DEPARTMENT OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
LEVEL TWO UNDERGRADUATE MODULE
IP35320
WARFARE
AFTER WATERLOO: MILITARY HISTORY 1815-1918
Office Hours: as posted
(two per week)
Military and
Strategy Cyber HQ
* A 2-hour exam (unseen question paper), in which you must
answer two questions from eight: worth 60 % of overall mark
1
Legacies of Napoleon
(Areas of Study: Napoleon’s system of operational
manoeuvres; how his opponents had eventually adapted to cope with him;
guerrillas and ‘people’s war’ in the Napoleonic era; conscripts vs. professionals;
the theories of Clausewitz)
2 The Concert of Europe and Limited War: the Crimea
(Areas of Study: the ‘Concert of Europe’ and the practice of
Limited War; the ‘Balance of Power’ and how to uphold it; were the British
generals in the Crimea ‘Butchers and Bunglers’?; disease and the health of
armies; impacts of new technologies; replay of Napoleonic war or foretaste of
‘modern’ war ?)
3 The Wars of German Unification
1864-71
(Areas of Study: the evolution of battle tactics as a result
of new weapons; the Elder Moltke and the rise of the Prussian Great General
Staff; German operational methods and the ‘kesselschlacht’; sources of Austrian
and French weakness,1866/1870; ‘Volkskrieg’/People’s War in 1871)
4 The American Civil War 1861-65
(Areas of Study: amateurs at war and the problem of
improvising mass citizen armies; the impact of railways; the effects of
terrain; reasons for the move to a ‘raiding’ strategy; Confederate superior
generalship versus Northern industrial muscle; attritional war: the strategies
of U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman)
5 European Interventions in Africa
& Colonial ‘Small Wars’
Lecture and film excerpt
(Areas of Study: Logistics problems in colonial campaigning;
distance, disease and communications; limitations inherent in the Victorian
concept of pacification, colonisation and ‘indirect rule’; weapons and tactics;
the circumstances in which non-Europeans could win – case study: The Zulu War
1878-79)
6 Developments in Naval Warfare,
1815-1918
Two lectures
(Areas of Study: wooden walls to steel dreadnoughts: a
revolution in shipbuilding; the rise of naval theorists – Mahan and Corbett;
the ‘Jeune école’ in France and the debate on composition of fleets for winning
and exercising sea-control; the rise and impact of torpedoes and submarines;
armour versus big guns: naval arms races; naval bases, dockyards and coaling
stations: navies and empires; Jutland – ‘missed opportunity’; trade defence in
time of war: the U-Boat campaigns of 1915 and 1917 and the rediscovery of the
convoy)
7 The Revolution in Armament,
1879-1914
(Areas of Study: role of the 2nd Industrial
revolution and its impact on armaments development; specific developments in
arms technology; impact of technology on logistics, communication and administration;
implications for strategy and tactics; military reforms and the creation of
professional general staffs)
8 Opening Moves in the Great War,
August 1914
(Areas of Study: Anglo-French planning and strategy;
expectations and realities of war in 1914; impact of technological and
industrial development on warfare; ‘War by Timetable’; the problem of
ammunition expenditure and re-supply; the ‘Race for the Sea’ and end of
mobility)
9 Trenchlock on the Western Front, 1915-16: Douglas Haig and
Tommy Atkins
Lecture, and video
screening: ‘The Somme’
(Areas of Study: The phenomenon of ‘Trenchlock’; the
development of mass civilian armies; the ‘Shell Shortage’ crisis; the rise of
artillery; the persistence of ‘breakthrough’ strategic thinking and the realities
of attrition; trench and artillery weapons development; assessing the Somme)
10 France’s War: ‘Aux armes,
citoyens…’
(Areas of study: the spirit of the offensive and the
weakness of French artillery; Joffre’s Plan XVII and the miscalculations of
1914; bearing the brunt: 1915; Verdun, 1916: ‘They Shall Not Pass!’; the
failure of the Nivelle offensive and the French mutinies, 1917; new commanders,
new techniques: Pétain, Estienne, Debeney, tanks and the Air Division: the
restoration of French military effectiveness in 1918
11
The Entente’s Exhaustion, 1917
(Areas of Study: From Arras to Ypres; the power of defence;
the development of modern deep battle and the operational ‘set-piece’ attack;
changes in tactics and the creation of the platoon system; logistics and the
‘industralisation’ of war; the soldiers’ experience of war; assessing Cambrai)
12
The Kaiser’s Collapse, 1918
Lecture
and video-screening
(Areas of Study; The Entente in defence and the problem of
manpower; the German spring offensives; development in Entente command,
control, co-operation and strategy; ‘The Yanks are coming’; The Entente bites
back: July-August 1918; the development of the ‘symphony’ of all-arms
co-operation; the restoration of mobility? – Sept.-Nov. 1918; Reflections on WW1
The lectures are intended to raise certain issues, indicate
areas of debate and interest, and major disagreements among historians - generally to introduce you to the topic.
They must be supplemented by
your own reading.
Each student must select ONE essay from the list below, and
answer this for the assessed element of the module. The essay must be 8 sides
of A4 paper (double-spaced, in 12 point font) i.e. approx. 2,500 words, in
length. Remember to number the pages
just before you print out !
Deadline for essay
submission: 2.30 p.m. on TUESDAY 18 NOVEMBER 2003
All essays must be handed in to Rachel Galloway at the
Department of International Politics General Office, Edward Llwyd Building.
Choose your essay sooner
rather than later – this deadline is in Week 8. But an early start on a
definite topic will help you space out your reading/note-taking. You will also
benefit more from the lectures, and save yourself a “can’t find the books”
panic-attack in weeks 7/8 (!)
Once your essay has been marked, you will receive tutor’s
comments about content, argument style etc. on the standard Interpol Essay
Comments pro-forma. You will not get
the submitted copy of the essay back. Therefore ensure you keep another
for yourself (a) to relate it to anything said in detail on the Tutor Comments
Sheet and (b) to help you revise later for the exam.
ESSAY QUESTIONS:
1.
Did changing technology or deeper thinking about sea-power
have the greater impact on navies and naval warfare, c. 1815-1905?
2.
Assess the parts played by the rival recruiting systems,
command and staff structures, technology, and tactics in explaining Prussia’s
defeats of Austria (1866) and France (1870)
3.
Explain why the battles of the American Civil War (1861-65)
were generally indecisive
4.
Why did ‘Western’ armies periodically suffer embarrassing
operational defeats against non-European native peoples, c. 1860-1899, but
still tend to win the wars ?
5.
How far did the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5)
offer sight of fundamental shifts in the nature of wars ?
6.
How close to success did the Schlieffen Plan come in 1914?
7.
Was the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign of 1915 a good idea
badly executed, or a poor idea in the first place – and why ?
8.
What went wrong with the British plan for a great triumph on
the Somme in July 1916?
9.
Did the allies win the war on the Western Front in the
autumn of 1918 – or did the Germans lose it ?
10.
‘Navies hugely disappointed the powers that had invested in
them most heavily.’ Discuss with particular reference to the 1916 Battle of
Jutland and the 1917 German U-Boat offensive
These run FORTNIGHTLY for each group, and last 90 minutes
each time. Students prepare for the seminars by working in 3-4 person
‘syndicates’ out of class hours on pre-assigned topics. (Each seminar group
thus normally consists of 3 or 4 ‘syndicates’).
Every syndicate chooses a member as its ‘rapporteur’
(changing this nominee from one seminar to the next). The rapporteur must
pre-circulate to the tutor and every student in his/her seminar group a 1-side
bullet-point ‘summary presentation’ as an e-mail attachment. The rapporteur
will have about 4 minutes to present the summary to the seminar, to prompt
questions, disagreements (!) and discussion.
