Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army in August 1914 as a war volunteer. Fanatically devoted to the German cause between 1914 and 1918 Hitler served with distinction and sometimes reckless bravery, winning both classes of Iron Cross. Using memoirs, military records, regimental, divisional and official war histories as well as (wherever possible) Hitler's own words, this book seeks to reconstruct a period in his life that has been neglected in the literature. It is also the story of a German regiment (16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, or List Regiment), which fought in all the main battles on the Western Front. As a frontline soldier Hitler began his 'study' of the black art of propaganda; and, as he himself maintained, the List Regiment provided him with his 'university of life'.
This is not only an account of the fighting, however. Some of the most profound influences on Hitler occurred on home leave or as a result of official wartime propaganda, which he devoured uncritically. His conversion from passive pathological anti-Semitism began while invalided in Germany in 1916-17. The language of anti-Bolshevik 'Jewish virus' propaganda became Hitler's language, confirmed, as he saw it, by the 'infected' recruits to the List Regiment in 1918.
Hitler is here presented less as the product of high-cultural forces than as an avid reader and gullible consumer of state propaganda, which fed his prejudices. He was a 'good soldier' but also a 'true believer' in fact and practice. It is no exaggeration to say that every military decision made by Hitler between 1939 and 1945 was in some way influenced or colored by his experiences with the List Regiment between 1914 and 1918.

Between Two Worlds: A Rajput Officer in the Indian Army, 1905-21 describes two societies in early twentieth century colonial India- the British governmental and military society and the regional Rajasthan aristocracy. The book portrays life in the peacetime cantonments of Mhow (1906-14) and New Delhi (1918-19), on the Western and Mesopotamian fronts of World War One, and on the Northwest Frontier (1919-21) during the Pathan uprising. The story is tied together by the pioneering experiences of Captain (later Major-General) Amar Singh, an aristocrat of Jaipur state. Singh's personal story, revealed through the diary that he kept throughout his adult life, details Indo-British cultural collaboration. Amar Singh was, unwittingly, an excellent ethnographer of Rajput society, extensively recording family tensions, marriages, estate development, and the decadent lives of Rajput princes. Singh, in 1905, was among the first Indians given an officers' commission in the British Indian Army. However, it was not until 1917 that he received his full officer commission.

Adolf Hitler enlisted in the Bavarian Army in August 1914 as a war volunteer. Fanatically devoted to the German cause between 1914 and 1918 Hitler served with distinction and sometimes reckless bravery, winning both classes of Iron Cross. Using memoirs, military records, regimental, divisional and official war histories as well as (wherever possible) Hitler's own words, this book seeks to reconstruct a period in his life that has been neglected in the literature. It is also the story of a German regiment (16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, or List Regiment), which fought in all the main battles on the Western Front. As a frontline soldier Hitler began his 'study' of the black art of propaganda; and, as he himself maintained, the List Regiment provided him with his 'university of life'.
This is not only an account of the fighting, however. Some of the most profound influences on Hitler occurred on home leave or as a result of official wartime propaganda, which he devoured uncritically. His conversion from passive pathological anti-Semitism began while invalided in Germany in 1916-17. The language of anti-Bolshevik 'Jewish virus' propaganda became Hitler's language, confirmed, as he saw it, by the 'infected' recruits to the List Regiment in 1918.
Hitler is here presented less as the product of high-cultural forces than as an avid reader and gullible consumer of state propaganda, which fed his prejudices. He was a 'good soldier' but also a 'true believer' in fact and practice. It is no exaggeration to say that every military decision made by Hitler between 1939 and 1945 was in some way influenced or colored by his experiences with the List Regiment between 1914 and 1918.

This lively collection of essays showcases recent research into the impact of the conflict on British women during the First World War and since. Looking outside of the familiar representations of wartime women as nurses, munitionettes, and land girls, it introduces the reader to lesser-known aspects of women's war experience, including female composers' musical responses to the war, changes in the culture of women's mourning dress, and the complex relationships between war, motherhood, and politics. Written during the war's centenary, the chapters also consider the gendered nature of war memory in Britain, exploring the emotional legacies of the conflict today, and the place of women's wartime stories on the contemporary stage. The collection brings together work by emerging and established scholars contributing to the shared project of rewriting British women's history of the First World War. It is an essential text for anyone researching or studying this history. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's History Review.

Matters of Conflict looks at the definitive invention of the twentieth century - industrialised war - and its vast and varied material legacy. From trench art and postcards through avant-garde art, museum collections and prosthetic limbs to battlefield landscapes, the book examines the First World War and its significance through the things it left behind. The contributions come from a multidisciplinary perspective, uniting previously compartmentalized disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, cultural history, museology and art history in their focus on material culture. This innovative, hybrid approach investigates the 'social life' of objects in order to understand them as they move through time and space and intersect the lives of all who came in contact with them.
The resulting survey sets a new agenda for study of the First World War, and ultimately of all twentieth-century conflict.

