The Forgotten Appeasement of 1920 examines a turning point in East European history: the summer of 1920, when Lenin's Soviet Russia decided to challenge the Versailles system and launch a military attack on the continent. The outcome of this attack might have been the occupation of all of Poland and East Central Europe, and a Red Army sweep further west. This book probes the British-Soviet negotiations and diplomatic operations behind the scenes. Professor Nowak uses hitherto unexamined documents from Russian and British archives to show how (and why) top British politicians were ready to accept a new Russian imperial control over the whole of Eastern Europe. Nowak unravels this previously untold story of that first and forgotten appeasement, stopped only by the Polish military victory over the Red Army. His excellent historical craftsmanship and new sources contribute to the book's quality, filling up a lacuna in contemporary historiography. This book will appeal to researchers of geopolitical affairs and the Great Powers, the history of Poland, and the political mentality of Western elites. It will also be of interest to university students and tutors, scholars of history and international relations and - thanks to the book's brisk and fascinating narrative - amateur historians and history aficionados.

On July 1, 1916, after a five-day bombardment, 11 British and five French divisions launched their long-awaited "Big Push" on German positions on high ground above the Rivers Ancre and Somme on the Western Front. Some ground was gained, but at a terrible cost.

German machine-guns—manned by troops who had sat out the storm of shellfire in deep dugouts—inflicted terrible losses on the British infantry. The British Fourth Army lost 57,470 casualties, the French Sixth Army suffered 1,590 casualties, and the German 2nd Army 10,000. And this was but the prelude to 141 days of slaughter that would witness the deaths of between 750,000 and 1 million troops.

Andrew Roberts evokes the pity and the horror of the blackest day in the history of the British army—a summer's day turned hell on earth by modern military technology—in the words of casualties, survivors, and the bereaved.

The motorised wheels of war begin to turn
In 1914 as the B. E. F was quickly hurried to the battle lines-by whatever means possible-British troops were amused to see familiar commercial vehicles trundle past, resplendent with their colourful advertisements for household products. The French civilian population was equally amused, bemused and occasionally confused by this incongruous sight. The Great War, with powered flying machines, submarines, motor transport and tanks, was the first major mechanised war. The invention of the internal combustion engine metamorphosed the waging of war. Motor transport could efficiently move both men and materials, the dispatch rider was no longer the glittering aide-de-camp but a drab, goggled corporal on a motorcycle, and weapons of destruction could be carried behind the steel plating of motorised armoured cars and tanks. This subject fascinates those interested in the history of modern warfare and to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the Leonaur Editors have compiled this special three-in-one book about the Great War from the perspective of 'the motor.' The first title here is an excellent overview of the subject, accompanied by useful illustrations and diagrams, which covers each aspect of the motor at war. Next is a manufactures catalogue with detailed views and elevations of the very commercial vehicles that carried British troops to the front in 1914. The final piece is an extract about motor transport and armoured vehicles in the first decades of the 20th century. This is a useful reference guide for all military vehicle enthusiasts.
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.

Glasgow men on the Western Front
As every student of the Great War is aware, the escalating scale of the conflict on the Western Front required the formation of new battalions-a new citizen army formed to be equal to the size of the challenge. This is the unit history of one of them, The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce) Battalion. As its name suggests it was but one of many additional battalions raised in Scotland which would bear the name of an old regiment of the British Army in this case the 71st Foot, the HLI. Many of these battalions, particularly those raised in large urban centres, took on the character of their place and community of origin. This battalion's sister unit, the Sixteenth, for example was styled, 'The Glasgow Boy's Brigade' Battalion. The Glasgow men were dispatched to France and into the trenches with all its hardships, grinding routine and frequent raiding. The battalion served through the Battle of the Somme and went on the see action around Hulluch, Beaumont-Hamel and the Ypres Salient among others. This invaluable book also contains honours and award rolls making it invaluable for genealogists. Available in softcover and hard over with dust jacket.

This study examines the role of British newspapers during the July Crisis of 1914. The author argues that decision-makers in Berlin and London framed their policies on a reading of the British press, which expressed deep skepticism about involvement in a general European war after the Sarajevo murders. British newspapers and journalists encouraged German hopes for British neutrality, as well as the indecisive nature of Sir Edward Grey's foreign policy in 1914, helping spark the Great War.

