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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
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 dramatic story of the turbulent birth of modern Turkey, which
rose out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire to fight off Allied
occupiers, Greek invaders, and internal ethnic groups to proclaim a
new republic under Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk). It is exceedingly rare
to run across a major historical event that has no comprehensive
English-language history, but such was the case until The Turkish
War of Independence brought together all the main strands of the
story, including the chaotic ending of World War I in Asia Minor
and the numerous military fronts on which the Turks defied odds,
fighting off several armies to create their own state from the
defeated ashes of the Ottoman Empire. This important book
culminates Erickson's three-part series on the early 20th-century
military history of the Ottomans and Turkey. Making wide use of
specialized, hard-to-find Western and Turkish memoirs and military
sources, it presents a narrative of the fighting, which eventually
brought the Turkish Nationalist armies to victory. Often termed the
"Greco-Turkish War," an incomplete description that misses its
geographic and multinational scope, this war pitted Greek,
Armenian, French, British, Italian, and insurgent forces against
the Nationalists; the narrative shows these conflicts to have been
distinct and separate to Turkey's opponents, while the Turkish side
saw them as an interconnected whole. Completes a trilogy of books
by Edward J. Erickson on the conventional wars of the Ottoman and
Turkish armies in the early 20th century, the first two of which
are Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912-1913
(2003) and Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the
First World War (2001). With no comprehensive English-language
military history available, fills a massive gap in our
understanding of this important war and Turkey's founding on the
centenary of Turkey's birth Contains the first reconciliation of
combatant estimates of military and civilian casualties in the
Turkish War of Independence Analyzes the Turkish War of
Independence as an early example of modern "hybrid-war"
(combination of differing types of wars-in this case,
simultaneously conventional, unconventional, counterinsurgency, and
political-economic-information warfare)
The front-line soldiers of the First World War endured appalling
conditions in the trenches and suffered unprecedented slaughter in
battle. Their morale, as much as the strategy of their commanders,
played the crucial part in determining the outcome of `the war to
end all wars'. J. G. Fuller examines the experience of the soldiers
of the British and Dominion armies. How did the troops regard their
plight? What did they think they were fighting for? Dr Fuller draws
on a variety of contemporary sources, including over a hundred
magazines produced by the soldiers themselves. This is the first
scholarly analysis of the trench journalism which played an
important role in the lives of the ordinary soldiers. Other themes
explored include the nature of patriotism, discipline, living
conditions, and leisure activities such as sport, concert parties,
and the music hall. Dr Fuller's vivid and detailed study throws new
light on the question of warfare, and in particular how the British
and Dominion armies differed from those of their allies and
opponents, which were wracked by mutiny or defeat as the war went
on.
Nets, mines and bullets
Very rarely, as we warm our hands by a coal fire or eat our fish
supper, do we think about what it took to heat our rooms or fill
our plates. We may feel grateful that the task was fortunately
undertaken by others-that it is something we would not wish to do
ourselves-but nothing more. The life of the fishermen of Northern
waters is, and always has been, a perilous one, many brave sailors
have drowned in pursuit of food for our nation. When war came the
fishing fleet, aware of its duty, did not dry dock and hang its
nets until peace returned. It still set out to fish, aware that the
perils of its trade would be worsened by the presence of an enemy
that knows that a hungry nation will be subdued more quickly. It
would have been enough if that was all British fishermen had done,
but they also gathered intelligence, cleared mines, fought actions
from armed fishing vessels and many other incredible acts of
courage and devotion. These were not men whose achievements were
seen as glamorous, but they were nonetheless brave, unsung heroes
in war as well as in peace. This book details the actions of
British Fishermen in Northern waters during the First World War; it
is, of course, an account so full of action and incident that it is
essential reading for those interested in the study of maritime
warfare.
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.
An insightful account of the devastating impact of the Great War,
upon the already fragile British colonial African state of Northern
Rhodesia. Deploying extensive archival and rare evidence from
surviving African veterans, it investigates African resistance at
this time.
The Avant-Garde in Interwar England addresses modernism's ties to
tradition, commerce, nationalism, and spirituality through an
analysis of the assimilation of visual modernism in England between
1910 and 1939. During this period, a debate raged across the nation
concerning the purpose of art in society. On one side were the
aesthetic formalists, led by members of London's Bloomsbury Group,
who thought art was autonomous from everyday life. On the other
were England's so-called medieval modernists, many of them from the
provincial North, who maintained that art had direct social
functions and moral consequences. As Michael T. Saler demonstrates
in this fascinating volume, the heated exchange between these two
camps would ultimately set the terms for how modern art was
perceived by the British public.
Histories of English modernism have usually emphasized the seminal
role played by the Bloomsbury Group in introducing, celebrating,
and defining modernism, but Saler's study instead argues that,
during the watershed years between the World Wars, modern art was
most often understood in the terms laid out by the medieval
modernists. As the name implies, these artists and intellectuals
closely associated modernism with the art of the Middle Ages,
building on the ideas of John Ruskin, William Morris, and other
nineteenth-century romantic medievalists. In their view, modernism
was a spiritual, national, and economic movement, a new and
different artistic sensibility that was destined to revitalize
England's culture as well as its commercial exports when applied to
advertising and industrial design.
