French Generals of the Great War

French Generals of the Great War PDF Author: Jonathan Krause
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526709465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Who were the senior generals who took France through the First World War, and why do we know so little about them? They commanded the largest force on the Western Front through both humiliating defeats and forgotten victories; they won international respect and adoration, but also led their army to infamous mutiny. Nevertheless, the French and their allies, under a French General in Chief, would eventually achieve final victory over Imperial Germany. It is extraordinary that this remarkable group of men has been so neglected in histories on the war. Previous studies are outdated and haven't tapped the wealth of primary source material in France's military archives. It is this gap in the literature and in the understanding of the conflict that this thought-provoking and original volume is designed to address. It takes a collective biographical approach to the leading French soldiers who ran the war on the Western Front.

French Generals of the Great War

French Generals of the Great War PDF Author: Jonathan Krause
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1526709465
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 330

Get Book Here

Book Description
Who were the senior generals who took France through the First World War, and why do we know so little about them? They commanded the largest force on the Western Front through both humiliating defeats and forgotten victories; they won international respect and adoration, but also led their army to infamous mutiny. Nevertheless, the French and their allies, under a French General in Chief, would eventually achieve final victory over Imperial Germany. It is extraordinary that this remarkable group of men has been so neglected in histories on the war. Previous studies are outdated and haven't tapped the wealth of primary source material in France's military archives. It is this gap in the literature and in the understanding of the conflict that this thought-provoking and original volume is designed to address. It takes a collective biographical approach to the leading French soldiers who ran the war on the Western Front.

French Generals of the Great War

French Generals of the Great War PDF Author: Jonathan Krause
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
ISBN: 9781781592526
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Who were the senior generals who took France through the First World War, and why do we know so little about them? They commanded the largest force on the Western Front through both humiliating defeats and forgotten victories; they won international respect and adoration, but also led their army to infamous mutiny. Nevertheless, the French and their allies, under a French General in Chief, would eventually achieve final victory over Imperial Germany. It is extraordinary that this remarkable group of men has been so neglected in histories on the war. Previous studies are outdated and haven't tapped the wealth of primary source material in France's military archives. It is this gap in the literature and in the understanding of the conflict that this thought-provoking and original volume is designed to address. It takes a collective biographical approach to the leading French soldiers who ran the war on the Western Front.

The French Army and the First World War

The French Army and the First World War PDF Author: Elizabeth Greenhalgh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110701235X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
A major new account of the role and performance of the French army in the First World War.

Marshal Joffre

Marshal Joffre PDF Author: André Bourachot
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473838266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
A century ago General Joffre, as Chief of the French General Staff, led the armies that blocked the German invasion at the First Battle of the Marne. He saved Paris from occupation and France from probable defeat. His calm demeanour when faced with a disaster, his ruthless dismissal of incompetent subordinates, and his skilled redeployment of his forces contributed to a historic victory. At the time many saw him as the saviour of the nation, but what should we make of him now? For Joffre contributed to the failures of the French army and its strategy before the war and during the first battles of 1914. Also his conduct of the war after the Marne futile offensives that cost thousands of lives and gained no ground, followed by near defeat at Verdun - undermined his position and led to his dismissal.Although he remained immensely popular in France, his reputation has been under a cloud ever since, and he has been overshadowed by the French generals - Ptain and especially Foch - who commanded the French army at the time of the final victory over Germany.Andr Bourachot, in this lucid and highly readable study of Joffre's career, focuses on his performance during the opening phase of the Great War. He offers a fresh and carefully considered view of the man and the soldier.

August 1914

August 1914 PDF Author: Bruno Cabanes
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030022494X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
A renowned military historian closely examines the first month of World War I in France. On August 1, 1914, war erupted into the lives of millions of families across France. Most people thought the conflict would last just a few weeks . . . Yet before the month was out, twenty-seven thousand French soldiers died on the single day of August 22 alone—the worst catastrophe in French military history. Refugees streamed into France as the German army advanced, spreading rumors that amplified still more the ordeal of war. Citizens of enemy countries who were living in France were viciously scapegoated. Drawing from diaries, personal correspondence, police reports, and government archives, Bruno Cabanes renders an intimate, narrative-driven study of the first weeks of World War I in France. Told from the perspective of ordinary women and men caught in the flood of mobilization, this revealing book deepens our understanding of the traumatic impact of war on soldiers and civilians alike. “An exceptional book, a brilliant, moving, and insightful analysis of national mobilization.” —Martha Hanna, author of Your Death Would Be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War “This book deserves a wide readership from historians, critics and anyone interested in the catastrophe of war.” —Mary Louise Roberts, Distinguished Lucie Aubrac and Plaenert-Bascom Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison “The sounds, sights and emotions of August, 1914 are all evoked with exceptional skill.” —David A. Bell, author of The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

