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Books > History > World history > From 1900 > First World War
The Missing of the Somme has become a classic meditation upon war
and remembrance. It weaves a network of myth and memory, photos and
films, poetry and sculptures, graveyards and ceremonies that
illuminate our understanding of, and relationship to, the Great
War.
This book is a collection of essays on neglected aspects of the
Great War. It begins by asking what exactly was so "Great" about
it, before turning to individual studies of various aspects of the
war. These fall broadly into two categories. Firstly personal,
micro-narratives that deal directly with the experience of war,
often derived from contemporary interest in diaries and oral
histories. Presenting both a close-up view of the viscerality, and
the tedium and powerlessness of personal situations, these same
narratives also address the effects of the war on hitherto
under-regarded groups such as children and animals. Secondly, the
authors look at the impact of the course of the war on theatres,
often left out in reflections on the main European combatants and
therefore not part of the regular iconography of the trenches in
places such as Denmark, Canada, India, the Levant, Greece and East
Africa.
Mick Mannock, Fighter Pilot is the authoritative life story of
Britain and Ireland's most successful fighter pilot of the First
World War; a working class hero and staunch socialist who in the
skies above the Western Front combined engineering prowess,
tactical initiative, and grim determination to become an
inspirational squadron commander.
Far from the battlefront, hundreds of thousands of workers toiled
in Bohemian factories over the course of World War I, and their
lives were inescapably shaped by the conflict. In particular, they
faced new and dramatic forms of material hardship that strained
social ties and placed in sharp relief the most mundane aspects of
daily life, such as when, what, and with whom to eat. This study
reconstructs the experience of the Bohemian working class during
the Great War through explorations of four basic spheres-food,
labor, gender, and protest-that comprise a fascinating case study
in early twentieth-century social history.
The notion of the First World War as 'the great seminal
catastrophe' (Urkatastrophe) of the twentieth century is now firmly
established in historiography. Yet astonishingly little has been
written about the fate of non-combatants in occupied and
non-occupied territory, including civilian internees, deportees,
expellees and disarmed military prisoners. This volume brings
together experts from across Europe to consider the phenomena of
captivity, forced labour and forced migration during and
immediately after the years 1914 to 1918. Each contribution offers
a European-wide perspective, thus moving beyond interpretations
based on narrow national frameworks or on one of the fighting
fronts alone. Particular emphasis is placed on the way in which the
experience of internees, forced labourers and expellees was
mediated by specific situational factors and by the development of
'war cultures' and 'mentalities' at different stages in the
respective war efforts. Other themes considered include the
recruitment and deployment of colonial troops in Europe, and
efforts to investigate, monitor and prosecute alleged war crimes in
relation to the mistreatment of civilians and POWs. The final
contribution will then consider the problems associated with
repatriation and the reintegration of returning prisoners after the
war. This book was published as a special issue of Immigrants and
Minorities.
This book tells the story of the Frontline Walk, a sponsored walk
across the former battlefields of the Western Front supporting the
work of ABF The Soldier's Charity. The service charity was
estalised in 1944, working with army veterans of every conflict and
to support future generations and their dependants. This book
uncovers the stories behind those who participated in the walks
since 2014, why they took part and what it meant to them and how
they discovered more about their forebears who very often served in
the First World War on the terrain being discovered during these
events. It also tells the stories behind some of those who have
been affected by conflict and the work that the charity has done to
help rebuild their lives. Illustrated throughout and with
accompanying maps, this book can be used to uncover the routes
taken and explore the stories behind those and the actions of the
time with proceeds going towards the ongoing work of the charity.
The collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of World War I
ushered in a period of radical change for East-Central European
political structures and national identities. Yet this transformed
landscape inevitably still bore the traces of its imperial past.
Breaking with traditional histories that take 1918 as a strict line
of demarcation, this collection focuses on the complexities that
attended the transition from the Habsburg Empire to its successor
states. In so doing, it produces new and more nuanced insights into
the persistence and effectiveness of imperial institutions, as well
as the sources of instability in the newly formed nation-states.
World War I utterly transformed the lives of Jews around the world:
it allowed them to display their patriotism, to dispel antisemitic
myths about Jewish cowardice, and to fight for Jewish rights. Yet
Jews also suffered as refugees and deportees, at times
catastrophically. And in the aftermath of the war, the replacement
of the Habsburg Monarchy and the Russian and Ottoman Empires with a
system of nation-states confronted Jews with a new set of
challenges. This book provides a fascinating survey of the ways in
which Jewish communities participated in and were changed by the
Great War, focusing on the dramatic circumstances they faced in
Europe, North America, and the Middle East during and after the
conflict.
