Passchendaele

The book examines the political dimension at a level which has hitherto been absent from accounts of 'Third Ypres'. It establishes what did occur, the options for alternative action, and the fundamental responsibility for the carnage. Prior and Wilson consider the shifting ambitions and stratagems of the high command, examine the logistics of war, and assess what the available manpower, weaponry, technology and intelligence could realistically have hoped to achieve. Most powerfully of all, they explore the experience of the men on the ground in the light -whether they knew it or not - of what was never going to be accomplished.