History of WWI

The History of World War I series recounts the battles and campaigns that took place during the 'Great War'. From the Falkland Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the World War I series provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns that raged on land, at sea and in the air. Following the climactic battles of Verdun and the Somme the previous year, the Allies sought to finish the war on the Western Front in 1917 through a major French offensive designed to rupture the German front and roll up their position. This attack was to be supported by a diversionary British offensive at Arras in the north, which would draw off both German attention and their reserves. In the event, the French offensive in Champagne failed to deliver the promised breakthrough, leaving the French Army in a state of open mutiny. While French discipline recovered, the British Expeditionary Force took on the burden of the bulk of the fighting for the rest of the year. The need for an Allied offensive to take the pressure off the French resulted in the Third Battle of Ypres, more commonly known as Passchendaele. The battle degenerated into a slaughter in the Flanders mud thanks to heavy rain, and the only rays of light for the Allies at the end of 1917 were the arrival of fresh American troops on the Western Front, and the potential for a decisive victory shown by the use of armour at the Battle of Cambrai. However the Russian Revolution brought the fighting on the Eastern Front to an end, releasing numerous battle-hardened divisions to reinforce the Germans in the west. The year 1918 saw Germany launch her Spring Offensives, desperate attempts to defeat the Allies before the Americans could arrive in force. Although these assaults came close to breaking the Allied line, they eventually petered out in the face of determined resistance and over-extended supply lines. Following the Battle of Amiens in August, the Allies pressed onwards: the British in Flanders, the French and the Americans in the Meuse-Argonne region. By September it was obvious that Germany was losing the war, and the decision was made to sue for peace before Allied troops reached German soil. The Armistice came into force at 11am on the morning of 11 November 1918, although the war did not officially end until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919. With the aid of over 300 black and white and colour photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, The Western Front 1917—1918 provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of the conflict on the Western Front in the final years of World War I.

The History of World War I series recounts the battles and campaigns that took place during the 'Great War'. From the Falkland Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the World War I series provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns that raged on land, at sea and in the air. The act that sparked World War I — the assassination in Sarajevo of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand — was the culmination of a series of events stretching back into the nineteenth century. A mixture of ethnic tensions, nationalism, political opportunism, and the quest for power and status within the Balkans helped to plunge all of Europe into a conflict that would cost millions of lives. Austro-Hungary faced conflict with both Serbia and Russia during the opening phase of the war. German allegiance to Austria had been clear from the outset, but the decision of the Bulgarians to commit themselves to the Central Powers in October 1915 made a notable difference to the war in the Balkans. It led to the opening of the Salonika front in Greece, where 150,000 British and French troops saw little fighting until the disastrous 1918 Doiran campaign. At the war's outbreak in 1914, the British authorities in Africa were totally unprepared, with relatively few forces available to attack the German colonies, who themselves were effectively left isolated from help. The German commander in East Africa, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, set about launching a brilliant guerrilla campaign with scant resources, conducting lightning attacks on Allied targets, particularly the Uganda Railway. He was opposed by the South African General Jan Smuts and his mixture of Boer, British, Rhodesian, Indian, African, Belgian and Portuguese soldiers. Fighting would continue in the African colonies until November 1918. Italy entered the war against the Central Powers in April 1915. For two years, Austro-Hungarian forces were kept at bay on Italy's northern borders, until disaster overtook the Italian forces at the Battle of Caporetto in October 1917. The humiliation of such a defeat by a combined German and Austro-Hungarian force would only be partially relieved by the Allied victory at Vittorio Veneto in November 1918, which led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. With the aid of over 300 black and white and colour photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, The Balkans, Italy & Africa provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of the war in the Balkan, Italian and African theatres from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo to the surrender of the Central Powers.

