Author: Joshua Bilton
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
ISBN: 1473876923
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Get Book Here
Book Description
For the Central Powers, 1916 was a year of trial and error, of successes and failures, of innovation and of drastic changes. Tactics developed, while war aims mutated to suit the inertia of trench warfare. Advances were effectively countered with the development of new weaponry, or indeed aided by their inclusion. Across all fronts, whether at home or in Poland, citizens and soldiers alike stood fast against Entente forces. On the Western Front, bitter fighting continued apace. To the east the armies of Austro-Hungary, Germany and Bulgaria battled Entente forces. Meanwhile at sea, the German High Seas Fleet ambushed the Royal Navy off the coast of Denmark. On the Home Front, the poor harvest of 1916, coupled with a lack of transport, led to a winter of stark deprivation. As a consequence, the German government introduced what was effectively a system of rationing entitled, ‘sharing scarcity.’ While to the south, Ottoman forces fought Allied soldiers for control of Kut and Erzurum, a fortified trading port in eastern Turkey. Germany in the Great War: Verdun & Somme is the third publication in a five-part series. In addition to the author’s introduction and a chronology of events, five hundred contemporary photographs, many of which have never before been published in this country, are included.
Author: Professor Michael S Neiberg
Publisher: Amber Books Ltd
ISBN: 190662612X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 226
Get Book Here
Book Description
The History of World War I series recounts the battles and campaigns of the 'Great War'. From the Falkland Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the World War I series provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns that raged on land, at sea and in the air.
Author:
Publisher: Clermont-Ferrand : Michelin
ISBN:
Category : Verdun (France)
Languages : en
Pages : 202
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Paul Jankowski
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199316910
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 976
Get Book Here
Book Description
At seven o'clock in the morning on February 21, 1916, the ground in northern France began to shake. For the next ten hours, twelve hundred German guns showered shells on a salient in French lines. The massive weight of explosives collapsed dugouts, obliterated trenches, severed communication wires, and drove men mad. As the barrage lifted, German troops moved forward, darting from shell crater to shell crater. The battle of Verdun had begun. In Verdun, historian Paul Jankowski provides the definitive account of the iconic battle of World War I. A leading expert on the French past, Jankowski combines the best of traditional military history-its emphasis on leaders, plans, technology, and the contingency of combat-with the newer social and cultural approach, stressing the soldier's experience, the institutional structures of the military, and the impact of war on national memory. Unusually, this book draws on deep research in French and German archives; this mastery of sources in both languages gives Verdun unprecedented authority and scope. In many ways, Jankowski writes, the battle represents a conundrum. It has an almost unique status among the battles of the Great War; and yet, he argues, it was not decisive, sparked no political changes, and was not even the bloodiest episode of the conflict. It is said that Verdun made France, he writes; but the question should be, What did France make of Verdun? Over time, it proved to be the last great victory of French arms, standing on their own. And, for France and Germany, the battle would symbolize the terror of industrialized warfare, "a technocratic Moloch devouring its children," where no advance or retreat was possible, yet national resources poured in ceaselessly, perpetuating slaughter indefinitely.
Author: John Mosier
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451414632
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Get Book Here
Book Description
Alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun during the First World War stands as one of history’s greatest clashes. Perfect for military history buffs, this compelling account of one of World War I’s most important battles explains why it is also the most complex and misunderstood. Although British historians have always seen Verdun as a one-year battle designed by the German chief of staff to bleed France white, historian John Mosier’s careful analysis of the German plans reveals a much more abstract and theoretical approach. From the very beginning of the war until the armistice in 1918, no fewer than eight distinct battles were waged there. These conflicts are largely unknown, even in France, owing to the obsessive secrecy of the French high command. Our understanding of Verdun has long been mired in myths, false assumptions, propaganda, and distortions. Now, using numerous accounts of military analysts, serving officers, and eyewitnesses, including French sources that have never been translated, Mosier offers a compelling reassessment of the Great War’s most important battle.
