First World War

Roger Hudson gives context to a photograph highlighting the plight of Galician Jews after the Russian army's invasion in the Great War.

Under the terms of the Armistice, writes Geoffrey Bennett, the ships of the German High Sea Fleet were interned and not surrendered. Hence they were manned by their own crews, who eight months later were able to carry out “an act of treachery.”

During the earliest phase of World War I, writes Robert Hessen, an enterprising American industrialist helped to turn the tide of naval warfare.

John Terraine studies the effects of Napoleonic doctrine upon the leadership of mass armies in the Industrial Age.

Describing the First World War as ‘an engineers’ war’, which required ‘arms more than men’, Lloyd George acted on the urgent need to employ women in the armaments industries. Henrietta Heald explains how they in turn responded to the challenges.

In the early days of the First World War a plan was hatched in Berlin to spread revolt among the Muslim populations of the Entente empires. David Motadel looks at the reasons why it failed.

When Great Britain entered the First World War, writes N.G. Garson, memories of their struggle for independence were still fresh in the minds of many Afrikaners; rather than accept its decision to follow the Empire’s lead, they took up arms against their own government.

British historiography has been offered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to integrate Ireland’s contribution into analyses of the Great War, argues Catriona Pennell.

When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914 there was no outbreak of jingoism and no immediate rush to enlist.

The Concert of Europe, the diplomatic model championed by Britain in the run-up to the First World War, was doomed by the actions of competing nationalisms. Britain’s entry into the conflict became inevitable, despite its lack of military preparation, as Vernon Bogdanor explains.