This extended study of one of the critical campaigns of World War I sheds light on vital strategic consequences for both sides. Published during the centennial of the events it considers, this book provides a comprehensive examination of one of the most interesting and influential campaigns of World War I, a campaign that was the apex of mobile warfare at the time. By the late summer of 1915, the Russian threat to Austria-Hungary had been eliminated by the Central Powers. That allowed Erich von Falkenhayn, head of the German supreme command, to turn his attention to his next strategic target-the conquest of Serbia-which was imperative to opening a land route to the Ottoman Empire. Until that task was accomplished, matters on the all-important Western Front would have to wait. This first major study of the invasion of Serbia covers events primarily from the viewpoint of the Central Powers, which played the most pivotal role in the campaign. The book considers the impact of factors as diverse as diplomacy, command, coalition warfare, mountain warfare, military technology, and the harsh environment in which the campaign was conducted. Readers will come away with an understanding of and appreciation for the importance of the Serbian campaign as it affected the outcome of the war and the ultimate destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Examines the campaign from the perspective of the Central Powers, rather than from the Serbian point of view Shows that the assault on Serbia was pivotal in that it led to the unraveling of the overall conflict for Germany Features research conducted at the German federal military archives in Freiburg, the Bavarian military archives in Munich, the Austrian archives in Vienna, and the Baden-Wurttemberg archives in Stuttgart Draws from official histories, regimental histories, memoirs, and first-person accounts Marks the 100th anniversary of the 1915 campaign

Machine Gunners in the desert
The development of the rapidly firing machine gun had been gathering pace throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. By the time of the Great War it had reached a point of deadly and devastating efficiency. Now, specially trained units of men within all armies were trained to bring this lethal weapon to bear on the enemy. This book concerns a group of such men-within the British Army-as it and they fought the Army of the Ottoman Turkish empire in the Middle East Campaign. This was a more mobile war than the gunners of the Western Front experienced, that had its own challenges including disease, blistering heat, flies and difficult terrain. This is an intimate story of a small tightly knit unit operating in an interesting sideshow of the greater conflict.

Anzac Labour explores the horror, frustration and exhaustion surrounding working life in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. Based on letters and diaries of Australian soldiers, it traces the history of work and workplace cultures through Australia, the shores of Gallipoli, the fields of France and Belgium, and the Near East.

Civilian into Soldier - A Novel Of The Great War. By John A. Lee. Originally published in 1937. A fictionalised but autobiographical account of a New Zealand man's fighting role in the fighting of World War I, written by a man who became a political force in a post-war New Zealand. Contents Include Sling Insubordination Hel-Fire for Orators-Klink Not so tough after all The road to Estaples Estaples War Logic About it and about Arrival Fatigue and fire-step Adapation Talk, Talk, Talk From Fleux Baix to Le Bezit Le Bezit Torches and Meteors Plugstreet Point De Neippe The Incubation of Chaos Raid on the Left Rehearsal Vicious Appetites Lot of Prepardness Fretfull Argumant Claim Twilight came Gas Nerves Up and Over The Hysterical Hero Enter Fear Any Bearers Look, The Cavalry-Counter Attack Bull Ring Philosophy Eyewash after chaos Rest, disintegration Pagan death but Christian burial Eve of offensive The advance of the refinery The brass hat who was a mad hatter Good sport Comedy or tragedy Tragedy or comedy Rest camp On the road gaily without a crust of bread Nerves nerves nerves The attack on the pay office In which the infantry have a jolly good time parley voo Good-byeee Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwor

The past is brought to life in this historical epic about a South African family whose lives collided with the biggest event in history: The First World War. The central theme is the largely forgotten east Africa campaign, but by definition a world war has a wide reach. Five members of one family with deep roots in all four corners of the country, served in three different theatres of war. Their lives on active service are all interwoven and inseparable from the home front. Global events are juxtaposed with everyday life on a farm in the eastern Orange Free State. Appropriately, the author constructs linkages that span generations, uncovering individual experiences of an earlier conflict which had engulfed South Africa barely a decade before the eruption of the 1914-18 war. As the sons of early pioneers, this generation witnessed history in the making before writing their own. Riding into action on horseback or in a flying machine, their paths led from the south west African desert, through disease-infested jungles in east Africa to some of the great battles on the western front. Only one of the five came home unscathed although he crash-landed his aircraft behind enemy lines and only made it back through his audacity and brute strength. Another, an intellectual priest, was left for dead at Delville Wood, and his brother was wounded on Messines Ridge. The remaining two suffered from debilitating tropical illnesses. Hazard and hardship lingered on in the form of Spanish in influenza, mining strikes and the Great Depression. The war cast a long shadow. Between them, these consciously literate men left substantial documentary legacies. Using extracts of their letters from the front, the story is to a large extent told in the words of those who were there. Context is provided by referencing existing literature, unpublished memoirs and archival material. It could be called a military history or a social history, but it is a truly South African story which contains much new material for historians, while for the general reader it offers an accessible insight into an unparalleled period of history.

