Now more than ever, a clear historical understanding of the conflicts that have engulfed the world is essential. In The First World War, one of the most respected historians of his generation offers a brief but hugely readable narrative account of WWI, its causes and consequences, and the many historical controversies surrounding the origin and conduct of the war. Karl von Clausewitz wrote that war is a trinity composed of the policy of the government, the activities of the military, and the passions of the people. Michael Howard argues that "each of these must be taken into account if we are to understand both why the war happened and why it took the course it did." In nine brisk chapters, Howard lays out the historical situation in Europe in 1914, the dispositions of the major belligerents prior to the war, the causes of war, the major campaigns, the entrance of the United States, the crisis, victory, and settlement of the war. Along the way, he offers compelling insights into the political motivations, military actions, and the "passions of the people" that contributed most strongly to the outcome of the war. There is no other short history of WWI on the market today written by a historian of Michael Howard's stature. For anyone wishing to gain a quick but authoritative understanding of one of the most crucial events of the twentieth century, The First World War is the best place to begin.

"In 1870 the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck ordered the Prussian Army to invade France, inciting one of the most dramatic conflicts in European history. It transformed not only the states-system of the Continent but the whole climate of European moral and political thought. The overwhelming triumph of German military might, evoking general admiration and imitation, introduced an era of power politics, which was to reach its disastrous climax in 1914."--Page 4 of cover.

The theme of Michael Howard's stimulating book is expressed in the following quote: "Wars have often determined the character of society. Society in exchange has determined the character of wars." Written with all the author's usual skill, Howard surveys a thousand years of history, and draws a broad outline of developments which will delight the general reader.

First published over thirty years ago, War in European History is a brilliantly written survey of the changing ways that war has been waged in Europe, from the Norse invasions to the present day. Far more than a simple military history, the book serves as a succinct and enlightening overview of the development of European society as a whole over the last millennium. From the Norsemen and the world of the medieval knights, through to the industrialized mass warfare of the twentieth century, Michael Howard illuminates the way in which warfare has shaped the history of the Continent, its effect on social and political institutions, and the ways in which technological and social change have in turn shaped the way in which wars are fought. This new edition includes a fully updated further reading and a new final chapter bringing the story into the twenty-first century, including the invasion of Iraq and the so-called "War against Terror."

Isn't war rooted in the vested interests of the ruling classes? (But have not democracies proved as bellicose as other states?) Should not political disputes be settled by civilised negotiations? (But what if the adversary is not, by your standards, 'civilised'?) Ought states to steer clear of other states' internal conflicts? (Or should they help liberate oppressed peoples?) Which is better, appeasement or a war to end war? Such questions reflect the confusion that still besets liberal-minded men and women in the face of war, despite centuries during which they have tried to discover its causes and secure its abolition. Sir Michael Howard traces the pattern in their attitudes from Erasmus to the Americans after Vietnam, and concludes that peacemaking 'is a task which has to be tackled afresh every day of our lives'.

A volume in the British Government's Official History of Intelligence in the Second World War, the book has been written by a master historian renowned for his eloquence as well as for his learning. The success of these operations can be measured by the fact that by 1943 the Germans were almost wholly dependent on double agents for news of what was going on in the United Kingdom; intercepted and decrypted radio traffic showed the Allies how extensively the enemy was accepting disinformation and acting on it. In Britain, extremely tight communications security made possible the apprehension and control of virtually all active enemy agents. Sir Michael Howard explains how the British were able to deceive the Germans about the strategic intentions of the Allies and make them greatly overestimate Allied resources. Here is the most authoritative account available of such classic deception operations as Operation Mincemeat, which preceded the invasion of Sicily; the nonexistent U.S. Army group that pinned down an entire German Army in the Pas de Calais until Montgomery's forces had achieved a secure foothold in Normandy; and the amazing trick played on the German intelligence authorities by the great double agent Garbo.

This book explores not only the formal constraints on the conduct of war throughout Western history but also the unwritten conventions about what is permissible in the course of military operations. Ranging from classical antiquity to the present, historians discuss the legal and cultural regulation of violence in such areas as belligerent rights, the treatment of prisoners and civilians, the observing of truces and immunities, the use of particular weapons, siege warfare, codes of honour, and war crimes.

A classic work, updated and expanded with important new material to take account of the world's most recent wars

For centuries liberal minded men have been horrified by the pain and waste of war. From Erasmus, who saw war above all as a product of stupidity, to the Marxists who see it as a matter of class conflict, they have produced social theories to account for its occurrence and have tried to devise means to end it. Their prescriptions have been various. The central view of the Enlightenment was that wars would end when the ambitions of princes could be curbed by the sanity of ordinary men. At first the commercial classes seemed to be the new force that would produce this happy state, but by the end of the nineteenth century they themselves (the ‘capitalists’) were being stigmatized as the instigators of war. Similarly, the nineteenth-century liberals at first believed that the rise of the new independent nation-states of Europe would lead to a permanent peace as the wishes of the masses (naturally peace-loving) were able to express themselves. Again, the supposed agents of peace were soon seen as a prime cause of wars. Despite these contradictions there have been certain continuing themes in the search for a means to end wars, and one of the most enlightening things in this book is they way in which it is possible to see how these themes recur in subtly different forms in different periods of history. Professor Howard traces them from the renaissance to our own time, through the social, political and intellectual groups that gave birth to them. Throughout the whole story runs the continuing contrast between those who hoped to find a single cause for the disease, leading to a lasting cure, and those who understood that, in Professor Howard’s words, ‘this was a task which needs to be tackled afresh every day of our lives’.