Showing titles in World War I

An audio dramatisation in 6 episodes of With Our Backs To The Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 by David Stevenson, Professor of International History at the LSE.

On January 25, 1917, HMS Laurentic struck two German mines off the coast of Ireland and sank. The ship was carrying 44 tons of gold bullion to the still-neutral United States via Canada in order to finance the war effort for Britain and its allies. Britain desperately needed that sunken treasure, but any salvage had to be secret, since the British government dared not alert the Germans to the presence of the gold. Lieutenant Commander Guybon Damant was the most qualified officer to head the risky mission.

The 17th century was marked by multiple pro-democratic revolutions exploding in both hemispheres. In Europe and its neighbors to the east, border-changing wars were fought incessantly. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the underlying premises of political, governmental and social structures within several European and Asian states were shaken to the core after centuries of royalty and one-family rule.

En Junio de 1914 el asesinato del archiduque Francisco Fernando de Austria provocó la primera "guerra total" de la historia: un conflicto que cambiará el destino del mundo. Normalmente no se presta a la Primera Guerra Mundial la debida atención, las estanterías, rebosantes de libros sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial, no tienen mucho sitio para su predecesora.

This is a dramatic and little-known story of the First World War, when the actions of a few men shaped the fate of nations. By 1914, Germany had ships and sailors scattered across the globe, protecting its overseas colonies and “showing the flag” of its new Imperial Navy. After war broke out on August 4 there was no hope that they could reach home. Instead, they were ordered to attack Britain’s vital trade routes for as long as possible.

In April 1915 Dorothea Crewdson, a newly trained Red Cross nurse, and her best friend, Christie, received instructions to leave for Le Treport in Northern France. Filled with excitement at the prospect of her first paid job, Dorothea began writing a diary. 'Who knows how long we shall really be out here? Seems a good chance from all reports of the campaigns being ended before winter, but all is uncertain.'

World War I, or the Great War, was believed to be "the war to end all wars". Because of the incredible extent of destruction and the staggering number of wounded and dead, even those who lived through it could scarcely comprehend its horror. Beginning in 1914, alliances between powerful nations soon plunged the world into a global conflict. Fighting - including miserable trench warfare - broke out in practically every corner of Europe and spread around the world to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

In Nine Desperate Days: America's Rainbow Division in the Aisne-Marne Offensive, historian Robert Thompson chronicles the hardships and tenacity of the men from the 42nd Division during this pivotal campaign. The Americans did not break despite heavy losses, and were able to drive the Germans back from territory they initially gained. The efforts of the Rainbow Division during Aisne-Marne were key to the ultimate Allied victory and are a symbol of American valor and sacrifice during the "war to end all wars."

In six weeks during April and May 1915, as World War I escalated, Germany forever altered the way war would be fought. On April 22, at Ypres, German canisters spewed poison gas at French and Canadian soldiers in their trenches; on May 7, the German submarine U-20, without warning, torpedoed the passenger liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 civilians; and on May 31, a German Zeppelin began the first aerial bombardment of London and its inhabitants.

Immediately after the armistice was signed in November, 1918, an American journalist asked Paul von Hindenburg who won the war against Germany. He was the chief of the German General Staff, co-architect with Erich Ludendorff of Germany's Eastern Front victories and its nearly war-winning Western Front offensives, and he did not hesitate in his answer. "The American infantry," he said. He made it even more specific, telling the reporter that the final death blow for Germany was delivered by "the American infantry in the Argonne."

The First World War had begun - imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age. War by Timetable is a history of the mobilization of the armies of the Great Powers in 1914. Taylor not only argues that the circumstances were already set for a general war, he also examines the flaws in the war plans of the Great Powers. The timetables and limited resources that were meant to serve as a deterrent to war instead relentlessly drove the powers into a conflict that engulfed the world.

On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers ...

"If war spares me," wrote Vera Brittain to her brother, Edward, in 1916, "it will be my one aim to immortalise in a book the story of us four." Seventeen years later, Vera was to achieve her aim with the acclaimed Testament of Youth. This series of letters was the inspiration behind Testament. Written between Vera; her brother; her fiancé, Roland Leighton; and their two best friends, Victor Richardson and Geoffrey Thurlow, they give a unique perspective on the most horrifying conflict the world has ever seen.

World War I, also known in its time as the "Great War" or the "War to End all Wars", was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite.

A reconnaissance man and sniper, John Lewis Barkley served in Company K of the Fourth Infantry Regiment, a unit that participated in almost every major American battle. The York-like episode that earned Barkley his Congressional Medal of Honor occurred on October 7, 1918, when he climbed into an abandoned French tank and singlehandedly held off an advancing German force, killing hundreds of enemy soldiers.

The Circuit des Champs de Bataille (the Tour of the Battlefields) was held in 1919, less than six months after the end of the First World War. It covered 2,000 kilometres and was raced in appalling conditions across the battlefields of the Western Front, otherwise known as the Zone Rouge. The race was so tough that only 21 riders finished, and it was never staged again. With one of the most demanding routes ever to feature in a bicycle race, and plagued by appalling weather conditions, the Circuit des Champs de Bataille was beyond gruelling, but today its story is largely forgotten.

On the evening of June 27, 1918, the Llandovery Castle—an unarmed, clearly marked hospital ship used by the Canadian military—was torpedoed off the Irish Coast by U-Boat 86, a German submarine. Sinking hospital ships violated international law. To conceal his actions, the U-86 commander had the submarine deck guns fire on survivors. One lifeboat escaped with witnesses to the atrocity. Global outrage over the attack ensued.

Nonfiction master Russell Freedman illuminates for young readers the complex and rarely discussed subject of World War I. The tangled relationships and alliances of many nations, the introduction of modern weaponry, and top-level military decisions that resulted in thousands upon thousands of casualties all contributed to the “great war”, which people hoped and believed would be the only conflict of its kind.

Few participants in World War I are more famous than Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. A German known for victories in a war that his country lost, a cavalry officer made famous as mounted combat disappeared, and an aristocratic hero in a century dominated by democracy; Richthofen's celebrity stands in stark contrast to the era.

In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent's politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world had collapsed into a chaotic savagery beyond any comparison.