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The First World War: The War to End All Wars
Raging for over four years across the tortured landscapes of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the First World War changed the face of warfare forever. Characterized by slow, costly advances and fierce attrition, the great battles of the Somme, Verdun and Ypres incurred human loss on a scale never previously imagined. This book, with a foreword by Professor Hew Strachan, covers the fighting on all fronts, from Flanders to Tannenberg and from Italy to Palestine. A series of moving extracts from personal letters, diaries and journals bring to life the experiences of soldiers and civilians caught up in the war.
384 pages, Paperback
First published September 25, 2003
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136 people want to read
About the author
Peter Simkins
33 books3 followersPeter Simkins worked at the Imperial War Museum for over 35 years and was its Senior Historian from 1976 until his retirement in 1999. Awarded the MBE that year for his services to the Museum, he is currently Honorary Professor in Modern History at the University of Birmingham, a Vice-President of the Western Front Association and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
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January 30, 2022
Book: The First World War: The War to End All Wars
Author: Peter Simkins, Geoffrey Jukes, Michael Hickey, Hew Strachan
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (25 September 2003)
Language: English
Paperback: 352 pages
Item Weight: 1 kg 150 g
Dimensions: 17.15 x 2.41 x 24.77 cm
Price: 1834/-
About 105 years ago, the First World War unfalteringly marked a defining moment in European and world history, and over the past 50 years and more than ever during its centenary, scholarship on the war has expanded very much, deepening our knowledge of its origins, route, and effects.
The book will show you that World War I was in many ways utterly novel in human history. The preceding wars had involved as many states and lasted even longer.
In every decade since 1815, there had been a war somewhere. As a matter of fact, 13 separate wars had been fought in Europe itself. However, if there had been no universal peace, there had been no universal war.
The World War I was the first broad-spectrum conflict between the extremely organised states of the 20th century.
The belligerents were able to command the energies of all their citizens, mobilize the productive ability of modern industries, and employ the resources of modern technology to find out new methods of destruction and defence.
It was the first war on a huge scale which dislocated international economy.
The war was fought with resolve and nervousness. The belligerents believed that they were fighting for survival.
They also believed that they were fighting for principles. The war was fought in Europe to a point of exhaustion or collapse. The war was fought on land and above land, on sea and under the sea.
The coming of the tank and airplane and submarine made warfare three-dimensional. New resources of economic and even physiological warfare were tapped.
It was the first war of the masses. It was a war between the whole peoples and not merely between armies and navies. This war between the gram alliances had many qualities of a Frankenstein monster.
The wars of Bismarck had been instrument of precision for attaining diplomatic and political ends. They rested on policies of limited labeler’ and specific objectives. The war of 1914 got as utterly out of hand as an instrument of policy that are demanded unlimited liability.
Its original objectives were ignored and other considerations came in the front.
Even the aims of the belligerents changed in course of war. Its outcome was different from the original or the subsequent aims of either side. Its greatest novelty was the great disparity between the ends sought the price paid and the results obtained.
In his introduction to this book, Professor Robert O’Neill writes, “The First World War challenged political and military leaders in a way in which no other conflict had since the Napoleonic Wars of a century earlier. It was the first truly global conflict among several major powers, ranging across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, and hence over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Of course the principal instigators, Germany and Austria-Hungary, did not intend the war to be anything other than a European conflict, with later consequences for the wider world.”
Winston Churchill wrote subsequently: ‘No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed.
Nor was there any other period in the War when the general battle was waged on so great a scale, when the slaughter was so swift or the stakes so high. Moreover, in the beginning our faculties of wonder, horror and excitement had not been cauterized and deadened by the furnace fires of years.’
All this was so, though few of Churchill’s fellow participants in those enormous events embraced them with such eager appetite.
This book has been divided into four broad chapters:
Chapter I: The Western Front 1914–1916
Chapter 2: The Western Front 1917–1918
Chapter 3: The Eastern Front 1914–1918
Chapter 4: The Mediterranean Front 1914–1923
Although England joined the war on the plea that Germany had violated the impartiality of Belgium, the latter could not be saved. The German steam roller was able to shatter the opposition of the people of Belgium.
Then came the turn of France ---there was bitter fighting on the French soil. The Battle of Marne is an unforgettable one for trench warfare. The Battle of Verdun decided the fortunes of the war in favour of the Allies.
