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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
This two volume set originally appeared in 1919 in limited quantities - original copies are now highly sought collectibles. Both volumes of New England Aviators are now available in new quality editions. 542 New England pilots - who flew with the USAAC, USN, USMC and British and French air forces - are given short biographical entries and most appear in World War I era photographs. New England Aviators is a superb, detailed reference for World War I and aviation historians, as well as uniform and insignia collectors.
Shortly after the end of the First World War, General Sir George Macdonagh, wartime director of British Military Intelligence, revealed that Lord Allenby's victory in Palestine had never been in doubt because of the success of his intelligence service. Seventy-five years later this book explains Macdonagh's statement. Sheffy also adopts a novel approach to traditional heroes of the campaign such as T E Lawrence.
The International Society for First World War Studies' ninth conference, 'War Time', drew together emerging and leading scholars to discuss, reflect upon, and consider the ways that time has been conceptualised both during the war itself and in subsequent scholarship. War Time: First World War Perspectives on Temporality, stemming from this 2016 conference, offers its readers a collection of the conference's most inspiring and thought-provoking papers from the next generation of First World War scholars. In its varied yet thematically-related chapters, the book aims to examine new chronologies of the Great War and bring together its military and social history. Its cohesive theme creates opportunities to find common ground and connections between these sub-disciplines of history, and prompts students and academics alike to seriously consider time as alternately a unifying, divisive, and ultimately shaping force in the conflict and its historiography. With content spanning land and air, the home and fighting fronts, multiple nations, and stretching to both pre-1914 and post-1918, these ten chapters by emerging researchers (plus an introductory chapter by the conference organisers, and a foreword by John Horne) offer an irreplaceable and invaluable snapshot of how the next generation of First World War scholars from eight countries were innovatively conceptualising the conflict and its legacy at the midpoint of its centenary.
This book explores how print journalism was a powerful and persistent influence on public attitudes to, and memories of, the First World War in a range of participant nations, including Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, the United States and Australia. With contributions from an international group of history, journalism and literary studies scholars, the book identifies and analyses five distinct roles played by the print media: producing and narrating histories of the war or its constituent episodes; serialising and reviewing memoirs or fictional accounts written by participants; reporting and framing the rituals and ceremonies of local and national commemoration; providing a platform for various war-related advocacy groups or campaigns, from veterans' associations to early Civil Rights movements; and using the war as a lens through which to interpret future conflicts. This innovative collection demonstrates the significance of journalism in shaping the public understanding of the First World War after 1918, and shows how the representations and narratives of the conflict reflected the political and social changes of the post-war decades. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.
The War as I Saw It is a completely fresh point of view of the "war to end all wars", an extraordinary first-person view of a young officer in the opening battles of the American Tank Corps in World War I. Written by a young, well-educated American, these forty-six letters chronicle the birth of the Tank Corps and provide a rare glimpse into a rich and complex arena of history. Harvey L. Harris clearly delighted in being a part of what was, then, cutting-edge technology in the Tank Corps; his letters capture the essence of American naivete and sense of adventure in Europe. A keen observer of people and events, Harris details his early training in France, the two major battles he witnessed, and his proximity to a then-unknown colonel, George S. Patton, Jr. Because this short but meaningful period of American military history has been largely neglected, the publication of these letters provides a window into a slice of military history beautifully captured in a young officer's first-person letters to his family back home in the States. The eightieth anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I will occur November 11, 1998. The War as I Saw It will be of particular interest to historians and, in particular, to American war/military history buffs. The War as I Saw It is the only title currently in print that extensively considers the use of American armored tanks in World War I.
Borderlines weaves together the study of gender with that of the
evolution of nationalism and colonialism. Its broad, comparative
perspective will rechart the war experiences and identities of
women and men during this period of transformation from peace to
war, and again to peace.
An up-to-date and concise account of WWI for teachers and students looking for a balanced introduction. It details both the military operations as well as the development of war aims, alliance diplomacy and the war on the home front.
