During World War I, French citizens accepted national union on the home front as a necessary act of self-defence, but not without a considerable degree of ambivalence. At the political level, the union altered the balance of forces by improving the position of the Right, destroying the identity of the Radical party and creating the means by which the Socialist party first had access to power. However, what makes this collection of articles important is that they illustrate the social and political impact of French citizens' acceptance of a national union during World War I as well as dealing with the industrial aspects of French wartime history.

This is the most comprehensive chronology ever provided on the First World War and how it transformed the world politically, economically, socially, technologically, and culturally. Gerald Herman outlines the military actions and events of the Great War in chronological order, depicting the actions of the belligerents on the Western, Eastern, and Southern Fronts, in the colonies, on sea, and in the air, in the order in which they entered the war. His chronology juxtaposes these military events alongside international actions, showing how the events of the war led to treaties and declarations, conferences and meetings, and various kinds of informal contacts and results. He goes on to outline domestic events in terms of political, economic, social, cultural, and technological activities. A full index is also provided.

The chronology will be of great use to all libraries, institutions, and individuals seriously concerned with military history and modern world history.

Fought during 1916, the Battle of the Somme was conceived by the French and British as a great offensive to be waged against Germany even as France poured incredible numbers of men into the slaughterhouse that was the desperate defense of Verdun. The French general-in-chief, Joseph "Papa" Joffre, was especially anxious to go on the offensive. For the French high command cherished the belief, born in the era of Napoleon, that the success of French arms depended on attack and that defense was anathema to what the nationalistic philosopher Henri Bergson called the "elan vital" of the French people, a quality, he argued, that set the Gallic race apart from the rest of the world. After more than five months, the British eked out a penetration of some six miles into German territory. The cost had been 420,000 Britons killed or wounded (70,000 men per mile gained)-and most of these were from "Kitchener's Army," so-called Pals Battalions, working- and middle-class volunteers promised that they could fight alongside their friends, co-workers, and neighbors. This meant that the Somme, more than any other battle before or since, devastated the young male population of entire British towns, villages, and neighborhoods. French losses were just under 200,000. The Germans lost at least 650,000. Just as the French refused to give up ground at Verdun, the Germans held on stubbornly at the Somme-so stubbornly that General Ludendorff actually complained that his men "fought too doggedly, clinging too resolutely to the mere holding of ground, with the result that the losses were heavy." The only thing "conclusive" about the Somme was the ineluctable fact of death. No battle ever fought in any conflict provided a stronger incentive for all sides to reach a negotiated peace-the "peace without victory" that Woodrow Wilson, still standing on the sidelines, urged the combatants to agree upon. Instead, the Kaiser, appalled both by Verdun and the Somme, relieved Falkenhayn and replaced him with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who had achieved great success on the Eastern Front. The new commanders created two new defensive lines, both well behind the Somme front. On the one hand, it was a retreat. On the other, it was a commitment to draw the French and British farther east and invite them to sacrifice more of their soldiery. The modest advance the British made was but the prelude to additional slaughter.

When the United States entered World War I, parts of the country had developed industries, urban cultures, and democratic political systems, but the South lagged behind, remaining an impoverished, agriculture region. Despite New South boosterism, the culture of the early twentieth-century South was comparatively artistically arid. Yet, southern writers dominated the literary marketplace by the 1920s and 1930s. World War I brought southerners into contact with modernity before the South fully modernized. This shortfall created an inherent tension between the region's existing agricultural social structure and the processes of modernization, leading to distal modernism, a form of writing that combines elements of modernism to depict non-modern social structures. Critics have struggled to formulate explanations for the eruption of modern southern literature, sometimes called the Southern Renaissance. ,br> Pinpointing World War I as the catalyst, David A. Davis argues southern modernism was not a self-generating outburst of writing, but a response to the disruptions modernity generated in the region. In World War I and Southern Modernism, Davis examines dozens of works of literature by writers, including William Faulkner, Ellen Glasgow, and Claude McKay, that depict the South during the war. Topics explored in the book include contact between the North and the South, southerners who served in combat, and the developing southern economy. Davis also provides a new lens for this argument, taking a closer look at African Americans in the military and changing gender roles.

