Author Description

Part I. Hybris -- The Road to War -- 'It can hardly go wrong now': The Schlieffen Plan and its Failure. -- Tannenberg and the Rise of Hindenburg -- The European Stalemate. -- A Strategy of Muddling Through? The War in 1915 -- 'An Unparalleled Act of Barbarism': The Naval Blockade, Submarine Warfare and the Battle for American Neutrality -- 'Potato-bread Spirit': The German Home Front in 1914-16 -- Squaring the Circle: Falkenhayn and Verdun 1916 -- Summer 1916: The Allied Attack on all Fronts and its Failure -- Part II. Climax: At the apex of war -- 'Only a Miracle can Save us Now': Germany and the War in the autumn of 1916 -- Action Stations, Panic Stations: The Radicalisation of Germany's Strategy under the Third OHL -- 'A Stroke of Genius': Tentative Offers of Peace in December 1916 -- The misjudged stand-off: Unrestricted submarine warfare and the USA's entry into the war. -- Part III. Nemesis: The defeat of the Central Powers and the destruction of the European Order -- Military Developments in the First Half of 1917 -- The First Russian Revolution and the Opportunity for a Peace Agreement with the Russian Democracy -- 'War Psychosis?' The Reichstag's Peace Offer and Bethmann Hollweg's Demission -- 'The Unmasking of the Central Powers?' Victory and Peace in the East -- 'Glorious, but hopeless': Germany's Position at the Turn of the Year 1917/18 -- 'Ludendorff's Hammer': The Western Offensive of 1918 -- 'Now the War was Lost': The Military Collapse of the Central Powers -- 'Savage in Victory, Contemptuous in Defeat': Germany's Route out of the War The Final Reckoning: A Terrible Debt that Must be Paid.