World War One: A Short History
Books / Hardcover
Books › History › Military › World War I
ISBN: 0465013686 / Publisher: Basic Books, April 2009
Describes the causes, events, and aftermath of World War One.
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The First World War was the overwhelming disaster from which everything else in the twentieth century stemmed. Fourteen million combatants died, a further twenty million were wounded, four empires were destroyed, and even the victors' empires were fatally damaged. The war began on horseback, with generals employing bayonet charges to gain ground, and ended with attacks resembling the Nazi blitzkriegs. What started as a massive grab for imperial riches was quickly transformed into an industrialized bloodbath whose loot proved worthless.This was a war that created the modern world. The boundaries between nations in Eastern Europe set by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk strikingly resemble those of today. When the war began, medical care was almost primitive, and severely wounded men were likely to perish; by 1918, a mere 1 percent of wounded men died. World War One dragged humanity from the nineteenth century forcibly into the twentieth - and then at Versailles, cast Europe on the path to World War Two as well.In World War One, Norman Stone has achieved the almost impossible task of writing a brief book on this epic war. A brisk history whose brevity belies its wealth of detail, World War One is Stone's retelling of a complex and pivotal conflict.
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