Loved it. What about... tunnels ?
I wish he mentioned it. My uneducated guess is that probably, again, technology was a limiting factor and it would not have been worth while to dig out tunnels because either too slow, not deep enough or too much rock.
Part I was an excellent overview of what caused the WW1 trench stalemate (TLDR: not as much to do with machine guns and bone headed generals as you might think).
All those elements have already coalesced into trench stalemate during the Battle of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese war, but even though most Western armies had their observers there, necessary lessons were either not taken, or taken in smaller extent than needed.
One of those lessons, of course, being "do not start a war under such circumstances".
Yes, but the rest of the conditions for a stalemate weren't met: the artillery was comparatively weak, barbed wire wasn't invented yet, there were no machine guns.
"The trench stalemate is the result of a fairly complicated interaction of weapons which created a novel tactical problem. The key technologies are ... artillery, machine guns, trenches, artillery, barbed wire, artillery, and artillery..."
According to some historians, WW1 was deliberately extended in order to completely eliminate Germany (which pre-WW1 was scientifically and industrially superior to the UK) as a strategic competitor to the British Empire:
I haven't read that book at all, but the blurb itself suggests that it will be just dripping with antisemitism:
> But the real power behind the war consisted of the bankers, the financiers, and the politicians, referred to, in this book, as The Secret Elite.
[ okay, that's not inherently antisemitic, but it finishes with ... ]
> Featured in this book are shocking accounts of [...] American and British zionists in cahoots with Rothschild's manipulated Balfour Declaration.
[ which clearly indicates how "bankers" and "financiers" is meant to be read. ]
In any case, to sustain such a thesis, you'd have to explain why the war could* have been won earlier than it actually was, and this post by Devereaux aptly points out that even the reasons commonly given for how WWI was eventually won (i.e., tanks, airplanes) didn't actually give the Allies the victory even in 1918, and couldn't have even earlier.
The qualifications of these "historians" appear to be that one was a secondary school theater teacher and the other was a medical doctor. So... there's that.
Also, as others have noted, this book is one giant conspiracy theory, and reads as such. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
> No one outside the favored few knew of the society's existence. Members understood that the reality of power was much more important and effective than the appearance of power, because they belonged to a priveleged class that understood how decisions were made, how governments were controlled and policy influenced. Party-political allegiance was not a given prerequisite for members; loyalty to the cause of Empire was. They have been variously referred to obliquely in speeches and books as the "Money Power," the "Hidden power" or the "Deep State." All of these labels are pertinent. We, however, have called them, collectively, the "Secret Elite."
The Kindle sample goes on to use that phrase "Secret Elite" 111 times.
According to one reviewer at Amazon (I could not find any scholarly reviews), the "Secret Elite" is the Milner group (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_Table_movement), which apparently published a newsletter.
That being said, non-professional-historians are capable of producing good history (for example, see Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully. I wouldn't discount it for the authors' qualifications alone.
On the other, other hand, everything about it is setting off my "crackpot" sensor, so I won't be the one trying to figure it out.
Or, you could check the National WWI Museum and Memorial Youtube channel for a bunch of very good lectures by historians on WWI, its origins, and consequences.
