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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
Honorable Mention, 2019 Saul Viener Book Prize, given by the
American Jewish Historical Society A compelling story of how
Judaism became integrated into mainstream American religion In
1956, the sociologist Will Herberg described the United States as a
"triple-melting pot," a country in which "three religious
communities - Protestant, Catholic, Jewish - are America." This
description of an American society in which Judaism and Catholicism
stood as equal partners to Protestantism begs explanation, as
Protestantism had long been the dominant religious force in the
U.S. How did Americans come to embrace Protestantism, Catholicism,
and Judaism as "the three facets of American religion?"Historians
have often turned to the experiences of World War II in order to
explain this transformation. However, World War I's impact on
changing conceptions of American religion is too often overlooked.
This book argues that World War I programs designed to protect the
moral welfare of American servicemen brought new ideas about
religious pluralism into structures of the military. Jessica
Cooperman shines a light on how Jewish organizations were able to
convince both military and civilian leaders that Jewish
organizations, alongside Christian ones, played a necessary role in
the moral and spiritual welfare of America's fighting forces. This
alone was significant, because acceptance within the military was
useful in modeling acceptance in the larger society. The leaders of
the newly formed Jewish Welfare Board, which became the military's
exclusive Jewish partner in the effort to maintain moral welfare
among soldiers, used the opportunities created by war to negotiate
a new place for Judaism in American society. Using the previously
unexplored archival collections of the JWB, as well as soldiers'
letters, memoirs and War Department correspondence, Jessica
Cooperman shows that the Board was able to exert strong control
over expressions of Judaism within the military. By introducing
young soldiers to what it saw as appropriately Americanized forms
of Judaism and Jewish identity, the JWB hoped to prepare a
generation of American Jewish men to assume positions of Jewish
leadership while fitting comfortably into American society. This
volume shows how, at this crucial turning point in world history,
the JWB managed to use the policies and power of the U.S.
government to advance its own agenda: to shape the future of
American Judaism and to assert its place as a truly American
religion.
At the beginning of 1917, the three empires fighting on the Eastern Front were reaching their breaking points, but none was closer than Russia. After the February Revolution, Russia's ability to wage war faltered and her last desperate gamble, the Kerensky Offensive, saw the final collapse of her army. This helped trigger the Bolshevik Revolution and a crippling peace, but the Central Powers had no opportunity to exploit their gains and, a year later, both the German and Austro-Hungarian empires surrendered and disintegrated.
Concluding his acclaimed series on the Eastern Front in World War I, Prit Buttar comprehensively details not only these climactic events, but also the 'successor wars' that raged long after the armistice of 1918. New states rose from the ashes of empire, and war raged as German forces sought to keep them under the aegis of the Fatherland. These unresolved tensions between the former Great Powers and the new states would ultimately lead to the rise of Hitler and a new, terrible world war only two decades later..
The History of World War I series recounts the battles and
campaigns that took place during the 'Great War'. From the Falkland
Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western
Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the series
provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns on land,
at sea and in the air. The assassination in Sarajevo of the
Austro-Hungarian heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand lit an explosive
mixture of ethnic tensions, nationalism, political opportunism, and
the quest for power within the Balkans to plunge Europe into a
conflict that would cost millions of lives. Austro-Hungary faced
both Serbia and Russia during the opening phase of the war, but
Bulgaria's decision to join the Central Powers in October 1915 led
to the opening of the Salonika front in Greece, where 150,0000
British and French troops saw little fighting until the disastrous
1918 Doiran campaign. At the war's outbreak, the British
authorities in Africa were totally unprepared, with few forces
available to attack the German colonies, who themselves were
effectively left isolated from help. The German commander in East
Africa, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, launched a brilliant guerrilla
campaign with scant resources, conducting lightning attacks on
Allied targets, particularly the Uganda Railway. He was opposed by
the South African General Jan Smuts and his mixture of Boer,
British, Rhodesian, Indian, African, Belgian and Portuguese
soldiers: fighting continued until November 1918. Italy entered the
war against the Central Powers in April 1915. For two years,
Austro-Hungarian forces were kept at bay on Italy's northern
borders, until a combined German and Austro-Hungarian defeated the
Italian forces at the Battle of Caporetto in October 1917. Revenge
came with the Allied victory at Vittorio Veneto in November 1918,
which led to Austro-Hungary's collapse. With the aid of over 300
photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, The Balkans, Italy
& Africa provides a detailed guide to the background and
conduct of the war in the Balkan, Italian and African theatres from
the assassination in Sarajevo to the surrender of the Central
Powers.
