"Defending Albion" is the first published study of Britain's response to the threat of invasion from across the North Sea in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It examines the emergency schemes designed to confront an enemy landing and the problems associated with raising and maintaining the often derided Territorial Force. It also explores the long-neglected military and political difficulties posed by the spontaneous and largely unwanted appearance of the "Dad's Army" of the Great War, the Volunteer Force.

Prelude to the Easter Rising casts light upon the clandestine activities of Sir Roger Casement in Imperial Germany from 1914 to 1916. German military intelligence and the Imperial Foreign Office had far-reaching plans to use the Irish in the war against Britain. Radical Irish-American leaders were behind Casement's mission to Berlin. It took some time for the highly sensitive and idealistic Casement to realize that neither the German General Staff nor the Imperial Chancellor was able or willing to lend full military support to the Irish. When Casement began to see that the rising would be a bloody massacre, he left for Ireland to halt the fatal development and, if necessary, sacrifice his own honour and life. The carefully edited documents contained in this volume, mostly from the German Foreign Office archives in Bonn, present a full record of Casement's activities prior to Easter 1916. Over 80 years later, these papers have lost none of their emotional intimacy.

The Lion's Pride is the first book to tell the full story of Theodore Roosevelt and his family in World War I. It is both a poignant group biography and an insightful study of the Rooseveltian notion of noblesse oblige.

This acclaimed encyclopedia provides an invaluable reference source on topics ranging from diplomatic initiatives to victory slogans, from political forces to armed forces, from legislation to Lusitania, and every aspect of war.

This is a long-overdue study of Sir Frederick H. Sykes, Chief of the Air Staff of Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) during the First World War. Historians, for the most part, have either overlooked Sykes or misinterpreted him, leaving a gap in the story of British flying. Contrary to previous images of Sykes, we now see that he was not a secretive intriguer or a tangential subject in RAF history. Rather, he played a fundamental part in organizing and leading British aviation from 1912 to the end of 1918. He provided organization, visionary guidance and efficient administrative control for the fledgling service that tried to survive infancy in the heat of battle.

Sykes assumed command of the Air Staff immediately after the RAF's birth - on April 1 1918 - at a critical time, when the German spring offensives were about to split the French and British defensive lines and cause an Allied defeat. Sykes stepped in to quell organizational and bureaucratic fires by working harmoniously with the Air Minister, Lord Weir. Together they maintained control of the air service and established a strategic Independent Air Force prepared to bomb Berlin by the time the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. Sykes battled against fellow airmen, military traditionalists and French commanders to promote an incipient air revolution in warfare by instituting 'air-minded' use of new technologies to economize on manpower and apply air power tactically, strategically and independently from the inefficient army and navy competitive control that had plagued the air services. From the reconnaissance of 1914 to the devastating precision attacks of Desert Storm in the 1991 Gulf War, aircraft have transformedthe modern battlefield. As this book shows, Sykes was important to that revolutionary process.

This is a long-overdue study of Sir Frederick H. Sykes, Chief of the Air Staff of Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) during the First World War. Historians, for the most part, have either overlooked Sykes or misinterpreted him, leaving a gap in the story of British flying. Contrary to previous images of Sykes, we now see that he was not a secretive intriguer or a tangential subject in RAF history. Rather, he played a fundamental part in organizing and leading British aviation from 1912 to the end of 1918. He provided organization, visionary guidance and efficient administrative control for the fledgling service that tried to survive infancy in the heat of battle.

Sykes assumed command of the Air Staff immediately after the RAF's birth - on April 1 1918 - at a critical time, when the German spring offensives were about to split the French and British defensive lines and cause an Allied defeat. Sykes stepped in to quell organizational and bureaucratic fires by working harmoniously with the Air Minister, Lord Weir. Together they maintained control of the air service and established a strategic Independent Air Force prepared to bomb Berlin by the time the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918. Sykes battled against fellow airmen, military traditionalists and French commanders to promote an incipient air revolution in warfare by instituting 'air-minded' use of new technologies to economize on manpower and apply air power tactically, strategically and independently from the inefficient army and navy competitive control that had plagued the air services. From the reconnaissance of 1914 to the devastating precision attacks of Desert Storm in the 1991 Gulf War, aircraft have transformedthe modern battlefield. As this book shows, Sykes was important to that revolutionary process.

