Mitrovic's volume fills the gap in Balkan history by presenting an in-depth look at Serbia and its role in WWI. The Serbian experience was in fact of major significance in this war. In the interlocking development of the wartime continent, Serbia's plight is part of a European jigsaw. Also, the First World War was crucial as a stage in the construction of Serbian national mythology in the twentieth century.

An up-to-date and concise account of WWI for teachers and students looking for a balanced introduction. It details both the military operations as well as the development of war aims, alliance diplomacy and the war on the home front.

In the winter of 1915, following the invasion of Serbia by the Central Powers, the Serbian Army retreated across the mountains of Albania and Montenegro together with thousands of civilians. Around 240,000 lost their lives. Today, the story of the retreat is little known, except in Serbia where it is represents the heroic Serbian sacrifice in the Great War. In this book Alex Tomić examines the centenary events memorializing the First World War with the retreat at its core, and provides a persuasive account of the ways in which the remembrance of Serbian history has been manipulated for political purposes. Whether through commemorations, ceremonies, or grass- root initiatives, she demonstrates how these have been used as distractions from the more recent unexamined past and in doing so provides an important new perspective on the cultural history of commemoration.

The course of events of the Great War has been told many times, spurred by an endless desire to understand 'the war to end all wars'. However, this book moves beyond military narrative to offer a much fuller analysis of of the conflict's strategic, political, economic, social and cultural impact. Starting with the context and origins of the war, including assasination, misunderstanding and differing national war aims, it then covers the treacherous course of the conflict and its social consequences for both soldiers and civilians, for science and technology, for national politics and for pan-European revolution. The war left a long-term legacy for victors and vanquished alike. It created new frontiers, changed the balance of power and influenced the arts, national memory and political thought. The reach of this acount is global, showing how a conflict among European powers came to involve their colonial empires, and embraced Japan, China, the Ottoman Empire, Latin America and the United States.

"[A] superb history…so much has been forgotten, including the course of the war in the east across multiple theaters of operation and the strategies pursued by both sides. It is all this and more that Mr. Lloyd has resurrected in compelling detail." —Economist "[H]arrowing…excellent…[a] masterly study." —William Anthony Hay, Wall Street Journal The first major history in fifty years of the often overlooked Eastern Front of the First World War, where a more fluid conflict resulted in the destruction of great empires and the rise of the Soviet Union. Writing in the 1920s, Winston Churchill argued that the First World War on the Eastern Front was “incomparably the greatest war in history. In its scale, in its slaughter, in the exertions of the combatants, in its military kaleidoscope, it far surpasses by magnitude and intensity all similar human episodes.” It was, he concluded, “the most frightful misfortune” to fall upon mankind “since the collapse of the Roman Empire before the Barbarians.” Yet Churchill was an exception, and the war in the east has long been seen as a sideshow to the brutal combat on the Western Front. Finally, with The Eastern Front—the first major history of that arena in fifty years—the acclaimed historian Nick Lloyd corrects the record. Drawing on the latest scholarship as well as eyewitness reports, diary entries, and memoirs, Lloyd moves from the great battles of 1914 to the final collapse of the Central Powers in 1918, showing how a local struggle between Austria-Hungary and Serbia spiraled into a massive conflagration that pulled in Germany, Russia, Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria. The Eastern Front was a vast theater of war that brought about the collapse of three empires and produced almost endless suffering. As many as sixteen million soldiers and two million civilians were killed or wounded in enormous battles that took place across as much as one hundred kilometers. Unlike in the west, where stalemate ruled the day, the war in the east was fluid, with armies embarking on penetrating advances. Lloyd narrates the repeated invasions of Serbia as well as the great battles between Russian, German, and Austrian forces at Tannenberg, Komarów, Gorlice–Tarnów, and the Masurian Lakes. All along, he takes us into the strategy of the generals who decided the war’s course, from the Germans Ludendorff and Hindenburg to the Austro-Hungarian chief, Conrad von Hötzendorf, to the brilliant Russian Brusilov. Perhaps the most radical aspect of the struggle in the east was that the violence was not confined to combatants. The Eastern Front witnessed calculated attacks against civilians that ripped the ethnic and religious fabric of numerous societies, paving the way for the horrors of the Holocaust. Lloyd’s magisterial, definitive account of the war in the east will fundamentally alter our understanding of the cataclysmic events that reshaped Europe and the world.