The History of World War I series recounts the battles and campaigns of the 'Great War'. From the Falkland Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the World War I series provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns that raged on land, at sea and in the air. In 1914, the autocratic Russian Empire was allied to the democracies of France and Great Britain — and the small Kingdom of Serbia — through a series of treaties concluded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and designed to counter the threat of the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. With the outbreak of war in August, the Russian forces mobilized and moved into the attack. Despite being outnumbered, the German commander, Paul von Hindenburg, destroyed one Russian army at the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914, before defeating another at the Battle of the Masurian Lakes the following month. The Russians fared better against the Austro-Hungarian forces further south in Galicia, before reluctant German intervention to help their allies stabilized the situation. The year 1915 saw the German High Command switch their main effort to the Eastern Front, resulting in the decisive German victory at Gorlice-Tarnow, and the subsequent capture of Warsaw and hundreds of square miles of formerly Russian-controlled territory. The Russian Brusilov Offensive in the summer of 1916 and the Romanian entry into the war on the Allied side saw the latter's fortunes revive, but the success proved to be only temporary. Brusilov's attack stalled, while Romania was effectively knocked out of the war by a joint Central Powers offensive led by Germany and Bulgaria. Increasing unrest in Russia culminated in the first revolution of 1917 and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. The offensives of the Russian Provisional Government failed, and a second revolution in November saw Lenin's Bolsheviks seize power. Having made peace with the Central Powers, the Bolsheviks fought the anti-Bolshevik 'White' Russian forces in the Civil War that followed, while a number of Allied powers sent forces to help the Whites. This conflict, combined with war with the newly-revived state of Poland in 1919, meant that large-scale fighting in Russia did not end until late 1920. The length of the front in the East was much longer than in the West. The theatre of war was roughly delimited by the Baltic Sea in the West and Moscow in the East, a distance of 1,200 kilometers, and Saint Petersburg in the North and the Black Sea in the South, a distance of more than 1,600 kilometers. This had a drastic effect on the nature of the warfare. While World War I on the Western Front developed into trench warfare for much of the war, the battle lines on the Eastern Front were much more fluid, and trenches never truly developed. The greater length of the front ensured that the density of soldiers in the line was lower so the line was easier to break. Once broken, the sparse communication networks made it difficult for the defender to rush reinforcements to the rupture in the line to mount a rapid counteroffensive and seal off a breakthrough. The terrain in the Eastern European theatre was quite solid, often making it near impossible to construct anything resembling the complicated trench systems on the Western Front, which tended to have muddier and much more workable terrain. In short, in the east the side defending did not have the overwhelming advantages it had on the Western Front. In fact the greatest advance of the whole war was made in the East by the German Army in the summer of 1915. With the aid of over 300 black and white and color photographs, complemented by full-color maps, The Eastern Front provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of the conflict on the Eastern Front, up to and including the Russian Civil War and the Russo-Polish War.

The History of World War I series recounts the battles and campaigns that took place during the 'Great War'. From the Falkland Islands to the lakes of Africa, across the Eastern and Western Fronts, to the former German colonies in the Pacific, the World War I series provides a six-volume history of the battles and campaigns that raged on land, at sea and in the air. The struggle for naval supremacy helped create the conditions for the outbreak of World War I. After the coronation of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany's ambitions for its 'place in the sun' — in other words a greater influence in world affairs — sidelined the traditional and familiar rivalry between France and the British Empire. The naval arms race inspired by HMS Dreadnought may have captured the headlines, but the opening stages of the naval war were dominated by the threat from German cruisers stationed outside European waters, until they were hunted down and sunk by the Royal Navy, notably at the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914. Germany switched its focus to the U-boat, seeing it as a weapon capable of winning the war by starving Britain into surrender. Unrestricted submarine warfare led to the sinking of millions of tons of shipping, but it would also force the USA to enter the war on the Allied side in 1917. In the Mediterranean, the French fleet took the lead, while Austria-Hungary supported German actions. The Allied attempt in 1915 to use maritime power to break the strategic deadlock with an amphibious operation in the Dardanelles ultimately failed, although Allied sea power helped sustain the successful campaigns against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East. What would prove to be the decisive naval engagement of the war took place in 1916 at the Battle of Jutland. Whilst the clash itself was inconclusive, the German High Seas Fleet would be all but confined to port for the rest of the war, handing the initiative to the Royal Navy. The resultant command of the seas allowed the Allies to carry fresh American armies and much-needed supplies to Europe in 1917. However, victory for the Allies was ultimately delivered by the naval economic blockade. By preventing the import of war materials and food, the fighting power and morale of the German armed forces was weakened. It was the mutiny of the High Seas Fleet in October 1918 that prompted the German Revolution and the subsequent abdication of the Kaiser. With the aid of over 300 black and white and colour photographs, complemented by full-colour maps, Naval Warfare provides a detailed guide to the background and conduct of World War I naval operations, describing the struggle to win control of the high seas around the globe.