The Purpose of the First World War

• Herausgeber(in): Professor Dr. Holger Afflerbach
• Titel: The Purpose of the First World War
• Untertitel: War Aims and Military Strategies
• Reihe: Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Kolloquien
• Bandnummer: 91
• Verlagsort: München
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2015
• Umfang: X, 258 S.
• ISBN: 978-3-11-034622-0
• Beschreibung:
  

  Nearly fourteen million people died during the First World War. But why, and for what reason? Already many contemporaries saw the Great War as a „pointless carnage“ (Pope Benedict XV, 1917). Was there a point, at least in the eyes of the political and military decision makers? How did they justify the losses, and why did they not try to end the war earlier? In this volume twelve international specialists analyses and compares the hopes and expectations of the political and military leaders of the main belligerent countries and of their respective societies. It shows that the war aims adopted during the First World War were not, for the most part, the cause of the conflict, but a reaction to it, an attempt to give the tragedy a purpose – even if the consequence was to oblige the belligerents to go on fighting until victory. The volume tries to explain why – and for what – the contemporaries thought that they had to fight the Great War.

• Inhalt:
  Table of Content (S. V–VI)

  Holger Afflerbach

  Danksagung (S. VII)

  List of Abbreviations (S. IX–X)

  Holger Afflerbach

  What Was the Great War about? War Aims, Military Strategies and Political Justifications during the First World War (S. 3–6)

  Hew Strachan

  Military Operations and National Policies, 1914–1918 (S. 7–25)

  Georges-Henri Soutou

  French War Aims and Strategy (S. 29–44)

  Keith Jeffery

  British Strategy and War Aims in the First World War (S. 45–60)

  Boris Kolonitskii

  War as Legitimisation of Revolution, Revolution as Justification of War. Political Mobilisations in Russia, 1914–1917 (S. 61–78)

  Dušan T. Bataković

  Serbian War Aims and Military Strategy, 1914–1918 (S. 79–94)

  Roger Chickering

  Strategy, Politics, and the Quest for a Negotiated Peace. The German Case, 1914–1918 (S. 97–115)

  Marvin Benjamin Fried

  „A Life and Death Question“: Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the First World War (S. 117–140)

  Lothar Höbelt

  Mourir pour Liège? World War I War Aims in a Long-Term Perspective (S. 143–159)

  Mesut Uyar

  Ottoman Strategy and War Aims during the First World War (S.  63–185)

  John Gooch

  „An Act of Madness“? Italyʼs War Aims and Strategy, 1915–1918 (S. 187–207)

  Klaus Schwabe

  President Wilson and the War Aims of the United States (S. 209–234)

  Holger Afflerbach

  „… eine Internationale der Kriegsverschärfung und der Kriegsverlängerung …“. War Aims and the Chances for a Compromise Peace during the First World War (S. 237–254)

  List of Authors (S. 255–258)