The First World War cannot be sufficiently documented and understood without considering the analytical category of gender. This exciting volume examines key issues in this area, including the 'home front' and battlefront, violence, pacifism, citizenship - and emphasizes the relevance of gender within the expanding field of First World War Studies. By addressing such a broad range of topics through case studies and chapters on British and French heroines, Austro-Hungarian war nurses, gendered representations of bereavement and modern war technology, this volume provides a transnational and comparative approach to the subject, integrating research on Western and Central Europe with that on marginalized regions in Italy, Austria-Hungary, Slovenia, and Lithuania.

At the end of the First World War, there were 270,000 demobilised Australian soldiers in Europe. Getting them home after the Armistice was a task of epic proportions that would take more than two years. In the meantime, how to keep these disgruntled, damaged men with guns occupied? In a word: sport. The Oarsmen tells the story of the servicemen who survived the war to row for the coveted King's Cup at the 1919 Royal Henley Peace Regatta. Competing against crews from the US, New Zealand, France, the UK and Canada, the Australians were a ragtag bunch of oarsmen thrown in an old-fashioned boat and expected to race. Many had seen the worst of the action during the war at Gallipoli and the Western Front, and carried scars both physical and psychological. The baggage they brought to the boat would soon threaten to capsize the whole endeavour. Combining first-hand accounts with lively prose, this never-before-told story approaches the First World War from peacetime and illuminates history in vivid and compelling detail. Interweaving the soldiers' personal stories from before, during and after the war, The Oarsmen paints a fascinating picture of how these men, and society, transitioned from an unprecedented war to a new sort of peace.

The first of four volumes that together provide a comprehensive account of World War I, this book unravels the complicated and tragic events of the war's Eastern Front. In particular, this book details the history of conflict between Germany and Russia, which proved disastrous for the Russian forces and would ultimately pave the way for the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917.

In France the decade preceding the outbreak of the First World War was characterized by a revival of nationalism and militarism. Wesseling analyzes the ideas current in France in this period about the use, value, and beauty of war, the army, and army life. In examining the French army of the period, Wesseling found that at the same time that new forms were sought, old values were being emphasized. Attempts at reforms were most frequent in those areas where antimilitarist writers had concentrated their criticism. Next to this there also was a new glorification of traditional military virtues: disinterestedness, submission, and discipline.

In conceptualizing war, as Wesseling shows, a distinction can be made between speculations on war as a concrete phenomenon and as an abstract notion. During the period, war was looked upon as a factor of renewal and regeneration. The years from 1905 to 1914 were of great importance for the history of the military problem in France. A new appreciation of the ideals that were preached in the army came into being. Though this did not lead to militarism in the sense that the military determined politics, as Wesseling illustrates, it did lead to a militarist attitude.

During the Great War, books and stories for young men were frequently used as unofficial propaganda for recruitment and to sell the war to British youth as a moral crusade. Until now, this literature has been neglected by academics, but the image of the war these fictions created was remarkably enduring and, despite the appearance of post-war literature of disillusioned veterans, continued to shape the attitudes of the young well into the 1930s. This is the first detailed account of how adventure fiction represented the Great War for British boys between 1914 and the end of the war. Paris examines how such literature explained the causes of the war to boys and girls and how it encouraged young men to participate in the noble crusade on the Western Front and in other theaters. He explores the imagery of the trenches, the war in the air, and the nature of war in the Middle East and Africa. He also details the links between popular writers and the official literary propaganda campaign. The study concludes by looking at how these heroic images remained in print, enduring well into the inter-war years.

Afterlives documents the lives and historical pursuits of the generations who grew up in Australia, Britain and Germany after the First World War. Although they were not direct witnesses to the conflict, they experienced its effects from their earliest years. Based on ninety oral history interviews and observation during the First World War Centenary, this pioneering study reveals the contribution of descendants to the contemporary memory of the First World War, and the intimate personal legacies of the conflict that animate their history-making. -- .

This work shows the importance of analyzing the "low" politics of areas that have traditionally been dominated by "high" politics. The role of bodies such as the Liberal Summer School and the Women's Liberal Federation are examined, along with the work of thinkers such as JM Keynes and Ramsay Muir. The text should make two major contributions to our knowledge of the role of international relations in British politics in the inter-war years. First, by analysing the Liberal Party's principles and policies on international relations, it offers a perspective on British Liberalism. Second, by exploring the Liberal Party's alternative to the Baldwin-Chamberlain policy of appeasement, it enters the historical debate on the options open to Britain in the 1930s, and shows that there was a Liberal alternative to appeasement.