"The Myriad Faces of War" is a unique and compelling study of the First World War from the standpoint of British involvement. It explores the reasons for Britain's entry into the war, the nature and course of Britain's participation and the far-reaching repercussions of the war on British society. The result is a rich and comprehensive chronicle of the social, political, diplomatic and military aspects of the Great War. It is worth quoting the author, 'Nevertheless, if the Great War seems to reduce humanity to ciphers, this book does not doubt that its proper subject is man - or, rather, men and women, in high estate and low, in handfuls and large masses, in political and social military groupings. . . It relates how vast military campaigns, whose course could scarcely be perceived by those commanding them, appeared to humble occupants of the firing line. It tries to see how the war impinged on particular classes and a particular sex and how it affected lives: extinguishing some, touching others, scarcely at all, radically altering others, and affecting most pretty nearly - at least for the duration and often for a good deal longer.' The author triumphantly succeeds in this. This is one of the most important books about the Great War published in the last fifty years. 'The Myriad Faces of War is a lively and well-organized reappraisal of Britain's role in the First World War which is unusual in paying equal attention to the military and home ''front''. Trevor Wilson makes good use of official records and the wealth of unpublished documentary material from archives such as that at the Imperial War Museum. This vigorous, fresh and thoughtful survey of a great war which still arouses a peculiar fascination can be strongly recommended to general students of the subject, but specialists will also find much of interest in Professor Wilson's magisterial history.' Brian Bond, "King's College, London " 'This is first major study of Britain in the Great War to appear in over a decade. It breaks new ground in integrating this history of then Front and the Home Front and provides insights into the way the war was fought by common soldiers and endured by ordinary people both in and out of uniform. The landscape of war it describes will be of interest to military, political and social historians, as well as to the wide readership which remains fascinated by the Great War.' Jay Winter, "Pembroke College, Cambridge" "" 'Professor Trevor Wilson's mighty work on the first world war . . . is a truly significant contribution to our understanding of what the war meant to the British people . . . "The Myriad Faces of War" is a disciplined, unsentimental and thoughtful book - and it also retains strongly the human touch.' "Spectator " 'Wilson wries with compassion and wit . . . this is a book for the general reader as well as the scholar . .. it is by far the best study of Britain and the First World War that has yet been written.' "London Review of Books " "" 'Wilson ranges impresssivley over all major aspects of the conflict . . . it is a judicious, readable overview of a monster subject.' "New York Times Book Review"
On the morning of 22 September 1914, just six weeks into the First World War, three Royal Navy armoured cruisers were sunk by a German U-boat in the southern North Sea. The action lasted less than 90 minutes but the lives of 1,459 men and boys were lost - more than the British losses at the Battle of Trafalgar or in the sinking of RMS Lusitania. Yet, curiously, few have ever heard of the incident. The Coal Black Sea tells the extraordinary true story of the disaster from the perspectives of the men serving on HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy, and the German submariners who orchestrated the attack. It also examines how the ignominious loss provoked widespread criticism of the highly ambitious First Lord of the Admiralty, the 39-year-old Winston Churchill. While the families of the victims grieved, Churchill succeeded in playing down the significance of the disaster and shifted the blame to those serving at sea to save his faltering career. Using a range of official and archival records, Stuart Heaver exposes this false narrative and corrects over a century of misinformation to honour those who lost their lives in the worst naval catastrophe of the First World War.
This new book contains not only a history of the legendary Lafayette Flying Corps, but also detailed biographies of the 269 volunteer American airmen and gunners of France's Service Aeronautique who flew in sixty-six pursuit and twenty-seven bomber/observation squadrons over the Western Front - also included are the thirty-eight pilots of the Escadrille Lafayette. It is an accurate and absorbing account of the lives and combat experiences of the men who later formed the nucleus of the American Expeditionary Force squadrons. This ground breaking work contains comprehensive research, including details of war casualties and survivors, and many unpublished photographs.
Chronicles one of the greatest sea tragedies of our time.