Germany started submarine warfare on a big scale and nothing was spared on the seas. All laws relating to naval warfare were thrown to the winds. Merely the code of ‘victory at any price’ was pursued.
Russia fought on the side of the Allies up to 1917 when a revolution took place in that country. The Czarist regime was overthrown and power was eventually captured by Lenin and his followers. The Bolshevist regime in Russia wanted peace and as a result it came to terms with Germany and thus the Treaty of Brest Litvosk was signed between Germany and Russia.
After the defection of Russia in 1917, the position of Germany became very strong. The drives of Flindenburg and Ludendorff carried everything before them.
It appeared as if the Allies were going to lose.
However, the U.S.A. came to their help. The Lusitania, an American ship, was torpedoed by a German submarine and as a result numerous Americans lost their lives.
There was a lot of bitterness in the U.S.A. and that enabled President Wilson to declare war against Germany. Fresh troops began to pour into Europe from the U.S.A. Notwithstanding her best efforts, Germany could not stand and eventually surrendered in November 1918.
Turkey also fought on the side of the Central Powers. It is true that she had preliminary success and the Allies met with reverses chiefly in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. Ultimately Turkey was defeated and she too had to surrender.
Japan declared war against the Central Powers in 1914 and she was able to capture the province Kai-Chow and the German concessions in the province of Shantung.
Although China also joined the Allies, she was presented with 21 demands by Japan.
The European Powers were entangled in a life and death struggle and consequently Japan was able to have her own way. Most of her demands were conceded and China practically came under the control of Japan.
It is true that there was resentment in China, but the position of Japan was vindicated even at the Paris Conference in 1919.
The spirit in which the war was fought, was described in "For All We Have And Are" by Kipling, thus:
No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all—
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
What was the outcome of World War I?
What was the repercussion?
The book tells you that when the War ended, each confrontational nation bore permanent wounds. Millions of men were either killed or disabled. Russia lost more than two million, Germany nearly two million, France and her colonies nearly one and a half million, Austria-Hungary one and a quarter million and the British Empire nearly one million.
The loss of lives so far as the United States was concerned was about 115,000. About 10 million men of all nations lost their lives. Most of them were under 40 years of age. More than twice that number was wounded. A considerable proportion of them were maimed for life.
All the wars from the time of Napoleon to the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 had cost less the four and a half million lives. It was calculated in France that between August 1914 and February’ 1917, one Frenchman was killed every minute. That had never been the case before.
Everywhere the structure of population both in sex and in age groups was affected. The number of women who died was very small. As more men had died than women, the problem of surplus women was to be faced.
The ideal of national economic self-sufficiency was born directly out of the needs of the war. Autark became a favourite notion of the inter-war period and means to make it possible were discover during the war.
To make explosives, Fritz Haber perfected the process of extracting nitrogen from the air because nitrates could no longer be imported from Chile. Cellulose was invented in the laboratory as a substitute for cotton.
Further research in that direction resulted in a series of new industries making rayon’s and plastics and synthetic materials.
The occupied territories of Europe suffered much. As Belgium was a battlefield, there was great destruction there. The economy the country was wrecked. Its cities were ruined.
Many of its people became refugees or deportees or prisoner of war. When the Russians were driven out of Polish territory, the Germans behaved as liherators Many Poles preferred German rule to Russian rule.
And the book reminds you that – “the major consequence was the creation of the Soviet Union”.
A pungent civil war resulted in the replacement of a self-proclaimed autocracy by an autocracy, then an oligarchy, that both claimed to be democratic and socialist, and of a self-proclaimed empire by an empire that claimed to be the arch-enemy of empires.
Stalin’s autocracy would prove far more tyrannical than that of Nicholas II, but also much more well-organized at harnessing the nation’s resources and industrialising its economy.
In 1941–1945 the Soviet Union would experience losses of people and territory far greater than those that brought down Tsarism.
But it would emerge a successful superpower, form a bloc of satellite states, and remain a superpower until in 1991 the empire collapsed yet again, leaving post-Soviet Russia with western frontiers confidentially resembling those imposed by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
What then does a reader carry away from this book?
The following points:
1) It is typically thought that the Cold War between communism and capitalism began at the end of the Second World War but in many ways it began at the end of the First World War.
2) The building of communism in Russia further undermined Wilson’s vision of a peaceful world in which democratic and capitalist nation-states participated in a League of Nations.