Readers have come to expect a level of detail and critical rigour
from the established military historian and author Bryan Perrett.
They will not be disappointed at all here by this new publication.
Focussing predominantly on the British armoured car units of World
War One, it also untangles many fascinating strands forming the
history of modern warfare. Full of detail, it acquaints the reader
with the complete history of the armoured car, from invention
onwards, setting the history of its Great War service career firmly
in context. Well written in an accessible style, this publication
serves as an impressive tribute to the armoured car, one of the
most effective weapons utilised by the allies during the course of
the Great War.
Billy Bishop was the top Canadian flying ace in the First World
War, credited officially with a record-breaking 75 victories. He
was a highly skilled pilot and an accurate shot. Bishop went from
being the most decorated war hero in Canadian history to a crusader
for peace, writing the book Winged Peace, which supported
international control of global air power. Author Dan McCaffery
presents the life and accomplishments of Bishop through information
he gathered from interviews and archival sources.This new
illustrated edition of Dan McCaffery's book contains more than 50
photos of Bishop and other First World War fliers including German
and British air aces, plus artefacts from the collection now on
display at Billy Bishop airport, Toronto.
Newcastle raised more battalions of volunteer soldiers that went on
to see active service than any other British provincial city during
the First World War. The first full battalion of Kitchener's Army,
Pioneer battalions, the Tyneside Scottish and the Tyneside Irish
Brigades and pre-war Territorial Battalions of The Northumberland
Fusiliers were all raised here and all of them served at some point
during the Battles on the Somme between 1 July and December 1916.
On the First Day of the Somme their stalwart bravery and conduct on
the field were remarked upon by all who witnessed it; be they the
gallant pipers that led the companies over the top or the
parade-like lines of the Tyneside Irish as they strode towards the
hail of machine gun fire. The losses suffered by these brave
battalions were also the worst suffered by any Regiment on that
fateful day. .
Grimsby in the Great War is a detailed account of how the
experience of war impacted on the seaside town of Grimsby from the
outbreak of the Great War in 1914, to the long-awaited peace of
1918. Grimsby and Cleethorpes were among the most vulnerable and
exposed British towns in August 1914 when the Great War broke out.
Situated on the North Sea, and facing the German Baltic fleet,
their vessels were to face the mines and the U-boat torpedoes as
the war progressed. But this is merely one of the incredibly
dramatic and testing developments in the wartime saga of 1914-18,
which impacted on the the town of Grimsby. Written into the greater
story are the achievements of the Grimsby Chums and the other
regiments containing Grimsby men, and the amazing story of the Home
Front experience, from the local shell factory staffed largely by
women, to the War Hospital Supply Depot and the Women's Emergency
Corps. Throughout this compelling book, Stephen Wade documents the
town's remarkable stories of heroism, determination and resolution
in the face of the immensity of the war and its seemingly endless
tests and trials of Grimsby's mettle.
Siblings are our longest lasting relationships. Narratives of the
Great War abound with the war stories of brothers and sisters.
Their emotional experiences span the novelty of departing for war
or taking up war work, the turmoil of facing combat, the effort to
provide ongoing support for family members, the ever-present
anxiety for soldier-brothers, the depth of sibling grief and the
multifarious ways surviving siblings sought to preserve the memory
of their fallen brothers. This social and cultural history places
siblinghood at the heart of our understanding of the war generation
and how they balanced conflicting obligations to the nation, the
military and their families. Drawing on a range of material,
Brothers in the Great War, reveals how sibling bonds sustained
fighting men and presents a novel insight into twentieth-century
familial life. -- .
