Alexander Watson's compelling history of the Great War shows all the major events of the war from the perspective of Berlin and Vienna - and tells how the genuine mass enthusiasm that flooded both these empires in 1914 turned into a devastating and nation-altering mood of disillusionment.
Alexander Watson is Lecturer of History at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, a British Academy Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Cambridge and, from 2011-13, Marie Curie Inter-European Fellow at Warsaw University. His first book, Enduring the Great War, won the Fraenkel Prize.
In a year dominated by memories of the First World War, this
supremely accomplished book stands out. Not only does it look at
the conflict from the perspective of the losing Central Powers,
imperial Germany and Austria-Hungary, but it brings together
political, military, economic and cultural history in an enormously
impressive narrative. Although Watson's book is based on archival
research in Germany, Austria and Poland, his scholarship is never
suffocating. His accounts of the terrible struggle on the vast
Eastern Front are brisk and well-judged, while he is particularly
good at bringing alive the mood on the German and Austrian home
fronts, from soldiers' letters to children's nursery rhymes. Above
all, his book could not be a more powerful reminder that, as bad as
the war was for Britain, it was far, far worse for the losers
*Sunday Times, History Book of the Year 2014*
Will be revelatory to most British readers
*New Statesman BOOKS OF THE YEAR*
British historians have tended to view the Great War predominantly
from the side of the Allies. Watson has done our understanding an
inestimable service by examining these familiar events from the
perspective of the Central Powers ... Watson's shift of perspective
offers illuminating sidelights ... Watson's balance is at its most
strikingly effective in a superlative chapter on Germany's
catastrophic decision to launch its U-boat campaign. But it is the
lost hordes of East European refugees who create the most haunting
images in the immense canvas of this outstanding book
*Telegraph*
A truly indispensable contribution . . . It is a mark of talent in
a historian to take familiar narratives and open them to new
interpretation. Mr. Watson's book is a brilliant demonstration of
this skill . . . Ring of Steel is a history as much of the emotions
that hardship and war produced as of politics or diplomacy . . .
Watson manages to mesh his dense bottom-up description with the
grand narrative of the war's key moments of decision
*Wall Street Journal*
An immensely authoritative new history of Germany and
Austria-Hungary between 1914 and 1918. Watson writes fluently and
compellingly, and his remarkable command of the sources offers new
insight and information on almost every page. Soundly judged on the
many controversial aspects of his topic, Watson is particularly
ground-breaking in evoking the popular experience of the conflict
and when investigating the atrocities that all too frequently were
its accompaniment
*David Stevenson (author of 1914-1918)*
In Ring of Steel Alexander Watson shows us what it was like to be
pierced by the sharp end of the Allied juggernaut. He takes us on
an illuminating tour of the German and Austrian trenches, their
querulous headquarters, their cold, starving towns, and their
increasingly desperate government ministries. This is a fascinating
account of the Great War from 'the other side of the hill,' but
also an explanation for the chaos that followed: communism,
fascism, depression, and Europe's plunge into a Second World
War
*Geoffrey Wawro (author of A Mad Catastrophe)*
The Central Powers' Great War was not waged from the top down.
Instead, as Alexander Watson's comprehensively researched and
clearly presented analysis demonstrates, in both Germany and
Austria-Hungary popular support was vital to mobilizing and
sustaining an increasingly-futile conflict
*Dennis Showalter (author of Tannenberg: Clash of Empires
1914)*
An immensely authoritative new history of Germany and
Austria-Hungary between 1914 and 1918. Watson writes fluently and
compellingly, and his remarkable command of the sources offers new
insight and information on almost every page. Soundly judged on the
many controversial aspects of his topic, Watson is particularly
ground-breaking in evoking the popular experience of the conflict
and when investigating the atrocities that all too frequently were
its accompaniment
*David Stevenson (author of 1914-1918)*
This book offers Anglo-Saxon students of the First World War a
usefully original perspective
*Sunday Times*
Alexander Watson's remarkable history of the first world war makes
clear as never before how this unparalleled conflict impacted on
and changed the societies of central Europe, particularly Germany
and Austria-Hungary
*the Guardian*
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