Haig's Enemy

Crown Prince Rupprecht and Germany's War on the Western Front

By: Jonathan Boff

Narrated by: Julian Elfer

During the First World War, the British army's most consistent German opponent was Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. Commanding more than a million men as a General, and then Field Marshal, in the Imperial German Army, he held off the attacks of the British Expeditionary Force under Sir John French and then Sir Douglas Haig for four long years. But Rupprecht was to lose not only the war, but his son and his throne.

In Haig's Enemy, Jonathan Boff explores the tragic tale of Rupprecht's war - the story of a man caught under the wheels of modern industrial warfare. Providing a fresh viewpoint on the history of the Western Front, Boff draws on extensive research in the German archives to offer a history of the First World War from the other side of the barbed wire. He revises conventional explanations of why the Germans lost with an in-depth analysis of the nature of command, and of the institutional development of the British, French, and German armies as modern warfare was born. Using Rupprecht's own diaries and letters, many of them never before published, Haig's Enemy views the Great War through the eyes of one of Germany's leading generals, shedding new light on many of the controversies of the Western Front.

©2018 Jonathan Boff (P)2018 Tantor

Insightful look inside dysfunctional WW1 Germany

"Haig's Enemy" is a most incisive read in regards to the absolute disaster that was Germany during World War I. When one thinks of the Great War, and Germany's ability to fight shockingly steadily for four years before negotiations, it's rather remarkable given what was going on behind closed doors. Crown Prince Rupprecht's Bavaria was one part, involving Prussia and all others connected the great empire. Instead of a cohesive unit fighting and planning, Germany during World War I was a discombobulated mess. Jonathan Boff does a spectacular job of getting into detail, but not too much detail to bog down the reader. Julian Elfer's narration is even and measured, providing the perfect pace.