World War I Battlefields: Crash Course European History #33

Europe’s system of alliances and centuries-old tensions erupted into war in August of 1914. This week on Crash Course Euro, we’re talking about the military history of World War I and taking a look at the broad strokes of how the war unfolded. We’ll take you from the guns of August through gruesome battles like Verdun and the Somme, and follow the thread all the way through to the Armistice in 1918. It didn’t turn out to be the War to End All Wars, sadly, but there is a lot to learn from it.

Sources

-Engelstein, Laura. Russia in Flames. War, Revolution, and Civil War 1914-1922. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1918.

-Hunt, Lynn et al. Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, 6th ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s 2019.

-Sanborn, Joshua A. Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

-Suny, Ronald Grigor. “They Can Lie in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

-Watson, Alexander. Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I. New York: Basic Books, 2014.