3) In a cruel irony, the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate blocked ratification of the Versailles Treaty, on the grounds that participation in a League of Nations would require the United States to intervene in overseas conflicts, when it was the constitutional prerogative of the Congress to declare war.
4) Wilson campaigned tough for ratification. Stress and exhaustion almost certainly helped to cause Wilson to suffer from a stroke, from which he never fully recovered. Meanwhile, the United States slid toward isolation from world events.
5) The next American president, the Republican Warren Harding, concluded separate peace treaties with the Central Powers. American isolationism, combined with Russian Bolshevism, French and British mean-spiritedness, and resentful nationalism in Germany, Italy, and Japan, all contributed to the advent of totalitarianism and war in the 1930s.
6) Antipathy spread to Europe’s colonies, too, when devotion was not repaid with liberty. For all these reasons it is not surprising that some historians argue that the First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War—and the wars associated with decolonization—were one incessant quarrel.
Read this book if you’re a World history buff. Lots of food for thought!
Author: Peter Simkins, Geoffrey Jukes, Michael Hickey, Hew Strachan
Publisher: Osprey Publishing (25 September 2003)
Language: English
Paperback: 352 pages
Item Weight: 1 kg 150 g
Dimensions: 17.15 x 2.41 x 24.77 cm
Price: 1834/-
About 105 years ago, the First World War unfalteringly marked a defining moment in European and world history, and over the past 50 years and more than ever during its centenary, scholarship on the war has expanded very much, deepening our knowledge of its origins, route, and effects.
The book will show you that World War I was in many ways utterly novel in human history. The preceding wars had involved as many states and lasted even longer.
In every decade since 1815, there had been a war somewhere. As a matter of fact, 13 separate wars had been fought in Europe itself. However, if there had been no universal peace, there had been no universal war.
The World War I was the first broad-spectrum conflict between the extremely organised states of the 20th century.
The belligerents were able to command the energies of all their citizens, mobilize the productive ability of modern industries, and employ the resources of modern technology to find out new methods of destruction and defence.
It was the first war on a huge scale which dislocated international economy.
The war was fought with resolve and nervousness. The belligerents believed that they were fighting for survival.
They also believed that they were fighting for principles. The war was fought in Europe to a point of exhaustion or collapse. The war was fought on land and above land, on sea and under the sea.
The coming of the tank and airplane and submarine made warfare three-dimensional. New resources of economic and even physiological warfare were tapped.
It was the first war of the masses. It was a war between the whole peoples and not merely between armies and navies. This war between the gram alliances had many qualities of a Frankenstein monster.
The wars of Bismarck had been instrument of precision for attaining diplomatic and political ends. They rested on policies of limited labeler’ and specific objectives. The war of 1914 got as utterly out of hand as an instrument of policy that are demanded unlimited liability.
Its original objectives were ignored and other considerations came in the front.
Even the aims of the belligerents changed in course of war. Its outcome was different from the original or the subsequent aims of either side. Its greatest novelty was the great disparity between the ends sought the price paid and the results obtained.
In his introduction to this book, Professor Robert O’Neill writes, “The First World War challenged political and military leaders in a way in which no other conflict had since the Napoleonic Wars of a century earlier. It was the first truly global conflict among several major powers, ranging across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, and hence over the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Of course the principal instigators, Germany and Austria-Hungary, did not intend the war to be anything other than a European conflict, with later consequences for the wider world.”
Winston Churchill wrote subsequently: ‘No part of the Great War compares in interest with its opening. The measured, silent drawing together of gigantic forces, the uncertainty of their movements and positions, the number of unknown and unknowable facts made the first collision a drama never surpassed.
Nor was there any other period in the War when the general battle was waged on so great a scale, when the slaughter was so swift or the stakes so high. Moreover, in the beginning our faculties of wonder, horror and excitement had not been cauterized and deadened by the furnace fires of years.’
All this was so, though few of Churchill’s fellow participants in those enormous events embraced them with such eager appetite.
This book has been divided into four broad chapters:
Chapter I: The Western Front 1914–1916
Chapter 2: The Western Front 1917–1918
Chapter 3: The Eastern Front 1914–1918
Chapter 4: The Mediterranean Front 1914–1923
Although England joined the war on the plea that Germany had violated the impartiality of Belgium, the latter could not be saved. The German steam roller was able to shatter the opposition of the people of Belgium.
