A Companion to the First World War brings together an international team of distinguished historians who provide a series of original and thought-provoking essays on one of the most devastating events in modern history.

• Comprises 38 essays by leading scholars who analyze the current state of historical scholarship on the First World War


• Provides extensive coverage spanning the pre-war period, the military conflict, social, economic, political, and cultural developments, and the war's legacy


• Offers original perspectives on themes as diverse as strategy and tactics, war crimes, science and technology, and the arts


• Selected as a 2011 Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE

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.

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