Chaplain G.A. Studdert Kennedy has been described as the most popular British chaplain of the First World War. Widely known as "Woodbine Willie" for the cigarettes he distributed to the troops, his wartime poetry and prose communicated the challenges, hardships and hopes of the soldiers he served. As a chaplain, he was subject to the same hardships as his soldiers. This book analyses his experiences through the contemporary understanding of psychological, moral and spiritual impact of war on its survivors and suggests that the chaplain suffered from Combat Stress, Moral Injury, and Spiritual Injury. Through the analysis of his wartime and postwar publications, the author illustrates the continuing impact of war on the life of a veteran of the Great War.

In incorporating Black African soldiers on the European battleground in their war against the Germans in WWI, France needed to change the image of the African from that of savage to a loyal and courageous soldier, a non-threat to French citizenry. What emerged was the Grand Enfant, a child-like figure with a winning grin who nonetheless could be ruthless in pursuit of the Hun. Meanwhile, German propaganda persisted in portraying the African as a cannibal, being unjustly deployed by France against the civilized European. Postcards of the era were an important means of disseminating these images and demonstrate how the African soldier's image was manipulated to serve the changing needs of the European belligerents. The book contains over 150 stunning images from this propaganda war and places them in historical context. It is a pioneering study in English of a long-neglected aspect of the First World War.

Writers at War addresses the most immediate representations of the First World War in the prose of Ford Madox Ford, May Sinclair, Siegfried Sassoon and Mary Borden; it interrogates the various ways in which these writers contended with conveying their war experience from the temporal and spatial proximity of the warzone and investigates the multifarious impact of the war on the (re)development of their aesthetics. It also interrogates to what extent these texts aligned with or challenged existing social, cultural, philosophical and aesthetic norms. While this book is concerned with literary technique, the rich existing scholarship on questions of gender, trauma and cultural studies on World War I literature serves as a foundation. This book does not oppose these perspectives but offers a complementary approach based on close critical reading. The distinctiveness of this study stems from its focus on the question of representation and form and on the specific role of the war in the four authors' literary careers. This is the first scholarly work concerned exclusively with theorising prose written from the immediacy of the war. This book is intended for academics, researchers, PhD candidates, postgraduates and anyone interested in war literature.

Over the seas and far away-the world at war
In the late summer of 1914, the eyes of the world were fixed upon Europe as seemingly unstoppable German armies simultaneously marched eastwards and westwards subduing nations and forcing their armies to retreat. This was the beginning of an industrial war without precedent which would send shockwaves across the globe. This book, specially compiled by Leonaur's editors from John Buchan's excellent writings on the First World War, concentrates on the world beyond mainland Europe in the early months of the war. Readers will discover the naval battles of Heligoland Bight, Coronel, the Falkland Islands and Dogger Bank as the Imperial German Navy tested its mettle against the might of the Royal Navy. Here are accounts of German naval raiders such as the 'Emden' and the naval bombardments of British seaside towns. German and British colonial and regular troops clashed in East and West Africa and actions were fought on the coast of China and upon remote Pacific Islands. Disaffected Boers rose in rebellion in South Africa and Germany's ally, the Ottoman Turkish Empire joined the fray making advances in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and towards the strategically vital Suez Canal in Egypt. In 1914 this was a conflict far removed from the familiar mud, wire and trenches that have become emblematic of the First World War. This is a highly recommended overview of the world at war created especially to mark the centenary of the outbreak of hostilities; it includes many illustrations, photographs and maps.
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.

The execution of British matron Edith Cavell by occupying German forces was portrayed by the allies as one of the key atrocities of the Great War. This book recovers and interprets the worldwide reaction to Cavell's death, exploring its contextual relationship within imperial and international history, as well women's history and gender history.

Historical research into the Armenian Genocide has grown tremendously in recent years, but much of it has focused on large-scale questions related to Ottoman policy or the scope of the killing. Consequently, surprisingly little is known about the actual experiences of the genocide's victims. Daily Life in the Abyss illuminates this aspect through the intertwined stories of two Armenian families who endured forced relocation and deprivation in and around modern-day Syria. Through analysis of diaries and other source material, it reconstructs the rhythms of daily life within an often bleak and hostile environment, in the face of a gradually disintegrating social fabric.