In 1916 a group of German saboteurs blew up Black Tom Island, a spit of land in New York Harbour. The brazen attack destroyed the harbour and the ammunition housed there - and the subsequent hail of missiles and gunpowder devastated much of lower Manhattan. The attack - so massive that as far away as Maryland people could feel the ground shake - had been shockingly easy. America was littered with networks of German agents plotting further, more deadly, attacks. Twenty years later the German government had still managed to evade responsibility for the crime - and probably would have continued to, were it not for the determination of three lawyers named McCloy, Peaslee, and Martin. These men made it their mission to solve a mystery that began during the first World War and barely ended before the second. They were litigators, spies, historians and, ultimately, defenders of the truth. THE DETONATORS is a fascinating portrait of these men and their time; the dramatic love story of John and Ellen McCloy; and the first full accounting of a crime and a cover-up that resonates strongly in a post-9/11 America.

"Defending Albion" is the first published study of Britain's response to the threat of invasion from across the North Sea in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It examines the emergency schemes designed to confront an enemy landing and the problems associated with raising and maintaining the often derided Territorial Force. It also explores the long-neglected military and political difficulties posed by the spontaneous and largely unwanted appearance of the "Dad's Army" of the Great War, the Volunteer Force.

The Amazon History Book of the Year 2013 is a magisterial chronicle of the calamity that befell Europe in 1914 as the continent shifted from the glamour of the Edwardian era to the tragedy of total war. In 1914, Europe plunged into the 20th century's first terrible act of self-immolation - what was then called The Great War. On the eve of its centenary, Max Hastings seeks to explain both how the conflict came about and what befell millions of men and women during the first months of strife. He finds the evidence overwhelming, that Austria and Germany must accept principal blame for the outbreak. While what followed was a vast tragedy, he argues passionately against the 'poets' view', that the war was not worth winning. It was vital to the freedom of Europe, he says, that the Kaiser's Germany should be defeated. His narrative of the early battles will astonish those whose images of the war are simply of mud, wire, trenches and steel helmets. Hastings describes how the French Army marched into action amid virgin rural landscapes, in uniforms of red and blue, led by mounted officers, with flags flying and bands playing. The bloodiest day of the entire Western war fell on 22 August 1914, when the French lost 27,000 dead. Four days later, at Le Cateau the British fought an extraordinary action against the oncoming Germans, one of the last of its kind in history. In October, at terrible cost they held the allied line against massive German assaults in the first battle of Ypres.The author also describes the brutal struggles in Serbia, East Prussia and Galicia, where by Christmas the Germans, Austrians, Russians and Serbs had inflicted on each other three million casualties. This book offers answers to the huge and fascinating question 'what happened to Europe in 1914?', through Max Hastings's accustomed blend of top-down and bottom-up accounts from a multitude of statesmen and generals, peasants, housewives and private soldiers of seven nations. His narrative pricks myths and offers some striking and controversial judgements. For a host of readers gripped by the author's last international best-seller 'All Hell Let Loose', this will seem a worthy successor.

Prelude to the Easter Rising casts light upon the clandestine activities of Sir Roger Casement in Imperial Germany from 1914 to 1916. German military intelligence and the Imperial Foreign Office had far-reaching plans to use the Irish in the war against Britain. Radical Irish-American leaders were behind Casement's mission to Berlin. It took some time for the highly sensitive and idealistic Casement to realize that neither the German General Staff nor the Imperial Chancellor was able or willing to lend full military support to the Irish. When Casement began to see that the rising would be a bloody massacre, he left for Ireland to halt the fatal development and, if necessary, sacrifice his own honour and life. The carefully edited documents contained in this volume, mostly from the German Foreign Office archives in Bonn, present a full record of Casement's activities prior to Easter 1916. Over 80 years later, these papers have lost none of their emotional intimacy.

The Lion's Pride is the first book to tell the full story of Theodore Roosevelt and his family in World War I. It is both a poignant group biography and an insightful study of the Rooseveltian notion of noblesse oblige.

This is a long-overdue study of Sir Frederick H. Sykes, Chief of the Air Staff of Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) during the First World War. Historians, for the most part, have either overlooked Sykes or misinterpreted him, leaving a gap in the story of British flying. Contrary to previous images of Sykes, we now see that he was not a secretive intriguer or a tangential subject in RAF history. Rather, he played a fundamental part in organizing and leading British aviation from 1912 to the end of 1918. He provided organization, visionary guidance and efficient administrative control for the fledgling service that tried to survive infancy in the heat of battle.

Sykes assumed command of the Air Staff immediately after the RAF's birth - on April 1 1918 - at a critical time, when the German spring offensives were about to split the French and British defensive lines and cause an Allied defeat. Sykes stepped in to quell organizational and bureaucratic fires by working harmoniously with the Air Minister, Lord Weir. Together they maintained control of the air service and established a strategic Independent Air Force prepared to bomb Berlin by the time the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. Sykes battled against fellow airmen, military traditionalists and French commanders to promote an incipient air revolution in warfare by instituting 'air-minded' use of new technologies to economize on manpower and apply air power tactically, strategically and independently from the inefficient army and navy competitive control that had plagued the air services. From the reconnaissance of 1914 to the devastating precision attacks of Desert Storm in the 1991 Gulf War, aircraft have transformedthe modern battlefield. As this book shows, Sykes was important to that revolutionary process.