World War I was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 1914 to 1918. Contemporaneously known as the Great War or "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. This series of Eight volumes provides year by year analysis of the war that resulted in the death of more than 17 million deaths worldwide.

Taking as its focus memorials of the First World War in Britain, this book brings a fresh approach to the study of public symbols by exploring how different motives for commemorating the dead were reconciled through the processes of local politics to create a widely valued form of collective expression. It examines how the memorials were produced, what was said about them, how support for them was mobilized and behaviour around them regulated. These memorials were the sites of contested, multiple and ambiguous meanings, yet out of them a united public observance was created. The author argues that this was possible because the interpretation of them as symbols was part of a creative process in which new meanings for traditional forms of memorial were established and circulated. The memorials not only symbolized emotional responses to the war, but also ambitions for the post-war era. Contemporaries adopted new ways of thinking about largely traditional forms of memorial to fit the uncertain social and political climate of the inter-war years.
This book represents a significant contribution to the study of material culture and memory, as well as to the social and cultural history of modern warfare.

The Great War toppled four empires, cost the world 24 million dead, and sowed the seeds of another worldwide conflict 20 years later. This is the only book in the English language to offer comprehensive coverage of how Germany and Austria-Hungary, two of the key belligerents, conducted the war and what defeat meant to them. This new edition has been thoroughly updated throughout, including new developments in the historiography and, in particular, addressing new work on the cultural history of the war. This edition also includes: - New material on the domestic front, covering Austria-Hungary's internal political frictions and ethnic fissures - More on Austria-Hungary and Germany's position within the wider geopolitical framework - Increased coverage of the Eastern front "The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918" offers an authoritative and well-researched survey of the role of the Central powers that will be an invaluable text for all those studying the First World War and the development of modern warfare.

This volume represents a comprehensive analysis, by the best known experts in the field on both sides of the Atlantic, of how and why Germany and the United States found themselves at war against each other in 1917 and how the end of their confrontation in 1918/19 paved the way for an era of renewed cooperation. Perspectives offered go well beyond the diplomatic and military aspects of the German-American relationship and include cultural and economic questions.
Germany and the United States of America: The Krefeld Historical Symposia

The happy warriors in the green hats
This is the story of the Nigerian Regiment-an imperial regiment led by British officers and manned principally by Hausa tribesmen who formed part of the force that fought the Germans in East Africa during the First World War. The account, written by one of those British officers, describes the earliest activities of the regiment in West Africa before travelling with them, across the continent, to new challenges. The author's affection and pride in these troops shines through every page and they were in his estimation some of the finest troops the British Empire had to offer. The reader is shown their perpetual good humour and outstanding courage and skill as soldiers in the field. Distinguished by their green headdress and machete they became a force with whom the enemy admitted 'they would take no liberties.' Their East African allies good humouredly hailed them with the call 'Yum Yum'-so convinced were they that they were cannibals The pivotal battles of the campaign are described in detail together with many personable anecdotes making this an original and different view of the Great War.

With the end of the First World War, the centuries-old social fabric of the Ottoman world an entangled space of religious co-existence throughout the Balkans and the Middle East came to its definitive end. In this new study, Hans-Lukas Kieser argues that while the Ottoman Empire officially ended in 1922, when the Turkish nationalists in Ankara abolished the Sultanate, the essence of its imperial character was destroyed in 1915 when the Young Turk regime eradicated the Armenians from Asia Minor. This book analyses the dynamics and processes that led to genocide and left behind today s crisis-ridden post-Ottoman Middle East. Going beyond Istanbul, the book also studies three different but entangled late Ottoman areas: Palestine, the largely Kurdo-Armenian eastern provinces and the Aegean shores; all of which were confronted with new claims from national movements that questioned the Ottoman state. All would remain regions of conflict up to the present day.Using new primary material, World War I and the End of the Ottoman World brings together analysis of the key forces which undermined an empire, and marks an important new contribution to the study of the Ottoman world and the Middle East. "

Two accounts of the Australian Army at war
During the Great War all of Britain's colonies and dominions rallied to the appeal of the motherland to fight the common enemy. None responded more positively than Australia. Leonaur has gathered together two accounts into this single volume for students and enthusiasts of the period to enjoy. The Australian experience of war is finely captured in them both. The first, written by a scout, takes the reader through recruitment, training, embarkation and a period in Egypt before gruelling combat on the Gallipoli peninsula and the bloody trenches of the Western Front. The second account is filled with vignettes of the Australian experience of war in Europe. This is another 'two for the price of one' volume by Leonaur available in softcover or hardback with dust jacket for collectors.