On the Other Shore explores the social history of Italian
communities in South America and the transnational networks in
which they were situated during and after World War I. From 1915 to
1921 Italy's conflict against Austria-Hungary and its aftermath
shook Italian immigrants and their children in the metropolitan
areas of Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Sao Paulo. The war led
portions of these communities to mobilize resources-patriotic
support, young men who could enlist in the Italian army, goods like
wool from Argentina and limes from Brazil, and lots of money-to
support Italy in the face of "total war." Yet other portions of
these communities simultaneously organized a strident movement
against the war, inspired especially by anarchism and revolutionary
socialism. Both of these factions sought to extend their influence
and ambitions into the immediate postwar period. On the Other Shore
demonstrates patterns of social cohesion and division within the
Italian communities of South America; reconstructs varying
transatlantic and inter-American networks of interaction, exchange,
and mobility in an "Italian Atlantic"; interrogates how authorities
in Italy viewed their South American "colonies"; and uncovers ways
that Italians in Latin America balanced and blended relationships
and loyalties to their countries of residence and origin. On the
Other Shore's position at the intersection of Latin American
history, Atlantic history, and the histories of World War I and
Italian immigration thereby engages with and informs each of these
subject areas in distinctive ways.
The First World War in the Middle East is an accessibly written
military and social history of the clash of world empires in the
Dardanelles, Egypt and Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia and the
Caucasus. Coates Ulrichsen demonstrates how wartime exigencies
shaped the parameters of the modern Middle East, and describes and
assesses the major campaigns against the Ottoman Empire and Germany
involving British and imperial troops from the French and Russian
Empires, as well as their Arab and Armenian allies. Also documented
are the enormous logistical demands placed on host societies by the
Great Powers' conduct of industrialised warfare in hostile terrain.
The resulting deepening of imperial penetration, and the extension
of state controls across a heterogeneous sprawl of territories,
generated a powerful backlash both during and immediately after the
war, which played a pivotal role in shaping national identities as
the Ottoman Empire was dismembered. This is a multidimensional
account of the many seemingly discrete yet interlinked campaigns
that resulted in one to one and a half million casualties.It
details not just their military outcome but relates them to
intelligence-gathering, industrial organisation, authoritarianism
and the political economy of empires at war.
This book offers a global history of civilian, military and
gendarmerie-style policing around the First World War. Whilst many
aspects of the Great War have been revisited in light of the
centenary, and in spite of the recent growth of modern policing
history, the role and fate of police forces in the conflict has
been largely forgotten. Yet the war affected all European and
extra-European police forces. Despite their diversity, all were
confronted with transnational factors and forms of disorder, and
suffered generally from mass-conscription. During the conflict,
societies and states were faced with a crisis situation of
unprecedented magnitude with mass mechanised killing on the battle
field, and starvation, occupation, destruction, and in some cases
even revolution, on the home front. Based on a wide geographical
and chronological scope - from the late nineteenth century to the
interwar years - this collection of essays explores the policing of
European belligerent countries, alongside their empires, and
neutral countries. The book's approach crosses traditional
boundaries between neutral and belligerent nations, centres and
peripheries, and frontline and rear areas. It focuses on the
involvement and wartime transformations of these law-enforcement
forces, thus highlighting underlying changes in police
organisation, identity and practices across this period.
Almost a century has passed since the signing of the armistice on
11 November 1918. Of all the soldiers who went through that hell on
earth, photographs, letters, stories and old uniforms kept in
attics are all that is left. Thanks to a collection of more than
ten thousand documents, the author allows us to follow these young
men with previously unseen photographs. All these faces, sometimes
smiling, sometimes serious, have a story to tell. Many collectors
have also allowed us access to their most precious objects, the
fruit of their relentless research that helps save these objects
that went through four terrible years of oblivion and destruction.
Finally, being in the era of Internet, many links allow you to
retrace the history of your ancestors and their regiments. The
Canadian Expeditionary Force arrived with its infantry division in
France in February 1915. The Canadians underwent the first poison
gas attack two months later. In 1918, they had such a reputation
that they were used as shock troops and took part in all the
battles of the year. The subject of this short book is a
non-exhaustive study of the Canadian soldier's equipment and his
commitment within the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in France in
1915-18.
