Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 161 - 180 of 2629 items
By Prinz Franz Joseph von Hohenzollern. 2018
During World War I Franz Joseph Prinz von Hohenzollern served in Germany s Kaiserliche Marine Imperial…
Navy as the second torpedo officer on the light cruiser SMS Emden at the Battle of Cocos The SMS Emden had an extraordinary record capturing British ships This book which was first published in its English translation in 1928 is a fascinating record of Franz Joseph s naval service on the SMS Emden SMS Emden His Majesty s Ship Emden was the second and final member of the Dresden class of light cruisers built for the Imperial German Navy Kaiserliche Marine Named after the town of Emden she was laid down at the Kaiserliche Werft Imperial Dockyard in Danzig in 1906 Her hull was launched in May 1908 and completed in July 1909 She had one sister ship Dresden Like the preceding K nigsberg-class cruisers Emden was armed with ten 10 5 cm 4 1 in guns and two torpedo tubes Emden spent the majority of her career overseas in the German East Asia Squadron based in Tsingtao in the Kiautschou Bay concession in China In 1913 she came under the command of Karl von M ller who would captain the ship during WWI At the outbreak of hostilities Emden captured a Russian steamer and converted her into the commerce raider Cormoran Emden rejoined the East Asia Squadron after which she was detached for independent raiding in the Indian Ocean The cruiser spent nearly two months operating in the region and captured nearly two dozen ships On October 28 1914 Emden launched a surprise attack on Penang in the resulting Battle of Penang she sank the Russian cruiser Zhemchug and the French destroyer Mousquet The SMS Emden s extraordinary record capturing British ships resulted in all those who served on her including Franz Joseph being given the right to add the ship s name to the end of their surnamesMajor Mick Mannock VC was the top-scoring RAF air ace of the…
First World War an almost legendary figure who personified the bravery and modesty that came to be expected of aerial heroes While other aces of that war became better known Mannock in his own quiet way topped them all with an official tally of 73 victories by the time of his death On the award of his posthumous VC the London Gazette described him as an outstanding example of fearless courage remarkable skill devotion to duty and self-sacrifice that has never been surpassed King of Air Fighters is an exciting account of Mannock s character and career by another great air ace For author Taffy Jones himself ranks sixth in the British list of First World War aces with 41 victories This is a tale of adventure courage and gallantry told with an experienced insider s understanding of the feelings and psychology of the air aces and with a thorough analysis of aerial combat techniquesBy Claud Sykes, Major Helders. 2018
In War in the Air 1936 which was first published in English in 1932 author Robert Knauss…
fantasizes about a confrontation between England and France Writing under the pseudonym Major Helders and using detailed descriptions of battles strategies and weaponry Knauss aim is for the reader to realize that air power in general and flying fortress bombers in particular would decide the outcome of the next war In this novel the hero is the English air force commander Brackley a carbon copy of the imaginary German leaders in other right-wing prophecies firm mysterious infallible In times of crisis he surveys the situation with lightning speed His war is one of movement of risk-taking of annihilation Modern airplane technology allows him to carry out a style of warfare that fits his chivalric warrior spirit Only for an instant does he pity the population of Paris as his planes pour bombs over the city in a surprise attack Pity though is not a virtue in the nationalist mind though Vernichtungswille the will to annihilate isBy Erika Kuhlman. 2016
This book usesstory-telling to recreate the history of German veteran migration after theFirst World War. German veterans of the Great…
War were among Europe's mostvolatile population when they returned to a defeated nation in 1918, aftergreat expectations of victory and personal heroism. Some ex-servicemen chose toflee the nation for which they had fought, and begin their lives afresh in thenation against which they had fought: the United States.By Craig Gibson. 2014
Until now scholars have looked for the source of the indomitable Tommy morale on the Western Front in innate British…
bloody-mindedness and irony, not to mention material concerns such as leave, food, rum, brothels, regimental pride, and male bonding. However, re-examining previously used sources alongside never-before consulted archives, Craig Gibson shifts the focus away from battle and the trenches to times behind the front, where the British intermingled with a vast population of allied civilians, whom Lord Kitchener had instructed the troops to 'avoid'. Besides providing a comprehensive examination of soldiers' encounters with local French and Belgian inhabitants which were not only unavoidable but also challenging, symbiotic and uplifting in equal measure, Gibson contends that such relationships were crucial to how the war was fought on the Western Front and, ultimately, to British victory in 1918. What emerges is a novel interpretation of the British and Dominion soldier at war.By George Whale.