The French Army and the First World War

The French Army and the First World War PDF Author: Elizabeth Greenhalgh
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316060683
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
This is a comprehensive new history of the French army's critical contribution to the Great War. Ranging across all fronts, Elizabeth Greenhalgh examines the French army's achievements and failures and sets these in the context of the difficulties of coalition warfare and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the enemy forces it faced. Drawing from new archival sources, she reveals the challenges of dealing with and replenishing a mass conscript army in the face of slaughter on an unprecedented scale, and shows how, through trials and defeats, French generals and their troops learned to adapt and develop techniques which eventually led to victory. In a unique account of the largest Allied army on the Western Front, she revises our understanding not only of wartime strategy and combat, but also of other crucial aspects of France's war, from mutinies and mail censorship to medical services, railways and weapons development.

The Great War and the French People

The Great War and the French People PDF Author: Jean Jacques Becker
Publisher: Berg Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
A well-known authority in the field provides a wide-ranging exploration of the repercussions of the First World War upon the French people.

French Head Quarters 1915-1918

French Head Quarters 1915-1918 PDF Author: Jean de Pierrefeu
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782892176
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
A Journalist in charge of the daily military communiques at French headquarters gives his view of the events as he saw them under the changing French war leadership. Although information on the early years of Jean de Pierrefeu is sketchy, even in his native France, however it is known that he started his journalistic career in 1905 and by 1908 was working for the political weekly L’Opinion. He career continued, leaning toward nationalist sympathies, until he was mobilized as part of the French Army reserves. Swiftly wounded and invalided out of the line, he began working for the Grand Quartier-Général in 1915 as part of the staff dealing with the evening new bulletins. He would have to use all of his journalistic skill to be as economical with the brutal truth of the losses and reverses at the front suffered by the French during 1915-1918. During this period he met with all of the senior officers of the French High Command of whom he had varied opinions of their skill; it was during this time that he began to become disillusioned with the French leadership. After the First World War ended Pierrefeu sharpened his criticisms and published his damning criticism of the French Army as “French Headquarters, 1915-1918”. He is frequently critical of his superiors and the elegant lifestyle at headquarters and holds back nothing in his vivid depiction of army life. “The writer of this amusing book had the task of drawing up each evening the communiqué of French General Headquarters. What he writes is military gossip rather than military history, but he gives an interesting insight into the life of the headquarters under Joffre, Nivelle, and Pétain.”— p. 67 Cyril Falls. War Books, London, 1930.

French Tanks of the Great War

French Tanks of the Great War PDF Author: Tim Gale
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473881935
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
A detailed history of France’s development of tanks and the combat the tanks served in during World War I, by an armored warfare expert. The French tank corps was an essential part of the French army from 1917 onwards, yet its history has been strangely neglected in English accounts of the Western Front. Using information derived from the French military archives at Vincennes—much of which has never been published in English before—author Tim Gale describes the design and development of the tanks, the political and organizational issues that arose between the French military and civilian bureaucracy, and the record of these pioneering fighting vehicles in combat. All the major engagements in which French tanks participated are depicted in graphic detail, often quoting directly from recollections left by individual tank commanders of their experience in battle, and each operation is assessed in terms of its impact on French tactics in general and on tank tactics in particular. The Nivelle offensive and the battles of Malmaison, the Matz, Soissons, and Champagne are featured in the narrative, and the actions of the French tanks serving with the U.S. army are covered, too. Much of the material in Tim Gale’s study will be entirely new to non-French speakers. The story will be fascinating reading for anyone who is interested in the Great War, the French army, military innovation and the history of armored warfare. Praise for French Tanks of the Great War “Gale’s book . . . is very easy to dip into.” —Military Modelling “It is a wealth of information and I would definitely recommend it.” —Forgotten Weapons

Memoirs of the Great War - Complete and Unabridged

Memoirs of the Great War - Complete and Unabridged PDF Author: Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781927537657
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Complete and Unabridged for the first time in English Among France's generals of the First World War, Marshal Joseph Joffre stands as one of the most accomplished and controversial. Starting his tenure as Generalissimo by modernizing the French Army, he presided over the dramatic victory at the Battle of the Marne that saved France...and the unrelenting slaughter in the trenches that followed. In this first volume, Joffre takes command of the French Army and races to prepare it for the war to come. Then, as the German Army crosses the border and advances towards Paris, he rallies his forces and allies for one of the most dramatic moments in modern military history.