Making these presentations is a very important part of
developing your ‘transferable skills’ for life/work after university. Try to
enhance them with maps, an OHP diagram, a handout for other class-members, or even
use a short video-clip in support of your points.
Topics for the fortnightly seminars are:
SEMINAR ONE (Legacies of
Napoleonic warfare)
a)
Command, operational systems, tactics
b)
Manning the military: army and navy
recruitment
c)
Strategic thought: Clausewitz –
‘Absolute’ war vs. ‘Real’ war; war’s political purpose; the ‘Paradoxical
Trinity’; the People in Arms
d) Logistics and Intelligence: the Cinderellas of military organisations…
and of military history?
SEMINAR
TWO (Mid-19th Century Warfare)
a)
Organising for War: general staffs, conscription and
fortifications
b)
The industrialisation of war: telegraphs, steamships,
railways, rifles
c)
The Crimea (1854-56) and Wars of German Unification
d)
The American Civil War, 1861-65
SEMINAR THREE (Between
sport and slaughter: armies and navies in ‘Britannia’s heyday’, 1871-1914)
a)
European Armies and the ‘Native Encounter’ (Case Study: The
Zulu War, 1878-79)
b)
The Leverage of Sea Power and the emergence of maritime
strategic thought (Mahan & Corbett)
c)
Things to Come? The Boer War (1899-1902) and Russo-Japanese
War (1904-5)
d)
Clash of Arms: The Battle of the Frontiers, Aug-Sept. 1914
SEMINAR FOUR (Towards
Total War: The Western Front, 1914-18)
a)
‘Trenchlock’ and modern siege warfare: the supply/transport
conundrum
b)
Elan vital vs. Stormtroops?
French & German approaches to winning on the Western Front
c)
‘Who’s in charge here?’ Command, control and communications
d)
Battle tactics and the ascent of the ‘learning curve’:
Arras, Messines and Ypres, April-November 1917
SEMINAR FIVE (Towards
Total War: “Sideshows” and Sea Warfare)
a)
‘Forgotten’ Allied victory: the Western Front, July-Nov.
1918
b)
The attractions of the Indirect Approach: Was Gallipoli a
good idea badly executed, or a poor idea in the first place?
c)
Why did the British public and R.N. officers feel so
disappointed by the outcome of the Battle of Jutland (1916)?
d)
How serious a threat to Britain was the 1917 German U-Boat
offensive, and why?
Pressure on books can sometimes be intense. Plan your reading with this in mind.
The Hugh Owen Library will not hold all the titles listed; you will have to use
the National Library of Wales and Inter-Library Loan. Demand means that you may
not be able to obtain a book precisely when you want it. Do not imagine that in
the week prior to essay submission, all the books will be available – THEY WON’T ! You need to plan ahead and
start reading for your essay early in the semester. Work and take notes
steadily towards it. Don’t leave it
till the week before the submission deadline ! If you experience
problems locating a text listed here you should seek help from the appropriate
specialist staff in the Hugh Owen Library – Meirion Derrick (meirion.derrick@aber.ac.uk) and
Judy Lile (jvl@aber.ac.uk).
You should strongly
consider purchasing some of the general books, as well as significant books for
your essay and seminar presentation(s). An inexpensive way of doing this is to
operate within your ‘syndicates’. Each syndicate, not each student, can then
buy several books on a pooled-funds basis. Agree which books you will buy in
yours, add up the cost and work out the required contribution from each member.
Thus 3 or 4 students can buy half a dozen specialist books quite cheaply
between them.
These are numerous in most fields of military history – and
especially plentiful concerning the American Civil War (1861-65). That is a
subject which in the USA still arouses fierce passions and the taking of sides.
Be especially wary of the ‘ulterior motives’ of many ACW sites if you go
‘surfing’. In general, many web-sites are highly dubious, unreliable or set
up to promote partial views and “carry the torch” for certain causes and myths.
They should carry an “academic health warning”! You must be even more
discriminating and critical in using the web than when using books and articles
in scholarly journals…
Anyone with web-authoring software can register a domain
name and create their own site… on any subject. These do NOT go through the quality filter of pre-publication
“peer-review” or “academic refereeing” that protects standards in scholarly
books and articles. It’s therefore a “Virtual No-Man’s-Land” out there, heavily
mined and booby-trapped, and likely to cause academic casualties among
inexperienced military history students.
There are, however, some good sites on the First World War
(1914-18) and examples include:-
The
Canadian Armed Forces College guide: http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/wwi.html
Tom
Morgan’s ‘Hellfire Corner’ site: http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/welcome.htm
The Imperial War Museum site: http://www.iwm.org.uk
The Australian War Memorial site: http://www.awm.gov.au
The
Western Front Association site: http://www.westernfront.co.uk
Nevertheless always
cross-check the information, arguments and ’line’ with what’s in books and
learned journal articles on the same subject. In time, and with your increasing
knowledge, you will become adept at judging the strengths, weaknesses -- and
sometimes downright tendentiousness -- of web-sites you decide to ‘hit’.
Finally, you may find it useful to visit my own site, one
part of which consists of scores of links to other military history and defence
policy sites: ‘Military and Strategic History Cyber HQ’ at http://users.aber.ac.uk/rbh/strategy/
If you are not yet familiar with journals, rectify this NOW ! They are an essential
tool. Often an article is an entirely legitimate ‘short-cut’ to the heart of a
major new interpretation of an issue or controversy. Articles also typically
form the first outlet for crucial new research findings; or are where major new
documentation freshly released from archives is made available.
Some common uses of articles by social science/humanities
academics:-
·
‘Trailing’ or heralding in 20-30 pages a forthcoming book
that has been years in the making and will soon be published -- a way for you to
get a ‘preview’ of the rethinking of a problem or historical episode.
·
An article may appear after the publication of a major book
– in which case they sometimes summarise the larger work in a convenient,
digestible, 20-30 pages.
·
Articles sometimes are written to bring to light facets of
the research that would not ‘fit’ logically within the framework adopted for
the book
·
Articles publish research that would have seen a book
greatly exceed the word-length insisted on by the author’s publisher!
So – for all these reasons – it is ESSENTIAL you familiarise yourself (if you have not already)
with the main journals in the field of your studies. The abbreviations below
indicate the main ones used in this module.
INS =
Intelligence and National Security (Publisher: Frank Cass)
JCH =
Journal of Contemporary History (Publisher: Sage)
JMilH = The Journal of Military History
(Publisher: George C. Marshall Foundation/Virginia Military Institute)
JSS = Journal of Strategic Studies (Publisher:
Frank Cass)
WH = War in History (Publisher:
Arnold/Hodder-Headline)
‘TEXTBOOKS’, AND ‘ESSENTIAL’ vs. ‘RECOMMENDED’ reading – some guidance:
Re: “textbooks”, for any one topic/seminar or essay, use ONE to gain familiarity
with the issues, with ‘what happened/when’, with the elementary ‘who was who’
of commanders etc. You might spend,
typically, a half-day laying the groundwork and gaining understanding and a
sense of the chronology from your preferred ‘textbook’. Then move straight on to as much of the
specialist books and articles as you can manage. DO NOT USE MORE THAN ONE
‘TEXTBOOK’ PER SEMINAR OR ESSAY.