“The war to end all wars” rings out a bitter mockery of the First World War, often viewed as the seminal catastrophe of the twentieth century, the crucible from which Soviet, Fascist, and Nazi dictatorships emerged. Today’s conventional wisdom is that the Great War attuned the world to large-scale slaughter, that post-war efforts directed by the Treaty at Versailles were botched, that unbridled new nationalisms made the Second World War inevitable. This provocative book refutes such interpretations, arguing instead that the first two decades of the twentieth century—and the First World War in particular—played an essential part in the construction of a peaceful new order on a global scale. Historian William Mulligan takes an entirely fresh look at the aspirations of statesmen, soldiers, intellectuals, and civilians who participated in the war and at the new ideas about peace that were forged. While the hope for ultimate peace may have legitimized and even intensified the violence of the war, it also broadened conventional ideas about international politics and led to the emergence of such institutions as the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization. The experience of the First World War reinforced humanitarian concerns in political life and focused attention on building a better and more peaceful world order, Mulligan shows. Such issues resonate still in the political and diplomatic debates of today.

With so much at stake and so much already lost, why did World War I end with a whimper-an arrangement between two weary opponents to suspend hostilities? After more than four years of desperate fighting, with victories sometimes measured in feet and inches, why did the Allies reject the option of advancing into Germany in 1918 and taking Berlin? Most histories of the Great War focus on the avoidability of its beginning. This book brings a laser-like focus to its ominous end-the Allies' incomplete victory, and the tragic ramifications for world peace just two decades later. In the most comprehensive account to date of the conflict's endgame, David Stevenson approaches the events of 1918 from a truly international perspective, examining the positions and perspectives of combatants on both sides, as well as the impact of the Russian Revolution. Stevenson pays close attention to America's effort in its first twentieth-century war, including its naval and military contribution, army recruitment, industrial mobilization, and home-front politics. Alongside military and political developments, he adds new information about the crucial role of economics and logistics. The Allies' eventual success, Stevenson shows, was due to new organizational methods of managing men and materiel and to increased combat effectiveness resulting partly from technological innovation. These factors, combined with Germany's disastrous military offensive in spring 1918, ensured an Allied victory-but not a conclusive German defeat.

When Austria-Hungary broke up at the end of the First World War, the sacrifice of one million men who had died fighting for the Habsburg monarchy now seemed to be in vain. This book is the first of its kind to analyze how the Great War was interpreted, commemorated, or forgotten across all the ex-Habsburg territories. Each of the book’s twelve chapters focuses on a separate region, studying how the transition to peacetime was managed either by the state, by war veterans, or by national minorities. This “splintered war memory,” where some posed as victors and some as losers, does much to explain the fractious character of interwar Eastern Europe.

Lakes and Empires in Macedonian History: Contesting the Waters tells the story of Psarades, a lakeside village in Macedonian Greece on the shores of the Prespa lake. This village, which is in many ways a completely typical Greek settlement and yet remains unconventional in its way of life, embodies the many contradictions of modern history and in exploring its roots James Pettifer and Miranda Vickers skilfully uncover the wider social, cultural and political history of this lake region. Drawing from oral testimonies and attentive to the construction of national histories, this book considers how the development of international borders, movement of people and role of national identities within imperial borderlands shaped Macedonia today. What is more, by centering the lakes and making use of an innovative environmental historical methodology, Pettifer and Vickers offer the first environmental history of this multi-ethnic borderland region shared by Greece, North Macedonia and Albania. The result is a nuanced and sophisticated transnational account of Macedonia from prehistory to the 21st century which will be essential reading for all Balkan scholars.

This book explores how journalists understand and interpret justice in their coverage of wars. Its deep analysis of war reporting offers a new understanding of modern, multicultural societies in times of conflict. In particular, it explores how the Yugoslav conflicts of the 1990s gave birth to the modern notion of the transnational community. The text provides new theoretical concepts in order to better understand media work during times of war, and offers new definitions of conflict and the transnational community as an authority of normative criteria for justice. Furthermore, it details a new model for the analysis of media texts with step-by-step guidelines and examples that will be very useful for media educators, journalism teachers, and students of journalism. The book’s novel approach to understanding justice during a times of conflict will also be valuable for journalists who cover armed conflicts.