The First World War is a subject that has fascinated the public as well as the academic community since the close of hostilities in 1918. Over the past thirty years in particular, the historiography associated with the conflict has expanded considerably to include studies whose emphases range between the economic, social, cultural, literary, and imperial aspects of the war, all coinciding with revisions to perceptions of its military context. Nevertheless, much of the discussion of the First World War remains confined to the experiences of a narrow collection of European armies on the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium. This volume seeks to push the focus away from the Western Front and to draw out the multi-spectral nature of the conflict, examining forgotten theatres and neglected experiences. The chapters explore the question of what ‘total war’ meant for the lives of people around the world implicated in this momentous event, broadening current debates on the First World War as well as developing, reinforcing, and refining the existing categories of analysis. The chapters are grouped into sections that reflect neglected elements of the transnational interpretation of the conflict and aspects of the total war debate. These encompass alternative forms of mobilisation, issues of neutrality, ideas of racial identity, and the scope of violence. The volume thus not only expands First World War studies but also contributes to the wider discourse on the shifting nature of warfare in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With chapters by leading scholars and early career researchers, this volume draws on a diverse range of original archival research undertaken across disciplinary and national boundaries. The contributions to the volume provide an analysis of the conflict that draws out its full breadth and complexity. The First World War demonstrated the critically important relationship between national mobilisation and total war, and saw multiple mobilisations and re-mobilisations of European populations. This theme is explored at the national, regional, and local levels through examinations of the Sicilian province of Catania, the role of science in France and Britain, and the utilisation of the narrative of maritime heroism surrounding the British sailor Jack Cornwell. For Europe’s neutrals the First World War was often as total in its effects as for those states engaged in military operations. Chapters analyse the diverse range of these experiences of neutrality, from the economy and people of the Netherlands to the attitudes of Switzerland’s intellectuals. Racial interpretations of modern conflict have defined much of the historiography of total war. The complexities of racial analysis with respect to total war are highlighted in chapters dealing with white colonial internees in German East Africa, the treatment of prisoners of war in Europe, and the recruitment of India’s ‘primitive’ peoples for service in labour units. The final section of the volume considers the scale and broad scope of the violence unleashed during the First World War. Chapters on the continuation of German naval war culture after the conflict, the shaping of personal narratives of the war in the Ottoman Empire, and anti-alien violence among veterans in Canada serve to reinforce the extent to which the conflict affected wider aspects of twentieth-century history around the globe. Other Combatants, Other Fronts sheds light on the diverse experiences of neutral and belligerent states, and their combatants and civilians, during the tumultuous events of 1914-18. This brings to the fore the extent to which the mechanisms of conflict developed during the struggle had a truly global reach, and the impact this has had ever since in defining modern conflict. The collection reinforces the notion that although the First World War was a vast and often bewildering industrial conflict, it was ultimately a very human phenomenon.

The Greater War is an international history of the First World War. Comprising of thirteen chapters this collection of essays covers new aspects of the French, German, Italian and American efforts in the First World War, as well as aspects of Britain's colonial campaigns.

Other Fronts, Other Wars? goes beyond the Western Front geographically and delves behind the trenches focusing on the social and cultural history of the First World War: it covers front experiences in the Ottoman and Russian Armies, captivity in Japan and Turkey, occupation at the Eastern war theatre, medical history (epidemics in Serbia, medical treatment in Germany) and war relief (disabled soldiers in Austria). It studies the home front from the aspect of gender (loosing manliness), transnational comparisons (provincial border towns) and culture (home front entertainments in European metropoles) and gives insight on how attitudes were shaped through intellectual wars of scientists and through commemoration in Serbia. Thus the volume offers a wide range of new approaches to the history of the First World War. Contributors are Kate Arrioti, Altai Atlı, Gunda Barth-Scalmani, Joachim Bürgschwentner, Wolfram Dornik, Indira Durakovic, Matthias Egger, Maciej Górny, Andrea Griffante, Ke-chin Hsia, Rudolf Kučera, Eva Krivanec, Stephan Lehnstaedt, Bernhard Liemann, Tilman Lüdke, Andrea McKenzie, Mahon Murphy, Nicolas Patin, Livia Prüll, Philipp Rauh, Paul Simmons, Christian Steppan and Katarina Todić.