When the Germans invaded her small Belgian village in 1914, Marthe
Cnockaert's home was burned and her family separated. After getting
a job at a German hospital, and winning the Iron Cross for her
service to the Reich, she was approached by a neighbor and invited
to become an intelligence agent for the British. Not without
trepidation, Cnockaert embarked on a career as a spy, providing
information and engaging in sabotage before her capture and
imprisonment in 1916. After the war, she was paid and decorated by
a grateful British government for her service. Cnockaert's is only
one of the surprising and gripping stories that comprise Female
Intelligence. This is the first history of the female spies who
served Britain during World War I, focusing on both the powerful
cultural images of these women and the realities, challenges, and
contradictions of intelligence service. Between the founding of
modern British intelligence organizations in 1909 and the
demobilization of 1919, more than 6,000 women served the British
government in either civil or military occupations as members of
the intelligence community. These women performed a variety of
services, and they represented an astonishing diversity of
nationality, age, and class. From Aphra Behn, who spied for the
British government in the seventeenth century, to the most well
known example, Mata Hari, female spies have a long history,
existing in juxtaposition to the folkloric notion of women as
chatty, gossipy, and indiscreet. Using personal accounts, letters,
official documents and newspaper reports, Female Intelligence
interrogates different, and apparently contradictory, constructions
of gender in the competing spheres of espionage activity.
As first lord of the admiralty and minister for war and air,
Churchill stood resolute at the center of international affairs. In
this classic account, he dramatically details how the tides of
despair and triumph flowed and ebbed as the political and military
leaders of the time navigated the dangerous currents of world
conflict.
Churchill vividly recounts the major campaigns that shaped the
war: the furious attacks of the Marne, the naval maneuvers off
Jutland, Verdun's "soul-stirring frenzy," and the surprising
victory of Chemins des Dames. Here, too, he re-creates the dawn of
modern warfare: the buzz of airplanes overhead, trench combat,
artillery thunder, and the threat of chemical warfare. In
Churchill's inimitable voice we hear how "the war to end all wars"
instead gave birth to every war that would follow, including the
current war in Iraq. Written with unprecedented flair and knowledge
of the events, "The World Crisis" remains the single greatest
history of World War I, essential reading for anyone who wishes to
understand the twentieth century.
For nearly all of the Great War, the Jewish doctor Bernhard Bardach
served with the Austro-Hungarian army in present-day Ukraine. His
diaries from that period, unpublished and largely overlooked until
now, represent a distinctive and powerful record of daily life on
the Eastern Front. In addition to key events such as the 1916
Brusilov Offensive, Bardach also gives memorable descriptions of
military personalities, refugees, food shortages, and the
uncertainty and boredom that inescapably attended life on the
front. Ranging from the critical first weeks of fighting to the
ultimate collapse of the Austrian army, these meticulously written
diaries comprise an invaluable eyewitness account of the Great War.
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.
The First World War had innumerable consequences for all aspects of
society; universities and education being no exception. This book
details the myriad impacts of the war on British universities:
telling how universities survived the war, their contribution to
the war effort and the changes that the war itself brought about.
In doing so, the author highlights the changing relationship
between universities and government: arguing that a transformation
took place during these years, that saw universities moving from a
relatively closed world pre-1914 to a more active and open role
within the national economy and society. The author makes extensive
use of original documentary material to paint a vivid picture of
the experiences of British universities during the war years,
combining academic analysis with contemporary accounts and
descriptions. This uniquely researched book will appeal to students
and scholars of the history of higher education, social history and
the First World War.
After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7.30 am. On 1 July
1916 the British Army went over the top and attacked the German
trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on
that day the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for
every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily
losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on
D-day, 1 July 1916 was the blackest day in the history of the
British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognised, it
was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army
that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered
Kitchener's call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive
victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could
any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook's
research has covered not just official and regimental histories and
tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of
survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he
conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that
it was for front-line soldiers.
This book examines the pictorial representation of women in Great
Britain both before and during the First World War. It focuses in
particular on imagery related to suffrage movements, recruitment
campaigns connected to the war, advertising, and Modernist art
movements including Vorticism. This investigation not only
considers the image as a whole, but also assesses tropes and
constructs as objects contained within, both literal and
metaphorical. In this way visual genealogical threads including the
female figure as an ideal and William Hogarth's 'line of beauty'
are explored, and their legacies assessed and followed through into
the twenty-first century. Georgina Williams contributes to debates
surrounding the deliberate and inadvertent dismissal of women's
roles throughout history, through literature and imagery. This book
also considers how absence of a pictorial manifestation of the
female form in visual culture can be as important as her presence.
