World War One: A Short History (19 page)

Some Sources

This list partly reproduces my own sources, but is mainly designed to cite the literature produced in the last few years, of which there has been much. Older works will be found in
their
bibliographies, and only in rareg – very rare – cases do I mention them (sometimes with the most recent date of reprint). One of these is my own,
The Eastern Front 1914–1917
(London 1975) – still, apparently, the main work on the matter:the Russians should have made it obsolete a long time ago. All other countries, including Turkey, are far ahead in publications.

The three most recent large-scale accounts of the First World War are especially useful because they bring earlier ones up to date with the prodigious amount of work that has been done in recent times. David Stevenson,
1914–1918: The History of the First World War
(Penguin, 2004) is extraordinarily informative on all matters, for instance the progress made by medicine or aircraft. Niall Ferguson,
The Pity of War
(Penguin, 1998) is equally far-ranging, though in a different way:it is particularly interesting on war finance, a vastly important subject, but has much of importance to say on other matters – for instance soldiers’ morale and why they fought as they did. Hew Strachan,
The First World War
, Vol. I:
To Arms
(Oxford, 2001) is the first of three proposed volumes, and the author knows the military inside-out:he also covers the first months
of the Ottoman war effort. I have owed much to all three of these books.

There are several other shorter accounts, each with its strong point. Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson,
The First World War
(Cassell, 2001) is very useful on military technicalities, for instance the changes in artillery usage that occurred. They are not respectful of A. J. P. Taylor’s short
The First World War
(1966, but endlessly reprinted by Penguin). I am. For the eastern front, I am told in Moscow that an official history will at last appear in 2014. Italy is well covered – excellent photographs and a solid bibliographical discussion – in Mario Isnenghi and Giorgio Rochat,
La Grande Guerra 1914–1918
(Milan, 2004), Austria-Hungary by Manfred Rauchensteiner,
Der Tod des Doppeladlers
(Graz, 1993); the most recent work on France is Anthony Clayton,
Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914–1918
(London, 2005), though see also J.-B. Duroselle,
La Grande Guerre des Français
(Paris, 1994). The Turkish front is covered by Edward J.Erickson,
Ordered to Die
(Westport, Conn., 2000) but see also Michael Carver,
The Turkish Front
(London, 2001), though Commandant Larcher,
La Guerre turque dans la guerre mondiale
(Paris, 1926) still needs to be read. For Germany, G. Hirschfeld (ed.),
Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg
(Munich, 2003) is useful, and there are summaries of important matters, given that some of the documentation disappeared; see also Holger Herwig,
The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918
(London, 1997).

I have used these as the basis for my narrative. However, it is now easily possible to supplement the basic accounts with a vast amount of research on the internet. A Google search on any name or topic usually brings remarkable results, the more so as many museums have their own websites. The Imperial War Museum in London is representative, and remarkable (
www.iwm.org.uk
), but there are many private websites,
such as
www.worldwar1.com
,
www.grande-guerre.org
, or
www.firstworldwar.com
, and I have traced many biographies through others, such as
www.findagrave.com
. There are equivalents in other countries, but the British – or at any rate the ‘Anglo-Saxons’ – are far in the lead.

As further reading (and sources) in connection with my own chapters, the following (complementary to the works mentioned above) may be cited:

Chapter 1: the most recent book is David Fromkin,
Europe’s Last Summer
:
Who Started the War in 1914?
(New York, 2004), with a decent booklist. James Joll,
The Origins of the First World War
(Longman, 1992) still remains important, and, for the background, so does A. J. P. Taylor:
The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918
(Oxford, 1954). It was written at a time when the crisis of July 1914 could still be seen as the outcome of a series of diplomatic crises, and these (Morocco etc.) are superbly covered, though Taylor was inclined to see July 1914 as a product of ‘the system’ rather than of plotting in Berlin. Imanuel Geiss,
Die Juli-Krise 1914
(2 vols., Munich, 1964), with an abridged English edition,
July 1914
(London, 1967)
did
document the outbreak of the war as a
mise-en-scène
, and further corroborative evidence, from papers that had escaped destruction, then began to emerge:see Angela Mombauer,
Origins of the First World War
(Harlow, 2002). Geiss subverted the important myth that Russian mobilization prompted German; see also V. Berghahn,
Germany and the Approach of War in 1914
(Basingstoke, 1995):his advantage is that he understands the dimension of the navy.

Chapter 2: on the opening round, L. Burchardt,
Friedenswirtschaft und Kriegsvorsorge
(Boppard, 1968) and L. J. Farrar,
The Short-war Illusion
(Santa Barbara, 1973) variously discuss this important matter. Winston Churchill’s
World Crisis
(6 vols., London 1923–31) is wonderfully dramatic on the Marne, and so is John Keegan,
The First World War
(London 1998). D. E. Showalter,
Tannenberg
(Hamden, Conn., 1991) deserves mention.