This book explores the acquisitive thinking which, from the autumn of 1914, nourished the Mesopotamian Expedition and examines the political issues, international and imperial, delegated to a War Cabinet committee under Curzon. The motives of Curzon and others in attempting to obtain a privileged political position in the Hejaz are studied in the context of inter-Allied suspicions and Turkish intrigues in the Arabian Peninsula. Debate on the future of Mesopotamia provided an outlet for differences between those who justified British gains on the basis of military conquests and those who realised that expansion must be reconciled with broader international trends. By 1918, Britain was developing strategic priorities in the Caucasus. Fisher analyses Turco-German aims in 1918 and challenges the notion of their leading, straightforwardly, to the zenith of British imperialism in the region. This is a penetrating study of war imperialism, when statesmen contemplated strong measures of control in several areas of the Middle East.

First to the battle line in the First World War
As the nineteenth century turned to the twentieth Britain could boast a well trained regular European army and one which was-regiment for regiment-considerably better than most. It was finely tuned and fundamentally suited to the kind of warfare the British Empire had fought since Waterloo. In a war of attrition in the industrial age all that could be hoped of it was that it would buy the nation time with its blood, so that other resources of men and material could be brought into the fight. The British Expeditionary Force which landed in Europe in 1914 consisted of six infantry divisions and five cavalry brigades. The 7th Division arrived in October 1914. Most students of the period know of the outstanding performance of the British regulars in the first engagements of the war. Casualties mounted through the Battle of Mons and the subsequent retreat, at Le Cateau, the Maine, the Aisne, at La Bassee and at Ypres. By the end of 1914 the 'old' British Army as it had quickly come to be known had been all but annihilated. The time of fluidity had passed and the war became a grinding stalemate of trenches, mud and wire. From the British perspective, the men who fought the remaining three years of war were Kitchener's New Army supported by troops from the far flung empire. Great feats of heroism and extraordinary acts of fortitude had been performed by the first seven divisions and the achievements of the 'Contemptible Little Army' as it battled to stem the rapid advance of the German tide had become a legend of the Great War. This book tells their story.
Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

On May 29, 1917, Mrs. E. M. Craise, citizen of Denver, Colorado, penned a letter to President Woodrow Wilson, which concluded, "We have surrendered to your absolute control our hearts dearest treasures - our sons. If their precious bodies that have cost us so dear should be torn to shreds by German shot and shells we will try to live on in the hope of meeting them again in the blessed Country of happy reunions. But, Mr. President, if the hell-holes that infest their training camps should trip up their unwary feet and they be returned to us besotted degenerate wrecks of their former selves cursed with that hell-born craving for alcohol, we can have no such hope". Anxious about the United States's pending entry into the Great War, fearful that their sons would be polluted by the scourges of prostitution, venereal disease, illicit sex, and drink that ran rampant in the training camps, and concerned that this war, like others before it, would encourage moral vice and corruption, countless Americans sent such missives to their government officials. In response to this deluge, President Wilson created the Commission on Training Camp Activities to ensure the purity of the camp environment. Training camps would henceforth mold not only soldiers, but model citizens who, after the war, would return to their communities, spreading white urban middle-class values throughout the country. Fortified by temperance, abstinence, self-control, and a healthy athleticism, marginal Americans were to be transformed into truly masculine crusaders. What began as a federal program designed to eliminate venereal disease soon mushroomed into a powerful social force intent on replacing America's many cultures witha single homogeneous one. Though committed to the positive methods of education and recreation, the reformers did not hesitate to employ repression when necessary. Those not conforming to this vision often faced exclusion from the reformers' idealized society, or sometimes even imprisonment. "Unrestrained" cultural expressiveness was stifled. Social engineering ruled the day. Combining social, cultural, and military history and illustrating the deep divisions among reformers themselves, Nancy Bristow, with the aid of dozens of evocative photographs, here brings to life a pivotal era in the history of the U.S., revealing the complex relationship between the nation's competing cultures, progressive reform efforts, and the Great War.

To the British soldiers of the Great War who heard about it, "shell shock" was uncanny, amusing, and sad. To those who experienced it, the condition was shameful, unjustly stigmatized, and life-changing. The first full-length study of the British "shell shocked" soldiers of the Great War combines social and medical history to investigate the experience of psychological casualties on the Western Front, in hospitals, and through their postwar lives. It also investigates the condition's origin and consequences within British culture.

