The Western Front Experience

The Western Front Experience PDF Author: Gary Sheffield
Publisher: Carlton Books
ISBN: 9781847329172
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Ninety-four years after its end, the First World War still fascinates. From the ordinary soldiers to the commanding generals, from obscure actions to major battles, "The Western Front Experience" is a riveting, all-encompassing guide to one of the most terrible periods of warfare the world has ever known. Endorsed by the Imperial War Museum, and including 15 rare and painstakingly researched facsimile items, here is history at its finest."

The Western Front Experience

The Western Front Experience PDF Author: Gary Sheffield
Publisher: Carlton Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781847321329
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Ninety years after the Armistice of 1918, we are still fascinatedwith the First World War. The Western Front Experience describes the development of the fighting from 1914-1918, spotlighting some of the obscure but important actions and as well as the major battles. From the appalling conditions endured by the soldiers in the trenches, to the generals in their headquarters, this book combines a vivid narrative informed by recent research, and brings to life one of the most terrible periods of warfare the world has ever known.

The War To End All Wars

The War To End All Wars PDF Author: Edward M. Coffman
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813146445
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 539

Book Description
A comprehensive history of the US military’s involvement in World War I, including soldiers’ experiences, the creation of the air force, and more. The War to End All Wars is considered by many to be the best single account of America’s participation in World War I. Covering famous battles, the birth of the air force, naval engagements, the War Department, and experiences of the troops, this indispensable volume is again available in paperback for students and general readers. Praise for The War to End All Wars “Will surely stand as the first source for anyone interested in the conflict.” —Stephen Ambrose “Coffman’s skilled use of archived materials, diaries and memoirs brings life and immediacy to his story.” —Virginia Quarterly Review “[Coffman] can explain complex matters in a few sharp paragraphs, illuminate technical discussions with personal vignettes, and use statistics to clarify rather than confuse. . . . Should become standard reading in twentieth century American history courses.” —Indiana Magazine of History

Battle Tactics of the Western Front

Battle Tactics of the Western Front PDF Author: Paddy Griffith
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300066630
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
Historians have portrayed British participation in World War I as a series of tragic debacles, with lines of men mown down by machine guns, with untried new military technology, and incompetent generals who threw their troops into improvised and unsuccessful attacks. In this book a renowned military historian studies the evolution of British infantry tactics during the war and challenges this interpretation, showing that while the British army's plans and technologies failed persistently during the improvised first half of the war, the army gradually improved its technique, technology, and, eventually, its' self-assurance. By the time of its successful sustained offensive in the fall of 1918, says Paddy Griffith, the British army was demonstrating a battlefield skill and mobility that would rarely be surpassed even during World War II. Evaluating the great gap that exists between theory and practice, between textbook and bullet-swept mudfield, Griffith argues that many battles were carefully planned to exploit advanced tactics and to avoid casualties, but that breakthrough was simply impossible under the conditions of the time. According to Griffith, the British were already masters of "storm troop tactics" by the end of 1916, and in several important respects were further ahead than the Germans would be even in 1918. In fields such as the timing and orchestration of all-arms assaults, predicted artillery fire, "Commando-style" trench raiding, the use of light machine guns, or the barrage fire of heavy machine guns, the British led the world. Although British generals were not military geniuses, says Griffith, they should at least be credited for effectively inventing much of the twentieth-century's art of war.

Facing Armageddon

Facing Armageddon PDF Author: Hugh Cecil
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473813972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 960

Book Description
Facing Armageddon is the first scholarly work on the 1914-18 War to explore, on a world-wide basis, the real nature of the participants experience. Sixty-four scholars from all over the globe deliver the fruits of recent research in what civilians and servicemen passed through, in the air, on the sea and on land.

Strangers on the Western Front

Strangers on the Western Front PDF Author: Guoqi Xu
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674060555
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Book Description
During World War I, Britain and France imported workers from their colonies to labor behind the front lines. The single largest group of support labor came not from imperial colonies, however, but from China. Xu Guoqi tells the remarkable story of the 140,000 Chinese men recruited for the Allied war effort. These laborers, mostly illiterate peasants from north China, came voluntarily and worked in Europe longer than any other group. Xu explores China’s reasons for sending its citizens to help the British and French (and, later, the Americans), the backgrounds of the workers, their difficult transit to Europe—across the Pacific, through Canada, and over the Atlantic—and their experiences with the Allied armies. It was the first encounter with Westerners for most of these Chinese peasants, and Xu also considers the story from their perspective: how they understood this distant war, the racism and suspicion they faced, and their attempts to hold on to their culture so far from home. In recovering this fascinating lost story, Xu highlights the Chinese contribution to World War I and illuminates the essential role these unsung laborers played in modern China’s search for a new national identity on the global stage.

The Western Front

The Western Front PDF Author: Richard Holmes
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1846075823
Category : World War, 1914-1918
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
Richard Holmes brings the Western Front to life in this detailed and authoritative text, in a way that goes deep beneath scholarly debate, ripping off the veneer of cliche which now covers the war as it really was."

They Shall Not Pass

They Shall Not Pass PDF Author: Ian Sumner
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1848842090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
This graphic collection of first-hand accounts sheds new light on the experiences of the French army during the Great War. It reveals in authentic detail the perceptions and emotions of soldiers and civilians who were caught up in the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen. Their testimony gives a striking insight into the mentality of the troops and their experience of combat, their emotional ties to their relatives at home, their opinions about their commanders and their fellow soldiers, the appalling conditions and dangers they endured, and their attitude to their German enemy. In their own words, in diaries, letters, reports and memoirs - most of which have never been published in English before - they offer a fascinating inside view of the massive life-and-death struggle that took place on the Western Front. Ian Sumner provides a concise narrative of the war in order to give a clear context to the eyewitness material. In effect the reader is carried through the experience of each phase of the war on the Western Front and sees events as soldiers and civilians saw them at the time. This emphasis on eyewitness accounts provides an approach to the subject that is completely new for an English-language publication. The authorÍs pioneering work will appeal to readers who may know something about the British and German armies on the Western Front, but little about the French army which bore the brunt of the fighting on the allied side. His book represents a milestone in publishing on the Great War.

The Dynamics of Doctrine

The Dynamics of Doctrine PDF Author: Timothy T. Lupfer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic government information
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
This paper is a case study in the wartime evolution of tactical doctrine. Besides providing a summary of German Infantry tactics of the First World War, this study offers insight into the crucial role of leadership in facilitating doctrinal change during battle. It reminds us that success in war demands extensive and vigorous training calculated to insure that field commanders understand and apply sound tactical principles as guidelines for action and not as a substitute for good judgment. It points out the need for a timely effort in collecting and evaluating doctrinal lessons from battlefield experience. --Abstract.

Picturing the Western Front

Picturing the Western Front PDF Author: Beatriz Pichel
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526151898
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 270

Book Description
Between 1914 and 1918, military, press and amateur photographers produced thousands of pictures. Either classified in military archives specially created with this purpose in 1915, collected in personal albums or circulated in illustrated magazines, photographs were supposed to tell the story of the war. Picturing the Western Front argues that photographic practices also shaped combatants and civilians’ war experiences. Doing photography (taking pictures, posing for them, exhibiting, cataloguing and looking at them) allowed combatants and civilians to make sense of what they were living through. Photography mattered because it enabled combatants and civilians to record events, establish or reinforce bonds with one another, represent bodies, place people and events in imaginative geographies and making things visible, while making others, such as suicide, invisible. Photographic practices became, thus, frames of experience.