Americans today harbor no strong or consistent collective memory of the First World War. Ask why they fought or what they accomplished, and "democracy" is the most likely if vague response. The circulation of confusing or lofty rationales for intervention started from the moment President Woodrow Wilson secured a war declaration in April 1917. Yet amid those shifting justifications, Love and Death in the Great War argues, was a more durable and resonant one: Americans would fight for home and family. Intervention came at a moment when arbiters of tradition regarded those very institutions-the white family in particular-under pressure from all sides: industrial work, women's employment, immigration, urban vice, woman suffrage, and most incendiary, the imagined threat of black sexual aggression. Alleged German crimes in France and Belgium seemed to further imperil women and children. Americans would fight, many said, to protect the family literally, but also indirectly. War promised to restore convention, stabilize gender roles, and sharpen male character. Love and Death in the Great War tracks such ideas of redemptive war across public and private spaces, policy and implementation, home and front, popular culture and personal correspondence. Huebner merges untold stories of men and women from Missouri, Wisconsin, Alabama, Louisiana, and other places with a history of wartime culture. Studying the radiating impact of war alongside the management of opinion, he recovers the conflict's emotional dimensions-its everyday rhythms, heartbreaking losses, soaring possibilities, and broken promises. Telling the war story as a love story, however, generated contradictions and challenges, some subtle, some transformative, some violent. African Americans and women serving in the army disrupted narratives of white chivalric rescue. Military life proved inhospitable to virtue. Death and injury brought destruction not regeneration. An army of mostly drafted men sought recompense for lives interrupted as much as patriotic or personal credibility. After the Great War, the mobilization of real and symbolic families would never quite look the same again.
At its dawn in the early twentieth century, the new technology of aviation posed a crucial question to American and British cavalry: what do we do with the airplane? Lacking the hindsight of historical perspective, cavalry planners based their decisions on incomplete information. Harnessing the Airplane compares how the American and British armies dealt with this unique challenge. A multilayered look at a critical aspect of modern industrial warfare, this book examines the ramifications of technological innovation and its role in the fraught relationship that developed between traditional ground units and emerging air forces. Cavalry officers pondered the potential military uses of airplanes and other new technologies early on, but preferred to test them before embracing and incorporating them in their operations. Cavalrymen cautiously examined airplane capabilities, developed applications and doctrine for joint operations, and in the United States, even tried to develop their own, specially designed craft. Throughout the interwar period, instead of replacing the cavalry, airplanes were used cooperatively with cavalry forces in reconnaissance, security, communication, protection, and pursuit - a collaboration tested in maneuvers and officially blessed in both British and American doctrine. This interdependent relationship changed drastically, however, during the 1930s as aviation priorities and doctrine shifted from tactical support of ground troops toward independent strategic bombardment. Henning shows that the American and British experiences with military aviation differed. The nascent British aviation service made quicker inroads into reconnaissance and scouting, even though the British cavalry was the older institution with more-established traditions. The American cavalry, despite its youth, contested the control of reconnaissance as late as the 1930s, years after similar arguments ended in Britain. Drawing on contemporary government reports, memoirs and journals of service personnel, books, and professional and trade journals and magazines, Harnessing the Airplane is a nuanced account of the cavalry's response to aviation over time and presents a new perspective on a significant chapter of twentieth-century military history.
Despite No.6 Squadron RNAS being the first British fighter squadron to deploy a production twin gun scout on the Western Front (beating the Royal Flying Corp's elite 56 Squadron by a couple of weeks) and the first squadron to take the notoriously unreliable Siddeley Puma powered D.H.9 into battle, almost nothing has been published about the activities of this important Royal Naval Air Service squadron. The lack of published information can perhaps be explained by the fact that a large block of the squadron's daily reports are inexplicably missing from their box in Britain's National Archives. After much effort and time, Mike Westrop discovered the missing documents in a Royal Flying Corps War Diary. This pilots' log books, and many previously unpublished photographs has enabled the author to produce the first in-depth look at the activities and accomplishments of this forgotten squadron. The Royal Naval Air Service had a reputation for fielding the most colorful Allied machines in France and Belgium, and the reputation was upheld by the Nieuport scouts of No.6 Squadron. A collection of superb new colour profiles from Mark Miller depicts the squadron's Nieuport 17Bis scouts to perfection.