How can we understand what caused World War I? What role did Germany play? This book encourages us to re-think the events that led to global conflict in 1914.Historians in recent years have argued that German leaders acted defensively or pre-emptively in 1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and diplomatic position. Germany and the Causes of the First World War challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war. This belief in Germany's superiority derived primarily from an assumption of French decline and Russian weakness throughout the period between the turn of the century and the eve of the First World War. Accordingly, Wilhelmine policy-makers pursued offensive policies - at the risk of war at important junctures during the 1900s and 1910s.The author analyses the stereotyping of enemy states, representations of war in peacetime, and conceptualizations of international relations. He uncovers the complex role of ruling elites, political parties, big business and the press, and contends that the decade before the First World War witnessed some critical changes in German foreign policy. By the time of the July crisis of 1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with Russia - the traditional bugbear of the German centre and left - becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. Under these changed conditions, German leaders could now pursue their strategy of brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical conclusion.

Whether victorious or not, Central European states faced fundamental challenges after the First World War as they struggled to contain ongoing violence and forge peaceful societies. This collection explores the various forms of violence these nations confronted during this period, which effectively transformed the region into a laboratory for state-building. Employing a bottom-up approach to understanding everyday life, these studies trace the contours of individual and mass violence in the interwar era while illuminating their effects upon politics, intellectual developments, and the arts.

This book fully revises standard regimental history by establishing the framework and background to the regiment's role in the Great War. It tests the current theories about the British army in the war and some of the conclusions of modern military historians. In recent years a fascinating reassessment of the combat performance of the British Army in the Great War has stressed the fact that the British Army ascended a 'learning curve' during the conflict resulting in a modern military machine of awesome power. Research carried out thus far has been on a grand scale with very few examinations of smaller units. This study of the battalion of the Buffs has tested these theoretical ideas. The central questions addressed in this study are: * The factors that dominated the officer-man relationship during the war. * How identity and combat efficiency was maintained in the light of heavy casualties. * The relative importance of individual characters to the efficiency of a battalion as opposed to the 'managerial structures' of the BEF. * The importance of brigade and division to the performance of a battalion. * The effective understanding and deployment of new weapons. * The reactions of individual men to the trials of war. * The personal and private reactions of the soldiers' communities in Kent. Using previously uncovered material, this book adds a significant new chapter to our understanding of the British army on the Western Front, and the way its home community in East Kent reacted to experience. It reveals the way in which the regiment adjusted to the shock of modern warfare, and the bloody learning curve the Buffs ascended as they shared the British Expeditionary Force's march towards final victory.

A literary account of the author's experience in World War I. Hell on Earth is the second book written by Avigdor Hameiri (born Feuerstein, 1890-1970) about his experiences as a Russian prisoner of war during the second half of World War I. Translator Peter C. Appelbaum first became interested in Hameiri's story after learning that one quarter of the Austro-Hungarian army was captured and imprisoned, and that the horrific events that took place at this time throughout Russia and central Asia are rarely discussed in scholarly texts. Available for the first time to an English-speaking audience, this reality-driven novel is comparable to classics like All Quiet on the Western Front and The Gulag Archipelago. The text is deeply tragic, while allowing some humor to shine through in the darkest hour. The reader is introduced to a procession of complex characters with whom Hamieri comes into contact during his imprisonment. The narrator watches his friends die one by one until he is released in 1917 with the help of Russian Zionist colleagues. He then immigrates to Israel in 1921. Hameiri's perspective on the things surrounding him-the Austro-Hungarian Army, the Russian people and countryside, the geography of Siberia, the nascent Zionist movement, the Russian Revolution and its immediate aftermath-offers a distinct personal view of a moment in time that is often overshadowed by the horrors of the Holocaust. In his preface, Appelbaum argues that World War I was the original sin of the twentieth century-without it, the unthinkable acts of World War II would not have come to fruition. Hell on Earth is a fascinating, albeit gruesome, account of life in prison camps at the end of the First World War. Fans of historical fiction and war memoirs will appreciate the historic value in this piece of literature.

