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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
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.
Off to the sidelines of the brutal western front of World War I was
a nasty little campaign by British and India troops sent to secure
Persian oil fields. Explaining what and how this happened in the
early decades of the twentieth century goes beyond being just
another history of a distant campaign in the 1914 to 1918 war. The
highs and lows of what many British military planners in London
considered to be a minor campaign in a distant theatre of
operations proved to be a long, costly conflict the results of
which still influence events today. Oil and the Creation of Iraq
describes how the policies of allied military leaders of the time
resulted in pushing the Ottoman government into partnership with
Germany and Austria during World War I, resulting in its
disintegration and loss of its Middle Eastern territories. The book
then describes how the political and economic aims of the nations
involved in the Mesopotamian campaign influenced the fighting and
subsequent creation of Iraq, a new nation with few defensible
boundaries, but one sitting atop an almost inexhaustible supply of
oil and gas.
A fascinating look at the British naval intervention in the Baltic
in 1918-20, and at the British, Soviet and Baltic nationalist
fleets that fought. Following the Russian Revolution of October
1917, the Baltic states became a battleground between Russian Reds
and Whites, German troops and emerging Baltic independence forces.
In November 1918, the British government decided to intervene, to
protect British interests and to support the emerging Baltic
states. This initial small force of cruisers and destroyers was
eventually augmented by other British warships, including aircraft
carriers, a monitor, as well as a handful of submarines and torpedo
boats. Opposing them was the far more powerful Russian Baltic
Fleet, now controlled by the Bolsheviks. The campaign that followed
involved naval clashes between the two sides, the most spectacular
of which was an attack on the Soviet naval base of Kronstadt in
June 1919 by a force of small British torpedo boats. They torpedoed
and sunk the Russian cruiser Oleg, an action which effectively
bottled the Baltic fleet up in port for the remainder of the
campaign. Finally, in early 1920, the British squadron was
withdrawn, following Soviet recognition of Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania. This New Vanguard title explores the naval side of this
little-known but strategically crucial campaign fought by the
war-weary navies of Britain and Russia and by warships of the
emerging Baltic states. Describing the political background to the
conflict, and the key points of the naval campaign as well as the
warships involved, this is a concise and fascinating account of an
overlooked naval campaign that helped reshape the map of Europe.
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.
Dazzling in its originality, witty and perceptive in unearthing patterns of behavior that history has erased, RITES OF SPRING probes the origins, the impact, and the aftermath of World War I -- from the premiere of Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913 to the death of Hitler in 1945. "The Great War," as Modris Eksteins writes, "was the psychological turning point . . . for modernism as a whole. The urge to create and the urge to destroy had changed places." In this "bold and fertile book" (Atlantic Monthly), Eksteins goes on to chart the seismic shifts in human consciousness brought about by this great cataclysm through the lives and words of ordinary people, works of literature, and such events as Lindbergh's transatlantic flight and the publication of the first modern bestseller, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. RITES OF SPRING is a remarkable and rare work, a cultural history that redefines the way we look at our past and toward our future.
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.
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 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.
Dissects the politics of commemoration of soldiers, veterans, and
relatives from WWI The United States lost thousands of troops
during World War I, and the government gave next-of-kin a choice
about what to do with their fallen loved ones: ship them home for
burial or leave them permanently in Europe, in makeshift graves
that would be eventually transformed into cemeteries in France,
Belgium, and England. World War I marked the first war in which the
United States government and military took full responsibility for
the identification, burial, and memorialization of those killed in
battle, and as a result, the process of burying and remembering the
dead became intensely political. The government and military
attempted to create a patriotic consensus on the historical memory
of World War I in which war dead were not only honored but used as
a symbol to legitimize America's participation in a war not fully
supported by all citizens. The saga of American soldiers killed in
World War I and the efforts of the living to honor them is a
neglected component of United States military history, and in this
fascinating yet often macabre account, Lisa M. Budreau unpacks the
politics and processes of the competing interest groups involved in
the three core components of commemoration: repatriation,
remembrance, and return. She also describes how relatives of the
fallen made pilgrimages to French battlefields, attended largely by
American Legionnaires and the Gold Star Mothers, a group formed by
mothers of sons killed in World War I, which exists to this day.
Throughout, and with sensitivity to issues of race and gender,
Bodies of War emphasizes the inherent tensions in the politics of
memorialization and explores how those interests often conflicted
with the needs of veterans and relatives.
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.
Wings of Honor is a compilation of all United States pilots,
observers, gunners and mechanics who flew against the enemy in
World War I. Covered are Americans who flew with the French and
British air services, U.S. Navy aviators, the 103rd Pursuit
Squardron, the 1st Balloon Group, the 1st Pursuit Group, the 1st
Corps Observation Group, American bomber units, the 2nd Pursuit
Squardron, the 3rd Pursuit Group, and all other units in which
Americans flew.\nJames J. Sloan is a founding member of the
American Aviation Historical Society, as well as a charter member
of the Society of World War I Aero Historians. He lives in Salinas,
CA.
