“Superb . . . a useful account of the First World War for anyone interested in the perspective of a member of Imperial Germany’s Alsatian minority.”—The Western Front Association As a conscript from Alsace, Dominik Richert realized from the outset of the First World War that his family would be at or near the front line. While he saw no alternative to performing his duty, he was a reluctant soldier who was willing to stand up to authority and to avoid risks—in order to survive. This thoughtful memoir of the conflict gives a lively picture of major events from the rare perspective of an ordinary German soldier. In 1914 Richert was involved in fighting on the French border and was then moved to northern France where he was in combat with Indian troops. In 1915 he was sent to the East and took part in the Battle for Mount Zwinin in the Carpathians and the subsequent invasion of the western parts of the Ukraine and of eastern Poland. In 1917 he took part in the capture of Riga before returning to the Western Front in 1918, where he saw German tanks in action at the battle of Villers-Brettoneux. No longer believing in the war, he subsequently crossed no-man’s land and surrendered to the French, becoming a “deserteur Alsacienne.” The book ends with his return home early in 1919. This “remarkable book . . . an absolute must-have” gives a fascinating insight into the War as experienced by the Germans, and into the development of Richert’s ambivalent attitude to it (The Great War Magazine).

"The dramatic opening weeks of the Great War passed into legend long before the conflict ended. The British Expeditionary Force fought a mesmerizing campaign, outnumbered and outflanked but courageous and skillful, holding the line against impossible odds, sacrificing themselves to stop the last great German offensive of 1914. A remarkable story of high hopes and crushing disappointment culminates in the climax of the First Battle of Ypres. And yet, as Peter Hart shows in this look at the war's first year, for too long the British part in the 1914 campaigns has been veiled in layers of self-congratulatory myth: a tale of unprepared Britain, reliant on the peerless class of her regular soldiers to bolster the rabble of the unreliable French Army and defeat the teeming hordes of German troops. But the reality of those early months is in fact far more complex-and ultimately, Hart argues, far more powerful than the standard triumphalist narrative. Fire and Movement places the British role in 1914 into a proper historical context, incorporating the personal experiences of the men who were present on the front lines. The British regulars were indeed skillful soldiers, Hart writes, courageous and adaptable in the near-impossible circumstances in which they found themselves. But they also lacked practice in many of the required disciplines of modern warfare. Hart also offers a more accurate portrait of the German Army they faced--not the caricature of hordes of automatons, but the reality of a well-trained and superlatively equipped force that outfought the BEF in the early battles--and allows readers to come to a full appreciation of the role of the French Army, which has often been marginalized"--Provided by publisher.

Germany in the 20th century endured two world wars, a failed democracy, Hitler's dictatorship, the Holocaust, and a country divided for 40 years after World War II. But it has also boasted a strong welfare state, affluence, liberalization and globalization, a successful democracy, and the longest period of peace in European history. A History of Twentieth-Century Germany provides a survey of German history during a century of extremes. Ulrich Herbert sees German history in the 20th century as determined by two contradictory perspectives. On one hand, there are the world wars and great catastrophes that divide the country's history into two parts-before and after 1945. Germany is the birthplace of radical ideologies of the left and right and the only country in which each ideology became the foundation of government. This pattern left its stamp on both the first and second halves of the century. On the other hand, the rise of modern industrial society led to decades of conflict over the social and political order regardless of which political system was in force. Considering these contradictory developments, Herbert tackles the questions of both the collapse in the first half of the century and the development from a post-fascist, ruined society to one of the most stable liberal democracies in the world in the latter half. Herbert's analysis brings together wars and terror, utopia and politics, capitalism and the welfare state, socialism and liberal democratic society, gender and generations, culture and lifestyles, European integration and globalization. The resulting book sets a standard by which historians of the period will be measured in the future.

