First World War

Graham Darby provides a timely reconsideration of why the conflict went on for so long and why the Central Powers lost.

Christopher Ray queries the accepted pictures of a reluctant victim of forces beyond her control.  

Derek Aldcroft argues that the statesmen of 1919 failed to act in the interests of Europe as a whole.

Robert Pearce distributes a survival kit for the most hazardous causation question of all.

Omer Bartov asks how the armies of lords and kings became the forces of peoples and nations.

Mark Meigs uncovers a fascinating initiative enacted in France at the end of the First World War designed to turn American soldiers into students empowered with all the virtues of the Progressive era.

A.D. Harvey reflects on why the Great War captured the literary imagination.

Peacemaker or warmonger: history has awarded the former epithet (albeit ill-fated) to Woodrow Wilson, but here Christopher Ray looks at how the President performed as head of the services in conflict and at his relationship with America’s generals

Alistair Thompson uncovers a hidden controversy about myth making and Gallipoli

Pictures worth a thousand words - William Coupe traces, via cartoons, the changes in attitudes and public opinion in the Kaiser's Germany towards the First World War.