Part of the 'Complete Idiot's Guide' series.
In a century defined by cataclysms, the only event more cataclysmic than World War I is the war it spawned, World War II. Without an understanding of the first world war, the second cannot be fully comprehended. Born of grand, sweeping strategies, World War I was a conflict marked by stalemate and slaughter rather than movement and conquest. Animated by nationalist fervor, world-embracing idealism, and self-sacrificing patriotism, it was characterised far more deeply by misery than by heroism. World War II was ultimately bloodier, but not more dismal. As one trench-bound British soldier put it, "Humanity must be mad".
This guide to World War I reveals why the war began (no, it wasn't just because an Austrian archduke got himself assassinated in Sarajevo), explores the "guns of August", describes the horrors of trench warfare and the first uses of poison gas, and explains why the Americans were so slow to enter the war. From the eastern front to the west, from Gallipoli to the Marne, from the Lafayette Escadrille to Lawrence of Arabia, this book tells the whole story of "the war to end all wars".
