A gripping chronicle of the personal and political rivalries from the birth of Queen Victoria to the unification of Germany during the decades leading up to WW1 from Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie 2018 marks the centenary of the end of the First World War. How did it all begin? With the biographer's rare genius for expressing the essence of extraordinary lives, Massie brings to life a crowd of glittering figures: the young, ambitious Winston Churchill; the ruthless, sycophantic Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow; Britain's greatest twentieth-century Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey; and Jacky Fisher, the eccentric admiral who revolutionised the British Navy and brought forth the battleship, H.M.S. Dreadnought. Their story, and the story of the era, filled with misunderstanding and tensions, missed opportunities, and events leading to unintended conclusions, unfolds like a Greek tragedy in this powerful narrative. Intimately human and dramatic, Dreadnought is history at its most riveting. 'History at its best, a fantastic mix of anecdote, observation and intelligent thinking' Dan Snow, Daily Express

This work shows the importance of analyzing the "low" politics of areas that have traditionally been dominated by "high" politics. The role of bodies such as the Liberal Summer School and the Women's Liberal Federation are examined, along with the work of thinkers such as JM Keynes and Ramsay Muir. The text should make two major contributions to our knowledge of the role of international relations in British politics in the inter-war years. First, by analysing the Liberal Party's principles and policies on international relations, it offers a perspective on British Liberalism. Second, by exploring the Liberal Party's alternative to the Baldwin-Chamberlain policy of appeasement, it enters the historical debate on the options open to Britain in the 1930s, and shows that there was a Liberal alternative to appeasement.

This is a rich yet succinct account of an underexplored story: the consequences of the Great War for the region which ignited it. It offers a fascinating tapestry: the collapse of Empires, the birth of Turkey and Yugoslavia, Greece as both victor and loser, Bulgaria's humiliating defeat; bitter memories, forced migrations, territorial implications and collective national amnesias. The legacies live on. The contributions in this volume significantly enhance the debate about how the Great War is remembered in South East Europe, and why it still evokes such strong emotions and reactions, more than a century after its beginnings.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

Intimate and richly detailed, The Beauty of Living begins with Cummings's Cambridge, Massachusetts upbringing and his relationship with his socially progressive but domestically domineering father. It follows Cummings through his undergraduate experience at Harvard, where he fell into a circle of aspiring writers including John Dos Passos, who became a lifelong friend. Steeped in classical paganism and literary decadence, Cummings and his friends rode the explosion of Cubism, Futurism, Imagism and other "modern" movements in the arts. As the United States prepared to enter the First World War, Cummings volunteered as an ambulance driver, was shipped out to Paris and met his first love, Marie Louise Lallemand, who was working in Paris as a prostitute. Soon after reaching the front, however, he was unjustly imprisoned in a brutal French detention centre at La Ferte-Mace. Through this confrontation with arbitrary and sadistic authority, he found the courage to listen to his own voice. Probing an underexamined yet formative time in the poet's life, this deeply researched account illuminates his ideas about love, justice, humanity and brutality. J. Alison Rosenblitt weaves together letters, journal entries and sketches with astute analyses of poems that span Cummings' career, revealing the origins of one of the twentieth century's most famous poets.

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.

Food is critical to military performance, but it is also central to social interaction and fundamental to our sense of identity. The soldiers of the Great War did not shed their eating preferences with their civilian clothes, and the army rations, heavily reliant on bully beef and hardtack biscuit, were frequently found wanting. Nutritional science of the day had only a limited understanding of the role of vitamins and minerals, and the men were often presented with a diet that, shortages and logistics permitting, was high in calories but low in flavour and variety. Just as now, soldiers on active service were linked with home through the lovingly packed food parcels they received; a taste of home in the trenches. This book uses the personal accounts of the men themselves to explore a subject that was central not only to their physical health, but also to their emotional survival. -- .

In the English-speaking world the Great War maintains a tenacious grip on the public imagination, and also continues to draw historians to an event which has been interpreted variously as a symbol of modernity, the midwife to the twentieth century and an agent of social change. Although much 'common knowledge' about the war and its aftermath has included myth, simplification and generalisation, this has often been accepted uncritically by popular and academic writers alike. While Britain may have suffered a surfeit of war books, many telling much the same story, there is far less written about the impact of the Great War in other combatant nations. Its history was long suppressed in both fascist Italy and the communist Soviet Union: only recently have historians of Russia begun to examine a conflict which killed, maimed and displaced so many millions. Even in France and Germany the experience of 1914-18 has often been overshadowed by the Second World War. The war's social history is now ripe for reassessment and revision. The essays in this volume incorporate a European perspective, engage with the historiography of the war, and consider how the primary textural, oral and pictorial evidence has been used - or abused. Subjects include the politics of shellshock, the impact of war on women, the plight of refugees, food distribution in Berlin and portrait photography, all of which illuminate key debates in war history.

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.

On November 30, 1916, an apparently ordinary freighter left harbor in Kiel, Germany, and would not touch land again for another fifteen months. It was the beginning of an astounding 64,000-mile voyage that was to take the ship around the world, leaving a trail of destruction and devastation in her wake. For this was no ordinary freighter--this was the "Wolf, "a disguised German warship.
In this gripping account of an audacious and lethal World War I expedition, Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen depict the "Wolf "'s assignment: to terrorize distant ports of the British Empire by laying minefields and sinking freighters, thus hastening Germany's goal of starving her enemy into submission. Yet to maintain secrecy, she could never pull into port or use her radio, and to comply with the rules of sea warfare, her captain fastidiously tried to avoid killing civilians aboard the merchant ships he attacked, taking their crews and passengers prisoner before sinking the vessels.
The "Wolf "thus became a huge floating prison, with more than 400 captives, including a number of women and children, from twenty-five different nations. Sexual affairs were kindled between the German crew and some female prisoners. A six-year-old American girl, captured while sailing across the Pacific with her parents, was adopted as a mascot by the Germans.
Forced to survive on food and fuel plundered from other ships, facing death from scurvy, and hunted by the combined navies of five Allied nations, the Germans and their prisoners came to share a common bond. The will to survive transcended enmities of race, class, and nationality.
It was to be one of the most daring clandestine naval missions of modern times. Under the command of Captain Karl Nerger, who conducted his deadly business with an admirable sense of chivalry, the "Wolf "traversed three of the world's major oceans and destroyed more than thirty Allied vessels.
We learn of the world through which the "Wolf "moved, with all its social divisions and xenophobia, its bravery and stoicism, its combination of old-world social mores and rapid technological change. The story of this epic voyage is a vivid real-life narrative and simultaneously a richly detailed picture of a world being profoundly transformed by war.

This book addresses the many avenues that are still left unexplored when it comes to our understanding of the First World War in the Low Countries. With the ongoing the centenary of the Great War, many events have been organized in the United Kingdom to commemorate its military events, its socio-political consequences, and its cultural legacy. Of these events, very few have paid attention to the fates of Belgium or the Netherlands, even though it was the invasion of Belgium in August 1914 that was the catalyst for Great Britain declaring war. The occupation of Belgium had long-term consequences for its people, but much of the military and social history of the Western Front concentrates on northern France, and the Netherlands is largely forgotten as a nation affected by the First World War. By opening the field beyond the military and beyond the front, this collection explores the interdisciplinary and international nature of the Great War.