In each section of
the Bibliography below, a small number of works are marked ‘E’ (ESSENTIAL) –
the rest are all ‘R’ category (strongly RECOMMENDED). Be aware that the
readings in this handbook constitute only a tiny, selected fraction of the good
scholarly work published on each topic. Do not, therefore, make the mistake of
thinking that ‘this is a lot’ -- still less that ‘this is IT’ !
For SEMINARS, you should read at least part of all (or nearly all)
ESSENTIAL works; for your essay topic, you need IN ADDITION to draw from and
familiarise yourself with half a dozen more books and/or articles from the
RECOMMENDED items on that section of the Bibliography.
It is simple: READ AS MUCH AND AS WIDELY AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN, AND START
READING/NOTE-TAKING AS SOON AS THE MODULE BEGINS.
1) The Legacies of Napoleonic Warfare
E:
MacGregor Knox, ‘Mass politics and nationalism as military
revolution: The French Revolution and after’, ch. 4 in MacGregor Knox and
Williamson Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of
Military Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge UP, 2001), 57-73
John Gooch, Armies in
Europe (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), chs. 2-6
Paddy Griffith, Forward
into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to the Near-Future (2nd
edn, Novato, CA: Presidio, 1991)
Hew Strachan, European
Armies and the Conduct of War (London: Routledge: 1983 and pb. reprints to
date)
Christon I Archer, John R. Ferris, Holger Herwig & Tim
Travers, A World History of Warfare
(Lincoln, NE: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2002)
R:
Charles Townshend (ed.), The
Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War (Oxford UP, 1997), esp. chs. 4-5
Paddy Griffith, The
Art of War of Revolutionary France, 1789-1802 (London: Greenhill, 1998)
Philip J. Haythornthwaite, The Napoleonic Sourcebook (London: Arms & Armour, 1991; pb.
reprint 1995), esp. Section II: ’Weapons and the Practice of War’, 70-122
William McElwee, The
Art of War: Waterloo to Mons (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1974)
Geoffrey Parker, The
Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge UP, 1995)
Alvin Bernstein & MacGregor Knox (eds), The Making of Strategy. Rulers, States and
War (Cambridge UP, 1994)
Peter Paret (ed.), Makers
of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton UP, 1986)
Carl von Clausewitz (ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret), On War (Princeton UP, 1976)
Michael Howard, Clausewitz
(Oxford UP, 1983)
2) Nineteenth Century themes
E:
Geoffrey Wawro, Warfare
and Society in Europe, 1792-1914 (London: Routledge, 1999)
David Gates, Warfare
in the Nineteenth Century (Harlow: Longman, 2001)
Martin van Creveld, The
Art of War. War and Military Thought (London: Cassell, 2000), chs. 4, 5 and
6
idem, Supplying War:
Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge UP, 1977)
idem, Technology in
War from 2000 BC to the Present (London, 1991)
Kenneth Macksey, Technology
and War: The Impact of Science on Weapon Development and Modern Battle
(London, 1986)
John A. Lynn (ed.), Feeding
Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present
(Boulder & London: Westview, 1993), esp. chs. 1 & 2, 9 &10
Jeremy Black (ed.), European
Warfare 1815-2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2002)
Edward M. Spiers, The
Army and Society, 1815-1914 (London, 1980)
Daniel Moran (ed.), The
People in Arms: Military Myth and National Mobilisation since the French
Revolution (Cambridge U.P., 2003)
R:
Geoffrey Best, War and
Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1998),
esp. ch. 12 and chs. 15-24
Brian Bond, War and
Society in Europe, 1870-1970 (Fontana, 1984)
Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, The
Army in Victorian Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977)
Christopher Bartlett, Peace,
War and the European Powers, 1814-1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan)
Joseph Sinclair, Arteries
of War. A History of Military Transportation (Shrewsbury: Airlife
Publishing, 1992), esp. chs. 1, 2, 4, 5
Dennis E. Showalter, ‘Prussia, Technology and War: Artillery
from 1815 to 1918’, in Ronald Haycock and Keith Neilson (eds.), Men, Machines and War (Waterloo, ONT:
Wilfrid Laurier U.P., 1989), 115-151
Hew Strachan, Wellington’s
Legacy: The Reform of the British Army, 1830-1854 (Manchester UP, 1985)
Paddy Griffith, Military
Thought in the French Army, 1815-1851 (Oxford UP, 1989)
Brian Bond, The
Victorian Army and the Staff College (London: 1972)
M. A. Ramsay, Command
and Cohesion. The Citizen Soldier and Minor Tactics in the British Army,
1870-1918 (New York: Praeger, 2002)
3) The Russian or ‘Crimean’ War (1854-56)
E:
Andrew Lambert, ‘Preparing for the Russian War: British
strategic planning, March 1853-March 1854’, War
& Society vol. 7:2 (Sept. 1989), 15-39
idem, The Crimean War:
British Grand Strategy against Russia, 1855-1856 (Manchester UP, 1990)
Hew Strachan, ‘Soldiers, strategy and Sebastopol’, Historical Journal XXI:2 (1978), 303-25
Winfried Baumgart, The
Crimean War, 1853-1856 (2000)
Trevor Royle, Crimea.
The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856 (London: Little, Brown & Co., 1999)
Paul Kerr, The Crimean
War (Basingstoke: Boxtree/Macmillan, 1997)
Robert B. Edgerton, Death
or Glory. The Legacy of the Crimea (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999)
R:
Alan Palmer, The
Banner of Battle: The Crimean War (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987)
Frederick W. Kagan, The
Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army (New
York: St Martin’s Press, 1999)
David M. Goldfrank, The
Origins of the Crimean War (Harlow: Longman, )
John Sweetman, Raglan:
From the Peninsula to the Crimea (London, 1993)
idem, Balaclava
(London: 1990)
William C. Fuller, Jr., Strategy
and Power in Russia, 1600-1914 (New York: Free Press, 1992), chs. 5, 6, 7
R. H. G. Thomas, The
Russian Army in the Crimean War 1854-56 (1991)
Brison D. Gooch, The
New Bonapartist Generals in the Crimean War. Distrust and Decision-Making in the Anglo-French Alliance (The
Hague: Martinus Niijhoff, 1959)
4) The Wars of German Unification (1864-71)
E:
Dennis E. Showalter, Railroad
and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology and the Unification of Germany (1975)
idem, ‘The Prusso-German RMA, 1840-1871’, ch. 6 in Knox and
Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of Military
Revolution, 1300-2050 (CUP 2001), 92-113
William Carr, The
Origins of the Wars of German Unification (Harlow: Longman, 1995 )
Geoffrey Wawro, The
Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Austria’s War with Prussia and Italy in 1866
(Cambridge UP, 1996)
Scott Lackey, ‘The Habsburg Army and the Franco-Prussian
War: The Failure to Intervene and its Consequences’, WH 2:2 (July 1995), 151-179
Arden Bucholz, Moltke
and the German Wars, 1864-1871 (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2001)
Michael Howard, The
Franco-Prussian War. The German Invasion of France, 1870-1871 (London:
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961; reprinted with a new Intro. as a Routledge pb., Sept.