Then came the turn of France ---there was bitter fighting on the French soil. The Battle of Marne is an unforgettable one for trench warfare. The Battle of Verdun decided the fortunes of the war in favour of the Allies.
Germany started submarine warfare on a big scale and nothing was spared on the seas. All laws relating to naval warfare were thrown to the winds. Merely the code of ‘victory at any price’ was pursued.
Russia fought on the side of the Allies up to 1917 when a revolution took place in that country. The Czarist regime was overthrown and power was eventually captured by Lenin and his followers. The Bolshevist regime in Russia wanted peace and as a result it came to terms with Germany and thus the Treaty of Brest Litvosk was signed between Germany and Russia.
After the defection of Russia in 1917, the position of Germany became very strong. The drives of Flindenburg and Ludendorff carried everything before them.
It appeared as if the Allies were going to lose.
However, the U.S.A. came to their help. The Lusitania, an American ship, was torpedoed by a German submarine and as a result numerous Americans lost their lives.
There was a lot of bitterness in the U.S.A. and that enabled President Wilson to declare war against Germany. Fresh troops began to pour into Europe from the U.S.A. Notwithstanding her best efforts, Germany could not stand and eventually surrendered in November 1918.
Turkey also fought on the side of the Central Powers. It is true that she had preliminary success and the Allies met with reverses chiefly in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. Ultimately Turkey was defeated and she too had to surrender.
Japan declared war against the Central Powers in 1914 and she was able to capture the province Kai-Chow and the German concessions in the province of Shantung.
Although China also joined the Allies, she was presented with 21 demands by Japan.
The European Powers were entangled in a life and death struggle and consequently Japan was able to have her own way. Most of her demands were conceded and China practically came under the control of Japan.
It is true that there was resentment in China, but the position of Japan was vindicated even at the Paris Conference in 1919.
The spirit in which the war was fought, was described in "For All We Have And Are" by Kipling, thus:
No easy hope or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all—
One life for each to give.
What stands if Freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?
What was the outcome of World War I?
What was the repercussion?
The book tells you that when the War ended, each confrontational nation bore permanent wounds. Millions of men were either killed or disabled. Russia lost more than two million, Germany nearly two million, France and her colonies nearly one and a half million, Austria-Hungary one and a quarter million and the British Empire nearly one million.
The loss of lives so far as the United States was concerned was about 115,000. About 10 million men of all nations lost their lives. Most of them were under 40 years of age. More than twice that number was wounded. A considerable proportion of them were maimed for life.
All the wars from the time of Napoleon to the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 had cost less the four and a half million lives. It was calculated in France that between August 1914 and February’ 1917, one Frenchman was killed every minute. That had never been the case before.
Everywhere the structure of population both in sex and in age groups was affected. The number of women who died was very small. As more men had died than women, the problem of surplus women was to be faced.
The ideal of national economic self-sufficiency was born directly out of the needs of the war. Autark became a favourite notion of the inter-war period and means to make it possible were discover during the war.
To make explosives, Fritz Haber perfected the process of extracting nitrogen from the air because nitrates could no longer be imported from Chile. Cellulose was invented in the laboratory as a substitute for cotton.
Further research in that direction resulted in a series of new industries making rayon’s and plastics and synthetic materials.
The occupied territories of Europe suffered much. As Belgium was a battlefield, there was great destruction there. The economy the country was wrecked. Its cities were ruined.
Many of its people became refugees or deportees or prisoner of war. When the Russians were driven out of Polish territory, the Germans behaved as liherators Many Poles preferred German rule to Russian rule.
And the book reminds you that – “the major consequence was the creation of the Soviet Union”.
A pungent civil war resulted in the replacement of a self-proclaimed autocracy by an autocracy, then an oligarchy, that both claimed to be democratic and socialist, and of a self-proclaimed empire by an empire that claimed to be the arch-enemy of empires.
Stalin’s autocracy would prove far more tyrannical than that of Nicholas II, but also much more well-organized at harnessing the nation’s resources and industrialising its economy.
In 1941–1945 the Soviet Union would experience losses of people and territory far greater than those that brought down Tsarism.
But it would emerge a successful superpower, form a bloc of satellite states, and remain a superpower until in 1991 the empire collapsed yet again, leaving post-Soviet Russia with western frontiers confidentially resembling those imposed by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
What then does a reader carry away from this book?
The following points:
1) It is typically thought that the Cold War between communism and capitalism began at the end of the Second World War but in many ways it began at the end of the First World War.