Author: Hugh Sebag-Montefiore
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674545192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 680
Get Book Here
Book Description
The notion of battles as the irreducible building blocks of war demands a single verdict of each campaign—victory, defeat, stalemate. But this kind of accounting leaves no room to record the nuances and twists of actual conflict. In Somme: Into the Breach, the noted military historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore shows that by turning our focus to stories of the front line—to acts of heroism and moments of both terror and triumph—we can counter, and even change, familiar narratives. Planned as a decisive strike but fought as a bloody battle of attrition, the Battle of the Somme claimed over a million dead or wounded in months of fighting that have long epitomized the tragedy and folly of World War I. Yet by focusing on the first-hand experiences and personal stories of both Allied and enemy soldiers, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore defies the customary framing of incompetent generals and senseless slaughter. In its place, eyewitness accounts relive scenes of extraordinary courage and sacrifice, as soldiers ordered “over the top” ventured into No Man’s Land and enemy trenches, where they met a hail of machine-gun fire, thickets of barbed wire, and exploding shells. Rescuing from history the many forgotten heroes whose bravery has been overlooked, and giving voice to their bereaved relatives at home, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore reveals the Somme campaign in all its glory as well as its misery, helping us to realize that there are many meaningful ways to define a battle when seen through the eyes of those who lived it.
Author: Martin Middlebrook
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473814243
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Get Book Here
Book Description
A history of the British Army’s experience at the Battle of the Somme in France during World War I. After an immense but useless bombardment, at 7:30 AM on July 1, 1916, the British Army went over the top and attacked the German trenches. It was the first day of the battle of the Somme, and on that day, the British suffered nearly 60,000 casualties, two for every yard of their front. With more than fifty times the daily losses at El Alamein and fifteen times the British casualties on D-day, July 1, 1916, was the blackest day in the history of the British Army. But, more than that, as Lloyd George recognized, it was a watershed in the history of the First World War. The Army that attacked on that day was the volunteer Army that had answered Kitchener’s call. It had gone into action confident of a decisive victory. But by sunset on the first day on the Somme, no one could any longer think of a war that might be won. Martin Middlebrook’s research has covered not just official and regimental histories and tours of the battlefields, but interviews with hundreds of survivors, both British and German. As to the action itself, he conveys the overall strategic view and the terrifying reality that it was for front-line soldiers. Praise for The First Day on the Somme “The soldiers receive the best service a historian can provide: their story is told in their own words.” —The Guardian (UK)
Author: Alistair Horne
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0140170413
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 613
Get Book Here
Book Description
The battle of Verdun lasted ten months. It was a battle in which at least 700,000 men fell, along a front of fifteen miles. Its aim was less to defeat the enemy than bleed him to death and a battleground whose once fertile terrain is even now a haunted wilderness. Alistair Horne's classic work, continuously in print for over fifty years, is a profoundly moving, sympathetic study of the battle and the men who fought there. It shows that Verdun is a key to understanding the First World War to the minds of those who waged it, the traditions that bound them and the world that gave them the opportunity.
Author: Julian Thompson
Publisher: Carlton Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781844424504
Category : Somme, 1st Battle of the, France, 1916
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
"Containing rare removable documents, memorabilia and an audio CD of veterans first-hand accounts." (Slip case)
Author: Roger Chickering
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316175928
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1065
Get Book Here
Book Description
Volume IV of The Cambridge History of War offers a definitive new account of war in the most destructive period in human history. Opening with the massive conflicts that erupted in the mid nineteenth century in the US, Asia and Europe, leading historians trace the global evolution of warfare through 'the age of mass', 'the age of machine' and 'the age of management'. They explore how industrialization and nationalism fostered vast armies whilst the emergence of mobile warfare and improved communications systems made possible the 'total warfare' of the two World Wars. With military conflict regionalized after 1945 they show how guerrilla and asymmetrical warfare highlighted the limits of the machine and mass as well as the importance of the media in winning 'hearts and minds'. This is a comprehensive guide to every facet of modern war from strategy and operations to its social, cultural, technological and political contexts and legacies.