This book deals with an aspect of the Great War that has been
largely overlooked: the war reportage written based on British and
American authors' experiences at the Western Front. It focuses on
how the liminal experience of the First World War was portrayed in
a series of works of literary journalism at different stages of the
conflict, from the summer of 1914 to the Armistice in November
1918. Sara Prieto explores a number of representative texts written
by a series of civilian eyewitness who have been passed over in
earlier studies of literature and journalism in the Great War. The
texts under discussion are situated in the 'liminal zone', as they
were written in the middle of a transitional period, half-way
between two radically different literary styles: the romantic and
idealising ante bellum tradition, and the cynical and disillusioned
modernist school of writing. They are also the product of the
various stages of a physical and moral journey which took several
authors into the fantastic albeit nightmarish world of the Western
Front, where their understanding of reality was transformed beyond
anything they could have anticipated.
![Mametz (Paperback): Aled Rhys Hughes](//media.loot.co.za/images/x80/103668979825179215.jpg) |
Mametz
(Paperback)
Aled Rhys Hughes; Contributions by Jeremy Hooker
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![Testament of Youth (Paperback): Vera Brittain](//media.loot.co.za/images/x80/494612263952179215.jpg) |
Testament of Youth
(Paperback)
Vera Brittain; Introduction by Mark Bostridge; Preface by Shirley Williams
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Much of what we know and feel about the First World War we owe to
Vera Brittain's elegiac yet unsparing book, which set a standard
for memoirists from Martha Gellhorn to Lillian Hellman. Abandoning
her studies at Oxford in 1915 to enlist as a nurse in the armed
services, Brittain served in London, in Malta, and on the Western
Front. By war's end she had lost virtually everyone she loved.
Testament of Youth is both a record of what she lived through and
an elegy for a vanished generation. Hailed by the Times Literary
Supplement as a book that helped "both form and define the mood of
its time," it speaks to any generation that has been irrevocably
changed by war.
* New introduction by Brittain's biographer examines her struggles
to write about her experiences and the book's reception in England
and America
The League of Nations - pre-cursor to the United Nations - was
founded in 1919 as a response to the First World War to ensure
collective security and prevent the outbreak of future wars. It was
set up to facilitate diplomacy in the face of future international
conflict, but also to work towards eradicating the very causes of
war by promoting social and economic justice. The philosophy behind
much of the League's fascinating and varied roles was to help
create satisfied populations who would reject future threats to the
peace of their world. In this new volume for Seminar Studies,
Martyn Housden sets out to balance the League's work in settling
disputes, international security and disarmament with an analysis
of its achievements in social and economic fields. He explores the
individual contributions of founding members of the League, such as
Fridtjof Nansen, Ludwik Rajchman, Rachel Crowdy, Robert Cecil and
Jan Smuts, whose humanitarian work laid the foundations for the
later successes of the United Nations in such areas as: the welfare
of vulnerable people, especially prisoners of war and refugees
dealing with epidemic diseases and promoting good health anti-drugs
campaigns Supported by previously unpublished documents and
photographs, this book illustrates how an understanding of the
League of Nations, its achievements and its ultimate failure to
stop the Second World War, is central to our understanding of
diplomacy and international relations in the Inter-War period.
When the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service merged
on 1 April 1918, to form the Royal Air Force, the new command
needed to have its own gallantry medals to distinguish itself from
the Army and the Royal Navy. Thus the new Distinguished Flying
Cross came into being. Not that this new award (along with the
Distinguished Flying Medal for non-commissioned personnel) came
into immediate use, but as 1918 progressed, awards that earlier
might have produced the Military Cross or Distinguished Service
Cross, became the Distinguished Flying Cross. By the end of WWI a
large number of DFCs and First Bars had been awarded, but only
three Second Bars had been promulgated for First War actions.
Before WWII erupted, only four more Second Bars had been awarded,
for actions largely in what we would now call the Middle East. By
the end of the WWII, awards of the DFC and First Bars had
multiplied greatly, but only fifty Second Bars had been awarded
(and Gazetted), making fifty-seven in all between 1918 and 1946. To
this can be added three more, awarded post-WWII, between 1952-1955,
making a grand total of sixty. Still a significantly small number
of members of this pretty exclusive 'club'. Within the covers of
this book recorded for the first time together are the
mini-biographies of all those sixty along with the citations that
accompanied their awards, or in some cases the recommendations for
them. Also recorded are citations for other decorations such as the
Distinguished Service Order, et al. The recommendations were often
longer than the actual citations themselves, and during periods of
large numbers of all types of awards, these citations did not make
it into the London Gazette, recording name of the recipient only.