This book, then, concerns the busy intersection of art, trade, and
national identity in the early decades of twentieth-century
England. Specifically, it explores the life and work of Frank Pick,
managing director of the London Underground, whose famous patronage
of modern artists, architects, and designers was guided by a desire
to unite nineteenth-century arts and crafts with twentieth-century
industry and mass culture. As one of the foremost adherents of
medieval modernism, Pick converted London's primary public
transportation system into the culminating project of the arts and
crafts movement. But how should today's readers regard Pick's
achievement? What can we say of the legacy of this visionary patron
who sought to transform the whole of sprawling London into a
post-impressionist work of art? And was medieval modernism itself a
movement of pioneers or dreamers? In its bold engagement with such
questions, The Avant-Garde in Interwar England will surely appeal
to students of modernism, twentieth-century art, the cultural
history of England, and urban history.
The commander of the BEF's view of the Great War
This book, written by Sir John French, concerns his period of
command during the first period of the Great War. Predictably, as
in many commander's memoirs it displays much partiality as to his
own actions and those of others. This is particularly noteworthy
since the consensus view of the history of the time does not
judge-with much justification-French kindly. At the outbreak of the
war French was the obvious choice for command and his views
accorded with the government establishment if not with more forward
thinking military men under his command. Fast moving German
offensives revealed French's military strategy with its faith in
inflexible defensive strongpoints to be hopelessly out of date.
Events overtook him and were it not for Smith-Dorrien's aggressive
action during the First Battle of Mons-for which seemingly French
never forgave him-the BEF could easily have been overwhelmed.
French became increasing out of touch and indecisive and was
replaced in 1915 by Haig. This book is far from a balanced history,
but is an important account of how a nineteenth century soldier saw
his twentieth century war. It also contains much factual
information on the dispositions of troops and actions in what was a
fluid stage of the conflict.
The epic battle of the Marine Fusiliers in the Great War
The men of the French Fusiliers Marins were always bound to draw
public attention because irrespective of their proud military
tradition, which often had them fighting alongside the celebrated
French Foreign Legion, their distinctive uniform set them apart
from the ordinary 'poilus' of the French infantry. The 'naval
style' uniform of the men with their characteristic jaunty red
pompomed hats and their officers in naval finery made them a unit
guaranteed to draw attention and inspire admiration and romance.
The role of this unit should not be confused with that of British
Royal Marines. They were not intended to be sea going soldiers but
to serve as land based infantry primarily in defence of naval
stations and in campaigns where amphibious landings and naval
support was essential. In the opening stages of the First World War
between the middle of October and the middle of November 1914,
these remarkable troops fought at Dixmude in Flanders, against the
overwhelming tide of the German Army, in a fierce action that
upheld their finest traditions, but all but annihilated them. This
book is the account of that battle.
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.
In this book, seven internationally renowned experts on Japanese
and Asian history have come together to investigate, with
innovative methodological approaches, various aspects of the
Japanese experience during and after the First World War.
The importance of the Italian front in the First World War is often
overlooked. Nor is it realised that British troops fought in Italy.
The Forgotten Front demonstrates Italy's vital contribution to the
Allied effort, including Lloyd George's plan to secure overall
victory by an offensive on this front. Although his grand scheme
was frustrated, British troops were committed to the theatre and
played a real part in holding the Italian line and in the final
victory of 1918. George H. Cassar, in an account that is original,
scholarly and readable, covers both the strategic considerations
and the actual fighting.
Faced by stalemate on the Western Front, Lloyd George argued
strongly in 1917 for a joint Allied campaign in Italy to defeat
Austria-Hungary. Knocking Germany's principal ally out of the war
would lead in turn to the collapse of Germany itself. While his
plan had real attractions, it also begged many questions. These
allowed Haig and Robertson to join the French high command to
thwarting it. The disastrous Italian defeat at Caporetto in October
1917 led, however, to the deployment of a British corps in Italy
under Sir Herbert Plumer, which bolstered the Italians at a
critical juncture. Subsequently led by the Earl of Cavan, British
troops fought gallantly at the battle of Asiago in February to
March 1918 and contributed significantly to the final defeat of
Austria-Hungary at Vittorio Veneto in October.
This transnational, interdisciplinary study argues for the use of
comics as a primary source. In recuperating currently unknown or
neglected strips the authors demonstrate that these examples,
produced during the World Wars, act as an important cultural
record, providing, amongst other information, a barometer for
contemporary popular thinking.
The New Nationalism and the First World War is an edited volume
dedicated to a transnational study of the features of the
turn-of-the-century nationalism, its manifestations in social and
political arenas and the arts, and its influence on the development
of the global-scale conflict that was the First World War.
