This innovative study by one of the leading specialists in the field examines the social and economic role of the German army in the nation's internal affairs during the First World War. This was the area in which the influence of the army was most direct and profound. Germany's wartime economic mobilisation was both planned and directed by the army, and as a consequence of this largely unanticipated responsibility, the army was compelled to cope with the great social conflicts of Imperial Germany. In the process of confronting the groups representing army and labour, the army paved the way for the establishment of collective bargaining in Germany and also created the foundations for the postwar inflation.

The description for this book, Army, Industry, and Labor in Germany, 1914-1918, will be forthcoming.

This innovative study by one of the leading specialists in the field examines the social and economic role of the German army in the nation's internal affairs during the First World War. This was the area in which the influence of the army was most direct and profound. Germany's wartime economic mobilisation was both planned and directed by the army, and as a consequence of this largely unanticipated responsibility, the army was compelled to cope with the great social conflicts of Imperial Germany. In the process of confronting the groups representing army and labour, the army paved the way for the establishment of collective bargaining in Germany and also created the foundations for the postwar inflation.

This important contribution to the successful textbook series New Approaches to European History explores the comprehensive impact of the First World War on Imperial Germany. It examines military aspects of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy, government, politics, and industrial mobilization of wartime Germany. Unlike other existing surveys, however, Roger Chickering also offers a rich portrait of life on the home front: the pervasive effects of 'total war' on wealthy and poor, men and women, young and old, farmers and city-dwellers, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. This excellent, well-illustrated study of the military, political and socio-economic effects of the First World War is essential reading for all students of German and European history, as well as for those interested in the history of war and society. Now appearing in a second edition, first published in 2004, this accessible book reflects important scholarship in the field and boasts an expanded and revised bibliography.

This unique volume offers a definitive new history of European economies at war from 1914 to 1918. It studies how European economies mobilised for war, how existing economic institutions stood up under the strain, how economic development influenced outcomes and how wartime experience influenced post-war economic growth. Leading international experts provide the first systematic comparison of economies at war between 1914 and 1918 based on the best available data for Britain, Germany, France, Russia, the USA, Italy, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and the Netherlands. The editors' overview draws some stark lessons about the role of economic development, the importance of markets and the damage done by nationalism and protectionism. A companion volume to the acclaimed The Economics of World War II, this is a major contribution to our understanding of total war.

Whereas the history of workers and labor movements has been widely researched, the history of work has been rather neglected by comparison. This volume offers original contributions that deal with cultural, social and theoretical aspects of the history of work in modern Europe, including the relations between gender and work, working and soldiering, work and trust, constructions and practices. The volume focuses on Germany but also places the case studies in a broader European context. It thus offers an insight into social and cultural history as practiced by German-speaking scholars today but also introduces the reader to ongoing research in this field.

An in-depth, finely detailed portrait of the German Army from its greatest victory in 1871 to its final collapse in 1918, this volume offers the most comprehensive account ever given of one of the critical pillars of the German Empire—and a chief architect of the military and political realities of late nineteenth-century Europe. Written by two of the world’s leading authorities on the subject, Imperial Germany and War, 1871–1918 examines the most essential components of the imperial German military system, with an emphasis on such foundational areas as theory, doctrine, institutional structures, training, and the officer corps. In the period between 1871 and 1918, rapid technological development demanded considerable adaptation and change in military doctrine and planning. Consequently, the authors focus on theory and practice leading up to World War I and upon the variety of adaptations that became necessary as the war progressed—with unique insights into military theorists from Clausewitz to Moltke the Elder, Moltke the Younger, Schlichting, and Schlieffen. Ranging over the entire history of the German Empire, Imperial Germany and War, 1871–1918 presents a picture of unprecedented scope and depth of one of the most widely studied, criticized, and imitated organizations in the modern world. The book will prove indispensable to an understanding of the Imperial German Army.

This book analyzes how a sizable group of Gennan workers came to support Communism and how they in turn influenced the emergence and development of the German Communist Party (KPD) in its fonnative period as a mass party. It reconstructs the interaction between a party and the constituency to which it appealed within the constraints and opportunities set by social structures, econo mic conditions, and political competitors. This interaction revolved around the elaboration and implementation of a specific concept of revolutionary politics, and this study investigates both the rise of the KPD as a mass party and its failure to set off a socialist revolution in the early 1920s in light of the contradictory ways German workers responded to its revolutionary strategy. When I began to study the KPD in the mid 1970s, scholarly works in the West portrayed a party so out of touch with the realities of German life from 1918 to 1933 that its history was a litany of political mistakes that led from crisis to catastrophe. The KPD was dominated by the foreign policy interests of the Soviet Union, by factional disputes and personal rivalries among the leadership, by an authoritarian, centralized party structure that stifled rank-and-file initiative and imposed a party line determined in Moscow and Berlin, and by a rigid ideology largely irrelevant to trends in German economy, society, and politics with at best compensatory value for a minority of the most impoverished workers.