CHASING THE GREAT RETREAT: The German Cavalry Pursuit of the British Expeditionary Force before the Battle of the Marne August 1914

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The focus is on the German pursuit of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) retreat. We show that the Great War should have ended on 23 August 1914 but, due to the 'fog and friction of war' it did not and 'Chasing the BEF' was born. This is a story of missed opportunities made more astonishing by the amount of propaganda extolled by some British authors. This propaganda line claimed that British firepower dealt a great blow to the German army at the Battle of Mons. Much is told about the British soldiers' ability to fire 15 rounds of aimed shooting in a minute, which allegedly the Germans mistook for machine-gun fire. Clearly in their eyes, the British won that battle. Britain, in fact, lost the Battle of Mons and should have lost the war on 23 August. Germany missed a wide-open door that would have spelled disaster for the BEF and the entire Left Flank of the French army. Includes 27 b/w photos and 15 maps.

We focus on the role of the German cavalry. This arm is seriously understudied and has had little place in some official histories. In general, both British and German works ignore the role the cavalry played in the war. We are talking about the Right Wing of the German army only, consisting of the German First Army, Second Army, and two cavalry formations known as Hoherer Kavallerie-Kommandeur (HKK 1 and HKK 2). The HKK were ad hoc organizations that had never been tested before the war. They are often wrongly referred to as a cavalry corps - the cavalry did not become a corps until 1915 - but neither were they similar to an infantry corps. However, many authors do not understand the concept of the HKK and therefore do not address the cavalry in operational maneuvers.

Written as a sequel to the award-winning German Failure in Belgium, August 1914: How Faulty Reconnaissance Exposed the Weakness of the Schlieffen Plan (2019), which won the Tomlinson Book Award for best First World War English language book in 2020, this volume stands alone as the German army chases the well-documented 'Great Retreat'.