As the reader will discover, the range of airmen who received the
DFC and Two Bars, cover most of the ambit of WWII operations, be
they fighter pilots, bomber pilots, night-fighter aircrew, aircrew
navigators, engineers, etc, or reconnaissance pilots. Each has
interesting stories, proving, if proof be needed, their gallantry
in action.
The sector north of Ypres is best known for the inundation of much
of the ground to the east of the Yser that acted as a block to the
German advance in the autumn of 1914\. From that time on military
activities were extremely limited. Much of this line was manned by
Belgian troops, with some assistance from the French army at its
southern end and of the British army on the Channel coast. The role
of the Belgian army in the Great War is little known, apart from
the opening months, when 'brave little Belgium' held on to its
important fortified cities, notably Liege and Antwerp, for longer
than German planning had anticipated. It was not until mid October
1914 that the Belgian army was forced back to the area of the Yser,
when its defences were bolstered by French troops whilst Haig's I
Corps came up on its southern flank. At this crucial phase of the
campaign, the harsh decision was taken to open the dykes at the end
of October 1914 and thereby flooding much of the low lying ground
east of the Yser and so effectively halting major German offensive
operations. For almost four years the Belgian army rested
reasonably secure behind this sodden landscape, although certain
key points were the scene of frequent, if limited, tussles. 'Free'
Belgium was reduced to two significant towns that could be regarded
as secure and out of the range of most German artillery - the
coastal resort of La Panne (De Panne) and the much bigger
settlement of Furnes (Veurne), Over these years the Belgian army
was rebuilt under the dynamic leadership of the king, Albert I, and
by the time of the general allied advance in September 1918, the
Belgian army was able to take its place in the Advance to Victory,
in an allied Army that was commanded by King Albert. Although this
phase of the war is outside the scope of the book, it is important
to realise that the Belgian army was a very active player in these
last few months. Amongst the achievements of Belgian troops at this
stage of the war was the final capture of Passchendaele. This book
concerns itself with the years of defence and the reconstruction of
the army behind the Yser. Relatively little of Belgium's efforts in
the Great War remained, but recent years have seen action to
preserve what does. Most significant of these, perhaps, is the so
called Trench of Death near Diksmuide. Although always preserved,
it has recently been very successfully refurbished and is now most
effectively and informatively presented. Other remains from the war
have also been developed so as to be more informative and the
result is that touring this area provides a fascinating insight
into one of the most unusual sectors of the Western Front and which
is conveniently close to the much visited Ypres Salient. In this
book Chris Baker brings his extensive knowledge of the Belgian army
(helped by his ability to read French and Dutch) and of the
Flanders region to produce a much needed insight into Belgium's
army role for most of the war as the protector of the northern
flank of the whole of the Allied line.
A surprise discovery in the 1980s unearthed the remarkable early
twentieth century photographs of Berry & Co., now held in Te
Papa's collection. Amongst the thousands of mystery images are more
than a hundred of ordinary First World War servicemen, taken
directly before the men left to fight. But who were they? A
heartfelt public response has helped reunite many soldiers with
their identities, and careful research has brought more to light.
Though these soldiers represent only a tiny fraction of the
thousands of men who departed to join the fighting overseas,
through their poignant stories we are granted a remarkable lens on
New Zealanders' experiences - their hope, anxiety, fear, pride and
love - over the span of the Frist World War. Published alongside
the TVNZ documentary, Berry Boys features the full collection of
beautifully reproduced portraits, accompanied by the unique stories
of the soldiers and their loved ones. Some died overseas, others
lived long after the war and all were changed by it. Although they
are only a fraction of the thousands of men who served, they offer
a potent snapshot of the New Zealand of the time - and the changing
face of the First World War itself.
On the night of 20 November 1914, everything pointed to the
likelihood of invasion by a German army, whisked across the North
Sea on a fleet of fast transports. The Royal Navy's Grand Fleet
prepared to sail south from remote bases in Scotland;
shallow-draught monitors were moored in the Wash; and 300,000
troops stood by to repel the enemy on the beaches. Fortunately, the
night passed without incident. For thirty years prior to the First
World War, writers, with a variety of motivations, had been
forecasting such an invasion. Britain regarded the army as an
imperial police force and, despite the experience gained in
military exercises involving simulated invasions, the Royal Navy
was still expected to fulfil its traditional role of intercepting
and destroying enemy forces. However, as the technology of warfare
developed, with the proliferation of ever more powerful warships,
submarines, mines, and torpedoes, alongside the added promise of
aerial assault, it became obvious that these long-established
notions of the Navy's invincibility might no longer be realistic.
The perceived threat of invasion, whether justified or not,
persisted throughout the First World War, and this book describes
the measures taken to protect Britain against enemy attack by land,
sea, or air.
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