When the Germans invaded her small Belgian village in 1914, Marthe Cnockaert's home was burned and her family separated. After getting a job at a German hospital, and winning the Iron Cross for her service to the Reich, she was approached by a neighbor and invited to become an intelligence agent for the British. Not without trepidation, Cnockaert embarked on a career as a spy, providing information and engaging in sabotage before her capture and imprisonment in 1916. After the war, she was paid and decorated by a grateful British government for her service. Cnockaert's is only one of the surprising and gripping stories that comprise Female Intelligence. This is the first history of the female spies who served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British government in either civil or military occupations as members of the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of nationality, age, and class. From Aphra Behn, who spied for the British government in the seventeenth century, to the most well known example, Mata Hari, female spies have a long history, existing in juxtaposition to the folkloric notion of women as chatty, gossipy, and indiscreet. Using personal accounts, letters, official documents and newspaper reports, Female Intelligence interrogates different, and apparently contradictory, constructions of gender in the competing spheres of espionage activity.

While we were still in Paris, I felt, and have felt increasingly ever since, that you accepted my guidance and direction on questions with regard to which I had to instruct you only with increasing reluctance.. ..". I must say that it would relieve me of embarrassment, Mr. Secretary, the embarrassment of feeling your reluctance and divergence of judgment, if you would give your present office up and afford me an opportunity to select some one whose mind would more willingly go along with mine." These words are taken from the letter which President Wilson wrote to me on February 11, 1920. On the following day I tendered my resignation as Secretary of State by a letter, in which I said:

The 'Normans' during the Great War in Europe
It would misleading and unfair to the entertainment value and writing ability of the author of this book to describe it as a regimental history. Nothing justifiably so classified began with the expletive, 'Fed up ' Nevertheless, this excellent account takes the reader to the heart of the light infantry regiment raised in Guernsey and from its nearby islands, a regiment of local men who were proud of their independence and their heritage as decedents of the Norman warriors who accompanied Duke William on the conquest of England-the country they all acknowledged as nothing less than their own. Blicq, the author, was one of their number-an ordinary soldier and proud to be one of the worst in the battalion So he predictably brings an element of humour into his graphic portrayal of his comrades and indeed, the text is full of wry period dialogue. Intimate portrait of life on the march, in camp and in the trenches is vividly painted giving the reader a picture of the Guernsey men's experience of life and death on the Western Front. The reader joins Blicq-half of the infamous 'Duo' into battle at Hendecourt, Cambrai, Marcoing, Masnieres through the near catastrophic German onslaught of 1918 to the Passchendaele sector and Doulieu-Estaires. This is a remarkable story of the men of a small island state who loyally and with humour and determination rallied to its call and, in many cases, sacrificed to the last full measure, leaving an appalling legacy of death and injury for the Channel Islands in the post war period. This is an unusual view of a unit at war on the Western Front from original sources and recommended. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 1914 to 1918. Contemporaneously known as the Great War or "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. This series of Eight volumes provides year by year analysis of the war that resulted in the death of more than 17 million deaths worldwide.

The Royal Navy strikes back
In the final months of the first year of the First World War a squadron of the Imperial German Navy under von Spee decisively destroyed a weaker British force under Cradock off the coast of South America. This action in the Southern Pacific, known as the Battle of Coronel (after the nearest coastal town in Chile) delivered a decisive blow to the prestige and perception of British sea power and prompted a determined and powerfully resourced retaliatory response from the British Admiralty which would lead to the events described in this book, the Battle of the Falkland Islands. The German cruiser squadron comprised two armoured cruisers, Scharnorst, Gneisenau, three light cruisers, Nurnberg, Dresden and Leipzig plus three auxiliary support vessels. After his Coronel victory, von Spee had sailed his squadron south with the intention of raiding the supply base at Port Stanley in the Falklands in the South Atlantic, when on December 8th, 1914 it was brought to engagement by the avenging stronger British force under Doveton Sturdee comprising the battle cruisers Invincible and Inflexible, the armoured cruisers Carnarvon, Cornwall and Kent and two light cruisers Bristol and Glasgow. The outcome was perhaps as inevitable as it was intended to be. Only two German vessels escaped being sunk. Students of naval history will know that for a century the Royal Navy's dominance of the seaways had meant that it had fought few major engagements since Trafalgar. The First World War was dominated by the Battle of Jutland. So this account of modern warships in action is of vital interest. Available in softcover and hardback for collectors.

Possibly THE book of the tank during the Great War
This is a very substantial and important book. Quite simply, anyone interested in the history of tank warfare should read and own it for it is essential. It was written by a British tank commander of the Great War who has given us a comprehensive account of tanks as machines and tanks at war. First, it is an account of the creation and development of the tank. Second, it describes the war of the tank in all its theatres of operation including the Western Front, the Middle East and including the French and German forces. Third, it provides an insight into armaments, armour, maintenance, breakdown and battle damage recovery and into many aspects of keeping an early armoured squadron operational. Fourth, it offers an excellent history of the engagements of British tanks and, finally, it is a brilliant eyewitness account of the tank of the Great War in action-from one who was personally involved-including much battle description, dialogue and anecdotal incident. A successful book in every way.

