The First World War, Second Edition: A Complete HistoryMacmillan, 2004 - 615 pages At 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo, the twentieth century could be said to have been born. The repercussions of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand -- Emperor Franz Josef's nephew and heir apparent -- by a Bosnian Serb are with us to this day. The immediate aftermath of that act was war. Global in extent, it would last almost five years and leave five million civilian casualties and more than nine million military dead. On both the Allied and Central Powers sides, losses -- missing, wounded, dead -- were enormous. After the war, barely a town or village in Europe was without its monument to the dead. The war also left us with new technologies of death: tanks, planes, and submarines; reliable rapid-fire machine guns and artillery; motorized cavalry. It ushered in new tactics of warfare: shipping convoys and U-boat packs, dog fights and reconnaissance air support. And it bequeathed to us terrors we still cannot control: poison gas and chemical warfare, strategic bombing of civilian targets, massacres and atrocities against entire population groups. But most of all, it changed our world. In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, whole political systems realigned. Instabilities became institutionalized, enmities enshrined. Revolution swept to power ideologies of the left and right. And the social order shifted seismically. Manners, mores, codes of behavior; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions: all underwent a vast sea change. In all these ways, the twentieth century could be said to have been born on the morning of June 28, 1914. Now, in a companion volume to his acclaimed The Second World War, Martin Gilbert weaves together all of these elements to create a stunning, dramatic, and informative narrative. The First World War is everything we have come to expect from the scholar the Times Literary Supplement placed "in the first rank of contemporary historians." |
Contents
Prelude to war I | 1 |
Wild with joy | 16 |
The opening struggle | 35 |
From Mons to the Marne | 55 |
the start of trench warfare | 78 |
mud and slime and vermin | 100 |
Stalemate and the search for breakthroughs | 124 |
The Gallipoli landings | 146 |
The intensification of the war | 301 |
War desertion mutiny | 324 |
Stalemate in the west turmoil in the east | 343 |
Battle at Passchendaele Revolution in Russia | 363 |
The Central Powers on the verge of triumph | 393 |
Germanys last great onslaught | 406 |
The Allied counterattack | 431 |
The turn of the tide | 454 |
The Entente in danger | 154 |
TO The Central Powers in the ascendant | 176 |
The continuing failure of the Entente | 196 |
This war will end at Verdun | 224 |
Europe is mad The world is mad | 244 |
It is going to be a bloody holocaust | 258 |
War on every front | 282 |
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Common terms and phrases
action advance Allied American troops April Arab armistice artillery attack August Australian Austria-Hungary Austrian battalion battle battlefield Belgian Belgium Berlin Bolsheviks bombardment bombs Britain British Expeditionary Force British soldiers British troops Bulgarian Captain captured casualties Churchill commander continued counter-attack Dardanelles days later dead death declared defenders diary divisions earlier east Eastern fighting fire Foch following day forces France French front line Gallipoli German soldiers German submarine German troops Government Haig hundred Imperial War Museum Indian Italian July June Kaiser killed land later recalled Lieutenant Lloyd George London Ludendorff machine guns March Martin Gilbert miles military million Minister months naval night November October offensive officer Paris peace Pershing Petrograd railway reached regiment retreat river Russian Salonica Front sent September Serbia Serbs shells ships shot Somme taken prisoner told town Turkish Turks Vera Brittain Verdun Victoria Cross victory village weeks Western Front World wounded wrote Ypres