Here, name by name, parish by parish, province by province, Kevin
Myers details Ireland's intimate involvement with one of the
greatest conflicts in human history, the First World War of 1914 to
1918, which left no Irish family untouched. With this gathering of
his talks, unpublished essays and material distilled from The Irish
Times and elsewhere, Myers lays out the grounds of his research and
findings in Connaught, Leinster, Munster and Ulster. He revisits
the main theatres of war in Europe - The Somme, Ypres and Verdun,
the war at sea and Gallipoli. He documents these bloody engagements
through the lives of those involved, from Dublin to Cork, Sligo to
Armagh, to the garrison towns of Athy, Limerick, Mullingar and
beyond. In Ireland's Great War Myers uncoils a vital
counter-narrative to the predominant readings in nationalist
history, revealing the complex and divided loyalties of a nation
coming of age in the early twentieth century. This remarkable
historical record pieced together the neglected shards of Ireland's
recent past and imparts a necessary understanding of the political
process that saw Sinn Fein's electoral victory in 1918 and the
founding of the Irish Free State. By honouring Ireland's forgotten
dead on the centenary of the Great War. Myers enables a rediscovery
of purpose that will speak to future generations.
When war engulfed Europe in 1914, the conflict quickly took on
global dimensions. Although fighting erupted in Africa and Asia,
the Great War primarily pulled troops from around the world into
Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Amid the fighting were large numbers
of expeditionary forces-and yet they have remained largely
unstudied as a collective phenomenon, along with the term
"expeditionary force" itself. This collection examines the
expeditionary experience through a wide range of case studies. They
cover major themes such as the recruitment, transport, and supply
of far-flung troops; the cultural and linguistic dissonance, as
well as gender relations, navigated by soldiers in foreign lands;
the political challenge of providing a rationale to justify their
dislocation and sacrifice; and the role of memory and
memorialization. Together, these essays open up new avenues for
understanding the experiences of soldiers who fought the First
World War far from home.
Linda R. Robertson argues that the development of the United States
as a global military power arose from the influence of an image of
air combat carefully constructed during World War I to mask the
sordid realities of modern ground warfare. "The Dream of Civilized
Warfare" carries this trajectory to its logical end, tracing the
long history of the American desire to exert the nation's will
throughout the world without having to risk the lives of ground
soldiers--a theme that continues to reverberate in public
discussions, media portrayals, and policy decisions today.
Histories of American air power usually focus on World War II, when
the air force became the foundation for the military strength of
the United States. The equally fascinating story of World War I air
combat is often relegated to a footnote, but it was the earlier war
that first inspired the vision of the United States attaining
dominance in world affairs through a massive air force.
"In The Dream of Civilized Warfare," Robertson presents the
compelling story of the creation of the first American air
force--and how, through the propaganda of the flying ace, a vision
of "clean" or civilized combat was sold to politicians and the
public. During World War I, air combat came to epitomize American
ingenuity, technological superiority, adventure, leadership, and
teamwork. Robertson reveals how the romantic and chivalric imagery
associated with flying aces was a product of intentional propaganda
and popular culture. Examining aviation history, military battles,
films, literature, and political events, she looks at how the
American public's imagination was shaped--how flying aces offered
not only a symbol of warfare in stark contrast to the muddy, brutal
world of the trenches, but also a distraction to an American public
resistant to both intervention in a European conflict and the new
practice of conscription.
Linda R. Robertson is professor and director of the Media and
Society program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
This book tackles cultural mobilization in the First World War as a
plural process of identity formation and de-formation. It explores
eight different settings in which individuals, communities and
conceptual paradigms were mobilized. Taking an interdisciplinary
approach, it interrogates one of the most challenging facets of the
history of the Great War, one that keeps raising key questions on
the way cultures respond to times of crisis. Mobilization during
the First World War was a major process of material and imaginative
engagement unfolding on a military, economic, political and
cultural level, and existing identities were dramatically
challenged and questioned by the whirl of discourses and
representations involved.
