The First World War

W.W.I is not a war that interests Americans. World War Two is our favorite war. But W.W.I is extremely important to our history and it offers lessons about war, diplomacy and politics we haven’t learned yet. But, even more, it is poignant in the immediacy it brings to our reactions to the rising casualty toll in Iraq. What value do we place on an individual life? How many lives are we willing to sacrifice to support the ideology of a faction of our country?  How long are we willing to stand by our government? And, what does it mean to “support the troops?” To date we have 1500 dead and 11,000 wounded in action and an unreported number of soldiers injured and ill as the result of non-combat situations. Of course millions died in W.W.I. Thousands more suffered grievous wounds and mental injury. Shell shock was one of the big stories of The First World War and its aftermath. The carnage was incredible. Thousands and thousands killed in single battles. Battleships sunk with two thousand men lost in seconds. Trenches across the breadth of France filled with mud and soldiers for four long years. Daily bombardments. Poison gas. Huge warships that could launch one ton shells at another ship miles away. I seem to read a lot of books about war or which have war or the military as their background. Recently I’ve read several books about The First World War—The Great War. The war to end all wars. One of these books, The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell tells the story of the trenches, their impact on the men who lived in them and the sources of their motivation and ability to persevere. Fussell is a brilliant scholar and writer who gets inside the heads of the W. W. I soldier. (Read a more extensive discussion of The Great War and Modern Memory here on
Bookends.
The second book covers the naval history of W.W. I. Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie is a gripping, exciting account of the naval war which, for the first time, involved the huge new battleships—the dreadnoughts. (Read more about Castles of Steel  here on Bookends, my other website.)
These two W.W.I nonfiction works will give you a good overview of that war by land and by sea.