Germany And The Causes Of The First World War

Author : Mark Hewitson
Publisher : Berg Publishers
Page : 294 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2004-10
Category : History
ISBN : 1859738702

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Germany and the Causes of the First World War by Mark Hewitson Pdf

This book reassesses the critical role played by Germany in the events leading to the First World War. Contemporary historians have argued that German leaders acted defensively in 1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and diplomatic position. Hewitson challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war. Accordingly, they pursued offensive policies--at the risk of war--at important junctures during the 1900s and 1910s. Hewitson contends that the decade before the First World War witnessed critical changes in German foreign policy. During the July crisis of 1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with Russia becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. German leaders could now pursue their strategy of brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical conclusion.

Author : Mark Hewitson
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2014-03-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781472578105

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Germany and the Causes of the First World War by Mark Hewitson Pdf

How can we understand what caused World War I? What role did Germany play? This book encourages us to re-think the events that led to global conflict in 1914.Historians in recent years have argued that German leaders acted defensively or pre-emptively in 1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and diplomatic position. Germany and the Causes of the First World War challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war. This belief in Germany's superiority derived primarily from an assumption of French decline and Russian weakness throughout the period between the turn of the century and the eve of the First World War. Accordingly, Wilhelmine policy-makers pursued offensive policies - at the risk of war at important junctures during the 1900s and 1910s. The author analyses the stereotyping of enemy states, representations of war in peacetime, and conceptualizations of international relations. He uncovers the complex role of ruling elites, political parties, big business and the press, and contends that the decade before the First World War witnessed some critical changes in German foreign policy. By the time of the July crisis of 1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with Russia - the traditional bugbear of the German centre and left - becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. Under these changed conditions, German leaders could now pursue their strategy of brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical conclusion.

Author : Mark Hewitson
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 43,5 Mb
Release : 2014-03-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781845207298

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Germany and the Causes of the First World War by Mark Hewitson Pdf

How can we understand what caused World War I? What role did Germany play? This book encourages us to re-think the events that led to global conflict in 1914.Historians in recent years have argued that German leaders acted defensively or pre-emptively in 1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and diplomatic position. Germany and the Causes of the First World War challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war. This belief in Germany's superiority derived primarily from an assumption of French decline and Russian weakness throughout the period between the turn of the century and the eve of the First World War. Accordingly, Wilhelmine policy-makers pursued offensive policies - at the risk of war at important junctures during the 1900s and 1910s. The author analyses the stereotyping of enemy states, representations of war in peacetime, and conceptualizations of international relations. He uncovers the complex role of ruling elites, political parties, big business and the press, and contends that the decade before the First World War witnessed some critical changes in German foreign policy. By the time of the July crisis of 1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with Russia - the traditional bugbear of the German centre and left - becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. Under these changed conditions, German leaders could now pursue their strategy of brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical conclusion.

Author : Mark Hewitson
Publisher : Berg Publishers
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2004-10-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1859738702

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Germany and the Causes of the First World War by Mark Hewitson Pdf

How can we understand what caused World War I? What role did Germany play? This book encourages us to re-think the events that led to global conflict in 1914.Historians in recent years have argued that German leaders acted defensively or pre-emptively in 1914, conscious of the Reich's deteriorating military and diplomatic position. Germany and the Causes of the First World War challenges such interpretations, placing new emphasis on the idea that the Reich Chancellor, the German Foreign Office and the Great General Staff were confident that they could win a continental war. This belief in Germany's superiority derived primarily from an assumption of French decline and Russian weakness throughout the period between the turn of the century and the eve of the First World War. Accordingly, Wilhelmine policy-makers pursued offensive policies - at the risk of war at important junctures during the 1900s and 1910s. The author analyses the stereotyping of enemy states, representations of war in peacetime, and conceptualizations of international relations. He uncovers the complex role of ruling elites, political parties, big business and the press, and contends that the decade before the First World War witnessed some critical changes in German foreign policy. By the time of the July crisis of 1914, for example, the perception of enemies had altered, with Russia - the traditional bugbear of the German centre and left - becoming the principal opponent of the Reich. Under these changed conditions, German leaders could now pursue their strategy of brinkmanship, using war as an instrument of policy, to its logical conclusion.

Author : Fritz Fischer
Publisher : New York : W. W. Norton
Page : 728 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1967
Category : Germany
ISBN : UOM:39015000213051

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Germany's Aims in the First World War by Fritz Fischer Pdf

This professor's great work is possibly the most important book of any sort, probably the most important historical book, certainly the most controversial book to come out of Germany since the war. It had already forced the revision of widely held views in Germany's responsibility for beginning and continuing World War 1, and of supposed divergence of aim between business and the military on one side and labor and intellectuals on the other.

Author : Niall Ferguson
Publisher : Basic Books
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2008-08-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780786725298

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The Pity of War by Niall Ferguson Pdf

In The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson makes a simple and provocative argument: that the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. Britain, according to Ferguson, entered into war based on naïve assumptions of German aims—and England's entry into the war transformed a Continental conflict into a world war, which they then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces.That the war was wicked, horrific, inhuman,is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. More British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War; indeed, the total British fatalities in that single battle—some 420,000—exceeds the entire American fatalities for both World Wars. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with enthusiasm. Ferguson vividly brings back to life this terrifying period, not through dry citation of chronological chapter and verse but through a series of brilliant chapters focusing on key ways in which we now view the First World War.For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them, and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper nor more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.

