First World War History

Dale Maharidge’s father, like many World War II veterans, never talked about “the good war”. There was just one clue to his dad’s experience as a US Marine - a portrait with a close friend that hung permanently in their home. In The Dead Drink First, Dale, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, recounts his 18-year quest to find and repatriate the missing remains of his dad’s buddy, Herman Walter Mulligan, 73 years after he was killed in action.

¡Reviva las experiencias de los héroes más memorables de la Primera Guerra Mundial! Explore las inolvidables historias de resistencia, valor y abnegación que marcaron a los héroes más destacados de la Primera Guerra Mundial. ¿Es aficionado a la historia y desea aventurarse más allá de los hechos históricos conocidos de la Primera Guerra Mundial? ¿Desea explorar la vida y los relatos personales de estos personajes? ¿Quiere saber cómo los héroes anónimos de la Gran Guerra grabaron su nombre en la historia para siempre?

In November 1944, the U.S. Navy fleet lay at anchor in Ulithi Harbor, deep in the Pacific Ocean, when the oiler USS Mississinewa erupted in a ball of flames. Japan's secret weapon, the Kaiten - a manned suicide submarine - had succeeded in its first mission. The Kaiten was so secret that even Japanese naval commanders didn't know of its existence. And the Americans kept it secret as well. Embarrassed by the shocking surprise attack, the U.S. Navy refused to salvage or inspect the sunken Mighty Miss.

La revolución industrial, iniciada en las últimas décadas del siglo XVIII, desencadenó la expansión económica hacia las colonias, particularmente las del continente africano. El nacionalismo, el imperialismo y el militarismo habían provocado diferentes conflictos coloniales entre las potencias europeas, que sin embargo lograron mantener un período de tranquilidad conocido como “Paz a través de la fuerza”, que estalló irremediablemente el 28 de junio de 1914.

The USS Cowpens and her crew weren’t your typical heroes. She was a flattop that the US Navy initially didn’t want, with a captain nearly scapegoated for the loss of his last command, pilots who self-trained on the planes they would fly into combat, and sailors that had been in uniform barely longer than the ship had been afloat. Despite their humble origins, Cowpens and her band of second-string reservists and citizen sailors served with distinction, fighting in nearly every major carrier operation from 1943 to 1945, including the Battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf.

Above and Beyond is the incredible true story of Frank Luke Jr., the first aviator to receive the Medal of Honor. When America entered the First World War in 1917, Luke became a fighter pilot in the newly formed US Army Air Service and was soon serving with a combat squadron in France. Above and Beyond chronicles Luke's most daring mission of all on September 29, 1918, which cost him his life, and for which he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

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.

The year was 1922: World War I had just come to a close, the Ottoman Empire was in decline, and Asa Jennings, a YMCA worker from upstate New York, had just arrived in the quiet coastal city of Smyrna to teach sports to boys. Several hundred miles to the east in Turkey's interior, tensions between Greeks and Turks had boiled over into deadly violence. Mustapha Kemal, now known as Ataturk, and his Muslim army soon advanced into Smyrna, a Christian city, where a half a million terrified Greek and Armenian refugees had fled in a desperate attempt to escape his troops.

The loss of British bombers over Occupied Europe began to reach alarming levels in 1941. Could it be that the Germans were using a sophisticated form of radar to direct their night fighters and anti-aircraft guns at the British bombers? British aerial reconnaissance discovered what seemed to be a rotating radar tower on a clifftop at Bruneval, near Le Havre. The truth must be revealed. The decision was taken to launch a daring raid on the Bruneval site to try and capture the technology for further examination.

In the early 20th century, World War I was the most devastating event humanity had yet experienced. New machines of war left tens of millions killed or wounded in the most grotesque of ways. The Great War remade the world's map, created new global powers, and brought forth some of the biggest problems still facing us today. But it also birthed a new art form: the horror film, made from the fears of a generation ruined by war. From Nosferatu to Frankenstein's monster and the Wolf Man, the touchstones of horror can all trace their roots to the bloodshed of the First World War.

From the author of the best-selling Forgotten Voices of the Great War comes a final look at the last 21 living British veterans of the First World War. These interviews, conducted in 2004, will never be repeated, as the youngest was 106 years old, and most are now gone. These first-person accounts follow the young soldiers from their homes throughout Britain to the raging battles while in the service of the Royal Field Artillery, Black Watch, Royal Navy, and others.

La Gran Guerra dejó millones de civiles y soldados mutilados o muertos. Siga los pasos de los militares británicos, alemanes y estadounidenses mientras detallan la vida y las luchas de la guerra en un país extranjero y extraño. Descubra sus hipnotizantes y realistas historias de combate, valor y angustia en relatos amenos y equilibrados contados desde el frente.

The growing buzz of aircraft engines disturbed the Japanese military construction personnel hauling equipment ashore on the beige coral sand of Tulagi Island at 8:20 AM on May 4, 1942. Offshore, the large IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) minelayer Okinoshima, flagship of Admiral Shima Kiyohide, lay at anchor, along with two destroyers, Kikuzuki and Yutsuki, and transport ships. Six Japanese Mitsubishi F1M2 floatplanes also rested on the gentle, deep blue swell, marking Tulagi's future as an IJN floatplane base.

This book is a fascinating insight into the workings of a World War I battalion in action, from the digging of trenches to the organisation of a solid defensive position and the patrolling of no-man’s land. It's also sprinkled with occasional amusing anecdotes that show the spirit of man shining in even the most desperate of situations.

Der Erste Weltkrieg wurde von 1914 bis 1918 in Europa, dem Nahen Osten, in Afrika, Ostasien und auf den Weltmeeren geführt und forderte rund 17 Millionen Menschenleben. Annähernd 70 Millionen Menschen standen unter Waffen, etwa 40 Staaten waren am Krieg direkt oder indirekt beteiligt. Nach der Ermordung des österreichischen Thronfolgers Franz Ferdinand am 28. Juni 1914 richtete richtete Österreich-Ungarn in der sogenannten Julikrise am 23. Juli ein Ultimatum an Serbien, was schließlich den Weltkrieg auslöste.

World War I, also known in its time as the “Great War” or the “War to End all Wars”, was an unprecedented holocaust in terms of its sheer scale. Fought by men who hailed from all corners of the globe, it saw millions of soldiers do battle in brutal assaults of attrition which dragged on for months with little to no respite. Such a war brought about technological innovation at a rate that made the boom of the Industrial Revolution seem stagnant. The Second Battle of Ypres resulted from the German decision to use poison gas against the Allied lines.

At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, the advanced base of the United States Navy's Pacific Fleet, was ablaze. It had been smashed by aircraft launched by the carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. All eight battleships had been sunk or badly damaged, 350 aircraft had been knocked out, and over 2,000 Americans lay dead.

It doesn’t seem like Enver Pasha was a good man. His war crimes caused the deaths of millions of innocent citizens. Sure, during a war and a collapsing empire, you try to do what you can to stop losing, but I doubt anyone in their right mind can justify his actions, which included the slaughter of minorities in the Ottoman Empire during World War One, and even the Armenian Genocide. And to this day, the Turkish government is still somewhat reluctant to acknowledge the severity of that historical atrocity.

Sólo superada por su triste segunda versión, fue peor que cualquier otra guerra que haya conocido el mundo hasta entonces. Gracias a la aparición de tecnologías nunca antes conocidas, murieron más personas y se hizo más daño que nunca antes en un conflicto internacional. Iniciado en 1914 tras el asesinato del archiduque Francisco Fernando, el impacto de esta conflagración provocaría la alarma mundial.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Las Guerras Mundiales and learn about the two World Wars.