Download or read book Great Writers on The Great War Fighting France written by Edith Wharton and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic account of the outbreak of war and a nation under invasion

Download or read book France and the Great War written by Leonard V. Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: France and the Great War tells the story of how the French community embarked upon, sustained, and in some ways prevailed in the Great War. In this 2003 book, Leonard Smith and his co-authors synthesize many years of scholarship, examining the origins of the war from a diplomatic and military viewpoint, before shifting their emphasis to socio-cultural and economic history when discussing the civilian and military war culture. They look at the 'total' mobilization of the French national community, as well as the military and civilian crises of 1917, and the ambiguous victory of 1918. The book concludes by revealing how traces of the Great War can still be found in the political and cultural life of the French national community. This lively, accessible and engaging book will be of enormous value to students of the Great War.

Download or read book Somewhere in France written by Jennifer Robson and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A daring young woman will risk her life to find her destiny in this atmospheric, beautifully drawn historical debut novel—a tale of love, hope, and danger set during the First World War. Lady Elizabeth Neville-Ashford wants to travel the world, pursue a career, and marry for love. But in 1914, the stifling restrictions of aristocratic British society and her mother’s rigid expectations forbid Lilly from following her heart. When war breaks out, the spirited young woman seizes her chance for independence. Defying her parents, she moves to London and eventually becomes an ambulance driver in the newly formed Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps—an exciting and treacherous job that takes her close to the Western Front. Assigned to a field hospital in France, Lilly is reunited with Robert Fraser, her dear brother Edward’s best friend. The handsome Scottish surgeon has always encouraged Lilly’s dreams. She doesn’t care that Robbie grew up in poverty—she yearns for their friendly affection to become something more. Lily is the most beautiful—and forbidden—woman Robbie has ever known. Fearful for her life, he’s determined to keep her safe, even if it means breaking her heart. In a world divided by class, filled with uncertainty and death, can their hope for love survive. . . or will it become another casualty of this tragic war? The paperback includes a P.S. section with additional insights from the author, background material, suggestions for further reading, and more.

Download or read book Eyewitnesses to the Great War written by Ed Klekowski and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with the novelist Edith Wharton, who toured the front in her Mercedes in 1915, this book describes the wartime experiences of American idealists (and a few rogues) on the Western Front and concludes with the doughboys' experiences under General Pershing. Americans were "over there" from the war's beginning in August 1914, and because America was neutral until April 1917, they saw the war from both the French and German lines. Since most of the Americans who served, regardless of which side they were on, were in Champagne and Lorraine, this sector is the focus. Excerpts from memoirs are supplemented by descriptions of personalities, places, battles and even equipment and weapons, thus placing these generally forgotten American adventurers into the context of their times. A special set of maps based upon German Army battle maps was drawn and rare photographs supplement the text.

Download or read book French Tanks of the Great War written by Tim Gale and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2016-08-31 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A detailed history of France’s development of tanks and the combat the tanks served in during World War I, by an armored warfare expert. The French tank corps was an essential part of the French army from 1917 onwards, yet its history has been strangely neglected in English accounts of the Western Front. Using information derived from the French military archives at Vincennes—much of which has never been published in English before—author Tim Gale describes the design and development of the tanks, the political and organizational issues that arose between the French military and civilian bureaucracy, and the record of these pioneering fighting vehicles in combat. All the major engagements in which French tanks participated are depicted in graphic detail, often quoting directly from recollections left by individual tank commanders of their experience in battle, and each operation is assessed in terms of its impact on French tactics in general and on tank tactics in particular. The Nivelle offensive and the battles of Malmaison, the Matz, Soissons, and Champagne are featured in the narrative, and the actions of the French tanks serving with the U.S. army are covered, too. Much of the material in Tim Gale’s study will be entirely new to non-French speakers. The story will be fascinating reading for anyone who is interested in the Great War, the French army, military innovation and the history of armored warfare. Praise for French Tanks of the Great War “Gale’s book . . . is very easy to dip into.” —Military Modelling “It is a wealth of information and I would definitely recommend it.” —Forgotten Weapons

Download or read book Fighting the Great War written by Michael S. NEIBERG and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Neiberg offers a concise history based on the latest research and insights into the soldiers, commanders, battles, and legacies of the Great War.