Author Dr. Dennis Showalter is the winner of the 2018 Pritzker Military Lifetime Achievement Award! If wars were wagered on like pro sports or horse races, the Germany military in August 1914 would have been a clear front-runner, with a century-long record of impressive victories and a general staff the envy of its rivals. Germany's overall failure in the first year of World War I was surprising and remains a frequent subject of analysis, mostly focused on deficiencies in strategy and policy. But there were institutional weaknesses as well. This book examines the structural failures that frustrated the Germans in the war's crucial initial campaign, the invasion of Belgium. Too much routine in planning, command and execution led to groupthink, inflexibility and to an overconfident belief that nothing could go too terribly wrong. As a result, decisive operation became dicey, with consequences that Germany's military could not overcome in four long years.

An eye-opening interpretation of the infamous Gallipoli campaign that sets it in the context of global trade. In early 1915, the British government ordered the Royal Navy to force a passage of the Dardanelles Straits-the most heavily defended waterway in the world. After the Navy failed to breach Turkish defenses, British and allied ground forces stormed the Gallipoli peninsula but were unable to move off the beaches. Over the course of the year, the Allied landed hundreds of thousands of reinforcements but all to no avail. The Gallipoli campaign has gone down as one of the great disasters in the history of warfare. Previous works have focused on the battles and sought to explain the reasons for the British failure, typically focusing on First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. In this bold new account, Nicholas Lambert offers the first fully researched explanation of why Prime Minister Henry Asquith and all of his senior advisers-the War Lords-ordered the attacks in the first place, in defiance of most professional military opinion. Peeling back the manipulation of the historical record by those involved with the campaign's inception, Lambert shows that the original goals were political-economic rather than military: not to relieve pressure on the Western Front but to respond to the fall-out from the massive disruption of the international grain trade caused by the war. By the beginning of 1915, the price of wheat was rising so fast that Britain, the greatest importer of wheat in the world, feared bread riots. Meanwhile Russia, the greatest exporter of wheat in the world and Britain's ally in the east, faced financial collapse. Lambert demonstrates that the War Lords authorized the attacks at the Dardanelles to open the straits to the flow of Russian wheat, seeking to lower the price of grain on the global market and simultaneously to eliminate the need for huge British loans to support Russia's war effort. Carefully reconstructing the perspectives of the individual War Lords, this book offers an eye-opening case study of strategic policy making under pressure in a globalized world economy.

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.

How did German intelligence agents in the First World War use dead fish to pass on vital information to their operatives? What did an advertisement for a dog in The Times have to do with the movement of British troops into Egypt? And why did British personnel become suspicious about the trousers hanging on a Belgian woman's washing line? During the First World War, spymasters and their networks of secret agents developed many ingenious - and occasionally hilarious - methods of communication. Puffs of smoke from a chimney, stacks of bread in a bakery window, even knitted woollen jumpers were all used to convey secret messages decipherable only by well-trained eyes. Melanie King retells the astonishing story of these and many other tricks of the espionage trade, now long forgotten, through the memoirs of eight spies. Among them are British intelligence officers working undercover in France and Germany, including a former officer from the Metropolitan Police who once hunted Jack the Ripper. There is also the German Secret Service officer, codenamed Agricola, who spied on the Eastern Front, an American newspaperman and an Austrian agent who disguised himself as everything from a Jewish pedlar to a Russian officer. Drawing on the words of many of the spies themselves, Secrets in a Dead Fish is a fascinating compendium of clever and original ruses that casts new light into the murky world of espionage during the First World War.

A unique and vivid first hand account of a young soldier, one of the millions who fought in World War I. Walter Williams volunteered at age fifteen and after completing his initial training in Shrewsbury, passed through the notorious training camp at Etaples before being plunged into the horrors of trench warfare. He fought in some of the major battles of the war including Passchendaele, the Somme and Vimy Ridge - and was badly wounded during the final attack on the Hindenburg line in September 1918, when he was hit by machine-gun fire from an enemy plane. After spending some months in a French hospital in Dieppe, he was repatriated to England where he made a full recovery. Walter's story was captured on an ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder during long conversations with his two nephews, Michael and Derek, who went on to research and verify the events he described before producing this remarkable story. Walter died in 1998, by which time he was one of the last veterans of World War I.

