Full Description
'The Great War' involved the mobilisation of 70 million soldiers worldwide. It produced images of such pervasive horror on the Western Front that it defined warfare in human memory long into the twentieth century. The war also left a grim legacy. Thirteen million people died, nine million of them combatants. Over one-third of those who died were 'missing', having no known graves. The war changed the world irrevocably. It marked the birth of the modern era, in attitudes, social relations, art and culture. Old empires disintegrated and new nations emerged in the maelstrom of the war and its aftermath. The peace settlements reshaped national boundaries, leaving tensions and rivalries between nation states and people that resonate to the present day. In just over a decade, the victory of 1918 was eroded by the apparent failure of the Versailles peace settlement, the rise of Nazism and the approach of the Second World War.Scholars continue to explore and challenge many of the assumptions and common perceptions surrounding the conflict, from its origins and causes, to the responsibility for its conduct, the reasons for Allied victory over the Central Powers, and the consequences and long-term outcomes of that victory. The chapters in this book had their origins in an international conference, 1918 Year of Victory, convened by the Australian War Memorial in Canberra in November 2008 to mark the ninetieth anniversary of the end of the Great War. First World War scholars from a number of nations, many of them renowned specialists in their field, gathered to present their research findings and to share their insights into issues surrounding the ending of the Great War, its memory and continuing impact.The presentations were lively, authoritative and wide-ranging, spanning the themes of war strategy and planning; the problems of raising, training and maintaining armies in the field; developments in technology and weapons systems; the role of command; the evolution of tactics and the use of combined arms; the development of war economies through control of industrial and agricultural production; and the exploitation of human and material resources in war on the home front, on land, at sea and in the air. This highly readable book is a collection of these presentations.
Contents
1. 1918German defeat in 1918 / Robin Prior 3. Finest hour? British forces on the Western Front in 1918: An overview / Gary Sheffield 4. From victory to defeat: The German army in 1918 / Robert T. Foley 5. A French victory, 1918 / Elizabeth Greenhalgh 6. The cost of inexperience: Americans on the Western Front, 1918 / Meleah Ward 7. Fighting to exhaustion: Morale, discipline and combat effectiveness in the armies of 1918 / Ashley Ekins 8. Maintaining the advance: Monash, battle procedure and the Australian Corps in 1918 / Peter Pedersen 9. Bloody Bapaume: New Zealand soldiers battle for the town, August-September 1918 / Glyn Harper 10. Bloody victory: The Canadian Corps in the Hundred Days Campaign / Tim Cook 11. Victory at sea, 1918 / David Stevens and James Goldrick 12. Victory in the air, 1918 / Peter Hart 13. The peace settlement of 1919 and its aftermath / Trevor Wilson 14. The veterans' voice: The Returned Sailors' and Soldiers' Imperial League of Australia, 1916-19 / Martin Grotty 15. Ninety years on: Recent and changing views on the military history of the First World War / Stephen Badsey.
