The Western Front : a history of the First World War /
Nick Lloyd.
- xxiv, 657 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white)
Prologue : 'an act of hostility' -- I. 'War is not like manoeuvres : Liège to the second battle of Champagne (August 1914-November 1915) --'A vision of Attila' -- 'To the last extremity' -- 'Men of real worth' -- 'New conditions' -- 'A real bad business' -- 'Only inaction is shameful' -- 'No getting through' -- II. 'Scales of fate' : Verdun to the second battle of the Aisne (December 1915-May 1917) -- 'A place of execution' -- 'Costly and fatal toils' -- 'Hunted on all sides' -- 'The future is darker than ever' -- 'The face of a general in victory' -- 'A very serious decision' -- 'An entirely new situation' -- 'Tortured ground' -- III. 'A matter of command' : Messines Ridge to Compiégne (June 1917-November 1918) -- 'Patience and tenacity' -- 'Terrible butchery' -- 'Nothing but the war' -- 'The greatest effort we have made' -- 'I fear it means disaster' -- 'Hold the line at all hazards' -- 'It will be a glorious day' -- 'Keep steady' -- 'The full measure of victory'.
"A panoramic history of the savage combat on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918 that came to define modern warfare. The Western Front evokes images of hardship and sacrifice, of young, mud-spattered men in water-logged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts by a few feet of dirt. Long considered the most futile arena of the First World War, the Western Front has persisted in our collective memory as a tragic waste of life. In this epic narrative history, Nick Lloyd brings together the latest research from America, France, Britain, and Germany, telling the full story of the war in France and Belgium from the German invasion in 1914 to the armistice four years later. His sweeping chronicle reveals that the trenches were, as often as not, sites of dramatic technological and tactical advances, and that superior generalship helped determine the outcome of the war. Brimming with gripping descriptions and insight, The Western Front is a historical account in the tradition of Barbara Tuchman, John Keegan, and Antony Beevor: an authoritative, magisterial portrait of men at war"--