THIS BOOK FIRST appeared in 1965; it almost exactly coincided with the BBC TV series, The Great War, in the making of which I played a consiaeratable part. Natural/y, the English publishers (Hutchinson) devised a dust-jacket bearing the same remarkable photograph of a grim-faced British soldier looking straight into camera that appeared each week in the opening floes of the BBC's 26-programme series. It was therefore equally natural for many people to suppose that this was "the book of the series". It was not. It was commissioned, in a lavishly illustrated edition, by Macmillan of New York, well before Mr. Tony Essex's admirable television project was launched. In helping to write that series ofprogrammes, I found the writing of this text (on which I was simultaneously engaged for part of the time) immensely useful, as may be supposed; it gave me an independent perspective of the war whose history we were telling. ...

From the fatal shots which killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28th 1914- to the Armistice at II a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918,this masterly account traces the progress of the First World War in fifteen chapters from the pen of the greatest historian of the conflict.

In this highly readable and wide-ranging history of the Great War, John Terraine examines it in its entirety, from the Batttle of Tannenburg to Gallipoli, from East Africa to the Western Front. Naval.batttles and airpower receive their fair share of attention, making this perhaps the best single-volume history of the first mechanised war of the industrial age that left at least 12 million dead and twice asmany maimed.

Introduction

Maps

Preface

The Lamps Go Out

Balance of Power

The Plan Unfolds

The Plan Fails

Seapower and Sideshows

Attrition or Evasion?

The Great 'If'

The Year of Groping

The Year of Killing: German Gambit

The Year of Killing: Naval Gambit

The Year of Killing:Allied Gambit

'The Object of War is Peace'

The Year of Catastrophe

The Gambler's Fling

'Victory will belong to the Side that Holds Out Longest'

Index