Download or read book The Great War in the Argonne Forest written by Richard Merry and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The annals of the First World War record the Argonne Forest as the epicenter of the famous Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918. The largest American operation launched against the Germans during the conflict. During 1914 and 1915 though, amidst the dense forest, French and Italian soldiers withstood the German assaults. All sides suffered horrendous casualties, as each sought to break through the lines. The epic four-year campaign is the subject of Richard Merry’s vividly written account. His great-uncle arrived there in September 1914 and started corresponding with his family. Richard traces the stories of some of the men – and women – who became embroiled in the epic forest struggle which culminated in the cold, gas-filled autumnal mist of 1918 when the New Yorkers of the 77th ‘Liberty’ Division fought there. One of their number, Charles Whittlesey, and his 'Lost Battalion’ held out against insurmountable odds. Sergeant Alvin York, the Tennessee backwoodsman and pacifist, overcame his religious convictions and wrote himself into American military history. The story does not end there; the author describes the aftermath of war in the area – the lethal outbreak of Spanish flu, the reburial of the dead, the rebuilding of the villages and the replanting of the forest before the Germans invaded again in 1940.

Download or read book Verdun written by Paul Jankowski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 976 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book August 1914 written by Bruno Cabanes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-23 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned military historian closely examines the first month of World War I in France. On August 1, 1914, war erupted into the lives of millions of families across France. Most people thought the conflict would last just a few weeks . . . Yet before the month was out, twenty-seven thousand French soldiers died on the single day of August 22 alone—the worst catastrophe in French military history. Refugees streamed into France as the German army advanced, spreading rumors that amplified still more the ordeal of war. Citizens of enemy countries who were living in France were viciously scapegoated. Drawing from diaries, personal correspondence, police reports, and government archives, Bruno Cabanes renders an intimate, narrative-driven study of the first weeks of World War I in France. Told from the perspective of ordinary women and men caught in the flood of mobilization, this revealing book deepens our understanding of the traumatic impact of war on soldiers and civilians alike. “An exceptional book, a brilliant, moving, and insightful analysis of national mobilization.” —Martha Hanna, author of Your Death Would Be Mine: Paul and Marie Pireaud in the Great War “This book deserves a wide readership from historians, critics and anyone interested in the catastrophe of war.” —Mary Louise Roberts, Distinguished Lucie Aubrac and Plaenert-Bascom Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison “The sounds, sights and emotions of August, 1914 are all evoked with exceptional skill.” —David A. Bell, author of The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

Download or read book The French Army and the First World War written by Elizabeth Greenhalgh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-13 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new account of the role and performance of the French army in the First World War.

Download or read book Years of Plenty Years of Want written by Benjamin Franklin Martin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great War that engulfed Europe between 1914 and 1918 was a catastrophe for France. French soil was the site of most of the fighting on the Western Front. French dead were more than 1.3 million, the permanently disabled another 1.1 million, overwhelmingly men in their twenties and thirties. The decade and a half before the war had been years of plenty, a time of increasing prosperity and confidence remembered as the Belle Epoque or the good old days. The two decades that followed its end were years of want, loss, misery, and fear. In 1914, France went to war convinced of victory. In 1939, France went to war dreading defeat. To explain the burden of winning the Great War and embracing the collapse that followed, Benjamin Martin examines the national mood and daily life of France in July 1914 and August 1939, the months that preceded the two world wars. He presents two titans: Georges Clemenceau, defiant and steadfast, who rallied a dejected nation in 1918, and Edouard Daladier,hesitant and irresolute, who espoused appeasement in 1938 though comprehending its implications. He explores novels by a constellation of celebrated French writers who treated the Great War and its social impact, from Colette to Irène Némirovsky, from François Mauriac to Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. And he devotes special attention to Roger Martin du Gard, the1937 Nobel Laureate, whose roman-fleuve The Thibaults is an unrivaled depiction of social unraveling and disillusionment. For many in France, the legacy of the Great War was the vow to avoid any future war no matter what the cost. They cowered behind the Maginot Line, the fortifications along the eastern border designed to halt any future German invasion. Others knew that cost would be too great and defended the "Descartes Line": liberty and truth, the declared values of French civilization. In his distinctive and vividly compelling prose, Martin recounts this struggle for the soul of France.