By John Mosier. 2013
Alongside Waterloo and Gettysburg, the Battle of Verdun during the First World War stands as one of history’s greatest clashes.…
Yet it is also one of the most complex and misunderstood, in a war only imperfectly grasped. Conventional wisdom holds that the battle began in February 1916 and lasted until December, when the victorious French wrested all the territory they had lost back from the Germans. In fact, says historian John Mosier, from the very beginning of the war until the armistice in 1918, no fewer than eight distinct battles were waged for the possession of Verdun. These conflicts are largely unknown, even in France, owing to the obsessive secrecy of the French high command and its energetic propaganda campaign to fool the world into thinking that the war on the Western Front was a steady series of German checks and defeats. Although British historians have always seen Verdun as a one-year battle designed by the German chief of staff to bleed France white, Mosier’s careful analysis of the German plans reveals a much more abstract and theoretical approach. Our understanding of Verdun has long been mired in myths, false assumptions, propaganda, and distortions. Now, using numerous accounts of military analysts, serving officers, and eyewitnesses, including French sources that have never been translated, Mosier offers a compelling reassessment of the Great War’s most important battle. .By James Miller. 2014
In 1916, Imperial German aerial domination, once held by rotary-engined Fokker and Pfalz E-type wing-warping monoplanes, had been lost to…
the more nimble French Nieuport and British DH 2s which not only out-flew the German fighters but were present in greater numbers. Born-from-experience calls from German fighter pilots requested that, rather than compete with the maneuverability of these adversaries, new single-engine machines should be equipped with higher horsepower engines and armed with two, rather than the then-standard single machine guns. The Robert Thelen-led Albatros design bureau set to work on what became the Albatros D.I and D.II and by April 1916 they had developed a sleek yet rugged machine that featured the usual Albatros semi-monocoque wooden construction and employed a 160hp Mercedes D.III engine with power enough to equip the aeroplane with two forward-firing machine guns. Visual hallmarks of the D.I and early production D.II include fuselage mounted Windhoff radiators and matching chords for the upper and lower wings. Meanwhile, Albatros had already produced the prototype of the D.II's successor, the D.III. Influenced by the French Nieuport sesquiplane design, the D.III featured lower wings of reduced chord and single-spar construction, with the interplane struts now meeting the lower wings in a 'V'. After arriving at the Front en masse in early 1917, the Royal Flying Corps did not possess a fighter that could arrest the Albatros' onslaught against the RFC reconnaissance machines and thus they suffered appalling casualties in a desperate period known as 'Bloody April'. However, despite the D.III's success, the sesquiplane design led to structural flaws that resulted in the deaths of several pilots, which caused the type to be grounded until the lower wings could be strengthened or replaced. Still, even after their return to service, German pilots knew not to prosecute a dive too aggressively lest they invite structural catastrophe.Always chasing performance enhancements, by the time of 'Bloody April' Albatros had already designed and received a production order for the D.V.D.IIIs were manufactured concurrently but production was shifted to the Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke (OAW) in Schneidmuhl, where they received more robust construction. They differed little from their Johannisthal D.III brethren externally, save for a slightly different skin application on the nose and a D.V-type rudder, which had a curved rather than straight trailing edge. They also had Mercedes engines of 175 hp, versus the 160 hp engines of the Johannisthal D.III. Overall they benefitted from the teething experience of the earlier D.IIIs and avoided the structural problems that resurfaced with the Johannisthal-built D.Vs. In all, 500 D.IIIs and 840 D.III(OAW)s were produced and saw heavy service throughout 1917. They extracted a serious toll on the enemy but as the year progressed faced an increasing number of new enemy fighter types, including the Sopwith Pup, Sopwith Triplane, SPAD VII, and SE5a, but remained at the Front in high numbers (446 of both types were recorded on 31 October) until dwindling in spring 1918 (from 357 in February to 82 in June) with the arrival of the Fokker Dr.I and D.VII.By Victor Lefebure.