When careful consideration is given to Nietzsche's critique of Platonism and to what he wrote about Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm, and to Germany's place in "international relations" (die Grosse Politik), the philosopher's carefully cultivated "pose of untimeliness" is revealed to be an imposture. As William H. F. Altman demonstrates, Nietzsche should be recognized as the paradigmatic philosopher of the Second Reich, the short-lived and equally complex German Empire that vanished in World War One. Since Nietzsche is a brilliant stylist whose seemingly disconnected aphorisms have made him notoriously difficult for scholars to analyze, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche is presented in Nietzsche's own style in a series of 155 brief sections arranged in five discrete "Books," a structure modeled on Daybreak. All of Nietzsche's books are considered in the context of the close and revealing relationship between "Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche" (named by his patriotic father after the King of Prussia) and the Second Reich. In "Preface to 'A German Trilogy,'" Altman joins this book to two others already published by Lexington Books: Martin Heidegger and the First World War: Being and Time as Funeral Oration and The German Stranger: Leo Strauss and National Socialism.

The American drive towards victory on the Western Front
This unique Leonaur book brings together 'The Turn of the Tide by Jennings Wise, ' an excellent history of some of the decisive battles fought by American forces on the Western Front in 1918, and the separately published portfolio of first-rate illustrations of the American Expeditionary Force in action during that period by Jean Berne-Bellecour. By the end of 1914 the die was cast in Europe for a war of stalemate on the Western Front. Inevitably generals on both sides sought battlefield solutions, but the lines remained almost static, with the armies grappling over entrenched positions of barbed-wire fringed mud. Inevitably the realisation came that this was a true war of attrition. There would be no decisive manoeuvre and the outcome would be determined by which nations would run out of men, materials and food first. Germany could see how the allies depended upon supplies from the United States of America and deployed its U-Boat wolf-packs to the Atlantic Ocean to disrupt shipping. By 1917 this strategy was close to success and the allied cause was in jeopardy. There can be little doubt that American entry into the war was the key to Allied victory. Both men and materials arrived, crossing the ocean protected by the might of a naval presence that only the USA could now muster. After three years of neutrality, the Americans-it has to be said-came not to fight the war, but to win it. This was an industrial war as no previous war had been, and this book traces the fiercely contested battles that became iconic for the Americans who served in Europe. Here are the battles of the summer of 1918 including the taking of Cantigny, the battles of Chateau Thierry and the famous Belleau Wood, Hill 204 and the counter-offensive which was the Second Battle of the Marne. This book includes many battlefield maps to assist the modern reader.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

The poetry of the Great War is among the most powerful ever written in the English language. Unique for its immediacy and searing honesty, it has made a fundamental contribution to our understanding of and response to war and the suffering it creates. Widely acclaimed as an indispensable guide to the Great War poets and their work, Out of Battle explores in depth the variety of responses from Rupert Brook, Ford Madox Ford, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Issac Rosenberg and Edward Thomas to the events they witnessed. Other poets discussed are Hardy, Kipling, Charles Sorely, Ivor Gurney, Herbert Read, Richard Aldington and David Jones. For the second edition of Out of Battle , a substantial new preface has been added together with an appendix on the unresolved problems concerning the Owen manuscripts. An updated bibliography provides useful guidance for further reading.

Two accounts of men of the Legion during the First World War
The French Foreign Legion has earned its reputation in acts of heroism and aggression, in tenacious actions of resistance and in the spilling of much blood. It has always been recognised as a home for the dispossessed, criminals and soldiers of fortune, so among its ranks could be found hard men from a multitude of backgrounds and numerous nations. The Legion has been typified by the fierce loyalty of its men, its esprit de corps and its undying allegiance to the nation which had taken them under its protection. France has, however, always exacted a high price for its patronage. The Legion has habitually been asked to demonstrate that it is equal to its laurels and it has constantly been placed in the 'post of honour'-that bloody ground where the fighting is hardest and death more certain. In the warfare of the Western Front during the Great War that likelihood of annihilation was multiplied by the lethal nature of the battleground and losses were horrendous for Legion regiments-sometimes as high as one man killed out of three or four engaged. Yet still men flocked to the Legion's ranks. This book offers accounts of the experiences of two such men as they fought for the cause of France in the trenches. Each piece is comparatively short so they have been joined together in this special Leonaur good value edition.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

On His Majesty's Secret Service
The Duke of Wellington famously said that the art of war was discovering what you don't know by what you do-guessing what was on the other side of the hill. The best way to know what was over that hill was to send someone to look for you. The duke was no stranger to scouts, spies and intelligence officers and knew their value. As important as the spying itself was the need to stop enemy agents employed in the same work. By the later 19th century the means by which intelligence work could be undertaken was as a result of developments in communication, transport and technology in all its forms becoming more sophisticated. Countermeasures likewise became more difficult and complex. The decision made by many governments was to formalise the operations of espionage and counterespionage agents into dedicated services. This book, by a member of the British Secret Service, offers an essential insight into intelligence activities during the Great War. The narrative includes the riveting personal experiences and anecdotes of other agents, touches upon the methods used including codes and locating minelayers, and gives an overview of the secret service organisations operating at that time; it concludes with an examination of the 'Casement Affair.' For those interested in the world of the proto-Bond against Imperial Germany this is a highly entertaining read.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.