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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
This history, originally published in 1962, by the then lone
remaining figure in the leadership of the Russian Social Democratic
Party, is an important contribution to the understanding of the
Soviet October Revolution of 1917. It covers in detail the period
from the February revolution of 1917 until the outbreak of the
Second World War, passing through the phases of the October
Revolution, the Peace of Brest-Litovsk, the Civil War, the struggle
for the leadership of the party and the triumph of Stalin.
First published in 1919, this book traces the growth of War Debt
during the First World War, examines the real meaning of the Debt
and discusses the proposals for clearing it. As the chief
contemporary proposal put forward for meeting the interest and
repaying the principal of the Debt was the "Conscription of
Wealth", or the "Capital Levy", this provides a main focus for the
analysis. The author also examines whether the methods of financing
war - by borrowing the required money - is sound and whether it
should be replaced by taxation. A plan for the reform of income tax
is put forward, designed to yield two-thirds of the revenue needed
for a Peace Budget that also addresses the War Debt.
A study of Anglo-Iranian relations during World War I. This book
analyzes such diplomacy as an example of great power politics in
regional affairs, examining Britain's concern to maintain stability
in Iran and exclude foreign interests from the Persian Gulf and the
approaches to India.
The First World War examines the outbreak, events themselves and
aftermath of the Great War, and the political, social and economic
effects on the European countries involved. Important themes
explored include : * recruitment and propaganda * women's
involvement in the war * protest and pacifism * the links between
the war and the revolutions in Russia and Germany.
The First World War was above all a war of logistics. Whilst the
conflict will forever be remembered for the mud and slaughter of
the Western Front, it was a war won on the factory floor as much as
the battlefield. Examining the war from an industrial perspective,
Arming the Western Front examines how the British between 1900 and
1920 set about mobilising economic and human resources to meet the
challenge of 'industrial war'. Beginning with an assessment of the
run up to war, the book examines Edwardian business-state relations
in terms of armament supply. It then outlines events during the
first year of the war, taking a critical view of competing
constructs of the war and considering how these influenced decision
makers in both the private and public domains. This sets the
framework for an examination of the response of business firms to
the demand for 'shells more shells', and their varying ability to
innovate and manage changing methods of production and
organisation. The outcome, a central theme of the book, was a
complex and evolving trade-off between the quantity and quality of
munitions supply, an issue that became particularly acute during
the Battle of the Somme in 1916. This deepened the economic and
political tensions between the military, the Ministry of Munitions,
and private engineering contractors as the pressure to increase
output accelerated markedly in the search for victory on the
western front. The Great War created a dual army, one in the field,
the other at home producing munitions, and the final section of the
book examines the tensions between the two as the country strove
for final victory and faced the challenges of the transition to the
peace time economy.
Because of the exceptionally high proportion of imports in
Britain's food supply and the determined efforts of the enemy to
sever the supply lines, efficient management of food resources was
an essential element in the British national war effort. This
volume was the first comprehensive study of this vital aspect of
government strategy and fills a gap in the historiography of this
period. This volume provides a balanced picture by drawing together
the diverse elements that went into food policy: economic and
social trends, international trade relations and labour issues. The
author also traces the evolution of food policy during the pre-war
planning period and the early part of the war, and analyses the
roles of the United States and the labour organizations.
The First World War marks a crucial period in the history of the
socialist wing of the British labour movement. This book is an
account of the development of the political ideas and activities of
some of the most influential British socialist thinkers of that
time: Beatrice and Sidney Webb, R. H. Tawney and G. D. H. Cole. The
first part of the book examines the state of the Labour movement
and of socialist ideas on the eve of the conflict, then turns to
the central question of the impact of the War on the dissemination
of British socialist ideas.
The war against the Ottomans, on Gallipoli, in Palestine and in
Mesopotamia was a major enterprise for the Allies with important
long-term geo-political consequences. The absence of a Turkish
perspective, written in English, represents a huge gap in the
historiography of the First World War. This timely collection of
wide-ranging essays on the campaign, drawing on Turkish sources and
written by experts in the field, addresses this gap. Scholars
employ archival documents from the Turkish General Staff, diaries
and letters of Turkish soldiers, Ottoman journals and newspapers
published during the campaign, and recent academic literature by
Turkish scholars to reveal a different perspective on the campaign,
which should breathe new life into English-language historiography
on this crucial series of events.
