A Companion to World War I

A Companion to the First World War brings together a team of distinguished historians from 10 countries who contribute 38 substantial and thought–provoking chapters. The volume opens with a section on the state of the world before 1914, as it prepared for war without anticipating its true nature, and concludes with an examination of the conflict s military, diplomatic, and cultural legacies. In addition to covering the military history of the war and the individual states involved, contributors explore major themes such as war crimes, occupations, film, and gender.

Reflecting the latest historical research, this Companion enriches our understanding of the origins, nature, and impact of what remains one of the most devastating events in modern history. 

List of Maps viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Editor′s Acknowledgments xv

Introduction xvi
John Horne

PART I ORIGINS 1

1 The War Imagined: 1890 1914 3
Gerd Krumeich

2 The War Explained: 1914 to the Present 19
John F. V. Keiger

PART II THE MILITARY CONFLICT 33

3 The War Experienced: Command, Strategy, and Tactics, 1914 18 35
Hew Strachan

4 War in the West, 1914 16 49
Holger H. Herwig

5 War in the East and Balkans, 1914 18 66
Dennis Showalter

6 The Italian Front, 1915 18 82
Giorgio Rochat

7 The Turkish War, 1914 18 97
Ulrich Trumpener

8 The War in Africa 112
David Killingray

9 War in the West, 1917 18 127
Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson

10 The War at Sea 141
Paul G. Halpern

11 The War in the Air 156
John H. Morrow, Jr.

PART III FACES OF WAR 171

12 Combat 173
Stéphane Audoin–Rouzeau

13 Combatants and Noncombatants: Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes 188
Alan Kramer

14 War Aims and Neutrality 202
Jean–Jacques Becker

15 Industrial Mobilization and War Economies 217
Theo Balderston

16 Faith, Ideologies, and the "Cultures of War" 234
Annette Becker

17 Demography 248
Jay Winter

18 Women and Men 263
Susan R. Grayzel

19 Public Opinion and Politics 279
John Horne

20 Military Medicine 295
Sophie Delaporte

21 Science and Technology 307
Anne Rasmussen

22 Intellectuals and Writers 323
Christophe Prochasson

23 The Visual Arts 338
Annette Becker

24 Film and the War 353
Pierre Sorlin

PART IV STATES, NATIONS, AND EMPIRES 369

25 Austria–Hungary and "Yugoslavia" 371
Mark Cornwall

26 Belgium 386
Sophie de Schaepdrijver

27 Britain and Ireland 403
Adrian Gregory

28 France 418
Leonard V. Smith

29 Germany 432
Gerhard Hirschfeld

30 German–Occupied Eastern Europe 447
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius

31 Italy 464
Antonio Gibelli

32 Russia 479
Eric Lohr

33 The Ottoman Empire 494
Hamit Bozarslan

34 The United States 508
Jennifer D. Keene

35 The French and British Empires 524
Robert Aldrich and Christopher Hilliard

PART V LEGACIES 541

36 The Peace Settlement, 1919 39 543
Carole Fink

37 War after the War: Conflicts, 1919 23 558
Peter Gatrell

38 Mourning and Memory, 1919 45 576
Laurence Van Ypersele

Select Primary Sources 591

Extended Bibliography 601

Index 634

John Horne is Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College, Dublin, and a member of the Research Centre at the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne, France. He has published widely on the history of the Great War and of twentieth–century France, including Labour at War: France and Britain, 1914–1918 (ed., 1991), State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (1997) and (with Alan Kramer), Germany Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial (2001), which has appeared in French and German.

Selected as CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 – 3.01.12

"This is why books such as A companion to World War I are so valuable." (Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 16 November 2011)

′The recipe for this volume′s success is simple:  take 30 or so of today′s leading specialists, provide them with five broad categories in which to articulate their understanding of this conflict, insist that bibliography be a priority, and oversee the project with a scholar who is himself a respected, widely published authority.  The book′s 38 essays are grouped to treat five aspects of the struggle:  origins, conduct, culture, a survey of the major individual states involved, and a finale that treats the peace conference and the war′s aftermath....[A] superb one–stop portal into the period.′  Choice  

′Horne is to be congratulated for editing such a disparate group of essays into a cohesive whole′.  Reviews in History 

′This substantial and comprehensive work is an important contribution to the literature of a conflict central to the history of the modern world.′ Reference Reviews 

′In its scope, its detail and the quality of scholarship and writing, this book certainly fulfils the aims of the Blackwell Companions in presenting up–to–date research in a way that is accessible for both those studying the subject and those with a general interest . It will provide both with a useful resource, but is perhaps most effective as a resource used by students on courses dealing with the war or modern conflicts more broadly, providing potted histories of important aspects of the Great War across the globe. The attention given to fronts other than France and Flanders, and nations other than those that fought there, is both laudable and effective, a useful corrective the Euro–centrism that often affects English–language works on the Great War.′ H–Soz–u–Kult