Begun within months of the war's outbreak, and not completed for a further 33 years, the writing of the Official Histories of World War I was a venture of unprecedented scale and complexity. Who, then, was responsible for producing such an enterprise? Did it aim to inform or did it have darker political motivations? Did the authors, who alone had access to records that were to remain classified for decades to come, seek to lay the facts and lessons of the war truthfully before the public? A number of critics have claimed that, on the contrary, the Official Histories were highly partial accounts written to protect reputations and cover up the true scale of British military incompetence. Andrew Green directly challenges these views, examining the progress by which official history was written, the motives and influences of its paymasters, and the literary integrity of its historians. The book focuses on four offical volumes covering arguably the most contentious battles of the war: Gallipoli, the Somme, Third Ypres (Passchendaele) and March 1918. What emerges from this is both a story of these great campaigns and an insight into the political intrigues and conflicting constraints that influenced the official writing of the Great War.

This is the unforgettable story of the remarkable medical workers of World War One. A hundred years ago, the Armistice that ended the Great War was signed. The human cost was devastating: over 21 million military wounded, and nearly 10 million killed. The injuries on the battlefield were unlike anything those in the medical field had ever witnessed. Yet, they adapted incredibly fast - saving millions of lives. Drawing on letters and diary entries, we follow the lone stretcher bearer into the trenches only to find that they were all dead, to the dugouts where rescue teams dug frantically to escape the earth-shaking shellfire, and from stretcher to aid station, from jolting ambulance to crowded operating tent, exploring actual cases of casualties who recorded their terrifying and remarkable experiences. A groundbreaking book of the history of the Western Front from a new perspective, this is a tribute to the indispensable medical network that came together and saved our soldiers. 'A highly readable account...this is an engaging book...they are voices that deserve to be heard.' Daily Express

This comprehensive annotated bibliography includes over 1,400 references to memoirs, diaries, and letters by soldiers and civilians from all belligerent nations during World War I. Key features include: Incisive commentary on each entry's value to historians, enthusiasts, and collectors, Includes well-known and overlooked titles, Organization by country, Introduction provides a reader's guide to the best World War I literature, Indexes by title and subject allow searching by units, fronts, personal perspectives, and battles This reference source is a necessary addition to the collections of World War I enthusiasts, military historians, and academic and public libraries.

Great Britain's economic blockade of Germany in World War I was one of the key elements to the victory of the Entente. Though Britain had been the leading exponent of blockades for two centuries, the World War I blockade was not effective at the outbreak of hostilities. Pre-war changes had led to the Admiralty supplanting the Royal Navy's leadership role in favor of direction from the civilian branch of government on the basis of international law.
The struggle between the primacy of international law and military expediency lasted for nearly two years, as the British tried to reconcile their pre-war stance as champion of neutral rights with measures necessary for a successful blockade. Not until 1916 did the operation have the potential to be a decisive factor in the defeat of Germany, when pressure from France, the Royal Navy, Parliament, British popular opinion, and the Admiralty forced the British government to abandon its defense of neutral rights over the interests of the state.
The arrival of the United States as an ally in April 1917 initiated the final evolution of the blockade. The Entente and the United States tightened the blockade with crushing effect on Germany, and by November 1918, it was evidently one of the chief factors behind the victory. This knowledge reinforced the decision to retain the blockade in the months following the armistice in order to force favorable terms from Germany. In both the war and in the peace, the economic blockade performed a critical role in World War I.

In response to the devastating trauma of World War I, British and American authors wrote about grief. The need to articulate loss inspired moving novels by Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. Woolf criticized the role of Britain in the "war to end all wars," and Faulkner recognized in postwar France a devastation of land and people he found familiar from his life in a Mississippi still recovering from the American Civil War. In Character and Mourning, Erin Penner shows how these two modernist novelists took on the challenge of rewriting the literature of mourning for a new and difficult era.Faulkner and Woolf address the massive war losses from the perspective of the noncombatant, thus reimagining modern mourning. By refusing to let war poets dominate the larger cultural portrait of the postwar period, these novelists negotiated a relationship between soldiers and civilians-a relationship that was crucial once the war had ended. Highlighting their sustained attention to elegiac reinvention over the course of their writing careers-from Jacob's Room to The Waves, from The Sound and the Fury to Go Down, Moses-Penner moves beyond biographical and stylistic differences to recognize Faulkner and Woolf's shared role in reshaping elegiac literature in the period following the First World War.

