First World War

Peering through the pines, a German cycle company of the First World War is captured on camera. Roger Hudson explains.

The entry of Turkey into the First World War may have extended the conflict by as much as two years. It certainly changed the country forever. Yet the advent of war was marked by confusion, uncertainty and shifting alliances, says Ian F.W. Beckett.

Exile to the Netherlands following the First World War chastened Kaiser Wilhelm II, but Robin Bruce Lockhart cannot believe that the former ruler of imperial Germany was ever either the mountebank, or the monster, which his biographers have tried to make him.

Few foresaw the horror of the First World War. The financier Jan Bloch did and he outlined his vision to Britain’s military establishment, as Paul Reynolds explains.

The German First World War commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck has been described as the 20th century’s greatest guerrilla leader for his undefeated campaign in East Africa. Is the legend justified? Dan Whitaker considers the wider picture.

J.D. Hargreaves reviews the delicate truce that existed between Britain and Japan in the early years of the twentieth century.

Sentimentality about Christmas in Britain is a Victorian legacy that owes much to the influence of Germany. The sense of outrage in December, 1914, at encountering a Christmas tarnished by the ugliness of war was common to both countries, as dramatically demonstrated on the Western Front and examined here by John Terraine.

C.E. Hamshere shows how, a fortnight after the Armistice of 1918, the elusive German Commander in East Africa surrendered at Abercorn in what is now Zambia.

How did the Allied Powers become committed to fighting the First World War on the Western Front, so that Germany, until near the end, always held the initative? John Terraine investigates.

Humiliating, painful and reminiscent of crucifixion, the British army’s Field Punishment No 1 fuelled public outrage during the First World War, as Clive Emsley explains.

Richard C. Hall looks at the bloody conflicts in south-eastern Europe which became the blueprint for a century of conflict in the region.

Panikos Panayi explores attitudes to German prisoners interned during the First World War.

The Treaty of Versailles, negotiated by the fractious Allies in the wake of the First World War, did not crush Germany, nor did it bring her back into the family of nations. Antony Lentin examines a tortuous process that sowed the seeds of further conflict.