2001)
R:
Lothar Gall, Bismarck:
The White Revolutionary. Vol. I, 1815-1871 (London: Allen & Unwin,
1976)
Gordon A. Craig, Königgratz,
1866 (1966)
Dennis E. Showalter, ‘Army and Society in Imperial Germany:
The Pains of Modernization’, JCH 18
(1983), 583-618
Richard Holmes, The
Road to Sedan. The French Army, 1866-1870 (Woodbridge: Boydell &
Brewer/Royal Historical Society, 1984)
Thomas J. Adriance, The
Last Gaiter Button: A study of the mobilization and concentration of the French
army in the war of 1870 (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1987)
David Ascoli, A Day of
Battle. Mars-la-Tour, 16 August 1870 (London: Harrap, 1987; and Birlinn
Books reprint, 2001)
Robert Tombs, The
Paris Commune, 1871 (Harlow: Pearson, 1999)
idem, The War against
Paris, 1871 (Cambridge UP, 1981)
Stig Forster and Jörg Nagler (eds.), On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of
Unification, 1861-1871 (Cambridge UP, 1997)
5)
The
American Civil War, 1861-65
E:
Reid Mitchell, The
American Civil War 1861-65 (Harlow: Pearson, 2001)
Brian Holden Reid, The
American Civil War and the Wars of the Industrial Revolution (London:
Cassell, 1999)
Paddy Griffith, Battle
Tactics of the Civil War (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1989)
Gary W. Gallagher, The
American Civil War. The War in the East, 1861-May 1863 (Oxford: Osprey,
2001)
David Kirkpatrick, ‘Slow Train to Vicksburg: the Confederate
capability for strategic reinforcement in 1863’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute 142:4 (Aug. 1997),
76-81
Russell F. Weigley, A
Great Civil War. A Military and Political History, 1861-1865 (Bloomington:
Indiana UP, 2000)
Peter J. Parish, The
American Civil War (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975), Chs. V, VI, VII,
X, XI, XII, XV, XVIII
Eric T. Dean, Jr., ‘The Awful Shock and Rage of Battle:
Rethinking the Meaning and Consequences of Combat in the American Civil War’, WH 8:2 (April 2001), 149-165
Grady McWhiney & Perry D. Jamieson, Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage
(Tuscaloosa, AL: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1972 – reprinted 1982 & 1988)
Mark Grimsley, ‘Surviving Military Revolution: The US Civil
War’, ch. 5 in Knox and Murray (eds.), The
Dynamics of Military Revolution (CUP, 1971), 74-91
R:
Susan-Mary Grant and Brian Holden Reid (eds.), The American Civil War: Explorations and
Reconsiderations (Harlow: Pearson, 2000)
Brian Holden Reid, Training,
Tactics and Leadership in the Confederate Army of Tennessee: The Seeds of
Failure (London: Frank Cass, 2000)
James M. McPherson, Battle
Cry of Freedom. The Civil War Era (Oxford UP, 1988 & Ballantine Books)
Edward Hagerman, The
American Civil War and the Origins of Modern Warfare (Bloomington: Indiana
UP, 1988/1992)
Andrew Haughton, Training,
Tactics and Leadership in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Seeds of Failure
(London: Frank Cass, 2000)
Steven E. Woodworth, Davis
and Lee at War (Lawrence, KS: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1995)
Gabor S. Boritt (ed.), Jefferson
Davis’s Generals (Oxford UP, 1999)
Philip Katcher, The
Army of Robert E. Lee (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1994)
There’s a wealth of evocative & revealing first-hand accounts of the
ACW in editions of contemporary Union and Confederate rankers’ diaries and
correspondence. Well worth ‘reading in’ are:-
William C. Davis (ed.), Diary
of a Confederate Soldier: John S. Jackman of the Orphan Brigade (Columbia:
Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1990)
William Gilfillan Gavin (ed.), Infantryman Pettit. The Civil War Letters of Corporal Frederick Pettit (New
York: Avon Books, 1990)
W. Springer Menge and J. August Shimrak (eds.), The Civil War Notebook of Daniel Chisholm. A
Chronicle of Daily Life in the Union Army, 1864-1865 (New York: Orion
Books, 1989)
Emil & Ruth Rosenblatt (eds.), Hard Marching Every Day. The Civil War Letters of Private Wilbur Fisk,
1861-1865 (Lawrence, KS: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1992)
Stephen Crane, The Red
Badge of Courage (Penguin – a great novel of the war by a journalist, made
into a 1950s Hollywood movie starring Audi Murphy)
6)
Colonial
Warfare: European-Native Encounters
E:
Bruce Vandervort, Wars
of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830-1914 (London: UCL Press/Taylor &
Francis, 1998)
Philip J. Haythornthwaite, The Colonial Wars Sourcebook (London: Arms & Armour Press,
1995)
Brian Bond, Victorian
Military Campaigns (London: Hutchinson, 1967)
Howard Whitehouse, Battle
in Africa, 1879-1914 (Camberley: Field Books, 1987)
Donald R. Morris, The
Washing of the Spears: A History of the Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1965 & reprints)
Ian Knight, Brave
Men’s Blood: The Epic of the Zulu War 1879 (1990)
Ian Knight and Ian Castle, Isandlwana: Zulu War
and idem, Rorke’s Drift: Zulu War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books/Leo
Cooper, 2001)
John P. C. Laband (ed.), Lord
Chelmsford’s Zulu Campaign, 1878-79 (Stroud: Alan Sutton/Army Records Society,
1994)
R:
Lawrence James, The
Savage Wars: British Campaigns in Africa, 1870-1920 (London: Robert Hale,
1985)
Douglas Porch, Wars of
Empire (London: Cassell, 2000)
Byron Farwell, Queen
Victoria’s Little Wars (New York: W.W. Norton, 1972)
Adrian Greaves & Brian Best (eds.), The Curling Letters of the Zulu War: ‘There Was Awful Slaughter’
(Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books/Leo Cooper, 2001)
Edward M. Spiers (ed.), Sudan:
The Reconquest Reappraised (London:
Frank Cass, 1998)
John Meredith, Omdurman
Diaries 1898. Eye-Witness accounts of the Legendary Campaign (Barnsley: Pen
& Sword Books)
David Omissi, The
Sepoy and the Raj: The Indian Army, 1860-1940 (London: Macmillan, 1994)
David B. Ralston, Importing
the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and
Institutions to the Extra-European World, 1600-1914 (Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1990)
Philip D. Curtin, Disease
and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa
(Cambridge UP, 1998)
7) The Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902)
E:
Bill Nasson, The South
African War, 1899-1902 (London: Arnold, 1999)
idem, ‘Waging Total War in South Africa: Some Centenary
Writings on the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902’, JMilH
66:3 (July 2002), pp. 813-828
Stephen M. Miller, Lord
Methuen and the British Army: Failure and Redemption in South Africa
(London: Frank Cass, 1999)
Field-Marshal Lord Carver, The National Army Museum Book of the Boer War (London: Sidgwick
& Jackson, 1999 & Pan pb., 2000)
Thomas Pakenham, The
Boer War (London: Weidenfeld, 1979)
Donal Lowry (ed.), The
South African War Reappraised (Manchester UP, 2000)
R:
Keith Wilson (ed.), The
International Impact of the Boer War (Chesham: Acumen, 2001)
Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (eds.), The Boer War: Army, Nation and Empire. The 1999 Chief of
Army/Australian War Memorial Military History Conference (Canberra: Army
History Unit, 2000)
David Omissi and Andrew Thompson (eds.), The Impact of the South African War,
1899-1902 (London: Palgrave, 2002)
John Gooch (ed.), The
Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image (London: Frank Cass, 2000)
Deneys Reitz, Commando.