New Modernist Studies, while reviving and revitalizing modernist studies through lively, scholarly debate about historicity, aesthetics, politics, and genres, is struggling with important questions concerning the delineation that makes discussion fruitful and possible. This volume aims to explore and clarify the position of the so-called ‘core’ of literary modernism in its seminal engagement with the Great War. In studying the years of the Great War, we find ourselves once more studying ‘the giants,’ about whom there is so much more to say, as well as adding hitherto marginalized writers – and a few visual artists – to the canon. The contention here is that these war years were seminal to the development of a distinguishable literary practice which is called ‘modernism,’ but perhaps could be further delineated as ‘Great War modernism,’ a practice whose aesthetic merits can be addressed through formal analysis. This collection of essays offers new insight into canonical British/American/European modernism of the Great War period using the critical tools of contemporary, expansionist modernist studies. By focusing on war, and on the experience of the soldier and of those dealing with issues of war and survival, these studies link the unique forms of expression found in modernism with the fragmented, violent, and traumatic experience of the time.

Translated into English as the Winner of the Geisteswissenschaften International Translation Prize for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences 2015. During the Great War, mass killing took place on an unprecedented scale. Violence and the German Soldier in the Great War explores the practice of violence in the German army and demonstrates how he killing of enemy troops, the deaths of German soldiers and their survival were entwined. As the war reached its climax in 1918, German soldiers refused to continue killing in their droves, and thus made an active contribution to the German defeat and ensuing revolution. Examining the postwar period, the chapters of this book also discuss the contested issue of a 'brutalization' of German society as a prerequisite of the Nazi mass movement. Biographical case studies on key figures such as Ernst Jünger demonstrate how the killing of enemy troops by German soldiers followed a complex set of rules. Benjamin Ziemann makes a wealth of extensive archival work available to an Anglophone audience for the first time, enhancing our understanding of the German army and its practices of violence during the First World War as well as the implications of this brutalization in post-war Germany. This book provides new insights into a crucial topic for students of twentieth-century German history and the First World War.

A detailed and absorbing narrative of the campaigns fought on the 'forgotten' Eastern Front of the Great War, vividly illustrating that these campaigns were no less costly, tragic and important than the catastrophes of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele. The massive offensives on the Eastern Front during 1915 are too often overshadowed by the events in Western Europe, but the scale and ferocity of the clashes between Imperial Germany, Habsburg Austria-Hungary and Tsarist Russia were greater than anything seen on the Western Front and ultimately as important to the final outcome of the war. With the Russians hamstrung by weak supply lines and the Austro-Hungarian leadership committed to a strategy of offensive drives despite diminishing manpower and adverse terrain, the fighting in early 1915 was a costly and futile exercise. By the summer, the Central Powers, increasingly dominated by Germany, had begun to gain the advantage, but even the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive of 1915 – which ultimately resulted in the retreat of Russian forces from Poland – failed to bring the conflict to a conclusion. Now with the work of internationally renowned Eastern Front expert Prit Buttar, this fascinating story is finally being told. From the bitter fighting in the Carpathian Mountains, to the sweeping advances through Serbia and the almost medieval battle for the fortress of Przemysl, this is a staggeringly ambitious history of some of the most important moments of the First World War.

The Author was among the first to respond to Kitchener’s call for volunteers in 1914. He joined 8th Battalion, The Leicestershire Regiment at the outbreak of war as a Private and, within weeks, he and the Battalion were heading for Northern France with the British Expeditionary Force. In this superb memoir we see how the spirit of adventurous patriotism that carried him to war gradually turns to sober reflection as the fighting intensifies and he loses so many friends and comrades at the Battles of the Somme and the Marne. In 1917 he is commissioned into the Royal Sussex Regiment and makes a long, hazardous journey to Egypt to join his new battalion only to be recalled to take part in the Second Battle of the Marne, where his leadership and bravery win him the Croix de Guerre. Written with great modesty and insight, Dick Read’s account contains a wealth of graphic descriptions of his experiences over the whole period of The Great War including the Somme 1916, Hindenburg Line, Egypt, Flanders and the Final Advance. The book is further enhanced by the inclusion of excellent drawings by the Author himself. Many memoirs will be published to commemorate the Centenary of ‘the War to end all Wars’ but it can be said with confidence that Of Those We Loved is unlikely to be bettered. It makes for gripping reading both at home and as a companion on any visit to the Battlefields. Refined over the years, but retaining a rare sense of authenticity, this is a moving personal record of a survivor’s war and a profoundly moving epitaph for a lost generation.