World War I directly and indirectly caused events and social and political trends which defined the history of the world for the rest of the century, including the Russian Revolution and the rise of communism to the Great Crash of 1929 which lead to the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. It marked a turning point in world history as the end of the historical era of European dominance and the ushering in of a period which accelerated demands for freedom and autonomy in colonial settings. India played a significant role in the war and in the Allied victory on the battlefield. This book explores India's involvement in the Great War and the way the war impacted upon the country from a variety of different viewpoints including case studies focusing on key individuals who played vital roles in the war. The long and short term impacts of the war on different locations in India are also explored in the chapters which offer an analysis of the importance of the war on India while commemorating the sacrifices which were made. A new, innovative and multidisciplinary examination of India and World War I, this book presents a select number of case studies showing the intimate relationship of the global war and its social, political and economic impacts on the Indian subcontinent. It will be of interest to academics in the field of War Studies, Colonial and Imperial History and South Asian and Modern Indian History.
This 2007 book provides the most comprehensive examination of American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) combat doctrine and methods ever published. It shows how AEF combat units actually fought on the Western Front in World War I. It describes how four AEF divisions (the 1st, 2nd, 26th, and 77th) planned and conducted their battles and how they adapted their doctrine, tactics, and other operational methods during the war. General John Pershing and other AEF leaders promulgated an inadequate prewar doctrine, with only minor modification, as the official doctrine of the AEF. Many early American attacks suffered from these unrealistic ideas that retained too much faith in the infantry rifleman on the modern battlefield. However, many AEF divisions adjusted their doctrine and operational methods as they fought, preparing more comprehensive attack plans, employing flexible infantry formations, and maximizing firepower to seize limited objectives.
This book demonstrates how people were kept ignorant by censorship and indoctrinated by propaganda. Censorship suppressed all information that criticized the army and government, that might trouble the population or weaken its morale. Propaganda at home emphasized the superiority of the fatherland, explained setbacks by blaming scapegoats, vilified and ridiculed the enemy, warned of the disastrous consequences of defeat and extolled duty and sacrifice. The propaganda message also infiltrated entertainment and the visual arts. Abroad it aimed to demoralize enemy troops and stir up unrest among national minorities and other marginalized groups. The many illustrations and organograms provide a clear visual demonstration of Demm's argument.
Around 250,000 Belgian refugees who fled the German invasion spent the First World War in Britain - the largest refugee presence Britain has ever witnessed. Welcomed in a wave of humanitarian sympathy for 'Poor Little Belgium', within a few months Belgian exiles were pushed off the front pages of newspapers by the news of direct British involvement in the war. Following rapid repatriation at British government expense in late 1918 and 1919 Belgian refugees were soon lost from public memory with few memorials or markers of their mass presence. Reactions to Belgian refugees discussed in this book include the mixed responses of local populations to the refugee presence, which ranged from extensive charitable efforts to public and trade union protests aimed at protecting local jobs and housing. This book also explores the roles of central and local government agencies which supported and employed Belgian refugees en masse yet also used them as a propaganda tool to publicise German outrages against civilians to encourage support for the Allied war effort. This book covers responses to Belgian refugees in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales in a Home Front wartime episode which generated intense public interest and charitable and government action. This book was originally published as a special issue of Immigrants and Minorities: Historical Studies in Ethnicity, Migration and Diaspora.
"An illustrated analytical study, Words and the First World War considers the situation at home, at war, and under categories such as race, gender and class to give a many-sided picture of language used during the conflict." The Spectator First World War expert Julian Walker looks at how the conflict shaped English and its relationship with other languages. He considers language in relation to mediation and authenticity, as well as the limitations and potential of different kinds of verbal communication. Walker also examines: - How language changed, and why changed language was used in communications - Language used at the Front and how the 'language of the war' was commercially exploited on the Home Front - The relationship between language, soldiers and class - The idea of the 'indescribability' of the war and the linguistic codes used to convey the experience 'Languages of the front' became linguistic souvenirs of the war, abandoned by soldiers but taken up by academics, memoir writers and commentators, leaving an indelible mark on the words we use even today.
