Achievement: The Righting of a Great Wrong, 1914 to 1918

Achievement: The Righting of a Great Wrong, 1914 to 1918
Author: Ian Hall
Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1783060948

Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the Great European War in 1914, Achievement is a guide to the war on which the future of Europe turned. Ian Hall’s fascinating book examines the social, political and military circumstances of the previous 200 years, it considers the conditions that allowed one nation, Germany, to justify a war in continental Europe on a scale never before possible, sending more than eighty army divisions to invade its neighbours in what can be described as the first industrial war. Achievement also examines why Britain, at that time one of the world’s greatest industrial and Imperial powers, could send only six divisions to join the party and wonders at the accomplishment of expanding such a force to more than fifty divisions just four years later. The book’s journey includes visiting the history of the nations of Britain and continental Europe, encouraging us to wonder at the empty splendour of European monarchies, allowing us to explore the foothills of the Industrial Revolution. It also makes one or two diversions into the by ways of history to remind us of events that have shaped Britain and its place in the world. The British army, from its most senior commanders down, make appearances throughout. The decisions to be faced and examples of the courage of the fighting men and the casualties that resulted are all considered in this encompassing commentary on the Great War.

A World Undone

A World Undone
Author: G. J. Meyer
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 818
Release: 2007-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0553382403

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Drawing on exhaustive research, this intimate account details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world “Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World Undone] is a book of true greatness that prompts moments of sheer joy and pleasure. . . . It will earn generations of admirers.”—The Washington Times On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War: four long years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe. Praise for A World Undone “Meyer’s sketches of the British Cabinet, the Russian Empire, the aging Austro-Hungarian Empire . . . are lifelike and plausible. His account of the tragic folly of Gallipoli is masterful. . . . [A World Undone] has an instructive value that can scarcely be measured”—Los Angeles Times “An original and very readable account of one of the most significant and often misunderstood events of the last century.”—Steve Gillon, resident historian, The History Channel

A History of the Great War, 1914–1918

A History of the Great War, 1914–1918
Author: C.R.M.F. Cruttwell
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Total Pages: 688
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0897336607

This vivid, detailed history of World War I presents the general reader with an accurate and readable account of the campaigns and battles, along with brilliant portraits of the leaders and generals of all countries involved. Scrupulously fair, praising and blaming friend and enemy as circumstances demand, this has become established as the classic account of the first world-wide war.

1914-1918

1914-1918
Author: David Stevenson
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: World War, 1914-1918
ISBN: 9780718197957

Account of the major events of the First World War.

The Great Wrong War

The Great Wrong War
Author: Stevan Eldred-Grigg
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2014-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1775530884

An entirely new look at the shocking impact of the First World War on New Zealand. For New Zealand, World War One was wholly avoidable, wholly unnecessary — and almost wholly disastrous. Stevan Eldred-Grigg believes that the enormous cost of the war to our people was way too high — and that we still feel its effects, both socially and culturally, today. This is excellent narrative non-fiction, analysing our history in a novel way. It's very accessible but is backed up by meticulous research. Stevan goes against the accepted line and gives us a fascinating look at our social history before, during and just after WW1. Why did we go to the war in Europe? Was the country united in its desire for war? What were the economic and social consequences? What has been the impact on the psyches of New Zeland men? These and many other questions are answered in this fascinating book. In 2007 Harvey McQueen wrote in a review of New Zealand's Great War (an anthology of essays) that '[there is] a need for a general, popular history of 'our' Great War... we need a skilled writer in the mould of Sinclair, Oliver or King to give an overview and link the various elements into a coherent whole.' This is that book.

All the Kaiser's Men

All the Kaiser's Men
Author: Ian Passingham
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 419
Release: 2011-10-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0752472585

Convinced that both God and the Kaiser were on their side, the officers and men of the German Army went to war in 1914, confident that they were destined for a swift and crushing victory in the West. The vaunted Schlieffen Plan on which the anticipated German victory was based expected triumph in the West to be followed by an equally decisive success on the Eastern Front. It was not to be. From the winter of 1914 until the early months of 1918, the struggle on the Western Front was characterised by trench warfare. But our perception of the conflict takes little or no account of the realities of life 'across the wire' in the German trenches. This book redresses that imbalance and reminds us how similar these young German men were to our own Tommies. Drawing from diaries and letters, Ian Passingham charts the hopes and despair of the German soldiers, filling an important gap in the history of the Western Front.

Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918

Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914-1918
Author: John F Williams
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2005-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134244487

Reconstructs a formative part of Hitler's life oft neglected in the literature: his war experiences as a soldier Tells the story of a German regiment that fought in the all the main battles of WWI Will appeal to military historians, WWI historians, German historians and general readers of military history

Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918

Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918
Author: Tammy M. Proctor
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2010-08-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 081476780X

World War I heralded a new global era of warfare, consolidating and expanding changes that had been building throughout the previous century, while also instituting new notions of war. The 1914-18 conflict witnessed the first aerial bombing of civilian populations, the first widespread concentration camps for the internment of enemy alien civilians, and an unprecedented use of civilian labor and resources for the war effort. Humanitarian relief programs for civilians became a common feature of modern society, while food became as significant as weaponry in the fight to win. Tammy M. Proctor argues that it was World War I—the first modern, global war—that witnessed the invention of both the modern “civilian” and the “home front,” where a totalizing war strategy pitted industrial nations and their citizenries against each other. Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918, explores the different ways civilians work and function in a war situation, and broadens our understanding of the civilian to encompass munitions workers, nurses, laundresses, refugees, aid workers, and children who lived and worked in occupied zones, on home and battle fronts, and in the spaces in between. Comprehensive and global in scope, spanning the Eastern, Western, Italian, East African, and Mediterranean fronts, Proctor examines in lucid and evocative detail the role of experts in the war, the use of forced labor, and the experiences of children in the combatant countries. As in many wars, civilians on both sides of WWI were affected, and vast displacements of the populations shaped the contemporary world in countless ways, redrawing boundaries and creating or reviving lines of ethnic conflict. Exploring primary source materials and secondary studies of combatant and neutral nations, while synthesizing French, German, Dutch, and English language sources, Proctor transcends the artificial boundaries of national histories and the exclusive focus on soldiers. Instead she tells the fascinating and long-buried story of the civilian in the Great War, allowing voices from the period to speak for themselves.

Battle Tactics of the Western Front

Battle Tactics of the Western Front
Author: Paddy Griffith
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780300066630

Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war.

Zero Hour Z Day

Zero Hour Z Day
Author: Jonathan Porter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2017
Genre: Somme, 1st Battle of the, France, 1916
ISBN: 9780995691100