|
|
Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
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.
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.
A close look at Woodrow Wilson's political thought and
international diplomacy In the widely acclaimed To End All Wars,
Thomas Knock provides an intriguing, often provocative narrative of
Woodrow Wilson's epic quest for a new world order. This book
follows Wilson's thought and diplomacy from his policy toward
revolutionary Mexico, through his dramatic call for "Peace without
Victory" in World War I, to the Senate's rejection of the League of
Nations. Throughout, Knock reinterprets the origins of
internationalism in American politics, sweeping away the view that
isolationism was the cause of Wilson's failure and revealing the
role of competing visions of internationalism-conservative and
progressive.
First to the battle line in the First World War
As the nineteenth century turned to the twentieth Britain could
boast a well trained regular European army and one which
was-regiment for regiment-considerably better than most. It was
finely tuned and fundamentally suited to the kind of warfare the
British Empire had fought since Waterloo. In a war of attrition in
the industrial age all that could be hoped of it was that it would
buy the nation time with its blood, so that other resources of men
and material could be brought into the fight. The British
Expeditionary Force which landed in Europe in 1914 consisted of six
infantry divisions and five cavalry brigades. The 7th Division
arrived in October 1914. Most students of the period know of the
outstanding performance of the British regulars in the first
engagements of the war. Casualties mounted through the Battle of
Mons and the subsequent retreat, at Le Cateau, the Maine, the
Aisne, at La Bassee and at Ypres. By the end of 1914 the 'old'
British Army as it had quickly come to be known had been all but
annihilated. The time of fluidity had passed and the war became a
grinding stalemate of trenches, mud and wire. From the British
perspective, the men who fought the remaining three years of war
were Kitchener's New Army supported by troops from the far flung
empire. Great feats of heroism and extraordinary acts of fortitude
had been performed by the first seven divisions and the
achievements of the 'Contemptible Little Army' as it battled to
stem the rapid advance of the German tide had become a legend of
the Great War. This book tells their story.
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.
Letters From a Yankee Doughboy is a collection of more than 125
letters written by Private 1st Class Raymond W. Maker, to his
sister, Eva, a county nurse living in Framingham, Massachusetts,
describing his everyday service in combat during World War 1. These
letters, edited by Private Maker's grandson, Major Bruce H. Norton
(USMC retired) are accompanied by 365 pocket-diary entries that
Raymond religiously kept throughout the year 1918. Private Maker
was assigned to Company C, 101st Field Signal Battalion, as a
wireman, whose duty was to repair and replace the communications
lines that were destroyed by artillery and mortar barrages during
the horrific battles that took place between German infantry forces
and the 26th "Yankee" Division of the American Expeditionary Force
(AEF), in France, from October of 1917 until the end of the war.
Assigned to the 104th Infantry Regiment, Private Maker saw the very
worst of ground warfare. He fought at the Battle of Belleau Wood;
was gassed by German artillery forces at the Battle of
Chateau-Thierry and was wounded by artillery fire outside of
Verdun, just one day before the Armistice was signed. The theme of
his letters will vividly evoke memories in the tens of thousands of
men and women who have served their country and their friends and
loved ones. As a postscript, toward the end of the war, Raymond
took the key to the North Gate of Verdun as a battlefield keepsake
and mailed it home to his sister, instructing her to "keep that
key, as someday it will be of value." On November 11, 2018 - the
centenary of Armistice Day - the author returned that key to
Thierry Hubscher, the Director of the Memorial de Verdun, to be
placed on display in that great Museum, closing a 100-year chapter
in Raymond's life.
An extraordinary tale, much-neglected by historians, of courage,
bravery and eventual tragedy which took place during the First
World War in the Middle East. It is the story of a small group of
people, of whom Sarah and Aaron Aaronsohn were the core, who were
devoted to the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, and who
were convinced that it was in imminent danger of extinction from
the Turks.They resolved to help the British in Egypt by collecting
military intelligence. Unfortunately, as Peter Calvocoressi points
out, their understanding of the British position was quite
wrong...[their] miscalculations created the tragedy which this book
recounts...'
World War One was the landmark event of the first quarter of the
20th century. In "The Great War, 1914-1918, " Roy Douglas tells the
history of the period through an international collection of over
100 cartoons, many of them previously unknown. This pioneering
pan-European approach offers new perspectives of key themes, events
and figures, forcing a new reinterpretation of the familiar. Both
"establishment" and "subversive" cartoons demonstrate the real
concerns of all participants from the governments of the combative
powers, to the soldier to those at home.
This unique collection will inform in a fresh way the continued
historical debates surrounding the Great War and the implications
which reach to the present day.
A rethinking of the factors which led to the American entry into
the war. The complicated situation which led to the American entry
into the First World War in 1917 is often explained from the
perspective of public opinion, US domestic politics, or financial
and economic opportunity. This book, however,reasserts the
importance of diplomats and diplomacy. Based on extensive original
research, the book provides a detailed examination of British,
German, and American diplomacy in the period 1914-17. It argues
that British and German diplomacy in this period followed the same
patterns as had been established in the preceding decades. It goes
on to consider key issues which concerned diplomats, including the
international legality of Britain's economic blockade of Germany,
Germany's use of unrestricted submarine warfare, peace initiatives,
and Germany's attempt to manipulate in its favour the long history
of distrust in Mexican-American relations. Overall, the book
demonstrates thatdiplomats and diplomacy played a key role, thereby
providing a fresh and original approach to this crucially important
subject. JUSTIN QUINN OLMSTEAD is an Assistant Professor of History
at the University of Central Oklahoma.