This study is among the first works in English to comprehensively address the Scandinavian First World War experience in the larger international context of the war. It surveys the complex relationship between the belligerent great powers and Northern Europe's neutral small states in times of crisis and war. The book's overreaching rationale draws upon three underlying conceptual fields: neutrality and international law, hegemony and great power politics as well as diplomacy and policy-making of small states in the international arena. From a variety of angles, it examines the question of how neutrality was understood and perceived, negotiated and dealt with both among the Scandinavian states and the belligerent major powers, especially Britain, Germany and Russia. For a long time, the experience of neutral countries during the First World War was seen as marginal, and was overshadowed by the experiences of occupation and collaboration brought about by the Second World War. In this book, Jonas demonstrates how this perception has changed, with neutrality becoming an integral part of the multiple narratives of the First World War. It is an important contribution to the international history of the First World War, cultural-historically influenced approaches to diplomatic history and the growing area of neutrality studies.

Recent scholarship has broadened definitions of war and shifted from the narrow focus on battles and power struggles to include narratives of the homefront and private sphere. To expand scholarship on textual representations of war means to shed light on the multiple theaters of war, and on the many voices who contributed to, were affected by, and/or critiqued German war efforts. Engaged women writers and artists commented on their nations' imperial and colonial ambitions and the events of the tumultuous beginning of the twentieth century. In an interdisciplinary investigation, this volume explores select female-authored, German-language texts focusing on German colonial wars and World War I and the discourses that promoted or critiqued their premises. They examine how colonial conflicts contributed to a persistent atmosphere of Kriegsbegeisterung (war enthusiasm) that eventually culminated in the outbreak of World War I, or a Kriegskritik (criticism of war) that resisted it. The span from German colonialism to World War I brings these explosive periods into relief and challenges readers to think about the intersection of nationalism, violence and gender and about the historical continuities and disruptions that shape such events.

Accounts of the 'Knights of the Sky' in the Great War
For those interested in the most outstanding airmen of the Great War, this book will a highly satisfying read. The author has chronicled the aces of the allied forces and has enhanced his narrative with riveting accounts and first hand experiences and reports of the 'High Aces' in action. Within these pages the reader will discover the exploits of the Lafayette Escadrille, Roland Garros-possibly the first Ace, Guynemer, Lufbery, Fonck, Pinsard and many others of varied nationalities. The valiant flyers of the bomber force are also covered as is the contribution made by American pilots. The appendix includes a list of the Aces of all nations with their 'kills' and much other vital information. Available in soft cover and hard cover with dust jacket. A must for every one interested in the dogfights over the trenches.

In 1914, journalist and mystery writer Mary Roberts Rinehart traveled to Europe alone to cover World War I for the Saturday Evening Post. This collection of her writing encompasses her observations on her travels-from being received by King Albert in Belgium and recording his first authorized statement on the war, to meeting Winston Churchill, to traveling to the English and French front lines as the first correspondent permitted there. Rinehart's book was a humanitarian plea to Americans to join the war effort three years before the American Expeditionary Force set sail for Europe, an unpopular view vindicated by subsequent events.

Anzac Labour explores the horror, frustration and exhaustion surrounding working life in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. Based on letters and diaries of Australian soldiers, it traces the history of work and workplace cultures through Australia, the shores of Gallipoli, the fields of France and Belgium, and the Near East.

Machine Gunners in the desert
The development of the rapidly firing machine gun had been gathering pace throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. By the time of the Great War it had reached a point of deadly and devastating efficiency. Now, specially trained units of men within all armies were trained to bring this lethal weapon to bear on the enemy. This book concerns a group of such men-within the British Army-as it and they fought the Army of the Ottoman Turkish empire in the Middle East Campaign. This was a more mobile war than the gunners of the Western Front experienced, that had its own challenges including disease, blistering heat, flies and difficult terrain. This is an intimate story of a small tightly knit unit operating in an interesting sideshow of the greater conflict.