The First World War claimed over 995,000 British lives, including
the deaths of over a thousand 'Men of Lancaster', and its legacy
continues to be remembered today. This book looks at the impact
that the loss of so many men had on the community and offers an
intimate portrayal of Lancaster and its people living in the shadow
of the 'war to end all wars'. Drawing on detailed research
conducted by the authors and their community partners, it describes
the local reaction to the outbreak of war, the experience of
individuals who enlisted, the changing face of industry, the women
who defied convention to play a vital role on the home front, and
how Lancaster coped with the transition to life in peacetime once
more. The Great War story of Lancaster draws on all of these
experiences to present a unique account of the local reality of a
global conflict.
One of the bloodiest conflicts in human history, World War I
devastated France, leaving behind battlefields littered with the
remains of the dead. Daniel Sherman takes a close look at the human
impact of this Great War by examining the ways in which the French
remembered their veterans and war dead after the armistice. Arguing
that memory is more than just a record of experience, Sherman's
cultural history offers a radically new perspective on how
commemoration of WWI helped to shape postwar French society and
politics.
Sherman shows how a wartime visual culture saturated with images of
ordinary foot soldiers, together with contemporary novels, memoirs,
and tourist literature, promoted a distinctive notion of combat
experience. The contrast between battlefield and home front,
soldier and civilian was the basis for memory and collective
gratitude. Postwar commemoration, however, also grew directly out
of the long and agonized search for the remains of hundreds of
thousands of missing soldiers, and the sometimes contentious
debates over where to bury them. For this reason, the local
monument, with its inscribed list of names and its functional
resemblance to tombstones, emerged as the focal point of
commemorative practice. Sherman traces every step in the process of
monument building as he analyzes commemoration's competing
goals--to pay tribute to the dead, to console the bereaved, and to
incorporate mourners' individual memories into a larger political
discourse.
Extensively illustrated, Sherman's study offers a visual record of
a remarkable moment in the history of public art. It is at once a
moving account of a culture haunted by war and a sophisticated
analysis of thepolitical stakes of memory in the twentieth century.
Winner of the 2000 J. Russell Major Prize of the American
Historical Association
The war was fought by the world's leading Christian nations, who
presented the conflict as a holy war. A steady stream of patriotic
and militaristic rhetoric was served to an unprecedented audience,
using language that spoke of holy war and crusade, of apocalypse
and Armageddon. But this rhetoric was not mere state propaganda.
Philip Jenkins reveals how the widespread belief in angels,
apparitions, and the supernatural, was a driving force throughout
the war and shaped all three of the Abrahamic religions -
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam - paving the way for modern views
of religion and violence. The disappointed hopes and moral
compromises that followed the war also shaped the political climate
of the rest of the century, giving rise to such phenomena as
Nazism, totalitarianism, and communism. Connecting remarkable
incidents and characters - from Karl Barth to Carl Jung, the
Christmas Truce to the Armenian Genocide - Jenkins creates a
powerful and persuasive narrative that brings together global
politics, history, and spiritual crisis. We cannot understand our
present religious, political, and cultural climate without
understanding the dramatic changes initiated by the First World
War. The war created the world's religious map as we know it today.
1914... The most terrible and bloody of the conflicts of history
comes from start. It will result in the death of more than 18
million soldiers. While still a child, Odysseus sees his father and
his brother leave his luminous scrubland to join the land dark and
stained by the war in eastern France. A conflict that was meant to
be short and that will last more than four years, stealing the
boy's childhood to make him a fighter, ready to fall on the field
of honor for his homeland.
The definitive history of the British soldiers executed by their
own Army during the First World War. Three hundred and fifty-one
men were executed by British Army firing squads between September
1914 and November 1920. By far the greatest number, 266 were shot
for desertion in the face of the enemy. The executions continue to
haunt the history of the war, with talk today of shell shock and
posthumous pardons. Using new material released from the Public
Records Office and other sources, the authors reveal what really
happened and place the story of these executions firmly in the
context of the military, social and medical context of the period.
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