A world undone: the story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

List of Maps

List of Illustrations

Chronology

Major Characters

Introduction

PART ONE

July 1914:
Into the Abyss

Chapter 1 June 28: The Black Hand Descends

Background: The Serbs

Chapter 2 Never Again

Background: The Hapsburgs

Chapter 3 Setting Fire to Europe

Background: The Hohenzollerns

Chapter 4 July 25 to 28: Secrets and Lies

Background: The Romanovs

Chapter 5 July 29 to 31: Fear Is a Bad Counselor

Background: The Ottoman Turks

Chapter 6 Saturday, August 1: Leaping into the Dark

PART TWO

August–December 1914:
Racing to Deadlock

Chapter 7 The Iron Dice Roll

Background: Paris in 1914

Chapter 8 First Blood

Background: London in 1914

Chapter 9 A Perfect Balance

Background: The Junkers

Chapter 10 To the Marne

Background: The French Commanders

Chapter 11 Back from the Marne

Background: The British Commanders

Chapter 12 Flanders Fields

PART THREE

1915:
A Zero-Sum Game

Chapter 13 The Search for Elsewhere

Background: The Machinery of Death

Chapter 14 The Dardanelles

Background: The Sea War

Chapter 15 Ypres Again

Background: Troglodytes

Chapter 16 Gallipoli

Background: An Infinite Appetite for Shells

Chapter 17 The Ground Shifts

Background: Genocide

Chapter 18 Gallipoli Again, and Poland, and…

PART FOUR

1916:
Bleeding to Death

Chapter 19 Verdun: Preparation

Background: Old Wounds Unhealed

Chapter 20 Verdun: Execution

Background: The Living Dead

Chapter 21 Verdun Metastasizes

Background: Airships and Landships

Chapter 22 Maelstrom

Background: The Jews of Germany

Chapter 23 The Somme

Background: Farewells, and an Arrival at the Top

Chapter 24 Exhaustion

PART FIVE

1917:
Things Fall Apart

Chapter 25 Turnips and Submarines

Background: Consuming the Future

Chapter 26 A New Defense, and a New Offensive

Background: Hearts and Minds

Chapter 27 Revolution and Intervention

Background: The Cossacks

Chapter 28 The Nivelle Offensive

Background: The War and Poetry

Chapter 29 Wars Without Guns

Background: Enter the Tiger

Chapter 30 Passchendaele

PART SIX

1918:
Last Throw of the Dice

Chapter 31 Going for Broke

Background: Kaiser Wilhelm II

Chapter 32 Entangling Misalliances

Background: Lawrence of Arabia

Chapter 33 Michael

Background: Ludendorff

Chapter 34 An Impossibly Complex Game

Background: The Women

Chapter 35 The Black Day of the German Army

Background: The Gardeners of Salonika

Chapter 36 The Sign of the Defeated

Postwar: The Fate of Men and Nations

Notes

Bibliography

Also by G. J. Meyer

Copyright Page

Dedicated to the memory of my parents,
Cornelia E. and Justin G. Meyer

List of Maps

The War in the West
Front endpaper

The War in the East
Back endpaper

German Advance of 1914

Dardanelles / Gallipoli

1916: Verdun

Brusilov Offensives of 1916

The Battle of the Somme

Nivelle Offensives of May 1917

German Offensives of 1918

List of Illustrations

Church
(NA)

Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife
(NA)

Franz Ferdinand and family
(WW)

Colonel Edward House
(WW)

Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic
(CPE)

Conrad von Hötzendorf
(CPE)

Emperor Franz Joseph
(CPE)

Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza
(CPE)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Sazonov
(CPE)

Kaiser Wilhelm II
(CPE)

German Foreign Minister Gottlieb von Jagow
(CPE)

Romanov family
(WW)

French President Raymond Poincaré
(WW)

Enver Pasha
(GW)

Ambassador Lichnowsky
(GW)

Troops marching
(NA)

Helmuth von Moltke
(GW)

King Albert of Belgium

Skoda gun
(CNP)

Belgian refugees
(CNP)

Herbert Henry Asquith
(WW)

British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey
(CPE)

General Alexander von Kluck
(GW)

General Otto von Bülow
(NW)

Pavel von Rennenkampf
(GW)

Otto von Bismarck
(GW)

Erich von Falkenhayn
(CMP)

General Joseph Joffre
(NW)

Joseph Gallieni
(CPE)

Field Marshal Sir John French
(WW)

Lord Horatio Kitchener
(WW)

Horse and soldier
(NA)

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg
(CPE)

Winter trenches
(NA)

French flamethrowers
(NA)

Vice Admiral Sackville Carden
(GW)

Rear Admiral John De Robeck
(CPE)

General Ian Hamilton
(GW)

Admiral Lord John Fisher
(CPE)

Lusitania
(HW)

Italian Prime Minister Antonio Salandra
(CPE)

Lieutenant General Horace Smith-Dorrien
(CPE)

Otto Limon von Sanders

Mustafa Kemal
(GW)

British munitions factory

August von Mackensen
(WW)

Troops at Suvla Bay
(NW)

Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford
(GW)

British soldiers
(NA)

General Noël De Castelnau
(CPE)

Generals Ferdinand Foch and Henri-Philippe Pétain
(WW)

German artillery
(NA)

Field hospital
(NA)

General Alexei Brusilov
(WW)

General Luigi Cadorna
(WW)

Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig
(GW)

British troops on Western Front
(NA)

Grigori Rasputin
(WW)

French refugees
(NA)

American President Woodrow Wilson
(HW)

French women
(NA)