How did German intelligence agents in the First World War use dead
fish to pass on vital information to their operatives? What did an
advertisement for a dog in The Times have to do with the movement
of British troops into Egypt? And why did British personnel become
suspicious about the trousers hanging on a Belgian woman's washing
line? During the First World War, spymasters and their networks of
secret agents developed many ingenious - and occasionally hilarious
- methods of communication. Puffs of smoke from a chimney, stacks
of bread in a bakery window, even knitted woollen jumpers were all
used to convey secret messages decipherable only by well-trained
eyes. Melanie King retells the astonishing story of these and many
other tricks of the espionage trade, now long forgotten, through
the memoirs of eight spies. Among them are British intelligence
officers working undercover in France and Germany, including a
former officer from the Metropolitan Police who once hunted Jack
the Ripper. There is also the German Secret Service officer,
codenamed Agricola, who spied on the Eastern Front, an American
newspaperman and an Austrian agent who disguised himself as
everything from a Jewish pedlar to a Russian officer. Drawing on
the words of many of the spies themselves, Secrets in a Dead Fish
is a fascinating compendium of clever and original ruses that casts
new light into the murky world of espionage during the First World
War.
Cautious Crusade explores how Americans viewed Nazi Germany during World War II, the extent to which the public opposed the president's vision for planning both Germany's defeat and future, and how opinion and policy interacted as the Roosevelt administration grappled with various aspects of the German problem during this period.
The American, his motor car and the cavalry in its last great
conflict
This essential Leonaur Original, combines two works by American
author Frederic Coleman, and has been published to coincide with
the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Coleman, an American member of the Royal Automobile Club, together
with a number of like minded volunteers, offered his own motor
vehicle and services as a driver to the war effort. In 1914 they
and their collection of superior cars arrived at the Western Front
to be used as chauffeurs and couriers by staff and regimental
officers of division and brigade. For many the Great War means
massive armies locked in a war of attrition fought over a ' No
Man's Land ' fringed with barbed wire behind which helmeted
soldiers cowered in squalid trenches. For much of the war that
image is accurate, but it was not always so. In the early stages
infantry marched, cavalry charged and artillery was pulled into
action by horsepower, just as it had been for hundreds of years.
The invading Imperial German Army, superior in numbers and
equipment of every kind, swept through Belgium and France as the
allied armies fought and retired before its might. Coleman was
allocated to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of De Lisle as part of
Allenby's First Cavalry Division. He kept a meticulous diary that
enabled him to write these well crafted and detailed books full of
anecdote, narrative and action. 'President' Coleman (as he was
christened by the cavalry) was an eyewitness in the very heart of
the conflict and in the company of the officers and men of the
British Army's cavalry regiments he takes the reader from the
campaigns of 1914 and the retreat from Mons to the war of stalemate
of 1915. His descriptions of cavalry in action on the field of
battle are riveting. Aside from his fascinating insights into some
of the last campaigns of mounted soldiers, Coleman also provides
the reader with a thrilling account of his own adventures with his
trusty and almost indestructible motor car.
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.
Short Flights With the Cloud Cavalry
by "Spin"
Cavalry of the Clouds
by "Contact"
Air Combat over the trenches by those who fought
The first hand accounts of the experiences of men in time of war
always make fascinating reading. Their stories are, of course,
always as varied as the individuals concerned and the eras to which
they belonged, whether they were soldiers, sailors or airmen, the
branch of their service, their nationalities, the conflict in which
they were participants and in which theatre they fought. This is
what makes military history so fascinating. Sometimes many men
report a common experience that abided for decades. Occasionally we
hear, across time, the voices of a few notable men who fought their
own war in their own special way and once their time had past
history would never know their like again. That is especially true
of the pilots of the First World war. The machinery of flight was a
new technology. The aircraft were raw, basic, flimsy and unproven
machines and both they and the brave men who piloted them were
fighting their first conflict while learning and evolving their
skills and equipment, quite literally, as they fought and died. The
dogfight days of the early biplanes, triplanes and early mono
winged fighters would be short, but their images together with
those of the iconic airships which they ultimately destroyed will
remain indelibly imprinted on the history of conflict and the
development of man's mastery of the air. Heroes to a man, these
trailblazers were almost always young, carefree, well educated and
modest young men full of the joy of living and commitment to their
aircraft and to flying. This special Leonaur edition contains the
writings of two such men from the Royal Air Force, written
anonymously during wartime, which take the reader back to those
dangerous and epic delays of aerial combat over the muddy trenches
of the Western Front in Europe during the Great War. Available in
softcover and hardback with dustjacket for collectors.
Provides an account of war veterans and their associations which
spanned French politics. Their work is distinguished from other
European veterans' organizations by their commitment to civic
rather than military virtues. The author has prepared a new
introduction for this English edition."
This is the first full scholarly history of the French Foreign
Ministry - the Quai d'Orsay - in the years between the Fashoda
Crisis and the First World War. In this intensively researched
study, M. B. Hayne examines the bureaucratic machinery of the Quai
d'Orsay, its policies, and its personnel. He explores the ideas and
influence of leading diplomats and administrators, their
prejudices, and their aims; and traces the often complex
relationships between successive Foreign Ministers and the
functionaries of the Quai d'Orsay. Dr Hayne's analysis throws much
light on French policy and actions during the July Crisis, and
makes a significant contribution to the debate over the origins of
the First World War.
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