A Boer Journal of the Boer War (London: The Folio Society, 1982)
Martin Cassidy, The
Inniskilling Diaries 1899-1903 (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books/Leo Cooper,
2001)
André Wessels (ed.), Lord
Roberts and the War in South Africa, 1899-1902 (Stroud: Alan Sutton/Army
Records Society, 2000)
Keith T. Surridge, Managing
the South African War, 1899-1902: Politicians versus Generals (London:
Aldgate, 1998)
Fransjohan Pretorius (ed.), Scorched Earth (Capetown: Human and Rousseau, 2001)
8) Wooden Walls to Dreadnoughts:
developments in navies and naval power, 1815-1914
E:
Ch. 6 ‘Naval Warfare’, in Martin van Creveld, The Art of War. War and Military Thought (London: Cassell, 2000), 146-159
Lawrence Sondhaus, Naval
Warfare, 1815-1914 (London: Routledge, 2000)
Holger H. Herwig, ‘Luxury
Fleet’: The Imperial German Navy, 1888-1918 (London: Allen & Unwin,
1980)
idem, ‘The Battlefleet Revolution, 1880-1914’, Ch. 7 in M. Knox
and W. Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of
Military Revolution (CUP, 2001), pp. 114-131
Donald M. Schurman, The
Education of a Navy. The Development of British Naval Strategic Thought,
1867-1914 (London: Cassell, 1965), ch. 4 ‘The American: Admiral Alfred Mahan’
pp. 60-82; ch. 7 ‘Civilian Historian: Sir Julian Corbett’, pp. 147-84
R:
Richard Harding, Seapower
and Naval Warfare, 1650-1830 (London: UCL Press/Taylor & Francis, 1999)
R. Gardiner (ed.), Steam,
Steel and Shellfire, 1815-1905 (London, 1992)
Andrew Lambert, Battleships
in Transition: the creation of the steam battlefleet, 1815-1860 (London,
1984)
J. R. Hill, The Oxford
Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (Oxford UP, 1995)
C. I. Hamilton, Anglo-French
Naval Rivalry, 1840-1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
Holger H. Herwig, ‘The Influence of A.T. Mahan upon German
Sea Power’, ch. 6; & John H. Maurer, ‘Mahan, World Politics and Naval
Rivalries, 1904-1914’, ch. 13, both in John B. Hattendorf (ed.), The Influence of History on Mahan. The
Proceedings of a Conference marking the centenary of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s
‘Influence of Sea Power upon History’ (Newport, RI: US Naval War College
Press, 1991), pp. 67-80 and 157-76
Donald M. Schurman, Julian
S. Corbett, 1854-1922: Historian of British maritime Policy from Drake to
Jellicoe (London: Royal Historical Society, 1981)
Mark R. Shulman, Navalism
and the Emergence of American Sea Power, 1882-1893 (Annapolis, MD: US Naval
Institute Press, 1995)
Paul M. Kennedy, The
Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Allen Lane, 1976)
Jon Tetsuro Sumida, In
Defence of Naval Supremacy. Financial Limitation, Technological Innovation and
British Naval Policy, 1889-1914 (London: Routledge, 1989)
Jonathan Steinberg, Tirpitz
and the Birth of the German Battlefleet. Yesterday’s Deterrent (London:
MacDonald, 1965)
Peter Overlack, ‘German Commerce Warfare Planning for the
Australian Station, 1900-1914’, War &
Society 14:1 (May 1996)
9) The Russo-Japanese War (1904-5)
E:
Ian Nish, The Origins
of the Russo-Japanese War (Harlow: Longman, 1985)
David Walder, The
Short Victorious War. The Russo-Japanese Conflict, 1904-5 (London:
Hutchinson, 1973)
Mark R. Peattie & David C. Evans, ‘Sato Tetsutaro and
Japanese Strategy’, Naval History
(Fall 1990), 34-39 (Copy
available to consult from Martin Alexander)
R:
J. N. Westwood, The
Illustrated History of the Russo-Japanese War (London: Sidgwick &
Jackson, 1973)
William C. Fuller, Jr., Civil-Military
Conflict in Imperial Russia, 1881-1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1985)
Eric Grove, Big Fleet
Actions. Tsushima – Jutland – Philippine Sea (London: Arms & Armour
Press, 1995), chs. 1 & 2
10) War Plans, Things to Come and the
approach to World War I
E:
Stig Förster, ‘Facing “People’s War”: Moltke the Elder and Germany’s
Military Options after 1871’, JSS 10
(1987), 209-30
Maureen P. O’Connor, ‘The Vision of Soldiers: Britain,
France, Germany and the United States observe the Russo-Turkish War [1877-78]’,
WH 4:3 (July 1997), 264-295
Gary C. Cox, ‘Of Aphorisms, Lessons and Paradigms: Comparing
the British and German Official Histories of the Russo-Japanese War’, JMilH 56 (1992), 389-401
Paul M. Kennedy (ed.), The
War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1979)
Brian Bond, ‘Doctrine and Training in the British Cavalry,
1870-1914’, in Michael E. Howard (ed.), The
Theory and Practice of War. Essays presented to Captain B.H. Liddell Hart
(London: Cassell, 1965)
Tim Travers, ‘The Offensive and the problem of innovation in
British military thought, 1870-1915’ JCH
13 (1978), 531-53
Arden Bucholz, Moltke,
Schlieffen and Prussian War Planning (Oxford: Berg, 1991)
Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘Moltke, Schlieffen and the Doctrine
of Strategic Envelopment’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavellli to the Nuclear Age
(Princeton UP, 1986), 296-325
Holger H. Herwig, ‘From Tirpitz Plan to Schlieffen Plan:
some thoughts on German military planning’, JSS IX (1986), 53-63
Dennis E. Showalter, ‘From Deterrence to Doomsday Machine:
The German Way of War, 1890-1914’, JMilH 64:3
(July 2000), 679-710
Annika Mombauer, ‘A Reluctant Military Leader? Helmuth von
Moltke and the July Crisis of 1914’, WH
6:4 (July 1999), 417-46
R:
Ian Drury, The
Russo-Turkish War, 1877 (London: Osprey, 1994)
Gerhard Ritter, The
Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth trans. E. Wilson (London: Praeger,
1958)
Terence Zuber, ‘The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered’, WH 6 (1999), 6:2 (1999), 262-305
Terence M. Holmes, ‘The Reluctant March on Paris: A reply to
Terence Zuber’s “The Schlieffen Plan Reconsidered”’, WH 8:2 (April 2001), 208-232
Terence Zuber, ‘Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen
Plan’, WH 8:4 (2001), 468-476
Terence M. Holmes, ‘The Real Thing: A Reply to Terence
Zuber’s “Terence Holmes Reinvents the Schlieffen Plan’, WH 9:1 (Jan. 2002), 111-120
Daniel J. Hughes, The
King’s Finest: A Social and Bureaucratic Profile of Prussia's General Officers,
1871-1914 (New York: Praeger, 1987)
Eric Dorn Brose, The
Kaiser’s Army. The Politics of Military Technology in Germany during the
Machine Age, 1870-1918 (Oxford UP, 2001)
Scott W. Lackey, The
Rebirth of the Habsburg Army: Friedrich Beck and the Rise of the General Staff
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995)
W.S. Hamer, The British
Army and civil-military relations, 1885-1905 (Oxford UP, 1970)
John Gooch, The Plans
of War. The General Staff and British Military Strategy, c. 1900-1916
(London: Routledge, 1974)
Jeremy Black, Warfare
in the Western World, 1882-1975 (Chesham: Acumen, 2002)
D. C. B. Lieven, Russia
and the Origins of the First World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983)
Peter Gatrell, Government,
Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900-1914. The Last Argument of Tsarism
(Cambridge UP, 1994)
John Bushnell, ‘The Tsarist Officer Corps, 1881-1914:
Customs, Duties, Inefficiencies’, American
Historical Review 86 (1981), 753-780
Gerd Krumeich, Armaments
and Politics in France on the Eve of the Fist World War. The Introduction of
Three-Year Conscription 1913-1914 (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1984)
David Stevenson, Armaments
and the Coming of War. Europe, 1904-1914 (Oxford UP, 1996)
David G. Herrmann, The
Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War (Princeton UP, 1996)
Richard C. Hall, The
Balkan Wars 1912-1913. Prelude to the First World War (London: Routledge,
2000)
Manfred M. Boemeke, Roger Chickering, Stig Förster (eds.), Anticipating Total War: The German and
American Experiences, 1871-1914 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999)
Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions
for War, 1914 (London: UCL Press, 1995)
Annika Mombauer, Helmuth
