The Face of War Changes
Excerpted from Aviation Changes Warfare on the Eastern Front by Terrence Finnegan, Carl Bobrow, and Helmut Jäger. Published in World War One Illustrated #4, Winter 2014-2015. This issue is still available for purchase here. This issue also included an introductory game: Russia’s Great War:1914 that can be played solitaire. Read more about the other issues […]
The Schlieffen Plan: Whose Plan Was It?
Excerpted from Schlieffen’s Plan: Myth, reality, or just a bad idea? by Dana Lombardy. Published in World War One Illustrated #3, Fall 2014. This issue is still available for purchase here. This issue also included an introductory game: On to Paris! that can be played solitaire. Read more about the other issues of WWOI and […]
The Dreadnoughts: The Reason Germany Lost to France?
Excerpted from Germany’s Missing Divisions A larger German army is not a “what-if” fantasy by Dana Lombardy. Published in World War One Illustrated #3, Fall 2014. This issue is still available for purchase here. This issue also included an introductory game: On to Paris! that can be played solitaire. Read more about the other issues […]
Mysteries of the Red Baron
Excerpted from Myths and Mysteries of the Great War in the Air, Part 2 by O’Brien Browne. Published in World War One Illustrated #2, Summer 2014. This issue is still available for purchase here. This issue also included an introductory game: Assassination in Sarajevo that you can play solitaire. Read more about the other issues of […]
Submarine B.11
Excerpted from British Success in the Dardanelles: Submarines Score Victories in the Gallipoli Campaign, by Captain Richard F. Church, USN. Published in World War One Illustrated #2, Summer 2014. This issue is still available for purchase here. This issue also included an introductory game: Assassination in Sarajevo! that can play solitaire. Read more about the […]
The Vanishing Hero and the Revenge that Never Happened
Excerpted from Myths and Mysteries of the Great War in the Air, Part 1 by O’Brien Browne. Published in World War One Illustrated #1, Fall 2013. This issue is still available for purchase here. This issue also included an introductory game: Zeppelin Raider! that can play solitaire. Read more about the other issues of WWOI […]
Terror in the Sky: The Zeppelin over Britain
In 1937, the luxury Zeppelin airship Hindenburg burned in a devastating fire. Instead of non-flammable helium, the Germans used hydrogen as the lifting gas for their airships. Public opinion labeled Zeppelins as unsafe because of the disaster, which was seen worldwide on newsreels. With that disaster in mind, one might not consider them to be […]
Admiral of the Fleet Earl Beatty: The Last Naval Hero: An Intimate Biography
Although originally written almost forty years ago, this book remains an important work on a controversial figure. Roskill was sympathetic to his subject, but does not shy away from the less attractive aspects of Beatty’s personality. A balanced portrait of a man who served successively as commander of the British battlecruisers, then as commander-in-chief of […]
The Zimmermann Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomacy, and America’s Entry into World War I
Although strictly speaking not a book about naval history, the group that deciphered the Zimmermann Telegram was the Royal Navy’s Room 40OB, so I think it is only just to include it with the naval titles. This major reexamination by an expert on military intelligence investigates how the infamous telegram was intercepted, deciphered, and exploited. […]
Jutland: The Naval Staff Appreciation
I include this title with some reluctance, as I contributed some of the text and prepared the book for publication after the death of my friend, Bill Schleihauf. Nevertheless, I think it rates as an important work on the battle. The core of this book is a secret appreciation of the battle, written after the […]
Jutland: The Unfinished Battle
Written by the grandson of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, who commanded the British Grand Fleet at Jutland, this is a fresh examination of the battle and its aftermath, offering many new perspectives on both the British and German sides of the battle, and on the bitter controversies that have surrounded it since the moment the […]
Jutland: World War I’s Greatest Naval Battle
This anthology, originally published in Germany, includes articles by both British and German scholars. They offer fresh perspectives on the battle, especially from the German side. The translations of the articles originally written in German are not as readable as one might wish, but the collection is nevertheless a valuable contribution to our understanding of […]
The Battle of Jutland
A remarkable work of scholarship; Brooks went back to the original reports submitted by the British commanders—Jellicoe, Beatty, and all their subordinates, as well as communications logs, gunnery logs, and other supplemental materials. The result is a detailed examination of the battle that strips away a hundred years of claims and counter-claims and provides a […]
Churchill and the Dardanelles
A reassessment of Churchill’s role in the conception, planning and execution of the Dardanelles fiasco, as well as an examination of the subsequent inquiry and the long-standing controversy over the operation. Bell previously wrote Churchill and Sea Power, and is an expert on the great man’s relationship with the Royal Navy. His account draws on […]
