Author: Annie Bourguignon Publisher: Peter Lang ISBN: 9783034303040 Category : History Languages : fr Pages : 476
Book Description
Le Danois Georg Brandes (1842-1927), considéré comme l'un des pères de la littérature comparée, exerça, en tant que critique littéraire, une influence déterminante sur son époque. Il fut également un intellectuel engagé, défendant la liberté individuelle et le droit des peuples à disposer d'eux-mêmes, ainsi que la cause de la paix pendant la Première guerre mondiale. Les pays qu'il connaissait le mieux, et où il avait les plus nombreux contacts, étaient la France, l'Allemagne et l'Angleterre. Les relations que Brandes entretenait avec ces pays ont été au centre de la Deuxième Conférence Internationale Georg Brandes (Nancy, 2008), dont les contributions sont rassemblées dans ce volume. La provenance des auteurs (France, Danemark, Italie, Allemagne, Suède, Grande Bretagne, Etats-Unis, Tchéquie...) témoigne de la dimension internationale de l'entreprise. La présence, aux côtés des meilleurs spécialistes de Brandes, de représentants de disciplines autres que les études scandinaves (littérature française, allemande, anglaise, philosophie, histoire, etc.) reflète la diversité et la richesse de l'oeuvre brandésienne. The Danish writer Georg Brandes (1842-1927) is regarded as one of the founders of comparative literature. As a literary critic, he was highly influential in his time. He was also a politically engaged intellectual, advocating individual freedom and peoples' right to self-government; he also refused to take sides during the First World War and opposed warfare. The countries he knew best and where he had most friends and correspondents were France, Germany and Britain. Brandes' relationship to those countries was the subject of the Second International Georg Brandes Conference held in Nancy (France) in November 2008. The papers that were delivered there are collected in this book. The authors are from various countries (France, Denmark, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain, USA, Czech Republic...), stressing the international dimension of their research. The presence of the best Brandes' specialists as well as of scholars from various fields other than Scandinavian studies (French, German, English literature, philosophy, history, etc.) shows the diversity and richness in Brandes' work.
Author: Nick Lloyd Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465094783 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 515
Book Description
The definitive account of Passchendaele, the months-long battle that epitomizes the immense tragedy of the First World War Passchendaele. The name of a small, seemingly insignificant Flemish village echoes across the twentieth century as the ultimate expression of meaningless, industrialized slaughter. In the summer of 1917, upwards of 500,000 men were killed or wounded, maimed, gassed, drowned, or buried in this small corner of Belgium. On the centennial of the battle, military historian Nick Lloyd brings to vivid life this epic encounter along the Western Front. Drawing on both British and German sources, he is the first historian to reveal the astonishing fact that, for the British, Passchendaele was an eminently winnable battle. Yet the advance of British troops was undermined by their own high command, which, blinded by hubris, clung to failed tactics. The result was a familiar one: stalemate. Lloyd forces us to consider that trench warfare was not necessarily a futile endeavor, and that had the British won at Passchendaele, they might have ended the war early, saving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives. A captivating narrative of heroism and folly, Passchendaele is an essential addition to the literature on the Great War.
Author: Friedrich von Bernhardi Publisher: Good Press ISBN: Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
The content of this book is both unpleasant and fascinating at the same time. The views put forward by the author in the period just before the outbreak of WW1 are abhorrent to most people now but Bernhardi had not lived through a world war. Nonetheless, he sees war as 'A biological necessity' for a country's advancement.
Author: Sean McMeekin Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 0465038867 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 482
Book Description
When a Serbian-backed assassin gunned down Archduke Franz Ferdinand in late June 1914, the world seemed unmoved. Even Ferdinand's own uncle, Franz Josef I, was notably ambivalent about the death of the Hapsburg heir, saying simply, "It is God's will." Certainly, there was nothing to suggest that the episode would lead to conflict -- much less a world war of such massive and horrific proportions that it would fundamentally reshape the course of human events. As acclaimed historian Sean McMeekin reveals in July 1914, World War I might have been avoided entirely had it not been for a small group of statesmen who, in the month after the assassination, plotted to use Ferdinand's murder as the trigger for a long-awaited showdown in Europe. The primary culprits, moreover, have long escaped blame. While most accounts of the war's outbreak place the bulk of responsibility on German and Austro-Hungarian militarism, McMeekin draws on surprising new evidence from archives across Europe to show that the worst offenders were actually to be found in Russia and France, whose belligerence and duplicity ensured that war was inevitable. Whether they plotted for war or rode the whirlwind nearly blind, each of the men involved -- from Austrian Foreign Minister Leopold von Berchtold and German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov and French president Raymond Poincaré- sought to capitalize on the fallout from Ferdinand's murder, unwittingly leading Europe toward the greatest cataclysm it had ever seen. A revolutionary account of the genesis of World War I, July 1914 tells the gripping story of Europe's countdown to war from the bloody opening act on June 28th to Britain's final plunge on August 4th, showing how a single month -- and a handful of men -- changed the course of the twentieth century.