Letters From a Yankee Doughboy is a collection of more than 125 letters written by Private 1st Class Raymond W. Maker, to his sister, Eva, a county nurse living in Framingham, Massachusetts, describing his everyday service in combat during World War 1. These letters, edited by Private Maker's grandson, Major Bruce H. Norton (USMC retired) are accompanied by 365 pocket-diary entries that Raymond religiously kept throughout the year 1918. Private Maker was assigned to Company C, 101st Field Signal Battalion, as a wireman, whose duty was to repair and replace the communications lines that were destroyed by artillery and mortar barrages during the horrific battles that took place between German infantry forces and the 26th "Yankee" Division of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), in France, from October of 1917 until the end of the war. Assigned to the 104th Infantry Regiment, Private Maker saw the very worst of ground warfare. He fought at the Battle of Belleau Wood; was gassed by German artillery forces at the Battle of Chateau-Thierry and was wounded by artillery fire outside of Verdun, just one day before the Armistice was signed. The theme of his letters will vividly evoke memories in the tens of thousands of men and women who have served their country and their friends and loved ones. As a postscript, toward the end of the war, Raymond took the key to the North Gate of Verdun as a battlefield keepsake and mailed it home to his sister, instructing her to "keep that key, as someday it will be of value." On November 11, 2018 - the centenary of Armistice Day - the author returned that key to Thierry Hubscher, the Director of the Memorial de Verdun, to be placed on display in that great Museum, closing a 100-year chapter in Raymond's life.

An extraordinary tale, much-neglected by historians, of courage, bravery and eventual tragedy which took place during the First World War in the Middle East. It is the story of a small group of people, of whom Sarah and Aaron Aaronsohn were the core, who were devoted to the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, and who were convinced that it was in imminent danger of extinction from the Turks.They resolved to help the British in Egypt by collecting military intelligence. Unfortunately, as Peter Calvocoressi points out, their understanding of the British position was quite wrong...[their] miscalculations created the tragedy which this book recounts...'

World War One was the landmark event of the first quarter of the 20th century. In "The Great War, 1914-1918, " Roy Douglas tells the history of the period through an international collection of over 100 cartoons, many of them previously unknown. This pioneering pan-European approach offers new perspectives of key themes, events and figures, forcing a new reinterpretation of the familiar. Both "establishment" and "subversive" cartoons demonstrate the real concerns of all participants from the governments of the combative powers, to the soldier to those at home.
This unique collection will inform in a fresh way the continued historical debates surrounding the Great War and the implications which reach to the present day.

A rethinking of the factors which led to the American entry into the war. The complicated situation which led to the American entry into the First World War in 1917 is often explained from the perspective of public opinion, US domestic politics, or financial and economic opportunity. This book, however,reasserts the importance of diplomats and diplomacy. Based on extensive original research, the book provides a detailed examination of British, German, and American diplomacy in the period 1914-17. It argues that British and German diplomacy in this period followed the same patterns as had been established in the preceding decades. It goes on to consider key issues which concerned diplomats, including the international legality of Britain's economic blockade of Germany, Germany's use of unrestricted submarine warfare, peace initiatives, and Germany's attempt to manipulate in its favour the long history of distrust in Mexican-American relations. Overall, the book demonstrates thatdiplomats and diplomacy played a key role, thereby providing a fresh and original approach to this crucially important subject. JUSTIN QUINN OLMSTEAD is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Central Oklahoma.

The Great War is a collection of seven original essays and three critical comments by senior scholars dealing with the greatest conflict in modern history to its time - the 1914-18 World War. The Great War is edited by the distinguished historian of the First World War, R.J.Q.Adams.

In the autumn of 1917, the British government established three batallions of infantry for the reception of non-nationalized Russian Jews. Known colloquially as the Jewish Legion, the batallions served in Egypt and Palestine, before their eventual disbandment in the late spring of 1921. By drawing on the testimonies of over 600 veterans, this unique unit is analyzed from within its political and social context, providing fresh insights into Anglo-Jewish relations during the early twentieth century.

The Zionist Masquerade is a new history of the birth of the Anglo-Zionist alliance during the Great War - a critical chapter in the history of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict. James Renton argues that the Balfour Declaration was the result of a wider phenomenon of British propaganda policies during World War I that were driven by mistaken conceptions of ethnicity, ethnic power and nationalism. From this vantage point, Renton contends that while a number of Zionist activists played a crucial role in the making of the Balfour Declaration, the end result was not the great Zionist victory that has been widely assumed. Although the Declaration came to be the basis for the British Mandate for Palestine, which made a Jewish State possible thirty years later, this was far from being the original intention of the British Government. The primary purpose of Britain's wartime support for Zionism was to secure Jewish backing for the war effort. The unintended consequences of this policy, however, were to be explosive and far-reaching.