The Naval Route to the Abyss: The Anglo-German Naval Race 1895–1914
An important collection of 153 documents from the British and German archives, edited and annotated by a pair of recognized experts on the naval history of the era—Seligmann for the British side and Epkenhans for the German. The commentary by the editors is excellent, and the book is produced to the usual high standards of […]
To Crown the Waves: The Great Navies of the First World War
Another innovative way to look at the First World War at sea, this book has separate chapters on the navies of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Russia, and the United States. The navies of Japan and the Ottoman Empire receive more limited coverage in a single chapter. Each chapter is written by an expert […]
Clash of Fleets: Naval Battles of the Great War, 1914–18
This innovative book looks at every single surface action involving ships of over 100 tons displacement—that is, it excludes only the smallest of patrol craft. The coverage is comprehensive, and is broken down by year, and then by theater. Each entry includes a listing of the ships involved, the commanding officer on each side, the […]
From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904-1919
In 5 volumes: vol. I: The Road to War, 1904-1914; vol. II: The War Years to the Eve of Jutland; vol. III: Jutland and After (May 1916-December 1916) (second edition, revised and enlarged); vol. IV: 1917, Year of Crisis; vol. V: Victory and Aftermath, January 1918–June 1919. London: Oxford University Press, 1961, 1978; a paperback […]
A Naval History of World War I
This work is still regarded as the gold standard for overall histories of the First World War at sea. It covers every theater of the war, and the author consulted not only English-language sources but made extensive use of French and German documents and publications as well. Originally published as a hardback, it has been […]
Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology
A mammoth and well-illustrated work by an expert in naval affairs and a prolific author. This book delves into the details of the war, with chapters on (for example), “Blockade, Trade Warfare and Economic Attack,” “The Chessboard—Naval Geography,” “Fleets in Battle,” “Inshore Operations and an Inshore Fleet,” etc. (Notes by Steve McLaughlin)
Duel #85: Zeppelin vs British Home Defence 1915-18
Editor’s Note: Osprey Publishing’s “versus” books cover many historical eras and weapon systems, from ancient Roman Legionary versus Carthaginian Warrior (Combat #35) to F-15C Eagle vs MiG 23/25 (Duel #72). Each of these splendid studies contain 80 pages, photos, color illustrations and often color maps, a bibliography that sometimes includes foreign language sources, […]
American Military Vehicles of World War I: An Illustrated History of Armored Cars, Staff Cars, Motorcycles, Ambulances, Trucks, Tractors and Tanks
Hundreds of b&w photos, images of advertisements, and technical drawings appear throughout this outstanding book that examines American motor vehicles used in World War One. The author researched a wide variety of sources, including the American Truck Historical Society, the Art Archives at the Imperial War Museum, the Society of Automotive Historians, and the National […]
The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2016 If it is true, as they say, that the victors write the history, then our understanding of World War I and the century that followed is at the very least incomplete. Take, for example, the seemingly basic question of when the war ended. The standard date–November 11, 1918–privileges […]
Pershing’s Crusaders: The American Soldier in World War I
Richard Faulkner’s incredible work on the doughboys of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) is imminently timely. …an extremely well researched and detailed account written by an Army veteran and World War I scholar…. It is based on the models of Bell Irvin Wiley’s The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank, which […]
The World’s War: Forgotten Soldiers of Empire
Winner of the (UK) Political Book Awards 2015 World War One Book of the Year This is a very good book. Olusoga rightly demonstrates that World War One was a multi-racial, multi-imperial conflict, waged in Asia and Africa as well as on better known fronts. This point has been largely downplayed by previous historians who […]
Victory on the Western Front: The Development of the British Army 1914-1918
Michael Senior identifies and analyzes why the development of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was “extraordinary” and shows how they led to the British Army becoming an infinitely more efficient force by 1918 than it was in 1914. Although written in an impressively lucid style, this is not a quick read…. [and] there’s a danger, […]
The Last Battle: Victory, Defeat, and the End of World War I
The author is oral historian at the Imperial War Museum in London and has access to large archives of original testimonies…. describing and enlivening the final battles of 1918. The author does admit that his “emphasis as a British historian is on the British Army with an appreciative reflection on the massive contributions of victory […]
The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order 1916-1931
