Historical research into the Armenian Genocide has grown tremendously in recent years, but much of it has focused on large-scale questions related to Ottoman policy or the scope of the killing. Consequently, surprisingly little is known about the actual experiences of the genocide's victims. Daily Life in the Abyss illuminates this aspect through the intertwined stories of two Armenian families who endured forced relocation and deprivation in and around modern-day Syria. Through analysis of diaries and other source material, it reconstructs the rhythms of daily life within an often bleak and hostile environment, in the face of a gradually disintegrating social fabric.

This book examines the history of Herbert Hoover's Commission for Relief in Belgium, which supplied humanitarian aid to the millions of civilians trapped behind German lines in Belgium and Northern France during World War I. Here, Clotilde Druelle focuses on the little-known work of the CRB in Northern France, crossing continents and excavating neglected archives to tell the story of daily life under Allied blockade in the region. She shows how the survival of 2.3 million French civilians came to depend upon the transnational mobilization of a new sort of diplomatic actor-the non-governmental organization. Lacking formal authority, the leaders of the CRB claimed moral authority, introducing the concepts of a "humanitarian food emergency" and "humanitarian corridors" and ushering in a new age of international relations and American hegemony.

The First World War's centenary generated a mass of commemorative activity worldwide. Officially and unofficially; individually, collectively and commercially; locally, nationally and internationally, efforts were made to respond to the legacies of this vast conflict. This book explores some of these responses from areas previously tied to the British Empire, including Australia, Britain, Canada, India and New Zealand. Showcasing insights from historians of commemoration and heritage professionals it provides revealing insider and outsider perspectives of the centenary. How far did commemoration become celebration, and how merited were such responses? To what extent did the centenary serve wider social and political functions? Was it a time for new knowledge and understanding of the events of a century ago, for recovery of lost or marginalised voices, or for confirming existing cliches? And what can be learned from the experience of this centenary that might inform the approach to future commemorative activities? The contributors to this book grapple with these questions, coming to different answers and demonstrating the connections and disconnections between those involved in building public knowledge of the 'war to end all wars'.

The literary canon of World War I - celebrated for realizing the experience of an entire generation - ignores writing by women. The war brought home to women the sorrow of the loss of husbands, lovers and relatives as well as more revolutionary knowledge gained through the experience of working in munitions factories and as ambulance drivers, police, nurses and spies. During all this time women wrote - letters, poetry, novels, short stories and memoirs. This volume of mutually reflective essays brings writing from Britain, America, France, Germany, Australia and Russia into literary focus.

International contributors from the fields of political science, cultural studies, history, and literature grapple with both the local and global impact of World War I on marginal communities in China, Syria, Europe, Russia, and the Caribbean. Readers can uncover the neglected stories of this World War I as contributors draw particular attention to features of the war that are underrepresented such as Chinese contingent labor, East Prussian deportees, remittances from Syrian immigrants in the New World to struggling relatives in the Ottoman Empire, the war effort from Serbia to Martinique, and other war experiences. By redirecting focus away from the traditional areas of historical examination, such as battles on the Western Front and military strategy, this collection of chapters, international and interdisciplinary in nature, illustrates the war's omnipresence throughout the world, in particular its effect on less studied peoples and regions. The primary objective of this volume is to examine World War I through the lens of its forgotten participants, neglected stories, and underrepresented peoples.

World War I was a global cataclysm that toppled centuries-old dynasties and launched ""the American century."" Yet at the outset few Americans saw any reason to get involved in yet another conflict among the crowned heads of Europe. Despite its declared neutrality, the U.S. government gradually became more sympathetic with the Allies, until President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany to ""make the world safe for democracy." Key to this shift in policy and public opinion was ""Anglo-Saxonism""-the belief that the English-speaking peoples were inherently superior and fit for world leadership. Just before the war, British and American elites set aside former disputes and recognized their potential for dominating the international stage. By casting Germans as "barbarians" and spreading stories of atrocities, the Wilson administration persuaded the public-including millions of German Americans-that siding with the Allies was a just cause.

A classic text that has been updated across the chapters, giving students a broad perspective on all the work done since the text was originally written, as well as the original perspective. A new introduction examines the topics and arguments that historians have raised since the original text was written, explaining what is new about them and their impact on the original text, giving students the tools to anaylse the context of the new material. Includes a new timeline, and fully updated further reading, providing extended context for students reading the text.