This is a long-overdue study of Sir Frederick H. Sykes, Chief of the Air Staff of Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) during the First World War. Historians, for the most part, have either overlooked Sykes or misinterpreted him, leaving a gap in the story of British flying. Contrary to previous images of Sykes, we now see that he was not a secretive intriguer or a tangential subject in RAF history. Rather, he played a fundamental part in organizing and leading British aviation from 1912 to the end of 1918. He provided organization, visionary guidance and efficient administrative control for the fledgling service that tried to survive infancy in the heat of battle.

Sykes assumed command of the Air Staff immediately after the RAF's birth - on April 1 1918 - at a critical time, when the German spring offensives were about to split the French and British defensive lines and cause an Allied defeat. Sykes stepped in to quell organizational and bureaucratic fires by working harmoniously with the Air Minister, Lord Weir. Together they maintained control of the air service and established a strategic Independent Air Force prepared to bomb Berlin by the time the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. Sykes battled against fellow airmen, military traditionalists and French commanders to promote an incipient air revolution in warfare by instituting 'air-minded' use of new technologies to economize on manpower and apply air power tactically, strategically and independently from the inefficient army and navy competitive control that had plagued the air services. From the reconnaissance of 1914 to the devastating precision attacks of Desert Storm in the 1991 Gulf War, aircraft have transformedthe modern battlefield. As this book shows, Sykes was important to that revolutionary process.

This book explores the acquisitive thinking which, from the autumn of 1914, nourished the Mesopotamian Expedition and examines the political issues, international and imperial, delegated to a War Cabinet committee under Curzon. The motives of Curzon and others in attempting to obtain a privileged political position in the Hejaz are studied in the context of inter-Allied suspicions and Turkish intrigues in the Arabian Peninsula. Debate on the future of Mesopotamia provided an outlet for differences between those who justified British gains on the basis of military conquests and those who realised that expansion must be reconciled with broader international trends. By 1918, Britain was developing strategic priorities in the Caucasus. Fisher analyses Turco-German aims in 1918 and challenges the notion of their leading, straightforwardly, to the zenith of British imperialism in the region. This is a penetrating study of war imperialism, when statesmen contemplated strong measures of control in several areas of the Middle East.

This acclaimed encyclopedia provides an invaluable reference source on topics ranging from diplomatic initiatives to victory slogans, from political forces to armed forces, from legislation to Lusitania, and every aspect of war.

On May 29, 1917, Mrs. E. M. Craise, citizen of Denver, Colorado, penned a letter to President Woodrow Wilson, which concluded, "We have surrendered to your absolute control our hearts dearest treasures - our sons. If their precious bodies that have cost us so dear should be torn to shreds by German shot and shells we will try to live on in the hope of meeting them again in the blessed Country of happy reunions. But, Mr. President, if the hell-holes that infest their training camps should trip up their unwary feet and they be returned to us besotted degenerate wrecks of their former selves cursed with that hell-born craving for alcohol, we can have no such hope". Anxious about the United States's pending entry into the Great War, fearful that their sons would be polluted by the scourges of prostitution, venereal disease, illicit sex, and drink that ran rampant in the training camps, and concerned that this war, like others before it, would encourage moral vice and corruption, countless Americans sent such missives to their government officials. In response to this deluge, President Wilson created the Commission on Training Camp Activities to ensure the purity of the camp environment. Training camps would henceforth mold not only soldiers, but model citizens who, after the war, would return to their communities, spreading white urban middle-class values throughout the country. Fortified by temperance, abstinence, self-control, and a healthy athleticism, marginal Americans were to be transformed into truly masculine crusaders. What began as a federal program designed to eliminate venereal disease soon mushroomed into a powerful social force intent on replacing America's many cultures witha single homogeneous one. Though committed to the positive methods of education and recreation, the reformers did not hesitate to employ repression when necessary. Those not conforming to this vision often faced exclusion from the reformers' idealized society, or sometimes even imprisonment. "Unrestrained" cultural expressiveness was stifled. Social engineering ruled the day. Combining social, cultural, and military history and illustrating the deep divisions among reformers themselves, Nancy Bristow, with the aid of dozens of evocative photographs, here brings to life a pivotal era in the history of the U.S., revealing the complex relationship between the nation's competing cultures, progressive reform efforts, and the Great War.

To the British soldiers of the Great War who heard about it, "shell shock" was uncanny, amusing, and sad. To those who experienced it, the condition was shameful, unjustly stigmatized, and life-changing. The first full-length study of the British "shell shocked" soldiers of the Great War combines social and medical history to investigate the experience of psychological casualties on the Western Front, in hospitals, and through their postwar lives. It also investigates the condition's origin and consequences within British culture.