Winner of the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Author Tooze, a previous winner of the (UK) Wolfson Foundation History Prize, has written a richly detailed book of how France and Great Britain, working with the United States, formed a workable triumvirate that won the war in 1918, only to have it unravel over the […]
The Path to War: How the First World War Created Modern America
Winner of the 2016 Tomlinson Prize Award Neiberg takes a bottom-up approach toward understanding why America finally associated itself with the Entente in the fight against Germany. His major thesis is that Americans were way ahead of the government, and especially President Woodrow Wilson, in understanding that we had to be part of the war […]
Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency
Erickson’s book was called “courageous and provocative” by Tomlinson prize-winner Sean McMeekin. It offers a counterinsurgency military explanation for the 1915 relocation of the Armenians in eastern Turkey. Erickson documents the beginning of the Armenian insurgency with the secret committees of the 1890s and their evolution into the Armenian armed resistance. When the Ottomans launched […]
King of Battle: Artillery in World War I
As the editor points out in his preface, “Artillery dominated the battlefields of World War I…. Artillery even holds the dubious distinction of causing a new diagnosis, shellshock.” Despite its crucial role in the conflict and since, and numerous books about the types and capabilities of weapons, this is the first major work that compares […]
Instrument of War: The German Army 1914-18
Winner of the 2016 Tomlinson Prize Award This is not a chronological presentation of campaigns and battles with maps and combat statistics, yet it is perhaps one of the most important books written about the German Army in the First World War. Dennis Showalter, author of Tannenberg: Clash of Empires, 1914 (Brassey’s, 2004), was recently […]
Empires in World War I: Shifting Frontiers and Imperial Dynamics in a Global Conflict
This anthology moves away from the decisive Western Front to dwell upon the ramifications of the war on outlying, but not necessarily peripheral areas of the globe. These essays range from Europe, the Indian subcontinent and Japan, through the Pacific Islands, North and sub-Saharan Africa to the Caribbean. Just one example in West Africa details […]
The British Imperial Army in the Middle East: Morale and Military Identity in the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns, 1916-1918
The 1918 battles in the Sinai and Palestine ultimately destroyed the Ottoman Empire and paved the way for the British and French to redraw the Middle East map and create the unstable nations whose dramas still give indigestion to diplomats a century later. This excellent book has received numerous accolades, including Kristian Ulrichsen in the […]
Over the Top: Alternate Histories of the First World War
One of the intellectual challenges and delights of reading history is imagining how past events could have followed different paths. This anthology offers ten short alternate histories, each driven by a single change to the First World War’s actual history. In one the Brusilov Offensive is more successful than it was, as the Russian Empire […]
World War I: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection (5 volumes)
Full disclosure: This reviewer contributed to ABC-CLIO’s previous The Encyclopedia of World War II (2005) and The Civil War encyclopedia (2013), but did not write for this WW1 series. A host of knowledgeable experts provided the entries that form the basis of this massive work. Spencer Tucker, the series editor, is an award-winning author or […]
And the World Went Dark: An Illustrated Interpretation of the Great War
Short but comprehensive summary of WW1 illustrated throughout (see sample pages). The author, an artist and historian, offers a thoughtful, elegant, and inclusive history of the Great War with well-presented data and illustrations that work together to incorporate the information while conveying the sense of the times. The format is similar to a graphic novel, […]
The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917
Histories of the Eastern Front in WW1 written and published in the West have relied upon German and Austrian sources, supplemented by writings of Russian exiles. David Stone was able to access Russian archives, including Soviet staff studies published after 1918, but he admits that some statistical data are still difficult if not impossible to […]
Armies of the Great War: The French Army and the First World War
The Journal of Military History review was mixed on this volume. The reviewer noted it is “a great primer for … learning more about the French” army, but also “It is imperfect, sometimes could go into more depth, and makes a few minor errors….” What are these “minor” errors? Elizabeth Greenhalgh, a QE II Research […]
Armies of the Great War: The British Army and the First World War
This volume was a collaborative effort of three professors at the University of Kent. Unlike the other volumes of this series reviewed in this issue, this one has no statistical tables; unfortunate since there are anecdotal numbers presented throughout the narrative. It assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the British Army between 1914 and 1918, […]