A war in the skies above the waves
As early as 1908 the Royal Navy understood the potential for the use of aircraft in naval warfare. By 1914 the Royal Naval Air Service consisted of 93 aircraft, 6 airships, 2 balloons and 727 personnel. By 1918 when the RNAS was combined with the RAF it had nearly 3,000 aircraft and more than 55,000 personnel. Aircraft working in concert with the Royal Navy and against enemy shipping and coastal installations had come to stay. This interesting book looks at the RNAS from a much more personal perspective-that of one young navy pilot, Harold Rosher. The book tells the story of Rosher's war, based around Dover and engaged in patrolling over and across the English Channel and attacking enemy held coastal defences such as Zeebrugge, principally through letters to his family and provides vital insights into the First World War in the air as experienced by an early naval pilot. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket

The acclaimed British historian offers a majestic, single-volume work incorporating all major fronts-domestic, diplomatic, military-for "a stunning achievement of research and storytelling"
("Publishers Weekly")
It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo. It would end officially almost five years later. Unofficially, it has never ended: the horrors we live with today were born in the First World War.
It left millions-civilians and soldiers-maimed or dead. And it left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced us to U-boat packs and strategic bombing, to unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. Most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole populations lost their national identities as political systems, and geographic boundaries were realigned. Instabilities were institutionalized, enmities enshrined. And the social order shifted seismically. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions-all underwent a vast sea change. And in all these ways, the twentieth century can be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914.
"One of the first books that anyone should read in beginning to try to understand this war and this century."
-"The New York Times Book Review" (cover)

Invented during World War I to break the grim deadlock of the Western Front trenches, tanks went on to revolutionize warfare. From the lightning Blitzkrieg assaults of World War II, to the great battles in the Middle Eastern desert, tanks have become one of the key components of the 'combined arms' philosophy of the modern battlefield. This pocket guide makes accessible to 'rivetheads' everywhere essential information to identify 40 of history's most fearsome tanks, including Germany's Tiger, Russia's T-34, America's Sherman and Panther, and France's FT-17. Each tank is presented with a detailed drawing to aid recognition.

In a unique collection of international and interdisciplinary research, this book focuses on commemorative events around the world on the same day: 11 November 2018, the centenary of Armistice Day, the end of the First World War. It argues that we need to move beyond discourse, narrative and how historical events are represented to fully understand what commemoration does, socially, politically and culturally. Adopting an experiential reframing treats sensory, affective and emotional feelings as fundamental to how we collectively understand shared histories, and through them, shared identities. The volume features 15 case studies from ten countries, covering a variety of settings and national contexts specific to the First World War. Together the chapters demonstrate that a new conceptualisation of commemoration is needed: one that attends to how it feels.

This is the first study of the Ludendorff Offensives of 1918 based extensively on key German records presumed to be lost forever after Potsdam was bombed in 1944. In 1997, David T. Zabecki discovered translated copies of these files in a collection of old instructional material at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He presents his findings here for the first time, with a thorough review of the surviving original operational plans and orders, to offer a wealth of fresh insights to the German Offensives of 1918. David T. Zabecki clearly demonstrates how the German failure to exploit the vulnerabilities in the BEF's rail system led to the failure of the first two offensives, and how inadequacies in the German rail system determined the outcome of the last three offensives. This is a window into the mind of the German General Staff of World War I, with thorough analysis of the German planning and decision making processes during the execution of battles. This is also the first study in English or in German to analyze the specifics of the aborted Operation HAGEN plan. This is also the first study of the 1918 Offensives to focus on the 'operational level of war' and on the body of military activity known as 'the operational art', rather than on the conventional tactical or strategic levels. This book will be of great interest to all students of World War I, the German Army and of strategic studies and military theory in general.

The Battle of the Somme as originally described by The Times war correspondents is republished in this highly illustrated volume from The Times Archive. Hundreds of original photographs, illustrations, and maps are presented alongside a comprehensive history of the battle, key events, people and places, reproduced exactly as they were at the time. Relive the original intensity through the detailed descriptions of the correspondents on the ground and visualize the nature of the conditions illustrated by the fascinating black and white original photographs. When war was declared in August 1914 The Times under its chief editor, Wickham Steed, embarked on an extraordinary project. As well as authoritative daily war reports in the paper itself, a separate weekly supplement would be produced, with 40 extra, illustrated pages of in-depth analysis. The result was The Times History of the War, collected into 22 massive volumes in 1921: 11,000 pages; 6 million words; thousands of photographs, graphics, illustrations and maps. The pages detailing The Battle of the Somme have been extracted from those volumes to produce a detailed history of the bloody battle as told 100 years ago.