A World on Edge reveals Europe in 1918, left in ruins by World War
I. With the end of hostilities, a radical new start seems not only
possible, but essential, even unavoidable. Unorthodox ideas light
up the age like the comets that have recently passed overhead: new
politics, new societies, new art and culture, new thinking. The
struggle to determine the future has begun. The sculptor Kathe
Kollwitz, whose son died in the war, was translating sorrow and
loss into art. Ho Chi Minh was working as a dishwasher in Paris and
dreaming of liberating Vietnam, his homeland. Captain Harry S.
Truman was running a men's haberdashery in Kansas City, hardly
expecting that he was about to go bankrupt - and later become
president of the United States. Professor Moina Michael was about
to invent the 'remembrance poppy', a symbol of sacrifice that will
stand for generations to come. Meanwhile Virginia Woolf had just
published her first book and was questioning whether that sacrifice
was worth it, while the artist George Grosz was so revolted by the
violence on the streets of Berlin that he decides everything is
meaningless. For rulers and revolutionaries, a world of power and
privilege was dying - while for others, a dream of overthrowing
democracy was being born. With novelistic virtuosity, historian
Daniel Schoenpflug describes this watershed year as it was
experienced on the ground - open ended, unfathomable, its outcome
unclear. Told from the vantage points of people, famous and
ordinary, good and evil, who lived through the turmoil and
combining a multitude of acutely observed details, Schoenpflug
composes a brilliantly conceived panorama of a world suspended
between enthusiasm and disappointment, and of a moment in which the
window of opportunity was suddenly open, only to quickly close shut
once again.
The Imperial German Navy of WWI is a series of books (Warships,
Campaigns, & Uniforms) that provide a broad view of the
Kaiser's naval forces through the extensive use of photographs.
Every effort has been made to cover all significant areas during
the war period. In addition to the primary use of photographs,
technical information is provided for each warship along with its
corresponding service history; with a special emphasis being placed
on those warships that participated in the Battle of Skagerrak
(Jutland). Countless sources have been used to establish individual
case studies for each warship; multiple photos of each warship are
provided. The entire series itself is unprecedented in its coverage
of the Kaiser's navy.
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 story of Bletchley Park's codebreaking operations in the Second
World War is now well known, but its counterparts in the First
World War - Room 40 & MI1(b) - remain in the shadows, despite
their involvement in and influence on most of the major events of
that war. From the First Battle of the Marne, the shelling of
Scarborough, the battles of Jutland and the Somme in 1916, to the
battles on the Western Front in 1918, the German naval mutiny and
the Zimmermann Telegram, this cast of characters - several of them
as eccentric as anyone from Bletchley Park in the Second World War
- secretly guided the outcome of the 'Great War' from the confines
of a few smoke-filled rooms. Using hundreds of intercepted and
decrypted German military, naval and diplomatic messages,
bestselling author Paul Gannon reveals the fascinating story of
British codebreaking operations. By drawing on many newly
discovered archival documents that challenge misleading stories
about Room 40 & MI1(b), he reveals a sophisticated machine in
operation.
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.
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.
The inspiring, heart-pumping true story of soldiers turned cyclists
and the historic 1919 Tour de France that helped to restore a
war-torn country and its people. On June 29, 1919, one day after
the Treaty of Versailles brought about the end of World War I,
nearly seventy cyclists embarked on the thirteenth Tour de France.
From Paris, the war-weary men rode down the western coast on a race
that would trace the country's border, through seaside towns and
mountains to the ghostly western front. Traversing a cratered
postwar landscape, the cyclists faced near-impossible odds and the
psychological scars of war. Most of the athletes had arrived
straight from the front, where so many fellow countrymen had
suffered or died. The cyclists' perseverance and tolerance for pain
would be tested in a grueling, monthlong competition. An inspiring
true story of human endurance, Sprinting Through No Man's Land
explores how the cyclists united a country that had been torn apart
by unprecedented desolation and tragedy. It shows how devastated
countrymen and women can come together to celebrate the adventure
of a lifetime and discover renewed fortitude, purpose, and national
identity in the streets of their towns.
A searing and highly original analysis of the First World War and
its anguished aftermath-from the prizewinning economist and author
of Shutdown, Crashed and The Wages of Destruction Winner of the Los
Angeles Times Book Prize - History Finalist for the Kirkus Prize -
Nonfiction In the depths of the Great War, with millions dead and
no imaginable end to the conflict, societies around the world began
to buckle. The heart of the financial system shifted from London to
New York. The infinite demands for men and materiel reached into
countries far from the front. The strain of the war ravaged all
economic and political assumptions, bringing unheard-of changes in
the social and industrialorder. A century after the outbreak of
fighting, Adam Tooze revisits this seismic moment in history,
challenging the existing narrative of the war, its peace, and its
aftereffects. From the day the United States enters the war in 1917
to the precipice of global financial ruin, Tooze delineates the
world remade by American economic and military power. Tracing the
ways in which countries came to terms with America's
centrality-including the slide into fascism-The Deluge is a
chilling work of great originality that will fundamentally change
how we view the legacy of World War I.
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.
This analysis of Britains war policy during the last years of the
Great War argues that it was strongly affected by a mood of
pessimism. The policy was revised after the defeats suffered by the
allies in 1917, so much so that Britain almost "tumbled into peace"
the following year.
"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 newand
controversial arguments. It will be essential reading for military
historians and strategists, and for those interested in the origins
of mechanical warfare.
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