This book, first published in 1963, discusses the events of the
Paris Peace Conference- the meeting of Allied victors following the
end of World War I to set peace terms. Lord Hankey discusses the
political and military terms and issues, as well as those of
individual countries. This book is ideal for students of modern
history.
In this astonishing new history of wartime Britain, historian
Stephen Bourne unearths the fascinating stories of the gay men who
served in the armed forces and at home, and brings to light the
great unheralded contribution they made to the war effort. Fighting
Proud weaves together the remarkable lives of these men, from RAF
hero Ian Gleed - a Flying Ace twice honoured for bravery by King
George VI - to the infantry officers serving in the trenches on the
Western Front in WWI - many of whom led the charges into
machine-gun fire only to find themselves court-martialled after the
war for indecent behaviour. Behind the lines, Alan Turing's work on
breaking the `enigma machine' and subsequent persecution contrasts
with the many stories of love and courage in Blitzed-out London,
with new wartime diaries and letters unearthed for the first time.
Bourne tells the bitterly sad story of Ivor Novello, who wrote the
WWI anthem `Keep the Home Fires Burning', and the crucial work of
Noel Coward - who was hated by Hitler for his work entertaining the
troops. Fighting Proud also includes a wealth of long-suppressed
wartime photography subsequently ignored by mainstream historians.
This book is a monument to the bravery, sacrifice and honour shown
by a persecuted minority, who contributed during Britain's hour of
need.
The introduction of chemical warfare during the First World War was
a major event in the history of military technology. It not only
posed an unusual challenge to military thinking of the day, which
was largely conventional and wholly unfamiliar with science; it
also created a heated moral controversy surrounding the new weapon
that did not discriminate between soldiers and civilians. This
study, based on a previously unavailable range of archival material
and statistical data, explores the military role of chemical
warfare as well as its effects on people, industries and
administration on both sides. The book also fully examines the
complex issues raised by this new technology, which were debated
endlessly between the wars and have led to recent agreements among
the powers to curb their use of chemical or biological warfare.
This study was planned in close cooperation with Sir Harold
Hartley, who became head of British chemical warfare in 1918.
Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no
Lord of the Rings, no Narnia, and perhaps no conversion to
Christianity by C. S. Lewis. The First World War laid waste to a
continent and brought about the end of innocence-and the end of
faith. Unlike a generation of young writers who lost faith in the
God of the Bible, however, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis found
that the Great War deepened their spiritual quest. Both men served
as soldiers on the Western Front, survived the trenches, and used
the experience of that conflict to ignite their Christian
imagination. Tolkien and Lewis produced epic stories infused with
the themes of guilt and grace, sorrow and consolation. Giving an
unabashedly Christian vision of hope in a world tortured by doubt
and disillusionment, the two writers created works that changed the
course of literature and shaped the faith of millions. This is the
first book to explore their work in light of the spiritual crisis
sparked by the conflict.
Originally published in 1915 in the middle of World War I,
Carpenter explores the effects that the war was having on society
and humankind as a whole from first-hand experience. In particular,
papers focus on the differences between Germany and England, the
causes of the war and suggestions for restoration and recovery when
the war has ended. Carpenter details all of this in a realistic way
drawing on matters such as class to put forward his anti-war stance
as well as philosophical approaches to coping with tragedy. This
title will be of interest to students of history, sociology and
politics.
This volume, originally published in 1987, fills a gap in a
neglected area. Looking at the entire war in the Mediterrean, the
volume examines the war from the viewpoint of all the important
participants, making full use of archives and manuscript
collections in Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Austria and the
United States. A fascinating mosaic of campaigns emerges in the
Adriatic, Straits of Otranto and the Eastern Aegean. The German
assistance to the tribes of Libya, the threat that Germany would
get her hands on the Russian Black Sea Fleet and use it in the
Mediterreanean, and the appearance and influence of the Americans
in 1918 all took place against a background of rivalry between the
Allies which frustrated the appointment of Jellicoe in 1918 as
supreme command at sea in a role similar to that of Foch on land.
Originally published in 1960, Captain Franz Roeder's ability to
bring to life the rigours in the Hessian Lifeguards during
Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812-13, together with
Helen Roeder's skilful narrative, make this book one of the most
compelling accounts of the sufferings of the Napoleonic Army. This
is both an impelling personal story and a document of outstanding
historical interest.
