num_pages: 632
description: Historian Jacques Pauwels applies a critical revisionist lens to the First World War offering readers a fresh interpretation that challenges mainstream thinking. As Pauwels sees it war offered benefits to everyone across class and national borders.For European statesmen a large-scale war could give their countries new colonial territories important to growing capitalist economies. For the wealthy and ruling classes war served as an antidote to social revolution encouraging workers to exchange socialism's focus on international solidarity for nationalism's intense militarism. And for the working classes themselves war provided an outlet for years of systemic militarization -- quite simply they were hardwired to pick up arms and to do so eagerly.To Pauwels the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914 -- traditionally upheld by historians as the spark that lit the powder keg -- was not a sufficient cause for war but rather a pretext seized upon by European powers to unleash the kind of war they had desired. But what Europe's elite did not expect or predict was some of the war's social revolution and Communist Party rule in Russia plus a wave of political and social democratic reforms in Western Europe that would have far-reaching consequences.Reflecting his broad research in the voluminous recent literature about the First World War by historians in the leading countries involved in the conflict Jacques Pauwels has produced an account that challenges readers to rethink their understanding of this key event of twentieth century world history.Table of ContentsCONTENTS The Great War in Dali-VisionPART THE LONG NINETEENTH CENTURY MOTHER OF THE GREAT WARChapter 1. The Revolutions of 1789 1830 and 1848: First Steps toward DemocracyChapter 2. The Nobility and the A Counterrevolutionary SymbiosisChapter 3. Socialism and DemocratizationChapter 4. Nationalism and Social ImperialismChapter 5. Nietzsche and Social Ode to WarChapter 6. Imperialist Friends and Foes on the Road to a Great WarChapter 7. Bourgeoisie Aristocracy Church and Socialists Confront War and RevolutionChapter 8. Fear and Tensions in the Belle poqueChapter 9. Reactionary and Bellicose PoliciesPART THE GREAT CLASS WAR 19141918Chapter 10. August 1914: Enthusiasm and Resignation (1)Chapter 11. August 1914: Enthusiasm and Resignation (2)Chapter 12. The End of PoliticsChapter 13. Gentlemen and Plebeians on the War PathChapter 14. Fall 1914: DisillusionChapter 15. Friends and EnemiesChapter 16. Militaria 1914: Aborted PlansChapter 17. Human Moles in the Lovely Land of WarChapter 18. Militaria 1915: The Great OffensivesChapter 19. From the Dolomites to the DardanellesChapter 20. Tired of WarChapter 21. Militaria 1916: Materiel and Human MaterialChapter 22. Disgruntled Soldiers and CiviliansChapter 23. Militaria 1917: Catastrophes at Caporetto and ElsewhereChapter 24. 1917: The Year of TroublesChapter 25. The Yanks Are Coming!Chapter 26. Revolution in Russia on the Way to Revolutions in AsiaChapter 27. Militaria 1918: German Spring Offensive Allied Final OffensiveChapter 28. Revolution Counterrevolution and ReformsChapter 29. Peace or Armistice?PART THE LONG SHADOW OF THE GREAT WARChapter 30. Via Fascism to a Second World War 19181945Chapter 31. Class Wars from 1945 to the PresentAcknowledgementsEndnotesBibliographyIndexAbout the author
language: English
title: The Great Class War 1914-1918
publisher: Lorimer