By Louise Herrick Wall, Anne Wintermute, Franklin K. Lane.
By Stephen L. Harris. 2015
The stirring account of the Third U.S. Infantry Division in the Second Battle of the Marne--where the tide of World…
War I was finally turned...The soldiers of the Third U.S. Infantry Division in World War I were outnumbered and inexperienced young men facing hardened veterans, but their actions proved to be a turning point during the last German offensive of World War I.In stopping three German divisions from crossing the Marne River, these heroic American soldiers blocked the road to Paris east of Château-Thierry, helped save the French capital and, in doing so, played a key role in turning the tide of the war. The Allies then began a counteroffensive that drove the enemy back to the Hindenburg Line, and four months later the war was over.Rock of the Marne follows the Third Division's Sixth Brigade, which took the brunt of the German attack. The officers, many of them West Pointers and elite Ivy Leaguers, fighting side-by-side with enlisted men--city dwellers and country boys, cowboys and coal miners who came from every corner of America along with newly planted immigrants from Europe--answered their country's call to duty.This is the gripping true account of one of the most important--yet least explored--battles of World War I.INCLUDES PHOTOSBy Stephen Bull. 1915
'Going up Beek trench on a dark night was no picnic. You started along a long narrow alley winding uphill,…
your hands feeling the slimy sandbag walls, your feet wary for broken duck boards; now and again a hot, stuff smell, a void space in the wall, and the swish of pumped up water under foot proclaimed the entrance to a mine. ... round corners you dived under narrow tunnels two or three feet high, finally emerging into the comparative open of the front line trench.' Soldier, 1/4th Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, 1916In this new book, First World War trench expert Stephen Bull provides a complete picture of trench warfare on the Western Front, from the construction of the trenches and their different types, to the new weaponry and tactics employed in defense and attack. In addition, the book describes the experience of life in the trenches, from length of service, dealing with death and disease, to uniforms and discharge. Alongside his compelling narrative of the campaigns fought in the trenches from 1914 to 1918, annotated trench maps highlight particular features of the trenches, while photographs, documents, and first-hand accounts combine to give a full and richly detailed account of war in the trenches.By Peter Doyle. 2014
A century may now have passed since the Great War, but the stories of everyday soldiers serving in miserable and…
life-threatening conditions still have a sobering sense of immediacy. Personal records, photographs and sentimental possessions that bring us even closer to the soldier as a person have often become valuable heirlooms, passed down through the generations. Nothing better depicts an individual soldier than these items, which were kept about his person and in his kitbag, and which constituted all his worldly possessions while on service in the trenches. This book looks at fifty objects with which every Tommy would have been familiar, from official uniform and equipment to good-luck charms and letters from sweethearts. With each artifact – be it an identity disc, training manual, packet of cigarettes, postcard or foreign phrasebook – the accompanying text explains the significance of all the things that, together, help to define him both as a man and as a soldier.By Elizabeth Greenhalgh. 2014
This is a comprehensive new history of the French army's critical contribution to the Great War. Ranging across all fronts,…
Elizabeth Greenhalgh examines the French army's achievements and failures and sets these in the context of the difficulties of coalition warfare and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the enemy forces it faced. Drawing from new archival sources, she reveals the challenges of dealing with and replenishing a mass conscript army in the face of slaughter on an unprecedented scale, and shows how, through trials and defeats, French generals and their troops learned to adapt and develop techniques which eventually led to victory. In a unique account of the largest Allied army on the Western Front, she revises our understanding not only of wartime strategy and combat, but also of other crucial aspects of France's war, from mutinies and mail censorship to medical services, railways and weapons development.By Timothy C. Winegard. 2012
This pioneering comparative history of the participation of indigenous peoples of the British Empire in the First World War is…
