Belgium And The Western Front

We have often heard about the brutal world of the trenches, the willingness of brave young soldiers and the apparent indifference of the generals, but reevaluations of the Great War in previous decades have shown us much more complexity, and in many cases some surprising reconstructions of very standard narratives of the war. The traditional isolation of the battle front from the home front, which historians have tended to observe, has given us an incomplete understanding of both fronts. In this study of Word War I, Hunt Tooley crosses the boundaries of national histories to examine the various connections between the 400-mile-long Western Front and the home fronts of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States. Tooley draws on recent research and the wealth of primary souce material available to provide a broad synthesis of a complex event, and to create a more holistic view of the war - as men stayed in touch with those at home, as governments responded to events on the battlefield, and as writers, poets and artists brought the cultural impulses of Europe to the deadly world of the Western Front. In his clearly-written, wide-ranging study, Tooley argues that the seeds of much of the 20th century may have been planted well before the First World War, but - as many social critics, politicians, soldiers, women's movement leaders, and others predicted - the cultivation of these seeds in war would have a powerful and formative effect on the social, political and cultural processes which shaped the 20th century.

One of the rare books about the First World War thatvisually explores the efforts of the major combatants toremember the fallen along the entire length of the oldWestern Front.The area of Belgium and northern France that was theWestern Front is a place like no other. In a line runningseven hundred kilometers from the English Channelto the Swiss border the horrors of industrialised warconsumed men by the millions for over four years.When the War finally ended, entire societies were inshock and the ensuing outpouring of grief can be seentoday in the countless cemeteries and memorials thatdot the landscape.Much has been written of the British experienceand the work of the Commonwealth War GravesCommission including the major architects of nationalmemorials, but little material can be found regardingthe American, French and German sites.In 2013 Marcel and a friend travelled the entirelength of the Western Front. The images he capturedtell an amazing story and the chapters of the bookare organised in such a way as to help the reader tounderstand the stupendous efforts of the nationsinvolved to remember their fallen.

Excerpt from On the Western Front: German Cruelties in France and Belgium I have written this book chiefly for an After the war livelihood. In addition to the chronological record of the Fifth Evacuation Hos pital under canvas. You will also find a chronological record of the world's greatest war, which you will find not only interesting, but educational. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

A unique 1914 trilogy in one special edition This Leonaur special edition, published to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, collects three of Edmund Dane's well regarded, concise histories of warfare Never before published in this form, this substantial trilogy covers events from the outbreak of hostilities in late July, 1914, to the battle of Neuve Chapelle in early March, 1915-approximately the first six months of the conflict. Germany had long planned this war. It had its well equipped army's inexorable advance mapped out in every detail, taking into account the French fortifications along it's borders and the terrain to be traversed. German commanders decided to march through the northern flank of Belgium and present this as a 'fait de complete' to the Belgians, sweetened by terms they thought would not be refused. However, the Belgians and their small archaic army, fought back. This resistance, a story of unparalleled bravery and tenacity has been substantially forgotten due to the world-wide carnage that followed. The German Army did, of course, advance through Belgium, into France and towards Paris. The French Army fought as it stubbornly retired and the small regular British Army was quickly transported to the battle line. The B. E. F stood and fought at Mons, but could not endure the seemingly endless supply of German troops thrown at it or the vast superiority in well-served artillery at the disposal of the invaders. A dogged retreat to the Marne was fought, with actions around Le Cateau that saved the British Army from annihilation. The British and French armies turned before Paris and counter-attacked driving the Germans north over the Marne and Aisne. Towards the end of the year the Germans stood at the First Battle of Ypres-a pivotal engagement that marked the beginning of the war of stalemate. From this point on the great armies of the Western Front would gain little on the tortured battleground of blood, mud and wire. Neuve Chapelle was the first of many offensives that defined the conflict-typified by an appalling loss of life for no significant gain. The days of mobility were over and the armies began to dig into the ground for the long haul to 1918. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

A serious attempt to illustrate the humanity of the soldier on the Western Front, this title reflects World War I as they saw it: from first shot to last. These tales, told to fellow men in the trenches, behind the lines, at base hospitals and at the estaminets and billets during rest periods, have been recorded here.

The Telegraph • Best Books of the Year The Times of London • Best Books of the Year A panoramic history of the savage combat on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 that came to define modern warfare. The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dirt. This iconic setting was the most critical arena of the Great War, a 400-mile combat zone stretching from Belgium to Switzerland where more than three million Allied and German soldiers struggled during four years of almost continuous combat. It has persisted in our collective memory as a tragic waste of human life and a symbol of the horrors of industrialized warfare. In this epic narrative history, the first volume in a groundbreaking trilogy on the Great War, acclaimed military historian Nick Lloyd captures the horrific fighting on the Western Front beginning with the surprise German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 and taking us to the Armistice of November 1918. Drawing on French, British, German, and American sources, Lloyd weaves a kaleidoscopic chronicle of the Marne, Passchendaele, the Meuse-Argonne, and other critical battles, which reverberated across Europe and the wider war. From the trenches where men as young as 17 suffered and died, to the headquarters behind the lines where Generals Haig, Joffre, Hindenburg, and Pershing developed their plans for battle, Lloyd gives us a view of the war both intimate and strategic, putting us amid the mud and smoke while at the same time depicting the larger stakes of every encounter. He shows us a dejected Kaiser Wilhelm II—soon to be eclipsed in power by his own generals—lamenting the botched Schlieffen Plan; French soldiers piling atop one another in the trenches of Verdun; British infantryman wandering through the frozen wilderness in the days after the Battle of the Somme; and General Erich Ludendorff pursuing a ruthless policy of total war, leading an eleventh-hour attack on Reims even as his men succumbed to the Spanish Flu. As Lloyd reveals, far from a site of attrition and stalemate, the Western Front was a simmering, dynamic “cauldron of war” defined by extraordinary scientific and tactical innovation. It was on the Western Front that the modern technologies—machine guns, mortars, grenades, and howitzers—were refined and developed into effective killing machines. It was on the Western Front that chemical warfare, in the form of poison gas, was first unleashed. And it was on the Western Front that tanks and aircraft were introduced, causing a dramatic shift away from nineteenth-century bayonet tactics toward modern combined arms, reinforced by heavy artillery, that forever changed the face of war. Brimming with vivid detail and insight, The Western Front is a work in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman and John Keegan, Rick Atkinson and Antony Beevor: an authoritative portrait of modern warfare and its far-reaching human and historical consequences.