
The First World War
A Complete History
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Narrated by:
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Roger Clark
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By:
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Martin Gilbert
It was to be the war to end all wars, and it began at 11:15 on the morning of June 28, 1914, in an outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire called Sarajevo. It would officially end nearly five years later. Unofficially, however, it has never ended: Many of the horrors we live with today are rooted in the First World War.
The Great War left millions of civilians and soldiers maimed or dead. It also saw the creation of new technologies of destruction: tanks, planes, and submarines; machine guns and field artillery; poison gas and chemical warfare. It introduced U-boat packs and strategic bombing, unrestricted war on civilians and mistreatment of prisoners. But the war changed our world in far more fundamental ways than these.
In its wake, empires toppled, monarchies fell, and whole populations lost their national identities. As political systems and geographic boundaries were realigned, the social order shifted seismically. Manners and cultural norms; literature and the arts; education and class distinctions; all underwent a vast sea change.
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I found this book to be very informative about WWI
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A good long read
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Good Listen
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There are no shortage of histories of WWI but Gilbert's 1994 history does an admirable job of covering all the major and minor theaters of war as well as the political machinations that fed into the belligerent's decision making. What sets Gilbert apart is both his solid writing and his grounding of the narrative with the human cost of the war. Frequent excerpts from letters home, poems, and other writings by Soldiers on both fronts helps give the narrative a tragic element as in nearly every case, the author of the piece quoted by Gilbert is killed shortly thereafter.
While comprehensive on the military and political fronts insofar as it directly impacts military decision making, Gilbert does not go into great depth on the domestic politics of the belligerents except for Russia -- understandable given the narrative focus. It's a minor quibble, and had he done so, the book would have run into multi-volume territory.
In addition to the human element, what's striking in the history is how frequently smaller "neutral" nations would decide to enter the war on one side or the other on the promise (rarely kept) to expand/gain territory once the war was over. It's been said that war crystalizes the human experience by bringing everything into sharper focus, and Gilbert's compelling history does a fine job presenting that. The constant push/pull between the honorable and the selfish at both the individual and national level makes for an outstanding single volume history.
A comprehensive and human history of WWI.
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every person should have to listen to this
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Best WW1 book I have came across
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Fantastic and comprehensive narrative history
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The gas attacks were horrendous, the addition of machine guns to warfare for slaughter for advancing troops across no man's land.
overview of world war I
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Unbiased true facts of the first world war
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The view from 50 000 feet
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