This book highlights the important, yet often forgotten, roles that Jamaican women played in the World Wars. Predicated on the notion that warfare has historically been an agent of change, Dalea Bean contends that traces of this truism were in Jamaica and illustrates that women have historically been part of the war project, both as soldiers and civilians. This ground-breaking work fills a gap in the historiography of Jamaican women by positioning the World Wars as watershed periods for their changing roles and status in the colony. By unearthing critical themes such as women's war work as civilians, recruitment of men for service in the British West India Regiment, the local suffrage movement in post-Great War Jamaica, and Jamaican women's involvement as soldiers in the British Army during the Second World War, this book presents the most extensive and holistic account of Jamaican women's involvement in the wars.

During the twilight years of the Ottoman Empire, the ethnic tensions between the minority populations within the empire led to the administration carrying out a systematic destruction of the Armenian people. This not only brought two thousand years of Armenian civilisation within Anatolia to an end but was accompanied by the mass murder of Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians. Containing a selection of papers presented at "The Genocide of the Christian Populations of the Ottoman Empire and its Aftermath (1908-1923)" international conference, hosted by the Chair for Pontic Studies at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, this book draws on unpublished archival material and an innovative historiographical approach to analyze events and their legacy in comparative perspective. In order to understand the historical context of the Ottoman Genocide, it is important to study, apart from the Armenian case, the fate of the Greek and Assyrian peoples, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the complexity of the situation. This volume is primarily a research contribution but should also be valued as a supplementary text that would provide secondary reading for undergraduates and postgraduate students.

The civilian police during the First World War in Great Britain were central to the control of the population at home. This book will show the detail and challenges of police work during the First World War and how this impacted on ordinary people's daily lives. The aim is to tell the story of the police as they saw themselves through the pages of their best-known journal, The Police Review and Parade Gossip, in addition to a wide range of other published, archival and private sources.

This beautifully illustrated book provides information on the air arms of the nations which took part in aerial warfare during the First World War featuring the Aces and their mounts. The war was a global conflict with 57 nations involved, but with aviation being in its infancy only eight nations had a major air arm to their fighting Services. The Allies: Britain, America, Italy, Belgium, France, and Russia and then the Central Powers comprising Germany and Austria-Hungary. This book is not intended to be comprehensive, for to provide such a work would require many volumes totalling thousands of pages. Instead this should be viewed as a relatively detailed overview; a general introduction to the topic of military aviation in the First World War. The aim has been to produce a well-illustrated book to maintain the interest of the reader with some short biographies of the leading Aces and basic information on the aircraft types used, and their development during the First World War. Furthermore, this book focuses on the air arms initially developed by the respective armies, and therefore the air arms of the navies, although fleetingly touched upon, are not dealt with in much detail. To provide reasonable coverage for the Royal Naval Air Service alone would require a separate and substantial additional volume. In a similar manner, although Zeppelins, other airships and balloons are mentioned and illustrated, little detail is given. The book contains details of the top Aces for each nation and in extensive illustration sections provides an extensive summary of the aircraft flown. While much of the focus is on the Aces, the book provides information on the aircraft flown and also has a separate illustrated section on Manfred von Richthofen and his 'flying circus'.

From the Treaty of Versailles to the 2018 centenary and beyond, the history of the First World War has been continually written and rewritten, studied and contested, producing a rich historiography shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation. Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars in the field. By analyzing perceptions of the war in contexts ranging from Nazi Germany to India's struggle for independence, this is an illuminating collective study of the complex interplay of memory and history.

Australia, Wilkommen (1990) documents the rich and varying contribution made by Germans in Australia. Originally welcomed as hardy pioneers, German settlers were responsible for discovering and opening up vast tracts of land. German scientists and entrepreneurs played a large role in the Australian economy. But as the German empire expanded into the Pacific, and Britain and Australia were drawn into two world wars, perceptions of Germany and its people changed and immigrants were caught in the crossfire between the old and new worlds. This book examines these issues surrounding German immigration into Australia, and the shifting perceptions of both the immigrants and the nation itself.