2) The building of communism in Russia further undermined Wilson’s vision of a peaceful world in which democratic and capitalist nation-states participated in a League of Nations.
3) In a cruel irony, the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate blocked ratification of the Versailles Treaty, on the grounds that participation in a League of Nations would require the United States to intervene in overseas conflicts, when it was the constitutional prerogative of the Congress to declare war.
4) Wilson campaigned tough for ratification. Stress and exhaustion almost certainly helped to cause Wilson to suffer from a stroke, from which he never fully recovered. Meanwhile, the United States slid toward isolation from world events.
5) The next American president, the Republican Warren Harding, concluded separate peace treaties with the Central Powers. American isolationism, combined with Russian Bolshevism, French and British mean-spiritedness, and resentful nationalism in Germany, Italy, and Japan, all contributed to the advent of totalitarianism and war in the 1930s.
6) Antipathy spread to Europe’s colonies, too, when devotion was not repaid with liberty. For all these reasons it is not surprising that some historians argue that the First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War—and the wars associated with decolonization—were one incessant quarrel.
Read this book if you’re a World history buff. Lots of food for thought!
Read
December 30, 2018This book is organized into four parts: two on the Western Front (written by Geofffrey Jukes), one on the Eastern Front (by Peter Simkins), and one on everything happening around the Mediterranean (by Michael Hickey). Full of good information, but like any book trying to tell the entire history of WWI, it was only able to scratch the surface.
June 29, 2018
This is a combination of the 4 'Essential Histories' books dealing with the First World War presented here is a special omnibus edition with the original books repeated (mostly) in full... including some orphaned or incorrect references to other texts - but nothing too difficult to understand.
The First World War was supposed to be the War to End All Wars (and in that it failed). This book from the Osprey and Simkins, Jukes, Hickey explores the areas and periods of the war from the declaration of war, to Gallipoli, Russia's descent into Civil War, and the victory in Europe.
The authors clearly know their subject(s) and present the information in a clear, easy to follow manner. Maps, explanations, and timelines help the narrative of the events and battles and makes the ebb and flow of the war easy to follow. The General's are dealt with in a modern manner (ie not perfect, but explanations of some of the requirements behind their actions, and the soldiers' stories told to bring home the horror of the war in all the battles.
A superb primer for the war, and a great addition to books which - far from glorifying war - explain it in such a way to help the reader understand that war is no longer a suitable response of nations, governments or people in the 'west'.
The First World War was supposed to be the War to End All Wars (and in that it failed). This book from the Osprey and Simkins, Jukes, Hickey explores the areas and periods of the war from the declaration of war, to Gallipoli, Russia's descent into Civil War, and the victory in Europe.
The authors clearly know their subject(s) and present the information in a clear, easy to follow manner. Maps, explanations, and timelines help the narrative of the events and battles and makes the ebb and flow of the war easy to follow. The General's are dealt with in a modern manner (ie not perfect, but explanations of some of the requirements behind their actions, and the soldiers' stories told to bring home the horror of the war in all the battles.
A superb primer for the war, and a great addition to books which - far from glorifying war - explain it in such a way to help the reader understand that war is no longer a suitable response of nations, governments or people in the 'west'.
May 30, 2022
This reads like a textbook. Which is fair; capturing the scope and nuance of the entire First World War past the names, dates, and numbers is an impossible task. Especially if you've only got 364 pages.
But, it's a good starting point. I had learned a lot about the Western Front, the Russian Revolution, and the beginning and end of the war in school, but the deeper descriptions of the battles were good. I had never learned anything about the war in the Mediterranean outside of vague references to a disaster at Gallipoli so learning about the role those fronts played was cool. Portraits of soldiers and descriptions of life at home in all of these countries were well done.
It made me want to read more in-depth about specific events and theatres of war and isn't that what a book trying to brush on all of the highlights of a major event should do?
But, it's a good starting point. I had learned a lot about the Western Front, the Russian Revolution, and the beginning and end of the war in school, but the deeper descriptions of the battles were good. I had never learned anything about the war in the Mediterranean outside of vague references to a disaster at Gallipoli so learning about the role those fronts played was cool. Portraits of soldiers and descriptions of life at home in all of these countries were well done.
It made me want to read more in-depth about specific events and theatres of war and isn't that what a book trying to brush on all of the highlights of a major event should do?
