All the World at War

People and Places, 1914–1918

James Charles Roy

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN: 9781399060349
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

While battles and wars and 'the clash of civilizations' are as old as time itself, there is little doubt that the conflagration of 1914–1918 was something unique and terrifyingly new. There was not a corner of the globe that did not feel its effects, some more than others, but the scope of its impact on economies, populations, food supplies, the character of governments in general and the day-to-day lives of numberless ordinary people, were such as the world had never experienced, nor expected. Little did anyone dream that the assassination of relatively minor figures of the Habsburg royal family, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, carried out by an unknown Serbian teenager on the street corner of an obscure town called Sarajevo that few had ever heard of, could possibly provide a spark that would plunge the entire European continent into an industrialized war of catastrophic destruction. But it did: the two shots that youth fired were surely 'heard around the world', and several million people would perish or be maimed as a result. The story of World War I has been told by many different writers, historians and participants in many different ways, especially so before and during the centennial of its events that just concluded. All the World at War stands apart from many of these standard studies. It presents a familiar story from points of view that many readers might find surprising: unexpected details, different perspectives, atypical and generally insightful observations from contemporaries (often obscure to modern readers), who witnessed the events and personalities that pushed the war along from phase to phase. The narrative is chronologically arranged, beautifully written, with something new or intriguing on every page. This is a unique and finely paced account of 'The War to End all Wars' that didn't.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1 The European Landscape: Victoria’s Web
• Chapter 2 The Kaiser
• Chapter 3 Alfred von Schlieffen
• Chapter 4 Sarajevo: Where It All Began (And Why)
• Chapter 5 Fort de Loncin
• Chapter 6 Tannenberg: ‘The Siamese Twins’
• Chapter 7 Gallipoli: The Sideshow
• Chapter 8 Verdun
• Chapter 9 Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig
• Chapter 10 Ireland: ‘That sad, beautiful, bitch of a country’
• Chapter 11 The Great War at Sea
• Chapter 12 ‘Halifax Wrecked’
• Chapter 13 Manfred von Richthofen
• Chapter 14 St. Petersburg … then Petrograd … then Leningrad
• Chapter 15 T. E. Lawrence, ‘of Arabia’
• Chapter 16 Berlin: Black Hours in a Red Tide
• Chapter 17 Versailles: Where It All Ended (or Should Have)
• Chapter 18 Known & Unknown Soldier(s)
• Chapter 19 Postscripts
• Chapter 20 Mistakes: Who Must Shoulder the Blame?
• Chapter 21 Residue: What Is ‘Civilization’?
• Notes
• Credits for illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Plates Section