This book is the first collection of essays to focus exclusively on Irish women's experiences in the First World War period, 1914-18, across the island of Ireland, contextualising the wartime realities of women's lives in a changing political landscape. The essays consider experiences ranging from the everyday realities of poverty and deprivation, to the contributions made to the war effort by women through philanthropy and by working directly with refugees. Gendered norms and assumptions about women's behaviour are critically analysed, from the rhetoric surrounding 'separation women' and their use of alcohol, to the navigation of public spaces and the attempts to deter women from perceived immoral behaviour. Political life is also examined by leading scholars in the field, including accounts from women on both sides of the 'Irish question' and the impact the war had on their activism and ambitions. Finally, new light is shed on the experiences of women working in munitions factories around Ireland and the complexity of this work in the Irish context is explored. Throughout, it is asserted that while there were many commonalities in women's experiences throughout the British and Irish Isles at this time, the particular political context of Ireland added a different, and in many respects an unexamined, dimension. This book was originally published as a special issue of Women's History Review.

Between the ending of the Great War and the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Royal Navy remained the largest in the world. But with the League of Nations seeming to offer a solution to all future conflicts, a country weary of war and without an obvious enemy there seemed no need for a large battlefleet. The strategic focus shifted eastwards, to Japan, with its growing battlefleet as the new threat to the British Empire and to the Royal Navy's supremacy. From 1924 a strategic plan, War Memorandum (Eastern), was written and refined. The plan called for the Royal Navy, still the largest in the world, even after the Washington Naval Treaties, to move eastwards to a defended base at Singapore, cut off Japan and force her battlefleet into a decisive fleet battle. As a strategy War Memorandum (Eastern) had many flaws. Its real importance lay in the fact that it provided a justification for the Royal Navy to maintain its leading position in the world and to be in the forefront of the development of new tactical thinking. Through planning for a war with Japan the Royal Navy was able to test its readiness for a future war. Many of the lessons learnt during this period were ultimately put to good use against a different foe in 1939.

Given the destruction and suffering caused by more than four years of industrialised warfare and economic hardship, scholars have tended to focus on the nationalism and hatred in the belligerent countries, holding that it led to a fundamental rupture of any sense of European commonality and unity. It is the central aim of this volume to correct this view and to highlight that many observers saw the conflict as a 'European civil war', and to discuss what this meant for discourses about Europe. Bringing together a remarkable range of compelling and highly original topics, this collection explores notions, images, and ideas of Europe in the midst of catastrophe.

Contesting the Origins of the First World War challenges the Anglophone emphasis on Germany as bearing the primary responsibility in causing the conflict and instead builds upon new perspectives to reconsider the roles of the other Great Powers. Using the work of Terrance Zuber, Sean McMeekin, and Stefan Schmidt as building blocks, this book reassesses the origins of the First World War and offers an explanation as to why this reassessment did not come about earlier. Troy R.E. Paddock argues that historians need to redraw the historiographical map that has charted the origins of the war. His analysis creates a more balanced view of German actions by also noting the actions and inaction of other nations. Recent works about the roles of the five Great Powers involved in the events leading up to the war are considered, and Paddock concludes that Germany does not bear the primary responsibility. This book provides a unique historiographical analysis of key texts published on the origins of the First World War, and its narrative encourages students to engage with and challenge historical perspectives.

Using U.S. State Department archives, Persian sources, and memoirs of British military officers, Majd provides an outline of military, diplomatic, and political events in Persia during 1914-1918. Persia in World War I and Its Conquest by Great Britain describes Persia's failure to gain recourse at Versailles, alleging that Persia was a loser both in war and peace. It is the second book in Majd's World War I triology.

The Great War is a landmark history that firmly places the First World War in the context of imperialism. Set to overturn conventional accounts of what happened during this, the first truly international conflict, it extends the study of the First World War beyond the confines of Europe and the Western Front. By recounting the experiences of people from the colonies especially those brought into the war effort either as volunteers or through conscription, John Morrow's magisterial work also unveils the impact of the war in Asia, India and Africa. From the origins of World War One to its bloody (and largely unknown) aftermath, The Great War is distinguished by its long chronological coverage, first person battle and home front accounts, its pan European and global emphasis and the integration of cultural considerations with political.

As many as eight to ten million Persians perished because of starvation and disease during the famine of 1917-1919, making it the greatest calamity in Persia's history. In this book, Mohammad Gholi Majd argues that Persia was the greatest victim of World War One and also the victim of possibly the worst genocide of the twentieth century. Using U.S. State Department records, as well as Persian and British sources, Majd describes and documents a veritable holocaust about which practically nothing has been written. It is the first book in Majd's World War I trilogy.

Warrant for Genocide provides a unique, interdisciplinary approach to understanding the underlying causes of the World War I Armenian genocide. It traces genocide to the origin and history of the long-standing Turko-Armenian discord with the massacres treated as a means to resolve the conflict between a powerful, dominant group and a weak, vulnerable minority.

