Download or read book The Germans on the Somme written by Philip Gibbs and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph during World War I, Gibbs had a ringside seat to many of the most significant battles and events of the conflict. In this book, he provides a firsthand account of the German army's actions during the Somme offensive. A must-read for anyone interested in military history. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Scorched Earth written by Gerhard Hirschfeld and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses in detail the experience of German warfare in the first World War, focusing specifically on the battle of the Somme. The Somme, together with other regions of northern France, had also lain under German domination. Its inhabitants had been rigorously suppressed and their possessions carted off as booty. Finally, during their 1917 withdrawal, the Germans had subjected the whole region to Operation Alberich, a retreat involving unparalleled brutality which left the population in occupation of a wilderness wrought by war (the "scorched earth policy"). A well-known, and well researched account, the authors have combined their research skills to produce a book which includes private testimonies. Amongst these are many unknown or previously unpublished letters and diaries as well as numerous photographs. AUTHOR: Gerhard Hirschfeld is Director of the Library of Contemporary History and Professor of Modern History at the University of Stuttgart; Gerd Krumeich is Professor of Modern History at the Heinrich-Heine- University of Duesseldorf; Irina Renz is chief curator of the archival collections of the Library of Contemporary History in Stuttgart. Gerd Krumeich and Gerhard Hirschfeld are closely involved with the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne/France. Together with Irina Renz they have written and edited the first German Encyclopedia of the First World War. SELLING POINTS: * The battle of the Somme has been coined by The English philosopher and pacifist Bertrand Russell as "maximum slaughter at minimum expense" * The "scorched earth policy" first practised on the Somme is an oft forgotten, or easily denied, aspect of a World War. Probably the reason why for the Germans - contrary to the British - it never developed into a region of national remembrance. * The losses on both sides were correspondingly high: more than 1.1 million men, twice the number at Verdun, were either killed, wounded or taken prisoner. ILLUSTRATIONS: 166 b/w plates

Download or read book The Germans on the Somme written by Philip Gibbs and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Scorched Earth written by Gerhard Hirschfeld and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2009-07-19 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses in detail the experience of German warfare in the first World War, focusing specifically on the battle of the Somme. The Somme, together with other regions of northern France, had also lain under German domination. Its inhabitants had been rigorously suppressed and their possessions carted off as booty. Finally, during their 1917 withdrawal, the Germans had subjected the whole region to Operation Alberich, a retreat involving unparalleled brutality which left the population in occupation of a wilderness wrought by war (the "scorched earth policy"). A well-known, and well-researched account, the authors have combined their research skills to produce a book which includes private testimonies. Amongst these are many unknown or previously unpublished letters and diaries as well as numerous photographs.

Download or read book Germany in the Great War written by Joshua Bilton and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-04-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Germans on the Somme Classic Reprint written by Philip Gibbs and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-10 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Germans on the Somme From January to May of this year the German Command on the Western front was concentrating all its energy and all its available strength in man power and gun power upon the attack of Verdun. The Crown Prince had staked all his reputation upon this adventure, which he believed would end in the capture of the strongest French fortress and the destruction of the French armies. He demanded men and more men until every unit that could be spared from other fronts of the line had been thrown into this furnace. Divisions were called in from other theatres of war, and increased the strength on the Western front to a total of about 130 divisions. Fear Of Our Offensive. But the months passed, and Verdun still held out above piles of German corpses on its slopes, and in June Germany looked East and saw a great menace. The Russian offensive was becoming violent. German generals on the Russian fronts sent desperate messages for help. "Send us more men" they said and from the Western front four divisions containing 39 battalions were sent to them. They must have been sent grudgingly, for now another menace threatened the enemy, and it was on the Western side. The British Armies were getting ready to strike. In spite of Verdun, France still had men enough - withdrawn from a part of the line in which they had been relieved by the British - to co-operate in a new attack. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Download or read book Somme written by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-15 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Somme written by Robin Prior and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-26 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published in a new edition on the centenary of the seismic battle, this book provides the definitive account of the Somme and assigns responsibility to military and political leaders for its catastrophic outcome. “A magisterial piece of scholarship. . . . It is a model of historical research and should do much to further our understanding of the Great War and how it was fought.”—Contemporary Review “Revisionist history at its best.”—Library Journal (starred review) “A major addition to the literature on the military history of the Great War.”—Jay Winter

Download or read book The Battle of the Somme written by Alan Axelrod and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fought during 1916, the Battle of the Somme was conceived by the French and British as a great offensive to be waged against Germany even as France poured incredible numbers of men into the slaughterhouse that was the desperate defense of Verdun. The French general-in-chief, Joseph “Papa” Joffre, was especially anxious to go on the offensive. For the French high command cherished the belief, born in the era of Napoleon, that the success of French arms depended on attack and that defense was anathema to what the nationalistic philosopher Henri Bergson called the “élan vital” of the French people, a quality, he argued, that set the Gallic race apart from the rest of the world. After more than five months, the British eked out a penetration of some six miles into German territory. The cost had been 420,000 Britons killed or wounded (70,000 men per mile gained)—and most of these were from “Kitchener’s Army,” so-called Pals Battalions, working- and middle-class volunteers promised that they could fight alongside their friends, co-workers, and neighbors. This meant that the Somme, more than any other battle before or since, devastated the young male population of entire British towns, villages, and neighborhoods. French losses were just under 200,000. The Germans lost at least 650,000. Just as the French refused to give up ground at Verdun, the Germans held on stubbornly at the Somme—so stubbornly that General Ludendorff actually complained that his men “fought too doggedly, clinging too resolutely to the mere holding of ground, with the result that the losses were heavy.” The only thing “conclusive” about the Somme was the ineluctable fact of death. No battle ever fought in any conflict provided a stronger incentive for all sides to reach a negotiated peace—the “peace without victory” that Woodrow Wilson, still standing on the sidelines, urged the combatants to agree upon. Instead, the Kaiser, appalled both by Verdun and the Somme, relieved Falkenhayn and replaced him with Hindenburg and Ludendorff, who had achieved great success on the Eastern Front. The new commanders created two new defensive lines, both well behind the Somme front. On the one hand, it was a retreat. On the other, it was a commitment to draw the French and British farther east and invite them to sacrifice more of their soldiery. The modest advance the British made was but the prelude to additional slaughter.