May 23, 2018
Beautiful, balanced presentation - dense with information and pictures, graphs and maps. I appreciated the division in the book - it was divided by Eastern and Western fronts.
I purchased this book in Kansas City, MO at the National WWI Memorial and Museum. It was my selection to complete my 4 years of study.
Recommended.
I purchased this book in Kansas City, MO at the National WWI Memorial and Museum. It was my selection to complete my 4 years of study.
Recommended.
January 3, 2021
Excellent story of World War I with a focus on military history. The author's arrangement into the three fronts - Eastern, Western, and Mediterranean - is a good way to organize it and tell the story in a logical sense. This is a great read for those who are interested in learning more about the war.
May 25, 2023
A relatively dry summary of the events of the War, mostly the Western Front, and spending no more than a page for all the battles excluding Verdun and the Somme. It has some interesting pictures but there are better books out there for the period, so I would personally read one of those if I had the chance again.
July 24, 2024
Impresionantă Serbia, de asemenea surprizatoare atutudinea încăpățânată a Bulgariei. Nu cunosteam atatea detalii, o lectură de neratat pentru pasionați. Citatul regelui sârb va dăinui mereu.
Milioane de morți pentru ambițiile unor politicieni fără scrupule, departe de linia întâi, unde oamenii simpli treceau printr-un calvar inimaginabil.
Iar familiile soldaților, acasă…
Milioane de morți pentru ambițiile unor politicieni fără scrupule, departe de linia întâi, unde oamenii simpli treceau printr-un calvar inimaginabil.
Iar familiile soldaților, acasă…
March 3, 2018
A very good book on the First World War. This work is laid out differently that most works on the war. This made it easier to follow the narrative of each front. I have read many works on the Great War and this one ranks near the top...
July 17, 2024
A comprehensive summary of the prelude, battles during and aftermath of WW1 which reads at breakneck speed and easily segueing from one battlefront to another
For those who want a shorter precise version of that war.
For those who want a shorter precise version of that war.
February 18, 2024
Interesting.
December 12, 2014
With 2014 marking the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, 2003's "The First World War - The War to End All Wars" by Peter Simkins, Geoffrey Jukes, & Michael Hickey is not a bad book to pick up for anyone interested in learning a bit more information about the Great War or the War to End All Wars as it was known then. The book itself is an interesting read which is divided into 4 parts - 2 dealing with the Western Front, 1 on the Eastern & 1 the Mediterranean with each author covers a section that is in his area of expertise which adds to the interest. In addition to covering the highlights of the major battles & strategies of the war there are also anecdotes at the end of each part dealing with soldiers, life on the home front as well as a glimpse as to how much hardship the major powers endured. With plenty of photographs as well as maps of some of the major campaigns, "The First World War - The War to End All Wars" while not necessarily being the most in-depth look at World War I, it offers a decent overview of the war & for this reader is a must have in any collection for anyone wanting to expand his or her knowledge of the war or to learn about it.
August 30, 2015
An excellent general history of the war, I highly recommend it to both novices and semi-experts alike. It concentrates on military affairs and on the British point of view. Unlike some British histories, it doesn't disparage American participation. One gets a view of how one front affected another but the division of the book into different section for each theatre was somewhat jarring. I also quibble with a somewhat favorable view of the incompetent butcher, Italian General Luigi Cardona. Still a good read.
December 9, 2015
A nice overview of "the great war". Is nicely divides the war into 3 arenas. Short sections on the lives of soldiers and the lives of the people provide a nice human touch. The book does not focus on pre-war causes or post-war implications and is light in those areas. It was the first book on this war that i have read and would say it is a nice introduction. British authors so somewhat from that perspective.
August 22, 2015
While I enjoyed reading The First World War: The War to End All Wars, as ever I am disappointed in the lack of mention of the minorities who served in the War. Women, the First Nation peoples, African Americans, those from the Indian Subcontinent etc. I know the book was probably not established for that purpose, however not to mention them is to deny their sacrifice.
Read
February 2, 2010highly recommended for balanced views on IWW. three authors, three fronts, unforgettable detail that knit them all together.
December 4, 2014
Great book but a little too heavy on the military details for me to consider if light reading
September 28, 2016
Good Summary
Nice coverage of the other war fronts, in addition to the Western Front. The numerous maps helped also. I now have a clearer idea of the full war.
Nice coverage of the other war fronts, in addition to the Western Front. The numerous maps helped also. I now have a clearer idea of the full war.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews