The Great War: 100 Years Ago

This list changes from time to time as I discover new books.

The Mons Myth: A Reassessment of the Battle by Terrence Zuber

They Shall Not Pass by Ian Sumner

The Killing Time by Edwyn Grey

The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman

Over the Top by Arthur Guy Empey

The Doughboys: The Story of the AEF, 1917-1918 by Laurence Stallings

The First Air Campaign: August 1914 - November 1918 by Jane and Eric Lawson

Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by Alexander Watson

The First World War by Martin Gilbert

Trial by Fire: Command and the British Expeditionary Force in 1914 by Nikolas Gardner

A World Undone by G. J. Meyers

The Myth of the Great War John Mosier

The Real German War Plan, 1904-14 by Terrence Zuber

The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester

Coronel and the Falklands by Geoffrey Bennett

A battle off the coast of central Chile near the city of Coronel between the British South Atlantic Squadron under Christopher Cradock and the German East Asia Squadron under Von Spee.  The battle was a decisive loss for the British, who suffered the loss of the the armoured cruisers HMS Good Hope , and HMS Monmouth.  Despite being a great victory, Von Spee used nearly half of his ammunition in the fight and have to turn back to Germany for supply, leading to his loss at the Battle of the Falklands.

In a major loss observed by nearly a thousand passengers of the liner Olympic, the HMS Audacious is sunk by a naval mine laid by the minelayer Berlin.

On 27 October 1914, First Lord Churchill asked Prince Louis to resign as First Sea Lord.  The resignation was based on public opinion rather than a real issue of ability.  Churchill and Louis had made several choices that had proven crucial to the British navy and her readiness for war.  At the same time several very public humiliations - which in retrospect were not the fault of either Churchill or Louis, haunted them at the start of the war.   

All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque that would become one of the best selling and most enduring stories of the Great War published.  Remarque was a young German conscript into the Army who fought for the final year of the war on the Western front, where he was seriously wounded.  he taught for a short time after the war but was troubled by his experiences and had trouble devoting himself to a single career, finding writing in the middle 1920s.  

Published in 1929, the book was a slow starter but soon found an audience based on Remarque's simple use of language and blunt, carefully told storyline.  The book caught the attention of the world, weary of the war, because it tried to explain how jingoism and optimism taken to extremes in the minds of young men was crushed by the unromantic realities of war.  Millions of veterans and their families were soon buying the book, trying to understand the war years from the eyes of the people who fought it.

Remarque's career was not over with a single book, although his later books (mostly best sellers) are not commonly read.  He published after "All Quiet" a series of works following the characters form the first book through the post war year.

In a tragic footnote to Remarque's life, the NAZI government banned all of his writings and organized massive book burnings in the 1930s.  So paranoid was the NAZI government about the memory of Remarques work that they arrested his sister, Elfriede Scholz, in 1943, beheading her on December 10 if that year.  The statement of the court illustrates their actiual goal when the judge said  "Ihr Bruder ist uns leider entwischt—Sie aber werden uns nicht entwischen" ("Your brother is unfortunately beyond our reach—you, however, will not escape us")