This book, originally published in 1981, tells the story of the
regular soldiers and reservists of the British Expeditionary Force
(B. E. F.) who fought in the first six months of the First World
War on the Western Front. This photographic history of the B. E. F.
is unique in that the photographs were taken not by official war
photographers, but either by the few press photographers who were
able to get near the Front or by members of the B. E. F themselves.
Complementing the photographs are many first-hand accounts of their
experiences by 'Old Contemptibles' and an authoritative text by
Keith Simpson.
Imagine stepping into someone else's shoes. Walking back in time a
century ago, which shoes would they be? A pair of silk sensations
costing thousands of pounds designed by Yanturni of Paris, or
wooden clogs with metal cleats that spark on the cobbles of a
factory yard? Would your shoes be heavy with mud from trudging
along duckboards between the tents of a front-line hospital or
stuck with tufts of turf from a football pitch? Would you be
cloaked in green and purple, brandishing a 'Votes for Women'
banner, or would you be respectably dressed, restricted by your
thigh-length corset? Great War Fashion opens the wardrobe of women
in the years before the outbreak of war to explore the real woman
behind the stiff, mono-bosomed ideal of Edwardian society, and
closes it on a new breed of women who have donned trousers and
overalls to feed the nation and work in munitions factories and
who, clad in mourning, have loved and lost a whole generation of
men. The journey through Great War Fashion is not just about the
changing clothes and fashions of the war years - it is a journey
into the lives of the women who lived under the shadow of war and
were irrevocably changed by it. Using material from her own
extensive collection, renowned costume expert Lucy Adlington brings
an inspiring generation of women to life with rare and stunning
images alongside a narrative that is both deeply poignant and
laugh-out-loud funny.
First published in 1923, this book examines the causes and evils of
War. Being published soon after the First World War, this becomes
the basis for much of the volume's experience. The author G. Lowes
Dickinson argues that war and civilisation are incompatible and
that the pursuit of war will end in the destruction of mankind.
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)
This study, first published in 1986, examines the evolution and
application of the policies of wartime governments designed to deal
with the danger to national security thought to be posed by enemy
alien residents, and considers the social and political forces
which helped shape these policies. The scope of the powers assumed
by the authorities to regulate the entry, departure, movement,
employment, business activities and many other facets of the lives
of aliens were unprecedented in war or peace. This book will be of
interest to students of history.
World War I represents one of the most studied, yet least
understood, systemic conflicts in modern history. At the time, it
was a major power war that was largely unexpected. This book
refines and expands points made in the author's earlier work on the
failure to prevent World War I. It provides an alternative
viewpoint to the thesis of Christopher Clark, Fritz Fischer, Paul
Kennedy, among others, as to the war's long-term origins. By
starting its analysis with the causes and consequences of the
1870-71 Franco-Prussian War and the German annexation of
Alsace-Lorraine, the study systematically explores the key
geostrategic, political-economic and socio-cultural-ideological
disputes between France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Russia,
Japan, the United States and Great Britain, the nature of their
foreign policy goals, alliance formations, arms rivalries, as well
as the dynamics of the diplomatic process, so as to better explain
the deeper roots of the 'Great War'. The book concludes with a
discussion of the war's relevance and the diplomatic failure to
forge a possible Anglo-German-French alliance, while pointing out
how it took a second world war to realize Victor Hugo's
nineteenth-century vision of a United States of Europe-a vision now
being challenged by financial crisis and Russia's annexation of
Crimea.
On 4 August 1914 following the outbreak of European hostilities,
large sections of Irish Protestants and Catholics rallied to
support the British and Allied war efforts. Yet less than two years
later, the Easter Rising of 1916 allegedly put a stop to the
Catholic commitment in exchange for a re-emphasis on the national
question. In Ireland and the Great War Niamh Gallagher draws upon a
formidable array of original research to offer a radical new
reading of Irish involvement in the world's first total war.
Exploring the 'home front' and Irish diasporic communities in
Canada, Australia, and Britain, Gallagher reveals that substantial
support for the Allied war effort continued largely unabated not
only until November 1918, but afterwards as well. Rich in social
texture and with fascinating new case studies of Irish
participation in the conflict, this book has the makings of a major
rethinking of Ireland's twentieth century.
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