based upon archival research in four continents. It provides the first comprehensive examination and comparison of how indigenous peoples of Canada, Australia, Newfoundland, New Zealand and South Africa experienced the Great War. The participation of indigenes was an extension of their ongoing effort to shape and alter their social and political realities, their resistance to cultural assimilation or segregation and their desire to attain equality through service and sacrifice. While the dominions discouraged indigenous participation at the outbreak of war, by late 1915 the imperial government demanded their inclusion to meet the pragmatic need for military manpower. Indigenous peoples responded with patriotism and enthusiasm both on the battlefield and the home front and shared equally in the horrors and burdens of the First World War.By John Gooch. 2014
This is a major new account of the role and performance of the Italian army during the First World War.…
Drawing from original, archival research, it tells the story of the army's bitter three-year struggle in the mountains of Northern Italy, including the eleven bloody battles of the Isonzo, the near-catastrophic defeat at Caporetto in 1917 and the successful, but still controversial defeat of the Austro-Hungarian army at Vittorio Veneto on the eve of the Armistice. Setting military events within a broader context, the book explores pre-war Italian military culture and the interactions between domestic politics, economics and society. In a unique study of an unjustly neglected facet of the war, John Gooch illustrates how General Luigi Cadorna, a brutal disciplinarian, drove the army to the edge of collapse, and how his successor, general Armando Diaz, rebuilt it and led the Italians to their greatest victory in modern times.By Pat Scales. 2014
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a five-star general and commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, established…
a committee in 1954 to plan a Veterans Day observance. This day honors all veterans of the United States and is held each year on November 11 with a somber ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. A wreath is placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and followed by a parade of colors. In 2015, the United States and the world will mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Victory in Europe occurred on May 8, 1945, but the official end of the war came when Japan surrendered to the United States on August 15, 1945. Some students may have family members who remember World War II, but most only know the hardships both at home and in foreign war zones through books they read. The novels presented in this guide give them a glimpse of the events on the home front in the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and what was happening in Europe and Asia before and after the United States entered the war.By Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 2013
In the early 20th century, the diesel-electric submarine made possible a new type of unrestricted naval warfare. Such brutal practices…
as targeting passenger, cargo, and hospital ships not only violated previous international agreements; they were targeted explicitly at civilians. A deviant form of warfare quickly became the norm. In Atrocity, Deviance, and Submarine Warfare, Nachman Ben-Yehuda recounts the evolution of submarine warfare, explains the nature of its deviance, documents its atrocities, and places these developments in the context of changing national identities and definitions of the ethical, at both social and individual levels. Introducing the concept of cultural cores, he traces the changes in cultural myths, collective memory, and the understanding of unconventionality and deviance prior to the outbreak of World War I. Significant changes in cultural cores, Ben-Yehuda concludes, permitted the rise of wartime atrocities at sea.By Roger Chickering. 2014
Unlike other existing surveys, this book explores the comprehensive impact of the First World War on Imperial Germany by offering…
a rich portrait of life on the home front: the pervasive effects of 'total war' on wealthy and poor, men and women, young and old, farmers and city-dwellers, Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Now appearing in a second edition, this accessible book reflects important new scholarship in the field and boasts an expanded and revised bibliography. It is essential reading for all students of German and European history, war and society. First Edition Hb (1998): 0-521-56148-5 First Edition Pb (1998): 0-521-56754-8By Christa Hook, Ian Castle. 2010
Osprey's Campaign title for the Gotha and the massive Staaken 'Giant' bomber raids against London during World War I (1914-1918).…
On a sunny May afternoon in 1917, the peace of an English seaside town was shattered when a flight of German Gotha bombers appeared without warning. Twenty-three Gothas had set out to attack London in this first bomber raid, but heavy cloud forced them to target Folkestone and the Shorncliffe army camp instead. It was the start of a new phase of the war aimed at destroying the morale of the British people. London's defences were quickly overhauled to face this new threat, providing the basis for Britain's defence during World War II.