In the autumn of 1917, the British government established three
batallions of infantry for the reception of non-nationalized
Russian Jews. Known colloquially as the Jewish Legion, the
batallions served in Egypt and Palestine, before their eventual
disbandment in the late spring of 1921. By drawing on the
testimonies of over 600 veterans, this unique unit is analyzed from
within its political and social context, providing fresh insights
into Anglo-Jewish relations during the early twentieth
century.
The Great War is a collection of seven original essays and three
critical comments by senior scholars dealing with the greatest
conflict in modern history to its time - the 1914-18 World War. The
Great War is edited by the distinguished historian of the First
World War, R.J.Q.Adams.
Drawing on unpublished letters and rare primary sources, King
and Woolmans tell the true story behind the tragic romance and
brutal assassination that sparked World War I
In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe:
Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Four years later all had
vanished in the chaos of World War I. One event precipitated the
conflict, and at its hear was a tragic love story. When Austrian
heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand married for love against the wishes
of the emperor, he and his wife Sophie were humiliated and shunned,
yet they remained devoted to each other and to their children. The
two bullets fired in Sarajevo not only ended their love story, but
also led to war and a century of conflict.
Set against a backdrop of glittering privilege, "The
Assassination of the Archduke" combines royal history, touching
romance, and political murder in a moving portrait of the end of an
era. One hundred years after the event, it offers the startling
truth behind the Sarajevo assassinations, including Serbian
complicity and examines rumors of conspiracy and official
negligence. Events in Sarajevo also doomed the couple's children to
lives of loss, exile, and the horrors of Nazi concentration camps,
their plight echoing the horrors unleashed by their parents'
deaths. Challenging a century of myth, "The Assassination of the
Archduke" resonates as a very human story of love destroyed by
murder, revolution, and war.
A preeminent writer on Paris, John Baxter brilliantly brings to
life one of the most dramatic and fascinating periods in the city's
history. From 1914 through 1918 the terrifying sounds of World War
I could be heard from inside the French capital. For four years,
Paris lived under constant threat of destruction. And yet in its
darkest hour, the City of Light blazed more brightly than ever.
It's taxis shuttled troops to the front; its great railway stations
received reinforcements from across the world; the grandest museums
and cathedrals housed the wounded, and the Eiffel Tower hummed at
all hours relaying messages to and from the front. At night,
Parisians lived with urgency and without inhibition. Artists like
Pablo Picasso achieved new creative heights. And the war brought a
wave of foreigners to the city for the first time, including Ernest
Hemingway and Baxter's own grandfather, Archie, whose diaries he
used to reconstruct a soldier's-eye view of the war years. A
revelatory achievement, Paris at the End of the World shows how
this extraordinary period was essential in forging the spirit of
the city beloved today.
This book assesses Lloyd George's attempt to shape the history of
1914-18 through his War Memoirs. His account of the British conduct
of the war focused on the generals' incompetence, their obsession
with the Western Front, and their refusal to consider alternatives
to the costly trench warfare in France and Belgium. Yet as War
Minister and Prime Minister Lloyd George presided over the bloody
offensives of 1916-17, and had earlier taken a leading role in
mobilising industrial resources to provide the weapons which made
them possible. Rewriting the First World War examines how Lloyd
George addressed this paradox.
"How the War Was Won" describes the major role played by the
British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in defeating the
German army. In particular, the book explains the methods used in
fighting the last year of the war, and raises questions as to
whether mechanical warfare could have been more widely used.
Using a wide range of unpublished material from archives in both
Britain and Canada, Travers explores the two themes of command and
technology as the style of warfare changed from late 1917 through
1918. He describes in detail the British army's defense against the
German 1918 spring offensives, analyzes command problems during
these offensives, and offers an overriding explanation for the
March 1918 retreat. He also fully investigates the role of the tank
from Cambrai to the end of the war, and concludes that, properly
used, the tank could have made a greater contribution to victory.
"How the War Was Won" explodes many myths and advances new and
controversial arguments. It will be essential reading for military
historians and strategists, and for those interested in the origins
of mechanical warfare.
The Zionist Masquerade is a new history of the birth of the
Anglo-Zionist alliance during the Great War - a critical chapter in
the history of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. James Renton
argues that the Balfour Declaration was the result of a wider
phenomenon of British propaganda policies during World War I that
were driven by mistaken conceptions of ethnicity, ethnic power and
nationalism. From this vantage point, Renton contends that while a
number of Zionist activists played a crucial role in the making of
the Balfour Declaration, the end result was not the great Zionist
victory that has been widely assumed. Although the Declaration came
to be the basis for the British Mandate for Palestine, which made a
Jewish State possible thirty years later, this was far from being
the original intention of the British Government. The primary
purpose of Britain's wartime support for Zionism was to secure
Jewish backing for the war effort. The unintended consequences of
this policy, however, were to be explosive and far-reaching.
|
|