First World War East

Surprisingly neglected in accounts of Allied wartime triumphs, in 1941 British and Commonwealth forces completed a stunning and important victory in East Africa against an overwhelmingly superior Italian opponent. A hastily formed British-led force, never larger than 70,000 strong, advanced along two fronts to defeat nearly 300,000 Italian and colonial troops.

August 1, 1914, Berlin: Kaiser Wilhelm II cancels the German invasion of Belgium over the objections of his generals, sending his armies east against Russia instead of west to France, and sets off a chain of events that will radically change the course of modern history. Gray Tide in the East is the best-selling counterfactual history of the First World War, if the Germans had not invaded Belgium in 1914 and thereby brought Great Britain and, eventually, the United States into the war.