Orchestrating Warfighting provides a detailed and wide-ranging examination of the employment of corps and divisions from the First World War through to the early twenty-first century. Division and corps formations have been at the forefront of the British Army’s prosecution of war since 1914. They constituted the major command and organisational elements that underpinned the conduct of large-scale warfighting on land. Divisions and corps were of central importance to the conduct of the First and Second World Wars, the maintenance of a conventional deterrence posture during the Cold War, and were also employed in major confrontations since 1945, including the Korean War and two Gulf Wars. The British Army of the early twenty-first century still retains two divisional formations alongside the British-led Allied Rapid Reaction Corps within NATO. Orchestrating Warfighting examines British, Dominion, and imperial corps and divisions, taking part in the total wars of the first half of the twentieth century and smaller scale conflicts since 1945. It throws new light on questions of command, generalship, and the management of battles and campaigns across a diverse range of theatres. Orchestrating Warfighting is of interest to historians of the British Army, operational military history, and modern war.

Americans are greatly concerned about the number of our troops killed in battle--33,000 in the Korean War; 58,000 in Vietnam; 4,500 in Iraq--and rightly so. But why are we so indifferent, often oblivious, to the far greater number of casualties suffered by those we fight and those we fight for? This is the compelling, largely unasked question John Tirman answers in The Deaths of Others. Between six and seven million people died in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq alone, the majority of them civilians. And yet Americans devote little attention to these deaths. Other countries, however, do pay attention, and Tirman argues that if we want to understand why there is so much anti-Americanism around the world, the first place to look is how we conduct war. We understandably strive to protect our own troops, but our rules of engagement with the enemy are another matter. From atomic weapons and carpet bombing in World War II to napalm and daisy cutters in Vietnam and beyond, our weapons have killed large numbers of civilians and enemy soldiers. Americans, however, are mostly ignorant of these methods, believing that American wars are essentially just, necessary, and "good." Trenchant and passionate, The Deaths of Others forces readers to consider the tragic consequences of American military action not just for Americans, but especially for those we fight against.

The first full-length study of the experience and memory of British and Dominion soldiers in the Middle East and Macedonia during WWI.

This book looks at several troop categories based on primary function and analyzes the ratio between these categories to develop a general historical ratio. This ratio is called the Tooth-to-Tail Ratio. McGrath's study finds that this ratio, among types of deployed US forces, has steadily declined since World War II, just as the nature of warfare itself has changed. At the same time, the percentage of deployed forces devoted to logistics functions and to base and life support functions have increased, especially with the advent of the large-scale of use of civilian contractors. This work provides a unique analysis of the size and composition of military forces as found in historical patterns. Extensively illustrated with charts, diagrams, and tables. (Originally published by the Combat Studies Institute Press)

This book explores, from a transnational viewpoint, the historical relationship between war veterans and fascism in interwar Europe. Until now, historians have been roughly divided between those who assume that 'brutalization' (George L. Mosse) led veterans to join fascist movements and those who stress that most ex-soldiers of the Great War became committed pacifists and internationalists. Transcending the debates of the brutalization thesis and drawing upon a wide range of archival and published sources, this work focuses on the interrelated processes of transnationalization and the fascist permeation of veterans' politics in interwar Europe to offer a wider perspective on the history of both fascism and veterans' movements. A combination of mythical constructs, transfers, political communication, encounters and networks within a transnational space explain the relationship between veterans and fascism. Thus, this book offers new insights into the essential ties between fascism and war, and contributes to the theorization of transnational fascism.

This book explores the lives and social histories of Indians soldiers who fought in the First World War. It focuses on their motivations, experiences, and lives after returning from service in Europe, Mesopotamia, East Africa, and Palestine, to present a more complete picture of Indian participation in the war. The book looks at the Indian support to the war for political concessions from the British government and its repercussions through the perspective of the role played by more than one million Indian soldiers and labourers. It examines the social and cultural aspects of the experience of fighting on foreign soil in a deadly battle and their contributions which remain largely unrecognised. From micro-histories of fighting soldiers, aspects of recruitment and deployment, to macro-histories connecting different aspects of the War, the volume explores a variety of themes including: the material incentives, coercion and training which converted peasants into combatants; encounters of travelling Indian soldiers with other societies; and the contributions of returned soldiers in Indian society. The book will be useful to researchers and students of history, post-colonial studies, sociology, literature, and cultural studies as well as for those interested in military history, World War I, and colonial history.

In this groundbreaking study, Heather Jones provides the first in-depth and comparative examination of violence against First World War prisoners. She shows how the war radicalised captivity treatment in Britain, France and Germany, dramatically undermined international law protecting prisoners of war and led to new forms of forced prisoner labour and reprisals, which fuelled wartime propaganda that was often based on accurate prisoner testimony. This book reveals how, during the conflict, increasing numbers of captives were not sent to home front camps but retained in western front working units to labour directly for the British, French and German armies - in the German case, by 1918, prisoners working for the German army endured widespread malnutrition and constant beatings. Dr Jones examines the significance of these new, violent trends and their later legacy, arguing that the Great War marked a key turning-point in the twentieth-century evolution of the prison camp.