Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. History
  4. Military history
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

15418 results in Military history

Page 213 of 771

  • 8 - The Chaos of Victory

  • Roger L. Ransom, University of California, Riverside
  • Book:
    Gambling on War
    Published online:
    21 June 2018
    Print publication:
    28 June 2018, pp 233-269

  • Summary

    Chapter 8 addresses the issues facing the victorious Allies in their effort to produce peace agreements after the war. In January 1919 more than 30 delegations from around the world gathered in Paris to work out the arrangements for a postwar world. They faced a Herculean task for which they were woefully unprepared. The German, Habsburg, and Ottoman Empires had disappeared, creating a political vacuum that stretched across Central Europe and the Middle East. There was a pervasive sense of fear and uncertainty which undercut the confidence of the peacemakers in their efforts to define boundaries for new and existing states. There would be several years of additional conflict before the new map of Europe and the Middle East was finally settled. Historians continue to debate whether John Maynard Keynes’ indictment of the peacemakers’ efforts was justified. More recent assessments suggest that the accomplishments of Paris peace conference were probably as much as could be reasonably expected given the magnitude of the task before them. The First World War was a tragic catastrophe whose dark legacy remains part of the modern world.

  • Epilogue: The Tragedy of a World War

  • Roger L. Ransom, University of California, Riverside
  • Book:
    Gambling on War
    Published online:
    21 June 2018
    Print publication:
    28 June 2018, pp 270-272

  • Summary

    The argument of this book is that the Great War was a series of enigmatic tragedies that changed the world in a way that made it impossible to return to the antebellum state of affairs. The inability of leaders to constrain the “animal spirits” that led to overconfidence and fear resulted in a war that nobody wanted, nobody understood, and nobody can forget. A century later we are still struggling to adjust to the tragic legacy of the Great War

  • 3 - Schlieffen’s Gamble

  • Roger L. Ransom, University of California, Riverside
  • Book:
    Gambling on War
    Published online:
    21 June 2018
    Print publication:
    28 June 2018, pp 51-84

  • Summary

    Chapter 3 examines how the “Schlieffen Plan” turned the 1914 crisis between Austria and Serbia and Russia into a world war. The only plan the Germans had for dealing with a war with Russia in 1914 was based on a 1906 memo by General Alfred von Schlieffen arguing that the Germans must invade France before dealing with the Russians. In August 1914 the Germans had to quickly decide whether to implement Schlieffen’s plan, even though it would expand the war to include both the French British. Under pressure to do something right away the Kaiser was willing to say that Schlieffen’s gamble was worth the risk. Unfortunately for the Germans, things did not work out in their favor. German troops were finally stopped at the River Marne and both sides settled for a line of trenches that stretched from the English Channel to the Swiss border. The Schlieffen Plan was not, however, a complete failure. By the end of 1914 Germany controlled Belgium and a significant area of Northern France, and German victories at the battles of Masurian Lakes and Tannenberg had turned back the Russian invasion in East Prussia. That success boosted German confidence to continue the war.

  • 5 - Economies at War

  • Roger L. Ransom, University of California, Riverside
  • Book:
    Gambling on War
    Published online:
    21 June 2018
    Print publication:
    28 June 2018, pp 118-153

  • Summary

    Chapter 5 explores how economic factors played a major role in determining the outcome of this war. An “economic snapshot” shows the impact of the war in every economy using indices of gross domestic product or national income, industrial production, changes in the labor force, food production, and the level of imports and exports for each country. Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia suffered severe shortages of food and consumer goods and a collapse of international trade. France and Britain used American credit markets to offset these losses by increasing imports. Government military expenditures produced budget deficits that produced an “inflation tax” to pay for the war. The British instituted a naval blockade to cut off trade with Germany. The Germans retaliated with submarine warfare that threatened to sink any ships trading with Germany. The blockades clearly placed an added burden on the domestic economies. On balance the economic war favored the Allies because of their greater access to global trade, and their more sophisticated markets, which made it easier for them to find substitutes for goods eliminated by wartime distruption.

  • 2 - Otto von Bismarck and the Changing Paradigm of War

  • Roger L. Ransom, University of California, Riverside
  • Book:
    Gambling on War
    Published online:
    21 June 2018
    Print publication:
    28 June 2018, pp 33-50

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 examines how Otto von Bismarck’s success in using Prussian economic and military power to create a unified German Empire. Prussia’s size and economic development changed the balance of power in Europe. Waging war was a major part of Bismarck’s strategy. Bismarck’s use of military victories as part of a well-defined state policy touched off a vigorous expansion of military expansion among European powers in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and led to a network of treaties intended to discourage interstate wars. Bismarck’s success rested on his ability to restrain the urge to exploit the advantages gained by military success. His replacement as Chancellor in 1890 by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who had a penchant for military expansion, threatened the fragile equilibrium between the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, and a Triple Entente of France, Russia and Great Britain. By 1914 Europe was a powder keg that could be set off by a single spark.

Women as Veterans in Britain and France after the First World War
  • Alison S. Fell
  • Published online:
    23 June 2018
    Print publication:
    12 July 2018
  • This is the story of how women in France and Britain between 1915 and 1933 appropriated the cultural identity of female war veteran in order to have greater access to public life and a voice in a political climate in which women were rarely heard on the public stage. The 'veterans' covered by this history include former nurses, charity workers, secret service agents and members of resistance networks in occupied territory, as well as members of the British auxiliary corps. What unites these women is how they attempted to present themselves as 'female veterans' in order to gain social advantages and give themselves the right to speak about the war and its legacies. Alison S. Fell also considers the limits of the identity of war veteran for women, considering as an example the wartime and post-war experiences of the female industrial workers who led episodes of industrial action.

Gambling on War
  • Confidence, Fear, and the Tragedy of the First World War
  • Roger L. Ransom
  • Published online:
    21 June 2018
    Print publication:
    28 June 2018
  • The First World War left a legacy of chaos that is still with us a century later. Why did European leaders resort to war and why did they not end it sooner? Roger L. Ransom sheds new light on this enduring puzzle by employing insights from prospect theory and notions of risk and uncertainty. He reveals how the interplay of confidence, fear, and a propensity to gamble encouraged aggressive behavior by leaders who pursued risky military strategies in hopes of winning the war. The result was a series of military disasters and a war of attrition which gradually exhausted the belligerents without producing any hope of ending the war. Ultimately, he shows that the outcome of the war rested as much on the ability of the Allied powers to muster their superior economic resources to continue the fight as it did on success on the battlefield.

Page 213 of 771