War, Peace, and International Relations. An Introduction to Strategic History

The modernization of the soldier’s premier weapon between the 1 8 40s and 1914, as outlined in Box 5.1, was an evolutionary triu ...

improve, and it constituted another huge step-level jump in the lethality of weapons available to the infantry for both offence ...

wholehearted official enthusiasm in the Royal Navy (RN), pointing out the limits of the cult of battle that he believed had secu ...

given that Southern blockade runners succeeded in importing 600,000 rifles, plus fancy fashionable goods worth a fortune in a so ...

to where these two chapters on the nineteenth century began: politics. The dynamic international and domestic political contexts ...

The Vienna Settlement of 1 8 14–15, and its evolution from Congress diplomacy to occasionally effective concerted behaviour, end ...

not a revolutionary or rogue power. It was content to defend the new status quo that it had won with blood and iron. The challen ...

tale of woe, by the 1900s some senior German soldiers, including the new Chief of the General Staff (from 1906 to 1914), Helmuth ...

Questions What was the ‘tactical crisis’? Why did it confound all attempts at solution? How and why did concerns for domestic p ...

6 World War I, I Controversies Introduction: the making of the twentieth century With black humour one could argue that the Grea ...

Map 6.1 Europe in 1914 ...

be imagined that strategic history occurs randomly, ever vulnerable to course redirection by surprises, great and small. The pas ...

until the primary errors are exposed. One must tackle, challenge and demolish five great myths about the Great War: Allegedly, ...

believed in Vienna to be at risk. For its part, Russia felt compelled to assert its weight in the 1914 crisis, having been shown ...

particular. And although the principal German strategic motive was defensive, not aggressive, the former required behaviour of t ...

pioneered in the construction of their Hindenburg Line in the winter of 1916–17. But what no one succeeded in achieving was a su ...

rather than years. Such a war was expected by most people to conclude with a decisive military victory for one side. However, th ...

the casualties of 1914–1 8 , regarded in strategic historical context, because the war of 1939–45 produced an even larger casual ...

Questions Do you agree that World War I continues to be seriously misunderstood? Why did the great powers go to war in 1914? Di ...

7 World War I, II Modern warfare Introduction: education by experience A strategic history such as this tries to avoid becoming ...