Histories you can trust.

The First World War, now a century ago, still shapes the world in which we live, and its legacy lives on, in poetry, in prose, in collective memory and political culture. By the time the war ended in 1918, millions lay dead. Three major empires lay shattered by defeat, those of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans. A fourth, Russia, was in the throes of a revolution that helped define the rest of the twentieth century.

The Oxford History of the First World War brings together in one volume many of the most distinguished historians of the conflict, in an account that matches the scale of the events. From its causes to its consequences, from the Western Front to the Eastern, from the strategy of the politicians to the tactics of the generals, they chart the course of the war and assess its profound political and human consequences. Chapters on economic mobilization, the impact on women, the role of propaganda, and the rise of socialism establish the wider context of the fighting at sea and in the air, and which ranged on land from the trenches of Flanders to the mountains of the Balkans and the deserts of the Middle East.

Hew Strachan, Wardlaw Professor of International Relations, St Andrews University

Hew Strachan was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he was a Fellow between 1975 and 1992. Since then he has been Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow, Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College, and on his retirement from Oxford in 2015 Wardlaw Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. The first volume of his planned trilogy on the First World War, To Arms, was published in 2001, and in 2003 he was the historian behind the 10-part series, The First World War, broadcast on Channel 4. He has served as a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner and as a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum, and during the centenary of the First World War sat on the advisory committees of the British, Scottish and French governments. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and was knighted in 2013.

Introduction, Hew Strachan
1. The Origins of the War, Samuel R. Williamson, Jr
2. The Strategy of the Central Powers, 1914-1917, Holger Afflerbach
3. Manoeuvre Warfare: The Eastern and Western Fronts, 1914-1915, D. E. Showalter
4. The Strategy of the Entente Powers, 1914-1917, David French
5. The Balkans, 1914-1918, R. J. Crampton
6. Turkey's War, Ulrich Trumpener
7. The War in Africa, David Killingray
8. The War at Sea, Paul G. Halpern
9. Economic Warfare, B. J. C. McKercher
10. Economic Mobilization: Money, Munitions, Machines, Hew Strachan
11. The Role of Women in War, Susan Grayzel
12. The Challenge to Liberalism: The Politics of the Home Fronts, J. A. Turner
13. Eastern Front and Western Front, 1916-1917, Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson
14. Mutinies and Military Morale, Alexander Watson
15. War Aims and Peace Negotiations, David Stevenson
16. Propaganda and the Mobilization of Consent, J. M. Winter
17. Socialism, Peace, and Revolution, 1917-1918, John Horne
18. The Entry of the USA into the War and its Effects, David Trask
19. The German Victories, 1917-1918, Holger H. Herwig
20. The War in the Air, John H. Morrow, Jr
21. The Allied Victories, 1918, Tim Travers
22. The Peace Settlement, Zara Steiner
23. No End to War, Robert Gerwarth
24. Memory and the Great War, Modris Eksteins
Further Reading
Index