Furious economic growth and social change resulted in pervasive civic conflict in Imperial Germany. Roger Chickering presents a wide-ranging history of this fractious period, from German national unification to the close of the First World War. Throughout this time, national unity remained an acute issue. It appeared to be resolved momentarily in the summer of 1914, only to dissolve in the war that followed. This volume examines the impact of rapid industrialization and urban growth on Cat...

Volume IV of The Cambridge History of War offers a definitive new account of war in the most destructive period in human history. Opening with the massive conflicts that erupted in the mid nineteenth century in the US, Asia and Europe, leading historians trace the global evolution of warfare through 'the age of mass', 'the age of machine' and 'the age of management'. They explore how industrialization and nationalism fostered vast armies whilst the emergence of mobile warfare and improved ...

This book explores the impact of the First World War on Imperial Germany and examines military aspects of the conflict, as well as the diplomacy, politics, and industrial mobilization of wartime Germany. Including maps, tables, and illustrations, it also offers a rich portrait of life on the home front - the war's pervasive effects on rich and poor, men and women, young and old, farmers and city-dwellers, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. It analyzes the growing burdens of war and the tran...

Originally published in 1984 this volume presents the first systematic analysis of the cultural sources of the Pan German League’s appeal and influence in Imperial Germany. It focuses on the symbolic dimensions of the League’s literature and activities, in order to explain the attraction of the League’s aggressive ideology to certain social groups. In addition it examines the relationship between the League and other patriotic societies in Imperial Germany and analyses the processes by whi...

**An absorbing, revelatory, and definitive account of one of the greatest tragedies in human history, by the author of The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and Hitler's People“This is history in the grand style, the kind of large-scale narrative that few historians dare to write these days. It is difficult to imagine how it could be improved upon, let alone surpassed.” —The Washington Post"This superb book is n...

A groundbreaking history of what drove the Germans to fight -- and keep fighting -- for a lost cause in World War IIIn The German War, acclaimed historian Nicholas Stargardt draws on an extraordinary range of firsthand testimony -- personal diaries, court records, and military correspondence -- to explore how the German people experienced the Second World War.When war broke out in September 1939, it was deeply unpopular in Germany. Yet without the ...

From a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I.“A rich and provocative book, evocative and heartbreaking.” — AtlanticThe Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England’s fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental co...

The first English translation of writings that capture the lives and thoughts of German soldiers fighting in the trenches and on the battlefields of WWI.German Soldiers in the Great War is a vivid selection of firsthand accounts and other wartime documents that shed new light on the experiences of German frontline soldiers during the First World War. It reveals in authentic detail the perceptions and emotions of ordinary soldiers that have been covered up ...

The essays in this volume analyze war, its strategic characterisitics and its political and social functions, over the past five centuries. The diversity of its themes and the broad perspectives applied to them make the book a work of general history as much as a history of the theory and practice of war from the Renaissance to the present. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age takes the first part of its title from an earlier collection of essays, publishe...

**A EuropeNow Editor’s PickA Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year“Pieter M. Judson’s book informs and stimulates. If his account of Habsburg achievements, especially in the 18th century, is rather starry-eyed, it is a welcome corrective to the black legend usually presented. Lucid, elegant, full of surprising and illuminating details, it can be warmly recommended to anyone with an interest in modern European history.”—Tim Blanning, Wall ...

As the Cold War followed on the heels of the Second World War as the Nuremburg Trials faded in the shadow of the Iron Curtain both the Germans and the West were quick to accept the idea that Hitler's army had been no SS no Gestapo that it was a professional force little touched by Nazi politics. But in this compelling account Omer Bartov reveals a very different history as he probes the experience of the average soldier to show just how thoroughly Nazi ideology permeated the army. In Hitle...

A history of the steel and arms maker that came to symbolize the best and worst of modern German historyThe history of Krupp is the history of modern Germany. No company symbolized the best and worst of that history more than the famous steel and arms maker. In this book, Harold James tells the story of the Krupp family and its industrial empire between the early nineteenth century and the present, and analyzes its transition from a family business to one owned by a...