøl on 17 April, and then jumps back in time to provide a chronology of the conflict. It's also unusual in that it focuses mainly on the personalities of the key figures of the war and biographies of some common soldiers, and devotes little space to what led to the fighting or the composition of the opposing forces. As someone who was unfamiliar with this obscure conflict, I found this to be a bit disorienting, and considered giving up on the book.

However, I'm glad that I stuck with it. Once Buk-Swienty gets into the campaign of 1864 he provides a gripping and very moving account of the fighting, with a strong focus on the human cost of the war. His sympathies are clearly with the common soldiers who fought in this eminently avoidable conflict, but his assessment of the senior officers is also fair. Buk-Swienty is scathing about the foolishness of the Danish government, and makes a convincing case that the Danes ultimately had no-one to blame but themselves for their defeat. At times his judgements seem a bit strong, which may limit the book's value as a reference, but he's never boring.

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