Download or read book The Battle of the Somme written by Matthias Strohn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of the Somme is the most famous battle of World War I in the English-speaking world. Published to coincide with the centenary commemoration of the battle of the Somme, this study comprises 12 separate articles written by some of the foremost military historians, each of whom looks at a specific aspect of the battle. The terrors of the Somme have largely come to embody trench warfare on the Western Front in the modern imagination, but this book looks beyond the horrendous conditions and staggering casualty rates to provide new, insightful research on one of the most pivotal battles of the war. Focusing on key aspects of the British, French and German forces, overall strategic and tactical impacts of the battle and with an introduction by renowned World War I scholar Professor Sir Hew Strachan, The Battle of the Somme is a timely collection of the latest research and analysis of the battle.

Download or read book Through German Eyes written by Christopher Duffy and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2020-03-05 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The key battle of the First World War from the German point of view The Battle of the Somme has an enduring legacy, the image established by Alan Clark of 'lions led by donkeys': brave British soldiers sent to their deaths by incompetent generals. However, from the German point of view the battle was a disaster. Their own casualties were horrendous. The Germans did not hold the (modern) view that the British Army was useless. As Christopher Duffy reveals, they had great respect for the British forces and German reports shed a fascinating light on the volunteer army recruited by General Kitchener. The German view of the British Army has never been made public until now. Their typically diligent reports have lain undisturbed in obscure archives until unearthed by Christopher Duffy. The picture that emerges is a far cry from 'Blackadder': the Germans developed an increasing respect for the professionalism of the British Army. And the fact that every British soldier taken prisoner still believed Britain would win the war gave German intelligence teams their first indication that their Empire would go down to defeat.

Download or read book The Germans on the Somme written by HardPress and published by Hardpress Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Download or read book This Carnival of Hell written by Richard A. Baumgartner and published by . This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book features first-person narratives of more than 85 participants and dozens of rare photographs. They offer snapshots of the Somme-fighter's reality, collectively illustrating what it was like for the German soldier at the apex of combat on the Western Front.

Download or read book The Germans on the Somme written by David Bilton and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2010-03-10 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This highly illustrated book covers the activities of the German Army on the River Somme throughout the long years of The Great War. The initial fighting in 1914 was against the French prior to the arrival of the British Army. The 1916 Allied Offensive eventually resulted in the German withdrawal but only at a terrible cost to both sides. The 1918 Kaiserschlacht saw the Germans return, albeit briefly. Each phase is covered from the German perspective using primary and secondary sources. In addition to the wealth of splendid/fully captioned photographs, there is an authoritative general text and a useful chronological order of events. Being arguably the most evocative area in British military history, much has been written on the Somme. What makes this splendid book so different is the author's successful attempt to view events through the eyes of our adversaries.

Download or read book Fighting the Somme written by Jack Sheldon and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * A thought-provoking study of the doctrine, particularly command and control, that the German army developed in fighting the defensive battle of the Somme 1916. * Insight into the development of German army doctrine and command and control. * Uses archival evidence and contemporary accounts to illustrate how the Germans put doctrine into pract

Download or read book The First Day on the Somme written by Martin Middlebrook and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2006-05-25 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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)

Download or read book The German Army in the Spring Offensives 1917 written by Jack Sheldon and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-09-21 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A detailed and vivid account of the battles on three deadly fronts. The research is breathtaking, the assembly of the story is masterful.”—The Long, Long Trail After the great battles of 1916, the Allied Armies planned to launch massive attacks North and South of the Somme. The German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917 forced the new French CinC General Nivelle to rethink and the French embarked on a major attack in the Aisne area and along the Chemin des Dames, with the British conducting large-scale diversionary operations around Arras. The French suffered disastrously and, rendered incapable of further offensive operations, it fell to the British to step up the pressure, which they did albeit at a terrible price. This latest work by expert Jack Sheldon describes the event of Spring 1917 from the defenders’ perspective. In particular it reveals the methods the Germans used to smash the French attacks and Oberst Fritz von Lossberg’s transformation of the defenses in the Arras front. Actions described in detail are the bitter battles around Monchy Le Preun, the Roeux Chemical works and Bullecourt as well as the capture of Vimy Ridge. “This volume of Jack Sheldon’s highly detailed series of books on the German Army in the Great War follows his usual effective model—employing the clear writing and knowledge learned from dogged, detailed research . . . It would be impossible to offer other than the highest recommendation for this book.”—Stand To! The Western Front Association “Incredibly moving and powerful.”—Pennant