The World War I Reader

by Neiberg, Michael S.

• ISBN13: 9780814758328
• ISBN10: 0814758320
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-12-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.The Great War of 1914-1918 is increasingly understood as the defining event of the twentieth century. . . . Neiberg has done a remarkable job of covering all the appropriate bases and tipping his intellectual hat to the major schools of thought past and present. --Dennis Showalter, author of Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth CenturyThis first-rate collection of primary documents and excerpts from leading historical works on World War I allows students to enter directly into current debates surrounding the war's meaning and significance. These selections provide a window into the varied wartime experiences of statesmen, generals, women, and soldiers, challenging students to discard over-simplistic interpretations of the war.--Jennifer D. Keene, author of Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of AmericaAlmost 100 years after the Treaty of Versailles was signed, World War I continues to be badly understood and greatly oversimplified. Its enormous impact on the world in terms of international diplomacy and politics, and the ways in which future military engagements would evolve, be fought, and ultimately get resolved have been ignored. With this reader of primary and secondary documents, edited and compiled by Michael S. Neiberg, students, scholars, and war buffs can gain an extensive yet accessible understanding of this conflict. Neiberg introduces the basic problems in the history of World War I, shares the words and experiences of the participants themselves, and, finally, presents some of the most innovative and dynamic current scholarship on the war.Neiberg, a leading historian of World War I, has selected a wide array of primary documents, ranging from government papers to personal diaries, demonstrating the war's devastating effect on all who experienced it, whether President Woodrow Wilson, an English doughboy in the trenches, or a housewife in Germany. In addition to this material, each chapter in The World War I Reader contains a selection of articles and book chapters written by major scholars of World War I, giving readers perspectives on the war that are both historical and contemporary. Chapters are arranged chronologically and by theme, and address causes, the experiences of soldiers and their leaders, battlefield strategies and conditions, home front issues, diplomacy, and peacemaking. A time-line, maps, suggestions for further reading, and a substantive introduction by Neiberg that lays out the historiography of World War I round out the book.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Maps	p. x
Timeline of Major Events	p. xv
Brief Biographies of Important Figures Mentioned in the Text	p. xvii
Introduction	p. 1
Causes
Primary
The Great Illusion, 1910	p. 25
Germany and the Next War	p. 35
The "Willy-Nicky" Telegrams	p. 46
Secondary
The Circus Rider of Europe	p. 50
The Army and the Nationalist	p. 71
Soldiers
Primary
The Good Soldier Schweik	p. 91
Her Privates We	p. 97
A Soldier's Notebook	p. 109
Secondary
Officer-Man Relations: The Other Ranks' Perspective	p. 123
"War Enthusiasm": Volunteers, Departing Soldiers, and Victory Celebrations	p. 148
Foch's General Counteroffensive, Part I: 26 September to 23 October 1918	p. 158
Armageddon
Primary
The Destruction of Louvain	p. 175
The Historic First of July	p. 184
Secondary
Between Mutiny and Obedience	p. 195
The Live and Let Live System	p. 208
Home Fronts
Primary
Letters from a Lost Generation	p. 227
An English Wife in Berlin	p. 243
Secondary
Home Fires Burning	p. 252
The Politics of Race	p. 272
The End of the War
Primary
The Fourteen Points	p. 291
Views on a Prospective Armistice	p. 294
Secondary
The Military Collapse of the German Empire	p. 297
Diggers and Doughboys: Australian and American Troop Interaction on the Western Front, 1918	p. 312
Peace
Primary
Peacemaking, 1919	p. 325
British Diplomacy: The Hussein-McMahon Letters	p. 335
Secondary
A Peace to End All Peace	p. 340
The Kings Depart	p. 348
Further Reading	p. 367
Index	p. 371
About the Editor	p. 375
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