Download or read book A World Undone written by G. J. Meyer and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-05-29 with total page 818 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Drawing on exhaustive research, this intimate account details how World War I reduced Europe’s mightiest empires to rubble, killed twenty million people, and cracked the foundations of our modern world “Thundering, magnificent . . . [A World Undone] is a book of true greatness that prompts moments of sheer joy and pleasure. . . . It will earn generations of admirers.”—The Washington Times On a summer day in 1914, a nineteen-year-old Serbian nationalist gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. While the world slumbered, monumental forces were shaken. In less than a month, a combination of ambition, deceit, fear, jealousy, missed opportunities, and miscalculation sent Austro-Hungarian troops marching into Serbia, German troops streaming toward Paris, and a vast Russian army into war, with England as its ally. As crowds cheered their armies on, no one could guess what lay ahead in the First World War: four long years of slaughter, physical and moral exhaustion, and the near collapse of a civilization that until 1914 had dominated the globe. Praise for A World Undone “Meyer’s sketches of the British Cabinet, the Russian Empire, the aging Austro-Hungarian Empire . . . are lifelike and plausible. His account of the tragic folly of Gallipoli is masterful. . . . [A World Undone] has an instructive value that can scarcely be measured”—Los Angeles Times “An original and very readable account of one of the most significant and often misunderstood events of the last century.”—Steve Gillon, resident historian, The History Channel

Download or read book German Strategy and the Path to Verdun written by Robert T. Foley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-06 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost 90 years since its conclusion, the battle of Verdun is still little understood. German Strategy and the Path to Verdun is a detailed examination of this seminal battle based on research conducted in archives long thought lost. Material returned to Germany from the former Soviet Union has allowed for a reinterpretation of Erich von Falkenhayn's overall strategy for the war and of the development of German operational and tactical concepts to fit this new strategy of attrition. By taking a long view of the development of German military ideas from the end of the Franco-German War in 1871, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun also gives much-needed context to Falkenhayn's ideas and the course of one of the greatest battles of attrition the world has ever known.

Download or read book Back Over There written by Richard Rubin and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on Richard Rubin's wildly popular New York Times series, Back Over There is a timely journey, in turns reverent and iconoclastic but always fascinating, through a place where the past and present are never really separated. In The Last of the Doughboys, Richard Rubin introduced readers to a forgotten generation of Americans: the men and women who fought and won the First World War. Interviewing the war’s last survivors face-to-face, he knew well the importance of being present if you want to get the real story. But he soon came to realize that to get the whole story, he had to go Over There, too. So he did, and discovered that while most Americans regard that war as dead and gone, to the French, who still live among its ruins and memories, it remains very much alive. Years later, with the centennial of the war only magnifying this paradox, Rubin decided to go back Over There to see if he could, at last, resolve it. For months he followed the trail of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front, finding trenches, tunnels, bunkers, century-old graffiti and ubiquitous artifacts. But he also found an abiding fondness for America and Americans, and a colorful corps of local after-hours historians and archeologists who tirelessly explore these sites and preserve the memories they embody while patiently waiting for Americans to return and reclaim their own history and heritage. None of whom seemed to mind that his French needed work.

Download or read book Great Writers on The Great War Kipling s War written by Rudyard Kipling and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2014-08-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A striking narrative of the First World War by one of the greatest writers in the English language

Download or read book On the Battlefield of Memory written by Steven Trout and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2010-09-02 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work is a detailed study of how Americans in the 1920s and 1930s interpreted and remembered the First World War. Steven Trout asserts that from the beginning American memory of the war was fractured and unsettled, more a matter of competing sets of collective memories—each set with its own spokespeople— than a unified body of myth. The members of the American Legion remembered the war as a time of assimilation and national harmony. However, African Americans and radicalized whites recalled a very different war. And so did many of the nation’s writers, filmmakers, and painters. Trout studies a wide range of cultural products for their implications concerning the legacy of the war: John Dos Passos’s novels Three Soldiers and 1919, Willa Cather’s One of Ours, William March’s Company K, and Laurence Stallings’s Plumes; paintings by Harvey Dunn, Horace Pippin, and John Steuart Curry; portrayals of the war in The American Legion Weekly and The American Legion Monthly; war memorials and public monuments like the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier; and commemorative products such as the twelve-inch tall Spirit of the American Doughboy statue. Trout argues that American memory of World War I was not only confused and contradictory during the ‘20s and ‘30s, but confused and contradictory in ways that accommodated affirmative interpretations of modern warfare and military service. Somewhat in the face of conventional wisdom, Trout shows that World War I did not destroy the glamour of war for all, or even most, Americans and enhanced it for many.

Download or read book British and French Writers of the First World War written by Frank Field and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-01-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The impact of the Great War on some of France and Britain's most prominent writers.