von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Cambridge U.P., 2001)
Daniel J. Hughes, ‘Schlichting, Schlieffen and the Prussian
Theory of War in 1914’ JMilH 59
(1995), 257-77
11)
The First
World War
A) General:
E:
Gerard J. DeGroot, The
First World War (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2001)
Ian F. W. Beckett, The
Great War 1914-18 (Harlow: Pearson, 2001)
Martin Gilbert, Atlas
of World War I. The Complete History (New York: Oxford UP, 1994)
Arthur Banks, A
Military Atlas of the First World War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books/Leo
Cooper, 2001)
Michael Howard, ‘British Grand Strategy in W.W.I’, in Paul
M. Kennedy (ed.), Grand Strategies in War
and Peace (Yale UP, 1991), 31-41
idem, ‘The Great War’, The
National Interest no. 64 (2001), accessible on-line at: http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/64/howard.html
John Gooch, ‘Soldiers, Strategy and War Aims in Britain,
1914-1918’, in Barry Hunt & Adrian Preston (eds.), War Aims and Strategic Planning in the Great War (London: Croom
Helm, 1977)
Jere Clemens King (ed.), The
First World War (New York: Walker and Co., 1972), esp. chs. I, V, VII, IX
R:
Jay Winter et al. (eds.), The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London Yale U.P., 2001)
Spencer C. Tucker, The
Great War, 1914-1918 (London: UCL
Press, 1998)
Roger Chickering & Stig Forster (eds.), Great War, Total War. Combat and
Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (CUP, 2000)
Hew Strachan, The
First World War vol. 1 (Oxford UP, 2000)
Lee Kennett, The First
Air War, 1914-1918 (New York: Free Press, 1991)
John H. Morrow, Jr., The
Great War in the Air: Military Aviation, 1909-21 (Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1993)
B) Land war aspects & campaigns
E:
Michael E. Howard, ‘Men against Fire: The Doctrine of the
Offensive in 1914’, in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers
of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton UP,
1986), 510-526
Stephen Van Evera, ‘The Cult of the Offensive and the
Origins of the First World War’, International
Security 9 (1984), 397-419
Jonathan B. A. Bailey, ‘The First World War and the birth of
modern warfare'’, in MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray (eds.), The Dynamics of Military Revolution
(Cambridge UP, 2001), Ch. 8, 132-153
Gary D. Sheffield, The
Somme (London: Cassell, 2003)
John Terraine, White
Heat. The New Warfare, 1914-1918 (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1982)
Allan R. Millett & Williamson Murray (eds.), Military Effectiveness. Vol. I: The First
World War (London & Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1988)
R:
Ed Skelding and Michael Stedman, Great Battles of the Great War (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books/Leo
Cooper, 2000)
Jack Snyder, The
Ideology of the Offensive. Military Decision-Making and the Disasters of 1914
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1984)
Michael Evans, The
Human Face of Warfare: Killing, Fear and Chaos in Battle (Allen &
Unwin)
Joanna Bourke, An
Intimate History of Killing. Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth century Warfare
(London: Granta, 1999)
John Keegan, The Face
of Battle (London: Jonathan Cape, 1976)
Edward M. Spiers, Chemical
Warfare (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986), Ch. 2, 13-33
idem, ‘Chemical Warfare in the First World War’, in Brian
Bond (ed.), Look to Your Front! Studies
in the First World War (Staplehurst: Spellmount, 1999), 163-78
John Keegan, ‘Towards a Theory of Combat Motivation’ and
John Ellis, ‘Reflections on the “Sharp End” of War’, in Paul Addison &
Angus Calder (eds.), Time to Kill. The
Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, 1939-45 (London: Pimlico, 1997),
chs. 1 & 2, 3-18
E:
Paddy Griffith (ed.), British
Fighting Methods in the Great War (London: Frank Cass, 1996) esp. ch. by
Jonathan B. A. Bailey ‘British Artillery in the Great War’
Albert Palazzo, ‘The British Army’s Counter-Battery Staff
Office and Control of the Enemy in World War I’, JMilH 63:1 (Jan. 1999), 55-74
Paddy Griffith, Battle
Tactics of the Western Front. The British Army’s Art of Attack, 1916-1918 (New
Haven/London: Yale UP, 1994)
Paul M. Kennedy, ‘Britain in the First World War’, in Allan
R. Millett & Williamson Murray (eds.), Military
Effectiveness. Vol. I: The First World War (Boston: Allen & Unwin,
1988), ch. 2, 31-79
Sanders Marble, ‘General Haig dismisses Attritional Warfare,
January 1916’, JMilH 65:4 (Oct.
2001), 1061-5
David French, ‘Who Knew What, and When? The French Army
Mutinies and the British decision to launch the Third Battle of Ypres’, in
Lawrence Freedman, Paul Hayes, Robert J. O’Neill (eds.), War, Strategy and International Politics: Essays in Honour of Sir
Michael Howard (Oxford UP, 1992), 133-53
Brian Bond & Nigel Cave (eds.), Haig: A Reappraisal 70 Years On (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 1999)
B. Bond (ed.), Look to
Your Front: Studies in the First World War (1999) esp. chapts. by I.
Beckett, K. Grieves, J. Lee, P. Simkins
Keith Simpson ‘The reputation of Sir Douglas Haig’, Ch. 6 in
Brian Bond, The First World War and
British Military History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 141-62
Tim Travers, ‘A Particular Style of Command: Haig and GHQ,
1916-1918’, JSS 10 (Sept. 1987),
363-76
idem, ‘Learning and Decision-Making on the Western Front,
1915-18: The British Example’, Canadian
Journal of History (1983)
R:
Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s
Army. The Raising of the New Armies, 1914-1916 (Manchester UP, 1985)
Martin Middlebrook, The
First Day of the Somme, 1 July 1916 (London, 1971 and Penguin pb. reprint)
Jonathan Nicholls, Cheerful
Sacrifice. The Battle of Arras 1917 (London: Leo Cooper, 1990)
Nigel Steel & Peter Hart, Passchendaele. The Sacrificial Ground (London: Cassell, 2000)
Tim Travers, The Killing
Ground. The British Army, the Western Front and the emergence of Modern
Warfare, 1900-1918 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1987)
idem, How the War Was
Won. Command and Technology in the British Army on the Western Front, 1917-1918
(London: Routledge, 1992)
Shelford Bidwell & Dominick Graham, Firepower: British Army weapons and theories of war, 1904-1945
(London, 1982)
Ian Malcolm Brown, British
Logistics on the Western Front, 1914-1919 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998)
Mike Young, Army
Service Corps, 1902-1918 (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2000)
K. W. Mitchinson, Pioneer
Battalions in the Great War. Intelligent and Organised Labour (Barnsley:
Leo Cooper, 1999)
Tony Ashworth, Trench
Warfare, 1914-1918: The Live and Let Live System (London: Macmillan, 1980;
Pan pb. reprint, 2000)
Gary D. Sheffield (ed.), Leadership
and Command: The Anglo-American Experience (Oxford: Brassey’s, 1997)
Nikolas Gardner, ‘Command in Crisis: The British
Expeditionary Force and the Forest of Mormal, August 1914’, War & Society 16:2 (Oct. 1998)
idem, ‘Command and Control in the “Great Retreat” of 1914:
The Disintegration of the British Cavalry Division’, JMilH 63:1 (Jan. 1999), 29-54
Lawrence James, Imperial
Warrior: The Life and Times of Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby, 1861-1936
(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993)
William J. Philpott, ‘Britain and France go to war:
Anglo-French relations on the Western Front, 1914-1918’, WH 2:1 (March 1995), 43-64
Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of Sir Henry Rawlinson,
1914-1918 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)
Richard Holmes, The
Little Field Marshal. The Life of Sir John French (London: Jonathan Cape,
1981)
John Terraine, Douglas
Haig, the Educated Soldier, 1861-1928 (London: Hutchinson, 1963)
idem, 1914-18. Essays
on Leadership and War (Reading: Western Front Association, 1998), esp.
