First World War

If one is looking for a single definitive cause for Europe’s collective decision to fight in 1914, the only certainty is disappointment, argues Sam Fowles.

The supreme direction of the First World War has remained a matter of controversy; in this essay, John Terraine contrasts Lloyd George’s hopes with the manner of their realization.

The most desirable tourist destination of belle époque Europe, Venice became a major naval base during the First World War. Richard Bosworth looks at how La serenissima dealt with the years of peril during which it became a target of enemy bombers.

The Daily Mail has recently caused controversy with its views on patriotism. Adrian Bingham looks back at a time when the newspaper’s belief in its national duty provoked intense debate and copies were burnt in the City of London.

As Home Secretary in 1911 Winston Churchill intervened in a debate about Britain’s role in a future European conflict. His observations were remarkably prescient and, had they been implemented, might have shortened the First World War, says Allan Mallinson.

During the First World War, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist William Lawrence Bragg devised a system to locate enemy guns, which made a dramatic impact on the Allied war effort and beyond, says Taylor Downing.

The tragic figure whose death led to the outbreak of the First World War was born on 18 December 1863.

J. Garston describes how for eleven years, amid political and economic storms, first from Cologne and then from Wiesbaden, the British Army kept watch over the Rhine.

The intervention of Mr. Churchill and the Royal Naval Division at Antwerp in early October, 1914, failed to save the city, writes David Woodward, but the vital Channel ports were thereby saved.

David Mitchell describes the postwar peace-making efforts employed by Woodrow Wilson in 1919.