Framing the First World War: How Divergent Views Shaped a Global Conflict (Modern War Studies)

This innovative approach to the history of World War I looks at ways in which military actors saw and perceived war, and how that exerted a significant influence over the decisions they made and the actions they took. The character of the conflict that erupted in 1914 defied the expectations of many political leaders and military analysts.Despite the mountains of books and articles published on World War I, there has been surprisingly little systematic or comparative research on how military commanders and politicians framed and interpreted the conflict - or, indeed, on how they understood war itself - and how that understanding shaped their decision-making. Wars are fought by organizations and people who have disparate visions of the world they live in and the conflict they are fighting.In Framing the First World War, a team of leading scholars explore the gulf between imagined warfare and the realities of battle.By doing so, they investigate how the military forces that contested the