essays 1, 2, 3, 5 & 7
Geoffrey Powell, Plumer:
The Soldiers’ General (London: Leo Cooper, 1990)
Gen. Sir Charles Harington, Plumer of Messines (London: John Murray, 1935) -- by
Plumer’s very able chief of staff
Brig-Gen. John Charteris, At GHQ, 1914-18 (London: Cassell, 1931) -- a diary
by Haig’s chief of intelligence, containing much of great interest on relations
between senior commanders, views of politicians and snapshots of British, French
and german troop morale etc.
Jeffery Williams, Byng
of Vimy. General and Governor-General (London: Leo Cooper/Secker &
Warburg, 1983)
A. J. Smithers, Sir
John Monash. The Biography of Australia’s Most Distinguished General
(London: Leo Cooper, 1973)
There is a
vast number of first-hand diaries, recollections and published volumes of
trench letters, many still in print. These include the famous books by Robert
Graves (Goodbye to All That), Siegfried Sassoon (Memoirs of an
Infantry Officer), Frank Richards (Old Soldiers Never Die), Harry
Beaumont (Old Contemptible), John Reith, (Wearing Spurs) and Guy
Chapman (A Passionate Prodigality). For something rather more ‘earthy’,
try George Coppard, With a Machine-Gun to Cambrai; and Orders are
Orders. A Manchester Pal on the Somme. From the Account of Albert William
Andrews of the 19th Manchesters, written in 1917, ed. by Sue
Richardson (pubd. by Neil Richardson, 1987 – copy consultable by request from Martin Alexander)
THE FRENCH
E:
Douglas Porch, ‘The French Army and the Spirit of the
Offensive, 1900-1914’, in Brian Bond and Ian Roy, War and Society. A Yearbook of Military History (London: Croom
Helm, 1976), 117-143
idem, ‘The French Army in the First World War’, in Millett
and Murray, Military Effectiveness,
vol. 1, ch. 6, 190-228
David Englander, ‘The French Soldier, 1914-1918’, French History I:1 (March 1987), 49-67
Anthony Clayton, Paths
of Glory. The French Army 1914-18 (London: Cassell 2003)
Malcolm Brown, Verdun,
1916 (Stroud: Tempus Books, 1999)
‘Pétain’, in
Correlli Barnett, The Swordbearers.
Supreme Command in the First World War (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1975),
193-265
Anthony Clayton, ‘Robert Nivelle and the French spring
offensive of 1917’, Ch. 3 in Brian Bond (ed.), Fallen Stars. Eleven Studies in Twentieth Century Military Disaster
(Oxford: Brassey’s, 1991), 52-64
Leonard V. Smith, ‘War and “Politics”: The French Army
Mutinies of 1917’, WH 2:2 (July
1995), 180-201
David French, ‘Watching the Allies: British intelligence and
the French mutinies of 1917’ INS 6:3
(July 1991), 573-92
R:
Alistair Horne, The
Price of Glory: Verdun, 1916 (Macmillan, 1961)
Ian Ousby, The Road to
Verdun. France, Nationalism and the First World War (London: Jonathan Cape,
2002)
Stephen Ryan, Pétain
the Soldier (Cranbury, NJ: A. S. Barnes, 1969)
David Mason, Verdun
(Moreton-in-Marsh: Windrush Press, 2000)
David J. Dutton, ‘The Fall of General Joffre (December
1916): an episode in the politico-military struggle in wartime France’, JSS 1 (1978)
An excellent first-hand account by a field-grade officer (captain/major)
is:- Henri Desagneaux, A
French Soldier’s War Diary, 1914-1918 (Leeds: Elmfield Press, 1975, trans.
Godfrey J. Adams); a perspective on the Western Front’s first year, from a French
infantry lieutenant who became an eminent medieval history professor at the
Sorbonne, is Carole Fink (ed.), Marc
Bloch. Letters and Diaries, 1914-1915 (Cambridge UP, 1989); a classic by a
subsequent leading interwar French Communist and pacifist is Henri Barbusse, Under Fire (London: J.M. Dent, 1926)
THE AMERICANS
E:
Timothy K. Nenninger, ‘American Military Effectiveness in
the First World War’, in Millett and Murray, Military Effectiveness, vol. I, ch. 4, 116-56
idem, ‘Unsystematic as a Mode of Command: Commanders and the
Process of Command in the American Expeditionary Forces, 1917-1918’, JMilH 64:3 (July 2000), 739-68
Paul F. Braim, The
Test of Battle: The American Expeditionary Forces in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign
(Newark: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1987)
Donald Smythe, ‘John J. Pershing, General of the Armies’, in
Michael Carver (ed.), The War Lords.
Military Commanders of the Twentieth Century (Boston: Little, Brown &
Co., 1976)
James J. Cooke, Pershing
and his Generals: Command and Staff in the AEF (Westport, CT: Praeger,
1997)
R:
Jennifer D. Keene, ‘Uneasy Alliances: French Military
Intelligence and the American Army during the First World War’, in Martin S.
Alexander (ed.), Knowing Your Friends. Intelligence
inside Alliances and Coalitions from 1914 to the Cold War (London: Frank
Cass, 1998), 18-36
James J. Cooke, The
Rainbow Division in the Great War, 1917-1919 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994)
Donald Smythe, General
of the Armies: The Life of John J. ‘Black Jack’ Pershing (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana UP, 1986)
David F. Trask, The
AEF and Coalition War-Making, 1917-1918 (Lawrence, KS: Univ. of Kansas
Press, 1993)
Edward M. Coffman, The
War to End all Wars: The American Military Experience in World War One
(Oxford UP, 1968)
Douglas E. Johnson II and Rolfe L. Hillman, Jr., Soissons, 1918 (College Station, TX:
Texas A&M Univ. Press, 1999)
THE GERMANS
E:
Roger Chickering, Imperial
Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918 (Cambridge UP, 1998)
Holger H. Herwig, The
First World War. Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (London: Arnold,
1997)
idem, ‘Germany and the “Short War” Illusion: Toward a New
Interpretation?’, JMilH 66:3 (July
2002), 681-693
idem, ‘The Dynamics of Necessity: German military policy
during the First World War’ in Millett and Murray, Military Effectivess, vol. I, ch. 3, pp. 80-115
Lancelot L. Farrar, The
Short-War Illusion: German Policy, Strategy and Domestic Affairs,
August-December 1914 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1973)
Martin Samuels, ‘Directive Command and the German General
Staff’, WH 2:1 (March 1995), 22-42
‘Moltke’ and ‘Ludendorff’ in Correlli Barnett, The Swordbearers. Supreme Command in the
First World War (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1975), 3-98; 269-361
Matthew Hughes and Matthew Seligmann (eds.), Leadership in Conflict, 1914-1918
(Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2000), chs. 5 (‘Moltke’, by Annika Mombauer), 6
(‘Falkenhayn’, by Robert Foley), 14 (‘Kaiser Wilhelm II’, by Matthew
Stibbe)
John Hussey, ‘The Movement of German Divisions to the
Western Front, 1917-1918’, WH 4:2
(April 1997), 213-220
Bruce I. Gudmundsson, Stormtroop
Tactics. Innovation in the German Army, 1914-1918 (New York: Praeger, 1989)
R:
Walter Bloem, The
Advance from Mons (London: Peter Davies, 1930)
Ernst Junger, The
Storm of Steel. From the Diary of a German Stormtroop Officer on the Western
Front (1st edn. 1929;
reprinted: New York: Howard Fertig, 1975), esp. 205-313
Erwin Rommel, Infantry
Attacks (first publ. 1937; English trans. 1956 and 1990 reprint)
Martin Samuels, Command
or Control? Command, Training and Tactics in the British and German Armies,
1888-1918 (London: Frank Cass, 1995)
Robert B. Asprey, The
German High Command at War: Hindenburg, Ludendorff and the First World War
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1993)
BLOODY VICTORY: THE 100 DAYS AND THE
DEFEAT OF THE GERMAN ARMIES (AUG.-NOVEMBER 1918)
E:
Gary D. Sheffield, Forgotten
Victory. The First World War, Myths and Realities (London: Headline, 2001)
‘Forum: 1918 – Britain’s Forgotten Victory’, Journal of the Royal United Services
Institute 143:6 (Dec. 1998), 69-83
Peter Simkins, ‘Henry Rawlinson and his Allies, 1916 and
1918’, ch. 1 and William J. Philpott, ‘Marshal Ferdinand Foch and Allied
Victory’, ch. 2 in M. Hughes & M. Seligmann (eds.), Leadership in Conflict 1914-18 (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2000), 13-37
& 38-53
Christopher M. Hand, ‘John Terraine: A Study of a First
World War Revisionist', Canadian Military
History 6:2 (Autumn 1997), 54-61
Tim Travers, ‘The Evolution of British Strategy and Tactics
on the Western Front in 1918: GHQ, Manpower and Technology’, JMilH 54:1 (Jan. 1990), 173-200
Jackson Hughes, ‘The Battle for the Hindenburg Line’, War & Society 17:2 (Oct. 1999)
Wilhelm Deist, ‘The Military Collapse of the German Empire:
The Reality behind the Stab-in-the-Back Myth’, WH 3:2 (April 1996), 186-207
J. P. Harris with Niall Barr, Amiens to the Armistice. The BEF in the Hundred Days Offensive, 8
August-11 November 1918 (London: Brassey’s, 1998)
Ian M. Brown, ‘Not Glamorous, but Effective: The Canadian
Corps and the Set-Piece Attack, 1917-18’, JMilH
58:2 (July 1994), 421-44
R:
John Terraine, To Win
a War (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978)
J. P. Harris, Men,
Ideas and Tanks. British military thought and armoured forces, 1903-1939
(Manchester UP, 1995)
Bill Rawling, Surviving
Trench Warfare: Technology and the Canadian Corps, 1914-1918 (Toronto:
Toronto Univ. Press, 1992)
Shane B. Schreiber, Shock
Army of the British Empire: The Canadian Corps in the Last 100 Days of the
Great War (New York: Praeger, 1997)
Brig. C. N. Barclay, Armistice,
1918 (London: J.M. Dent, 1968)
‘PERIPHERAL CAMPAIGNS’: GALLIPOLI (1915)
E:
David French, ‘The Origins of the Dardanelles Campaign
Reconsidered’, History 68, no. 223
(June 1983), 210-24
Michael Hickey, ‘Gallipoli: A British Perspective’, Journal of the Royal United Services
Institute 140:6 (Dec. 1995), 47-53
John Lee, ‘Sir Ian Hamilton and the Dardanelles, 1915’, Ch.
2 in Brian Bond (ed.), Fallen Stars.
Eleven Studies of Twentieth Century Military Disasters (Oxford: Brassey’s,
1992), 32-51
Tim Travers, ‘Command and Leadership styles in the British
Army: the 1915 Gallipoli model’, JCH 29
(1994), 403-42
idem, ‘When Technology and Tactics Fail: Gallipoli, 1915’, in
Stephen Chiabotti (ed.), Tooling for War:
Military Transformation in the Industrial Age (Chicago: Imprint
Publications, 1996), 97-122
idem, ‘ The Ottoman Crisis of May 1915 at Gallipoli’, WH 8:1 (January 2001), 72-86
idem, ‘Liman Von Sanders, the Capture of Lieutenant Palmer
and Ottoman anticipation of the Allied Landings at Gallipoli, 25 April 1915’, JMilH 65:4 (Oct. 2001), 965-79
Gen. Liman von Sanders memoir of the Ottoman-German defence
of the Dardanelles, Five Years in Turkey,
excerpted in Jere Clemens King (ed.), The
First World War (New York: Walker & Co., 1972), 94-120
Edward J. Erickson, ‘Strength against Weakness: Ottoman
Military Effectiveness at Gallipoli, 1915’, JMilH
65:4 (Oct. 2001), 981-1011 (a very important
new piece of scholarship)
Eliot A. Cohen and John Gooch, Military Misfortunes. The Anatomy of Failure in War (New York: Free
Press, 1990), Ch. 6: ‘Failure to Adapt: The British at Gallipoli, August 1915’
Nigel Steel & Peter Hart, Defeat at Gallipoli (London: Macmillan, 1994)
R:
Michael Hickey, Gallipoli
(London: John Murray, 1995)
Tim Travers, Gallipoli,
1915 (Stroud: Tempus Books, 2001)
Edward J. Erickson, Ordered
to Die. A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (London:
Greenwood Press, 2001)
And for two excellent first-hand accounts,
one by a British Army Service Corps officer, the other by an Australian
private, see:-
Major John Gillam, Gallipoli
Diary (Stevenage: Strong Oak Press/Tom Donovan Publishing, 1989)
A. B. Facey, A Fortunate
Life (Penguin of Australia, 1981), esp. pp. 240-80
The 1914-18 War at Sea
E:
Paul G. Halpern, A
Naval History of World War I (London: UCL Press/Taylor & Francis, 1995)
Ronald H. Spector, At
War at Sea. Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century (New York:
Viking, 2001)
V. E. Tarrant, Jutland:
The German View (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1996)
John Terraine, The
U-Boat Wars, 1916-1945 (New York: Putnam, 1989)
Geoffrey Bennett, Naval
Battles of the First World War (London: Batsford, 1968; revd. edn. Pan
Books, 1974)
R:
Eric Grove, Big Fleet
Actions. Tsushima – Jutland – Philippine Sea (London: Arms & Armour
Press, 1995), chs. 3,4 Ruddock F. McKay, Fisher
of Kilverstone (Oxford UP, 1973)
John Keegan, The Price
of Admiralty. The Evolution of Naval Warfare (London: Century Hutchinson,
1988), ch. 2
Stephen Roskill, The
Last Naval Hero: Admiral of the Fleet Sir David Beatty, An Intimate Biography
(London: Collins: 1980)
A.
Temple Patterson, Jellicoe
(London: Macmillan, 1969)
Andrew Gordon, Rules
of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (London: John Murray, 1996)
Excerpt from Jellicoe’s memoir, The Grand Fleet, in Jere Clemens King, The First World War (New York: Walker & Co., 1972), ch. V,
154-82