Following the defeat of Napoleon in 1814, an event that signalled an end to nearly fourteen years of French domination, Florence seemed to enter a new cultural 'golden age' and by 1824 was described as 'an Earthly Paradise' by the political and liberal writer, Pietro Giordano. Politically, economically and culturally, the city prospered in this new era. After 1814 it seemed as if the Enlightenment had found a new beginning in Florence. Aubrey Garlington, a scholar of long standing in the music of early nineteenth-century Florence, considers the roles played by John Fane, Lord Burghersh, an English aristocrat, diplomat and dilettante composer together with his wife, Priscilla, in the development of the richly homogeneous culture that blossomed in Florence at this time. Burghersh, known today for being instrumental in the founding of the English Royal Academy of Music, composed six operas that were performed privately on numerous occasions at the English Embassy, his best known work being "La Fedra". Lady Burghersh became known for her painting and dilettante theatrical performances. Garlington provides a thorough re-examination of the categories 'professional' and 'dilettante' which were so important in the concept of music at this time. The notions of boundaries between public and private activity are discussed, and the operas themselves are examined specifically. Through the contemplation of the Burghershs's sixteen year stay in Florence, the significance of dilettante orientations are demonstrated to have been essential components for the city's musical and social life. Garlington draws together an impressive compilation of documentation regarding the part music played in shaping society and culture. In this way, the book will appeal not only to opera historians, musicologists and critics working on the nineteenth century, but also to historians and scholars of cultural theory.
This is the first systematic scholarly study of the historiography of the First World War. The First World War remains controversial in its conduct and broader implications, and this volume explores many issues which continue to cause debate, such as Haig's generalship, the role of T.E. Lawrence in the Arab Revolt, and the failure of the Dardanelles campaign. It also examines the new approaches to the war stimulated by the fiftieth anniversaries in the 1960s, and follows them through to contemporary concern with the experiences of ordinary soldiers and their chroniclers. The contributors are leading historians of the First World War. They draw their material from a wide range of contemporary sources and subsequent accounts, and make full use of recent research. They provide new insights into the age-old problems of war and attitudes to warfare. Their purpose is to demonstrate how our understanding of war and our image of the First World War have been shaped by the historical writing of the twentieth century.
The Wet Flanders Plain was first published in 1929. It was in good company for that year also saw the first publication of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That, Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End and Ernst Junger's Storm of Steel."" It doesn't suffer by comparison. But it is different from them. Unlike almost all the Great War classics this book isn't based on delayed recollection, it is more immediate than that. In 1928, Henry Williamson and another unnamed veteran revisited the battlefields of Flanders and Northern France. In Williamson's own words he wanted to 'return to my old comrades . . . to the brown, the treeless, the flat and grave-set plain of Flanders - to the rolling, heat-miraged downlands of the Somme - for I am dead with them, and they live in me again.' He wanted to be rid of the 'wraith of the war'. As he continued to be haunted by his experiences as a soldier, and continued to write at length about the Great War in both fiction and non-fiction works, it is doubtful if he was successful in that but what he does give us is a memoir that, as one reviewer put it, 'emerges from the mass of War books as the most beautiful and the most terrible.'
The First World War was above all a war of logistics. Whilst the conflict will forever be remembered for the mud and slaughter of the Western Front, it was a war won on the factory floor as much as the battlefield. Examining the war from an industrial perspective, Arming the Western Front examines how the British between 1900 and 1920 set about mobilising economic and human resources to meet the challenge of 'industrial war'. Beginning with an assessment of the run up to war, the book examines Edwardian business-state relations in terms of armament supply. It then outlines events during the first year of the war, taking a critical view of competing constructs of the war and considering how these influenced decision makers in both the private and public domains. This sets the framework for an examination of the response of business firms to the demand for 'shells more shells', and their varying ability to innovate and manage changing methods of production and organisation. The outcome, a central theme of the book, was a complex and evolving trade-off between the quantity and quality of munitions supply, an issue that became particularly acute during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. This deepened the economic and political tensions between the military, the Ministry of Munitions, and private engineering contractors as the pressure to increase output accelerated markedly in the search for victory on the western front. The Great War created a dual army, one in the field, the other at home producing munitions, and the final section of the book examines the tensions between the two as the country strove for final victory and faced the challenges of the transition to the peace time economy. |
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