The World War I destruction of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire was neither an accident nor an aberration. The seeds of the large-scale deportations and massacres of Armenians can be found in the 1919u1920 Turkish Courts Martial documents of leaders of the Young Turk Ittihadist regime. These were replete with xenophobic nationalism, calls for the use of arms to achieve that end, and references to Islam to incite the masses against Armenians. The utmost secrecy, camouflage, and deflection with respect to their plans were evident in what was not said. This was a drastic departure by the regime from its publicly proclaimed posture of egalitarianism, heralding the dawn of a new era of multiethnic harmony and accord in the decaying empire.

Dadrian carefully details these calculated deliberations and the concomitant shift from Ottomanism to Turkism in the radical wing of the regime. He illustrates how this rekindled enmities between dominant Turks and subject minorities. The desire to neutralize or eliminate the opposition helped pave the way to a new and radical nationality policy. To Dadrian, the act of genocide was a draconian method of resolving a lingering conflict.

No analysis of the Armenian genocide can be adequate without understanding the origin, elements, evolution, and escalation of the Turko-Armenian conflict. Dadrian details this admirably, showing that in the final analysis, the Armenian genocide was a cataclysmic by-product of this conflict. Genocide and Holocaust scholars, Armenian area specialists, and human rights activists will consider this an essential addition to the literature.

More than eight decades later, the Great War - particularly the great battles such as the Somme and Verdun - continues to fascinate us and cast long shadows over our world today. In this volume, Peter Simkins re-examines the early years of the war's Western Front, shedding interesting new light on the nature, course, and effects of the fighting in France and Belgium from 1914 to 1916.

The final volume in a four part set covering the First World War, this book includes the Allied attempts to capture Constantinople, the bloody campaigning in Northern Italy, the defence of the Suez Canal and the defeat of the Turkish army in Palestine. The war in North Africa is also covered.

In this second volume devoted to the Western Front of World War I, Peter Simkins describes the last great battles of attrition at Arras, on the Aisne, and at Passchendaele in 1917. The book moves on to relate the successive offenses launched by Germany during the spring and summer of 1918 in an effort to achieve victory or a favorable peace before American manpower proved decisive. Questioning and debunking several myths and assumptions about the conduct of war on the Western Front, the author also looks at the aftermath and legacy of the 'war to end wars'.

With the aid of almost 100 photographs from the news archives of Mirrorpix, this book offers readers the opportunity to read a critique and review of the inspirational, moving, shocking and sometimes humorous words of the men and women who experienced The Great War first hand. This book presents a poignant, nostalgic record of the lives of military commanders, ordinary soldiers, politicians, royalty and civilian families whose lives were torn asunder in a four-year conflict that redrew the map of the world.

In this new book, Spencer Coil examines various models of uniforms and equipment used by the multiethnic French armed forces in the First World War. A carefully chosen and researched selection of period photographs enables the reader to visualize a climactic era in history, as experienced by the poilus (French soldiers) serving in the trenches and on the battlefields. There are detailed chapters covering French machineguns, medical, artillery, motor corps, infantry, chasseur, armored car and tank units as well as the air service and the cavalry's hussars, dragoons and cuirassiers. Other chapters examine the French foreign legion, Zouaves, and Tirailleurs. A full color section shows heretofore unpublished photos of headdress, uniforms, equipment, and accoutrements used by the French armed forces in the First World War. This work is a must for all serious historians, collectors, wargamers, model builders, and re-enactors.

First published in 1940, the original blurb reads: Here is an inquiry how to make a just and lasting peace when the danger of further aggression by Herr Hitler's Germany has been removed. A feature of the book is the stress it lays on Germany's part in forming and fostering a new world order. When the World War ended, cries of "Hang the Kaiser" and "Squeeze the German Orange" hampered the peacemakers and helped to spoil the peace. If that mistake is not to be repeated, public opinion must be prepared for whatever apparent sacrifices may be involved in passing from the old civilization to the new. And if the foundations of the new system are to be well and truly laid, they must rest not only upon the undertakings of governments, but also upon the convictions and the sentiments, the thoughts and the feelings, of individual men and women. To that end people should begin now to think over and discuss with one another how the errors of Versailles are to be avoided and how we are to do better this time. This book by Dr Maxwell Garnett, for 18 years the secretary of the League of Nations Union and Dr H. F. Koeppler will help such thought and talk to prepare the way of lasting peace. Dr Koeppler shows how essential is Anglo-French solidarity in the interests of Germany herself. For the rest he is chiefly concerned with the conflict between German democracy and Prussian Junkerdom as he defines it. He suggests how this conflict may be resolved when the Nazi disciples of the Junkers have left the scene and how Germany may then play an equal part in a new Europe.