Gilbert - World War I: A concise military history
Here you can read online Gilbert - World War I: A concise military history full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2020, publisher: Lume Books, genre: History. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
Romance novel
Science fiction
Adventure
Detective
Science
History
Home and family
Prose
Art
Politics
Computer
Non-fiction
Religion
Business
Children
Humor
Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.
World War I: A concise military history: summary, description and annotation
We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "World War I: A concise military history" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.
Gilbert: author's other books
Who wrote World War I: A concise military history? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Gilbert
Matthew P Gilbert [Gilbert
Matthew P Gilbert [Gilbert
Matthew P Gilbert [Gilbert
Jason Gilbert [Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Martin Gilbert
Adrian Gilbert
Sir Martin Gilbert
Martin Gilbert
Michael A. Palmer
World War I: A concise military history — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work
Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "World War I: A concise military history" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
World War I
A Concise Military History
Orbis Book Publishing Corporation, 1986
Copyright Adrian Gilbert 1986
This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books
30 Great Guildford Street,
Borough, SE1 0HS
The right of Adrian Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
The Road to War
On 28 June 1914 Gavrilo Princip, a young Serb nationalist, fired his revolver at Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, mortally wounding the heir to the Austro-Hungarian thrown. To the horrified onlookers the enormity of the act was obvious, any yet few then could have foreseen that this particular Balkan assassination would lead directly and inexorably to a global war of almost indescribable destruction.
The causes of World War I have always been complex and, in the search for a culprit nation, highly controversial. The background to the war lay in the fierce rivalry of Europes major nation states. The extraordinary economic expansion of Europe in the nineteenth century depended on the procurement of new overseas markets and the safeguarding of sources of raw materials. This encouraged the military conquest of overseas territories, which in turn led to disputes between the imperial powers over ownership of these colonial possessions.
The increase in national rivalry was exacerbated by Germany's arrival within this inner circle. In 1914 Germany was the most powerful nation in Europe, but she had only achieved unification in 1871 and, as a newcomer to the world stage, had lost out in the race for empire. Britain and France had been the main beneficiaries of overseas colonialism and Germany felt acute frustration at being 'cheated' out of what she saw as her just rewards.
A youthful, aggressive nation, the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II sat uneasily at the high table of the great powers. Germany's colonial resentment was only one expression of a profound instability within the nation as a whole. Although Germany was in the vanguard of economic and scientific progress, her system of government still possessed a distinctly feudal character. The German Reichstag (parliament) was hardly comparable to its French and British equivalents; when the crunch came power in Germany lay in the hands of an autocratic, military elite. Alongside the army chiefs was the Kaiser: vain, weak and possessed of a deep-seated inferiority complex. Wilhelm and his advisors had a poor understanding of international politics: diplomacy was too often dispensed with in favor of blustering intimidation.
Germany's main ally, Austria-Hungary, was racked by an instability of a very different kind. Whereas Germany was a single, ethnically cohesive nation state, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was an aggregate of largely Slavic entities, ruled over by a Germanic Austria and Magyar Hungary. And yet the nineteenth-century was the age of the nationalism, and by 1900 the Austro-Hungarian empire was facing imminent destruction from within, as its many and diverse ethnic minorities struggled for national self-determination.
The slow decline of the other Balkan empire Turkey had led to the emergence of the independent states of Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. Their continuing belligerence towards Austria-Hungary and Turkey (and among themselves) only served to increase the volatility of the region.
The animosity between the Austro-Hungarian empire and the Slavs found its most dangerous expression in the deteriorating relationship between Austria and Serbia, the former accusing the latter of supporting terrorist activity by Slav nationalists within the empire. There was considerable truth in these accusations, and to the Austrians the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was the final provocation in a series of perceived humiliations inflicted upon them by Serbia.
That Austria-Hungary should have taken its retribution to the point of declaring war on Serbia was extreme but not a total surprise. The question then arises of why a local dispute between two Balkan powers should have led to world war within a matter of weeks? The answer lay in the nature of the system of alliances that both bound and divided Europe into two armed camps.
The struggle for the domination of central Europe had been won by Germany in wars against Denmark, Austria and France in the nineteenth century. After the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) the German Chancellor, Count Otto von Bismarck, had followed up military victory with a series of treaties designed to maintain Germanys ascendant position in Europe.
When Wilhelm II came to the throne, however, and removed Bismarck in 1889 the system began to fall apart. Russia, previously bound by a treaty of friendship with Germany, moved towards a diplomatic and military relationship with France, especially when Germany aligned herself with Austria-Hungary, Russias rival for influence in the Balkans. Russia, like Austria-Hungary, was keen to exploit the decline of the old Turkish empire in Europe, and it also made clear its support for fellow Slav states in the Balkans, especially Serbia.
Britain traditionally remained outside the European treaty system, although the emergence of Germany as an economic and political rival began to cause concern. But it was Germanys decision to challenge Britains position as the premier naval power through the construction of a large, modern battle fleet that eventually pushed Britain into an informal alliance with France. While these treaties were intended to be essentially defensive in character, a series of diplomatic incidents Morocco (1905), Bosnia (1908-09) and Agadir (1911) increased international tensions.
With the European powers polarized into two rival camps, war plans were drawn up to cover the possibility or probability of outright conflict. The strategic situation was geographically determined: Germany and Austria-Hungary held the center, surrounded' by France and Russia, with Britain on the periphery.
While the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary held the advantage of operating on interior lines, Germany was also faced with the prospect of war on two fronts. The economic rise of Russia during the early years of the twentieth century was seen as a direct threat by German military planners, all the more so after Russias swift recovery from defeat in the Russo-Japanese war (1904-5). The German General Staff had become increasingly fearful of Russias military potential, and arguments were put forward to instigate a preventative war before Russia grew any stronger. As a consequence, following the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the German Army actively encouraged Austria to adopt drastic punitive measures against Serbia.
The German General Staff had developed a variety of plans to defeat France and Russia, but the best known was that put forward by Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the General Staff between 1891 and 1905. He proposed to strike a swift and massive blow against France sufficient to knock her out of the war and subsequently turn eastward to deal with Russia.
The German plan was a gamblers throw, dependent on the speed of German mobilization, the completeness of the victory over France and the slowness of Russias mobilization. But what made the plan infamous was its strategic inflexibility: no matter where the threat or danger originated, once war was declared Germany must immediately invade France. At the end of July 1914 doubts were expressed within German government circles as to the advisability of attacking in the West when the source of conflict lay so obviously in the Balkans. The General Staff crushed all dissent, however, with the blanket reply that to change the rail schedules would throw the German Armys plans into disarray. Once committed, there could be no going back, so that strategy was subordinated to the railway timetable.
Light
Font size:
↓
↑
Reset
Interval:
↓
↑
Bookmark:
Make
Similar books «World War I: A concise military history»
Look at similar books to World War I: A concise military history. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.
Gilbert
Matthew P Gilbert [Gilbert
Matthew P Gilbert [Gilbert
Matthew P Gilbert [Gilbert
Jason Gilbert [Gilbert
W. S. Gilbert
Martin Gilbert
Adrian Gilbert
Sir Martin Gilbert
Martin Gilbert
Michael A. Palmer
Reviews about «World War I: A concise military history»
Discussion, reviews of the book World War I: A concise military history and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.