Nearly 100 years ago, on October 4, 1918, on a muddy, poison gas-soaked hillside in France, the U.S. 26th Infantry Regiment jumped-off amidst a hail of shell fire and machine-gun fire to begin the final push to end World War I. For the next 39 days, with little respite, the regiment fought desperately against a determined, well-armed foe. This is the story of a single regiment in a successful, highly acclaimed "Regular Army" division, during the greatest American battle to date. This is not a dry recitation of facts, but an in-depth examination of a single regiment that allows the reader to appreciate the intricacies of small-unit action and the problems associated with leading platoons, companies, and battalions in battle during the Great War, while at the same time depicting the human drama associated with the terrible carnage

Museums, Modernity and Conflict examines the history of the relationship between museums, collections and war, revealing how museums have responded to and been shaped by war and conflicts of various sorts. Written by a mixture of museum professionals and academics and ranging across Europe, North America and the Middle East, this book examines the many ways in which museums were affected by major conflicts such as the World Wars, considers how and why they attempted to contribute to the war effort, analyses how wartime collecting shaped the nature of the objects held by a variety of museums, and demonstrates how museums of war and of the military came into existence during this period. Closely focused around conflicts which had the most wide-ranging impact on museums, this collection includes reflections on museums such as the Louvre, the Stedelijk in the Netherlands, the Canadian War Museum and the State Art Collections Dresden. Museums, Modernity and Conflict will be of interest to academics and students worldwide, particularly those engaged in the study of museums, war and history. Showing how the past continues to shape contemporary museum work in a variety of different and sometimes unexpected ways, the book will also be of interest to museum practitioners.

The Impact of the First World War on U.S. Policymakers: American Strategic and Foreign Policy Formulation, 1938-1942 is designed to recount the formulation of foreign and defense policies through an examination of the background of the policymakers, with specific emphasis on the World War I experience. The introduction provides an analysis of the literature of the history of this American World War II policy formulation. The events and factors that led to the reorientation of priorities in 1938-1939 are examined. From that base, Michael Carew reviews the unfolding events of the European and Japanese degeneration into war through the spring of 1940, and their perception for the American policy-makers. He also recounts the tectonic shifts of the subsequent eighteen months and the scramble for an American response. The immediate consequences of Pearl Harbor brought the policymaking to a crisis, and the Casablanca conference of January 1943 signified the completion of the formulation of American foreign policy and naval-military strategy. Carew emphasizes the leadership of President Roosevelt and his cadre of planners in the policy formulation realm, the assertion of leadership of the alliance, and Roosevelt's specific tasks in managing the American war effort. These presidential tasks included the industrial mobilization of the American economy, the domestic political leadership of the war, the persuasion of the alliance to the propriety of American policy, and the defeat of the Axis.

Tens of thousands of Jewish children were orphaned during World War I and in the subsequent years of conflict. In response, Jewish leaders in Poland established CENTOS, the Central Union of Associations for Jewish Orphan Care. Through CENTOS, social workers and other professionals cooperated to offer Jewish children the preparation necessary to survive during a turbulent period. They established new organizations that functioned beyond the authority of the recognized Jewish community and with the support of Polish officials. The work of CENTOS exemplifies the community's goal to build a Jewish future. Translations of sources from CENTOS publications in Yiddish and Polish describe the lives of the orphaned Jewish children and the tireless efforts of adults to better the children's circumstances.

Many believe that World War I was only fought "over there," as the popular 1917 song goes, in the trenches and muddy battlefields of Northern France and Belgium - they are wrong. There was a secret war fought in America; on remote railway bridges and waterways linking the United States and Canada, aboard burning and exploding ships in the Atlantic Ocean, in the smoldering ruins of America's bombed and burned-out factories, munitions plants and railway centers and waged in carefully disguised clandestine workshops where improvised explosive devices and deadly toxins were designed and manufactured. It was irregular warfare on a scale that caught the United States woefully unprepared. This is the true story of German secret agents engaged in a campaign of subversion and terror on the American homeland before and during World War I.

The author charts the growth of the German community in Britain and dramatically details the story of its destruction under the intolerance which gripped the country during World War I.

The history of the First World War continues to attract enormous interest. However, most attention remains concentrated on combatants, creating a misleading picture of wartime Britain: one might be forgiven for assuming that by 1918, the country had become virtually denuded of civilian men and particularly of middle-class men who - or so it seems - volunteered en masse in the early months of war. In fact, the majority of middle-class (and other) men did not enlist, but we still know little about their wartime experiences. Civvies thus takes a different approach to the history of the war and focuses on those middle-class English men who did not join up, not because of moral objections to war, but for other (much more common) reasons, notably age, family responsibilities or physical unfitness. In particular, Civvies questions whether, if serviceman were the apex of manliness, were middle-class civilian men inevitably condemned to second-class, 'unmanly' status? -- .