Chapter 3: Tim Travers,
The Killing Ground
(Barnsley, 2003) is an important study of the British army’s ‘learning curve’. Robert Graves,
Goodbye to All That
(London, 1960) is a classic disillusioned account of the ‘New Army’ as it started off in France, and compare Barry Webb,
Edmund Blunden
(London, 1990) for a more resigned view. Another classic British observer was E. L. Spears, liaison officer with the French (in both world wars), and his life is excellently recorded by Max Egremont,
Under Two Flags
(London, 1997). For Italian intervention, Indro Montanelli,
L’Italia di Giolitti
(Rizzoli, 1975) is wonderfully readable and given to the black humour that modern Italy sometimes brings out. On the Dardanelles campaign, Nigel Steel and Peter Hart,
Defeat at Gallipoli
(London, 2002) and Tim Travers,
Gallipoli 1915
(London, 2001) are solid and very fair-minded. On the Armenian issue, Guenter Lewy,
The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey
(Utah, 2005) replaces everything, but Franz Werfel’s
Vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh,
originally written in 1932, woodenly translated into English, is a magnificent novel, taking some liberties with the history. Werfel wrote on his title page:
nicht gegen Tuerken polemisieren
, ‘do not use this against the Turks’. If only. On the blockade, G.-H. Soutou,
L’Or et le sang
(Paris, 1989) discusses (predatory) Allied economic war aims, and A. Offer,
The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation
(Oxford, 1989) puts them in an interesting and original perspective. Gerd Hardach,
The First World War
(London, 1977) came as part of a series of books on economic history and is still the widest survey of a gigantic subject (on the financial aspects of which Niall Ferguson,
op. cit.
, is the best introduction).

Chapter 4: On Verdun there is a classic:Alistair Horne,
The Price of Glory
(London, 1978). Holger Afflerbach,
Falkenhayn
(Munich, 1996) corrects much of the legendry. On the Somme,
the latest work is Peter Hart,
The Somme
(London, 2005). There is still much fighting over British strategy. John Terraine wrote a heroically unfashionable book in 1963,
Haig, the Educated Soldier
. It was the very moment when
Oh ! What a Lovely War
, as a sort of musical based on the soldiers’ songs, and then as a a film, appeared in London (and Paris) – the film, and even more the stage version, amounting to genius. Terraine’s defence has probably had the best of things, given the vast difficulties that Haig faced. Lyn Macdonald has done a wonderful job in collecting accounts of life in the trenches in each of the years of the First World War. Her
Somme
appeared in 1993. On Jutland, Arthur Marder,
From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era
(5 vols., London 1961–70) is the established labour of love.

Chapter 5: The background to the Central Powers’ peace offer is in Fritz Fischer,
Griff nach der Weltmacht
, translated (London, 1967)as
Germany’s Aims in the First World War
. On American intervention Barbara Tuchman,
The Zimmermann Telegram
(London, 1966) is a very good introduction (she was the daughter of ambassador Morgenthau in Istanbul). The French disasters of spring 1917 are laid out in G. Pedroncini,
Les Mutineries de 1917
(Paris 1967). Prior and Wilson’s
Passchendaele
:
The Untold Story
(Yale, 1996) is a model account of a battle on the western front; but Leon Wolff,
In Flanders Fields
(London, 1958) is devastating; I read it (together with Robert Graves) one Christmas in my teens, and have never forgotten either. There is a large literature on the Italian disaster:two British mountaineers, John and Eileen Wilks, wrote
Rommel and Caporetto
(Leo Cooper, 2001) with remarkable insight into terrain and sources alike; Mario Isnenghi,
I Vinti di Caporetto
(Milan, 1967) asked questions about morale, and his
Grande Guerra
(
op cit
.) contains a very thorough bibliography. Heinz von Lichem,
Krieg in den Alpen
, vol. 3 (Augsburg, 1993) is episodic and romantic, but also knows
about mountains. On Russia in 1917, we have two very different but immensely thorough books:Richard Pipes,
The Russian Revolution
(London, 1999) and Orlando Figes,
A People’s Tragedy
(London, 1997). How Lenin arrived at his intuitive judgements is well explained in Robert Service,
Lenin
(2 vols., Basingstoke, 1991). Russian historians are well represented by Oleg Airapetov,
Poslednyaya Voyna Imperatorskoy Rossii
(Moscow, 2002) and
Generaly, Liberaly i Predprinimately
(Moscow, 2003) which acutely examines the divisions at the top in Russia before the Revolution.