The African and Chinese battles of the First World War
Historian Edmund Dane wrote some excellent concise histories of various theatres of the First World War and the first work in this unique volume from Leonaur is one of them. There is much interest among students of the period in the campaigns fought in Africa which drew into conflict the regular troops of the principal protagonists together with a colourful array of colonial and imperial troops on both sides. This book covers Botha's campaign in South-West Africa, the East African Campaign which pitted Smuts against the exemplary generalship of von Lettow-Vorbeck and the campaigns in Togoland and the Cameroons. Dane includes in his book's title the campaign in the Pacific and although the single chapter dedicated to this topic is of undeniable interest the contemporary reader may judge the piece too short. To remedy this we have included an in depth work on the siege and fall of Tsingtau in China by an American journalist who was an eye-witness. This was a vital outpost for the Germans in the region. The Royal Navy was involved and the South Wales Borderers were engaged; the main assault, however, was undertaken by Imperial Japanese forces. The author's forecasts as to Japan's ambitions in the region turned out to be chillingly accurate.
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.

Wallach provides a pioneering study of coalition warfare. Using World War I as a case study, Wallach examines such important aspects as Allied pre-war planning; the particularistic interests of coalition partners; human relations; the framework for coordination mechanisms within coalitions; the application of such concepts as a general reserve, unified command, and amalgamation of forces; logistical problems; war finance; and the transition from war to peace.

In the process, Wallach shows that coalition warfare is among the most difficult forms to develop and maintain successfully. Unfortunately, as recent post-Cold War experiences illustrate, coalition warfare is an ongoing military issue. As such, this book will be of great interest to military planners as well as students of the history of World War I.

COLONIAL SETTLERS, ASKARIS AND MASAI SCOUTS. AMBUSH AND BATTLE AMONG WILD ANIMALS AS DANGEROUS AS THE ENEMY ITSELF. Colonial neighbours in British & German East Africa fought their war far from the Western front across country familiar today as the great game reserves. The East African Mounted Rifles were six squadrons amalgamated from hastily formed volunteer units such as Bowkers Horse and the Legion of Frontiersmen. Encounters with enraged lions, horses camouflaged as zebras, a brief period as marines all form part of this most unusual account of a most unusual campaign.

From the Treaty of Versailles to the 2018 centenary and beyond, the history of the First World War has been continually written and rewritten, studied and contested, producing a rich historiography shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation. Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars in the field. By analyzing perceptions of the war in contexts ranging from Nazi Germany to India's struggle for independence, this is an illuminating collective study of the complex interplay of memory and history.

An incredible adventure from the Great War
This is a unique and riveting book. The steamer Tara and her crew spent the early part of WW1 patrolling the Northern Channel between England and Ireland before a transfer to coastal duties off Egypt and Libya. There she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat operating from a secret base on the Libyan coast. To ensure no intelligence of it's presence leaked to the British, the Germans towed the survivors-including this book's author, the Tara's captain, into captivity at the hands of the Senussi-religious zealots in league with the Ottoman Turkish forces. Then began a tortuous ordeal for the crew who suffered abuse, starvation and in some cases death at the hands of their gaolers. Abortive escape attempts across the relentless 'Red Desert' followed before rescue finally came in the form of a dramatic hunt and final assault by the forty armoured cars of the Duke of Westminster's squadron. An absolutely essential and gripping read which will be a delight to all those interested in the fortunes of British seamen, the war in the Middle East and well told accounts of true adventure.

Between 1917 and 1919 women enlisted in the Women's Land Army, a national organisation with the task of increasing domestic food production. Behind the scenes organisers laboured to not only recruit an army of women workers, but to also dispel public fears that Britain's Land Girls would be defeminized and devalued by their wartime experiences.

The East African Campaign through a British Army Doctor's eyes The author of this book-a practicing doctor in the British Army-had already served on the Western Front in the early months of the Great War and had actually become a P. O. W. at the hands of the German enemy. Now in the East African Campaign he explains-in writings originally intended for his own family-every aspect of war in this little reported theatre. We learn about the movements of troops and battle actions, but also of the character of troops from many countries and of the African tribes who fought for each side. We hear of the trials of the motor transport men-dodging ambush and wild animals equally-and of the adventures of the "behind the lines" intelligence gatherers living thrilling and dangerous lives in the bush. Finally we are shown the difficulties of keeping men healthy and the problems of saving lives under the most arduous conditions. This is an unusual and interesting perspective on war from a medical man in Africa.