Author: George Frost Kennan Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691218277 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 495
Book Description
In an attempt to discover some of the underlying origins of World War I, the eminent diplomat and writer George Kennan focuses on a small sector of offstage events to show how they affected the drama at large long before the war even began. In the introduction to his book George Kennan tells us, "I came to see World War I . . . as the great seminal catastrophe of this century--the event which . . . lay at the heart of the failure and decline of this Western civilization." But, he asks, who could help being struck by the contrast between this apocalyptic result and the "delirious euphoria" of the crowds on the streets of Europe at the outbreak of war in 1914! "Were we not," he suggests, "in the face of some monstrous miscalculation--some pervasive failure to read correctly the outward indicators of one's own situation?" It is from this perspective that Mr. Kennan launches a "micro-history" of the Franco-Russian relationship as far back as the 1870s in an effort to determine the motives that led people "to wander so blindly" into the horrors of the First World War.
Author: Gordon Martel Publisher: ISBN: 0199665389 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 511
Book Description
On 28 June 1914 the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in the Balkans. Five fateful weeks later the Great Powers of Europe were at war. Much time and ink has been spent ever since trying to identify the "guilty" person or state responsible, or alternatively attempting to explain the underlying forces that 'inevitably' led to war in 1914. Unsatisfied with these explanations, Gordon Martel now goes back to the contemporary diplomatic, military, and political records to investigate the twists and turns of the crisis afresh, with the aim of establishing just how the catastrophe really unfurled. What emerges is the story of a terrible, unnecessary tragedy - one that can be understood only by retracing the steps taken by those who went down the road to war. With each passing day, we see how the personalities of leading figures such as Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Emperor Franz Joseph, Tsar Nicholas II, Sir Edward Grey, and Raymond Poincare were central to the unfolding crisis, how their hopes and fears intersected as events unfolded, and how each new decision produced a response that complicated or escalated matters to the point where they became almost impossible to contain. Devoting a chapter to each day of the infamous "July Crisis," this gripping step by step account of the descent to war makes clear just how little the conflict was in fact premeditated, preordained, or even predictable. Almost every day it seemed possible that the crisis could be settled as so many had been over the previous decade; almost every day there was a new suggestion that gave statesmen hope that war could be avoided without abandoning vital interests. And yet, as the last month of peace ebbed away, the actions and reactions of the Great Powers disastrously escalated the situation. So much so that, by the beginning of August, what might have remained a minor Balkan problem had turned into the cataclysm of the First World War.
Author: Jay Winter Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521668149 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 646
Book Description
This ambitious volume marks a huge step in our understanding of the social history of the Great War. Jay Winter and Jean-Louis Robert have gathered a group of scholars of London, Paris and Berlin, who collectively have drawn a coherent and original study of cities at war. The contributors explore notions of well-being in wartime cities - relating to the economy and the question of whether the state of the capitals contributed to victory or defeat. Expert contributors in fields stretching from history, demography, anthropology, economics, and sociology to the history of medicine, bring an interdisciplinary approach to the book, as well as representing the best of recent research in their own fields. Capital Cities at War, one of the few truly comparative works on the Great War, will transform studies of the conflict, and is likely to become a paradigm for research on other wars.
Author: James Joll Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317875362 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 357
Book Description
James Joll's study is not simply another narrative, retracing the powder trail that was finally ignited at Sarajevo. It is an ambitious and wide-ranging analysis of the historical forces at work in the Europe of 1914, and the very different ways in which historians have subsequently attempted to understand them. The importance of the theme, the breadth and sympathy of James Joll's scholarship, and the clarity of his exposition, have all contributed to the spectacular success of the book since its first appearance in 1984. Revised by Gordon Martel, this new 3rd edition accommodates recent research and an expanded further reading section.
Author: Annie Bourguignon
Author: Nicolae Paun
Author: Maureen Healy
Author: Nick Lloyd
Author: Friedrich von Bernhardi
Author: Sean McMeekin
Author: George Frost Kennan
Author: Gordon Martel
Author: Jay Winter
Author: James Joll