Author : Jay Winter
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2009-10-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9780826271990

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The Legacy of the Great War by Jay Winter Pdf

In late 2007 and early 2008, world-renowned historians gathered in Kansas City for a series of public forums on World War I. Each of the five events focused on a particular topic and featured spirited dialogue between its prominent participants. In spontaneous exchanges, the eminent scholars probed each other’s arguments, learned from each other, and provided insights not just into history but also into the way scholars think about their subject alongside and at times in conflict with their colleagues. Representing a fourth generation of writers on the Great War and a transnational rather than an international approach, prominent historians Niall Ferguson and Paul Kennedy, Holger Afflerbach and Gary Sheffield, John Horne and Len Smith, John Milton Cooper and Margaret MacMillan, and Jay Winter and Robert Wohl brought to the proceedings an exciting clash of ideas. The forums addressed topics about the Great War that have long fascinated both scholars and the educated public: the origins of the war and the question of who was responsible for the escalation of the July Crisis; the nature of generalship and military command, seen here from the perspectives of a German and a British scholar; the private soldiers’ experiences of combat, revealing their strategies of survival and negotiation; the peace-making process and the overwhelming pressures under which statesmen worked; and the long-term cultural consequences of the war—showing that the Great War was “great” not merely because of its magnitude but also because of its revolutionary effects. These topics continue to reverberate, and in addition to shedding new light on the subjects, these forums constitute a glimpse at how historical writing happens. American society did not suffer the consequences of the Great War that virtually all European countries knew—a lack of perspective that the National World War I Museum seeks to correct. This book celebrates that effort, helping readers feel the excitement and the moral seriousness of historical scholarship in this field and drawing more Americans into considering how their own history is part of this story.

Author : Timothy T. Lupfer
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 84 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 1981
Category : Electronic government information
ISBN : UCR:31210004670269

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The Dynamics of Doctrine by Timothy T. Lupfer Pdf

This paper is a case study in the wartime evolution of tactical doctrine. Besides providing a summary of German Infantry tactics of the First World War, this study offers insight into the crucial role of leadership in facilitating doctrinal change during battle. It reminds us that success in war demands extensive and vigorous training calculated to insure that field commanders understand and apply sound tactical principles as guidelines for action and not as a substitute for good judgment. It points out the need for a timely effort in collecting and evaluating doctrinal lessons from battlefield experience. --Abstract.

Author : Holger Afflerbach,David Stevenson
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 381 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : History
ISBN : 9780857453105

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An Improbable War? by Holger Afflerbach,David Stevenson Pdf

The First World War has been described as the "primordial catastrophe of the twentieth century." Arguably, Italian Fascism, German National Socialism and Soviet Leninism and Stalinism would not have emerged without the cultural and political shock of World War I. The question why this catastrophe happened therefore preoccupies historians to this day. The focus of this volume is not on the consequences, but rather on the connection between the Great War and the long 19th century, the short- and long-term causes of World War I. This approach results in the questioning of many received ideas about the war's causes, especially the notion of "inevitability."

Author : Edward Eastman McCullough
Publisher : Black Rose Books
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Europe
ISBN : UOM:39015047456721

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How the First World War Began by Edward Eastman McCullough Pdf

Attempts to understand the real causes of the First World War.

Author : Richard F. Hamilton,Holger H. Herwig
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 558 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2003-02-24
Category : History
ISBN : 0521817358

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The Origins of World War I by Richard F. Hamilton,Holger H. Herwig Pdf

Discusses and examines the possible causes of World War I.

Author : Sean McMeekin
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2013-05-06
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674072336

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The Russian Origins of the First World War by Sean McMeekin Pdf

The catastrophe of the First World War, and the destruction, revolution, and enduring hostilities it wrought, make the issue of its origins a perennial puzzle. Since World War II, Germany has been viewed as the primary culprit. Now, in a major reinterpretation of the conflict, Sean McMeekin rejects the standard notions of the war’s beginning as either a Germano-Austrian preemptive strike or a “tragedy of miscalculation.” Instead, he proposes that the key to the outbreak of violence lies in St. Petersburg. It was Russian statesmen who unleashed the war through conscious policy decisions based on imperial ambitions in the Near East. Unlike their civilian counterparts in Berlin, who would have preferred to localize the Austro-Serbian conflict, Russian leaders desired a more general war so long as British participation was assured. The war of 1914 was launched at a propitious moment for harnessing the might of Britain and France to neutralize the German threat to Russia’s goal: partitioning the Ottoman Empire to ensure control of the Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Nearly a century has passed since the guns fell silent on the western front. But in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, World War I smolders still. Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Jews, and other regional antagonists continue fighting over the last scraps of the Ottoman inheritance. As we seek to make sense of these conflicts, McMeekin’s powerful exposé of Russia’s aims in the First World War will illuminate our understanding of the twentieth century.

Author : James Joll
Publisher : London ; New York : Longman
Page : 244 pages
File Size : 50,5 Mb
Release : 1984
Category : History
ISBN : 0582490162

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The Origins of the First World War by James Joll Pdf

Author : A. F. Pollard
Publisher : BoD – Books on Demand
Page : 522 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2023-07-08
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9783368363567

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A Short History of the Great War by A. F. Pollard Pdf

Reproduction of the original.

Author : Christoph Cornelissen,Arndt Weinrich
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 516 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2022-11-11
Category : History
ISBN : 9781800737273

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The Historiography of World War I from 1918 to the Present by Christoph Cornelissen,Arndt Weinrich Pdf

From the Treaty of Versailles to the 2018 centenary and beyond, the history of the First World War has been continually written and rewritten, studied and contested, producing a rich historiography shaped by the social and cultural circumstances of its creation. Writing the Great War provides a groundbreaking survey of this vast body of work, assembling contributions on a variety of national and regional historiographies from some of the most prominent scholars in the field. By analyzing perceptions of the war in contexts ranging from Nazi Germany to India’s struggle for independence, this is an illuminating collective study of the complex interplay of memory and history.