The unprecedented scope and intensity of the First World War has prompted an enormous body of retrospective scholarship. However, efforts to provide a coherent synthesis about the war's impact and significance have remained circumscribed, tending to focus either on the operational outlines of military strategy and tactics or on the cultural legacy of the conflict as transmitted bythe war's most articulate observers. This volume departs from traditional accounts on several scores: by exploring issues barely touched upon in previous works, by deviating from the widespread tendency to treat the experiences of front and homefront isolation, and by employing a thematic treatment that, by considering the construction of authority and identity between 1914 and 1918, illuminates the fundamental question of how individuals, whether in uniform or not, endured the war's intrusion into so many aspects of their public and private lives.

The unprecedented scope and intensity of the First World War has prompted an enormous body of retrospective scholarship. However, efforts to provide a coherent synthesis about the war's impact and significance have remained circumscribed, tending to focus either on the operational outlines of military strategy and tactics or on the cultural legacy of the conflict as transmitted bythe war's most articulate observers. This volume departs from traditional accounts on several scores: by exploring issues barely touched upon in previous works, by deviating from the widespread tendency to treat the experiences of front and homefront isolation, and by employing a thematic treatment that, by considering the construction of authority and identity between 1914 and 1918, illuminates the fundamental question of how individuals, whether in uniform or not, endured the war's intrusion into so many aspects of their public and private lives.

Drawing upon recently discovered diaries, almost all of which were previously unpublished, this book provides an intimate look at how ordinary soldiers and civilians experienced and reflected upon the physical and psychological strains of the First World War. It reprints the personal wartime diaries of six individuals with differing experiences: a British sapper who dug precarious tunnels beneath the trenches of the Western Front, a French infantry officer embroiled in years of bloody combat, an idealistic American volunteer ambulance driver who sought to save lives rather than take them, a German businessman caught in England upon the war's outbreak and interned there for the duration, a New Zealand artilleryman fighting thousand of miles from home, and a German machine gunner, captured and held as a prisoner of war. Taken together, their experiences illuminate many of the iconic episodes of the war, from the upheaval of mobilization through the great battles of Gallipoli, Verdun, and the Somme, as well as the less familiar 'other ordeal' of internment and captivity. These six diaries enable us to eavesdrop, a century later, on their authors' intimate reactions as they came of age-literally as young men in their early twenties, figuratively as veterans-in an environment of total war that none could have imagined. Commitment and Sacrifice introduces new and distinctive voices to be added to the chorus of testimony regarding the impact of the Great War.

An edited volume of primary sources from the Second World War, The World in Flames: A World War II Sourcebook is the first of its kind to provide an ambitious and wide-ranging survey of the war in a convenient and comprehensive package. Conveying the sheer scale and reach of the conflict, the book's twelve chapters include sufficient narrative and analysis to enable students to grasp both the war's broad outlines and the context and significance of each particular source.
Beginning with the growing disenchantment over the World War I peace settlements and the determination of German, Italian, and Japanese leaders to revise the situation, the book traces the descent into open, armed conflict. It covers the spectacular early successes of the Germans and Japanese, the pivotal campaigns of 1942, and the Allied effort during the remaining three years to destroy the Axis' capacity to wage war. Drawing examples from a wide range of documents, the text also includes visual sources: propaganda posters, photos, and cartoons.

This book traces the development of the German Army League from its inception through the earliest days of the Weimar Republic. Founded in January 1912, the League promoted the intensification of German militarism and the cultivation of German nationalism. As the last and second largest of the patriotic societies to emerge after 1890, the League led the campaign for army expansion in 1912 and 1913, and against the growing influence of socialism and pacifism within Germany. Attempting to harness popular and nationalist sentiment against the government's foreign and domestic policies by preying on Germans' fears of defeat and socialism, the League contributed to the polarization of German society and aggravated the international tensions which culminated in the Great War. Coetzee combines an analysis of the League's principal personalities and policies with an exploration of the inner workings of local and regional branches, arguing that rather than having served solely as a barometer of populist nationalist sentiment, the League also reflected the machinations of men of education and prominence who believed that an unresponsive German government had stifled their own careers, dealt ineffectually with the prospect of domestic unrest, and squandered the nation's military superiority over its European rivals.

For years, those who attempted to understand the devastation of World War I looked to the collections of diplomatic documents, the stirring speeches, and the partisan memoirs of the leading participants. However, those accounts offered little by way of the intimate history, or the individual experiences of those involved in the Great War. In Commitment and Sacrifice, Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee and Frans Coetzee provide just such an "intimate look" by bringing together previously unpublished diaries of five participants in the First World War and restoring to publication the diary of a sixth that has long been out of print. The six diaries address the war on the Western front and the Mediterranean, as well as behind the lines on the home front. Together, these diarists form a diverse group: John French, a British sapper who dug precarious tunnels beneath the trenches of the Western Front; Henri Desagneaux, a French infantry officer embroiled in years of bloody combat; Philip T. Cate, an idealistic American volunteer ambulance driver who sought to save lives rather than take them; Willy Wolff, a German businessman caught in England upon the war's outbreak and interned there for the duration; James Douglas Hutchison, a New Zealand artilleryman fighting thousands of miles from home; and Felix Kaufmann, a German machine gunner, captured and held as a prisoner of war. Through the personal reflections of these young men, we are transported into many of the iconic episodes of the war, from the upheaval of mobilization through the great battles of Gallipoli, Verdun, and the Somme, as well as the less familiar "other ordeal" of internment and captivity. As members of the so-called Generation of 1914 (each was between nineteen and twenty-four years old), they shared an unwavering commitment to their countries' cause, and possessed a steadfast determination to persevere despite often appalling circumstances. Collectively, these diaries illuminate the sacrifices of war, whether willingly volunteered or stoically endured. That the diarists had the desire and the ingenuity to record their experiences, whether for their families, posterity, or simply their own personal satisfaction, gives readers the ability to eavesdrop on horrors long past. A century later, we are fortunate that they were both willing and able to set pencil to paper.