THE FIRST WORLD WAR

VOLUME I — 1914: THE GUNS OF AUGUST

Quentin Drummond Anderson

From the bestselling author of The Fearless Fifteen, Lions and Foxes and The Same Country comes an ambitious five-volume history of the First World War.

At eleven o'clock on 11 November 1918, the guns fell silent. This is the story of how it started.

In the summer of 1914, Europe stood at the height of its power. Its empires spanned the globe. Its royal families were connected by blood. Its generals believed that any war would be swift.

Within weeks, those assumptions lay in ruins.

Beginning with the world that made Sarajevo so dangerous, Quentin Drummond Anderson traces the forces driving Europe towards catastrophe: German unification, Bismarck's diplomacy, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the naval arms race, the Balkan Wars and the alliances dividing the continent.

Then, on 28 June 1914, two shots in Sarajevo ignite a chain reaction.

The Blank Cheque. The July Crisis. Mobilisation. The Schlieffen Plan. The invasion of Belgium. Britain's declaration of war.

And then the slaughter begins.

Mons. Tannenberg. The Marne. First Ypres.

Millions march to war expecting victory by Christmas. Instead, they encounter machine guns, devastating artillery and casualties on an unimaginable scale.

By December, the illusion of a short war is dead.

Yet on Christmas Day, soldiers emerge from opposing trenches to exchange greetings, cigarettes and gifts. For a few extraordinary hours, humanity interrupts the killing.

WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. THEY DIDN'T.

History is lived forwards, without the certainty of hindsight.

Combining political intrigue, military history and deeply human stories, 1914: The Guns of August recreates the year Europe's old order began to destroy itself.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR — A FIVE-VOLUME HISTORY

1914 — The Guns of August

1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918

A companion to Anderson's seven-volume history of the Second World War, together forming a twelve-volume narrative of the two world wars.