Seminar Questions:

• Why did Germany go to war in 1914?

• How did 'ordinary Germans' experience of ‘Total War’? What were the main political, economic and social consequences?

• How transformative was the First World War?

• Why did Germany lose?

Reading List:

Required Reading:

• Jeffrey Verhey, 'War and Revolution' in J. Retallack (ed. ) Imperial Germany, 1871-1918 (OUP, 2009), pp. 242-263
• Benjamin Ziemann, 'Germany 1914–1918. Total War as a Catalyst of Change' in Helmut Walser Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (OUP, 2012)

Primary Sources:

• The Schlieffen Plan (1905)
• The "War Council" (December 1912)
• The 'Willy-Nicky' Telegrams

• The Kaiser Speaks from the Balcony of the Royal Palace (August 1, 1914).

• Reichstag Peace Resultion (1917)
• Hindenburg's Call for a Negotiated Peace (1918)

Further Reading:

Origins and Outbreak:

• Christopher Clark, The sleepwalkers : how Europe went to war in 1914 (New York : Harper, 2013).
• Richard Hamilton and Holger Herwig, Decisions for War, 1914-1917 (Cambridge UP, 2004), Chapter 4.
• ______________________________, War Planning 1914 (Cambridge UP, 2009), Chapter 3.
• Mark Hewitson, Germany and the causes of the First World War (Berg, 2004
• Jack S. Levy, 'The sources of preventive logic in German decision-making in 1914' in Jack S. Levy and John A. Vasquez (ed.), The Outbreak of the First World War : Structure, Politics, and Decision-Making (Cambridge UP, 2014), pp. 139-166.
• Margaret Macmillan, The war that ended peace : how Europe abandoned peace for the First World War (London : Profile Books, 2013).
• Annika Mombauer, Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (Palgrave, 2005)
• Kieth Neilson, '1914: The German War?', European History Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 3 (2014), pp. 395-418
• T. G. Otte, The July Crisis (Cambridge UP, 2014).
• S. Williamson, ‘July 1914 Revisited and Revised: The erosion of the German Paradigm’ in Jack S. Levy and John A. Vasquez, (eds.), The Outbreak of the First World War: Structure, Politics, and Decision-Making (2014), pp. 30-62

• Special edition on the Fischer Controversy 50 years later of Journal for Contemporary History (guest editor Annika Mombauer), 2013.

Military Histories and The Experience of War:

• Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914-1918 (Cambridge UP, 1998).
• Jason Crouthamel, An Intimate History of the Front – Masculinity, Sexuality and German Soldiers in the First World War (Palgrave, 2014)
• Jason Crouthamel, 'Love in the Trenches: GermanSoldiers’ Conceptions of Sexual Deviance and Hegemonic Masculinity in the First World War' in Christa Hammerle, Oswald Uberegger, and Birgitta Bader-Zaar (eds.), Gender and the First World War (Palgrave, 2014)
• Hanna Hafkesbrink, Unknown Germany : an inner chronicle of the First World War based on letters and diaries (Yale, 1948)
• Holger Herwig, The First World War : Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914-1918 (2nd Edition) (Bloomsbury, 2015)
• Matthew Stibbe, Germany 1914–1933: Politics, Society and Culture (Longman, 2010), chapters 1 and 2
• Erik Ringmar,. "‘The Spirit of 1914’: A Redefinition and a Defense", War in History, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2017), pp. 1–22
• Jack Sheldon, The German Army on the Somme, 1914-1918 (Pen & Sword, 2005)
• Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (Hodder and Stoughton, 1975)
• Alexander Watson, Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 (Allen Lane, 2014)
• Alexander Watson, Enduring the Great War: Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914–1918 (Cambridge UP, 2008)

The Home Front:

• Mattias Blum, 'War, food rationing, and socioeconomic inequality in Germany during the First World War', Economic History Review, 66, 4 (2013), pp. 1063–1083
• Belinda Davis, Home Fires Burning: Food, Politics, and Everyday Life in World War I Berlin (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2000): pp. 24-47

• Elisabeth Domansky, ‘Militarization and Reproduction in World War I Germany’, in Geoff Eley (ed.), Society, Culture and the State in Germany, 1871-1930, (Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996): pp. 427-464.

• Geoff Eley, ‘The SPD in War and Revolution 1914‐1919’, in Roger Fletcher (ed.), Bernstein to Brandt: A to Z Short History of German Social Democracy (Edward Arnold, 1987).

• S. Gross, ‘Confidence and Gold: German War Finance 1914–1918’, Central European History, Vol. 42, No. 2, (2009) pp. 223–252

• Holger Herwig, ‘Industry, Empire and the First World War’, in Gordon Martel (ed.), Modern Germany Reconsidered (London: Routledge, 1992): 33-53.

• Patrick J. Houlihan, Catholicism and the Great War: Religion and Everyday Life in Germany and Austria-Hungary, 1914–1922 (Cambridge UP, 2015)

• Jürgen Kocka, Facing Total War. German Society 1914-1918 (Harvard, 1984).

• Claudia Siebrecht, 'Martial Spirit and Mobilization Myths: Bourgeois Women and the ‘Ideas of 1914’ in Germany' in Alison S. Fell and Ingrid Sharp (ed.), The women's movement in wartime: International perspectives, 1914-18 (Palgrave, 2007)

• Lisa Todd, "“The Soldier's Wife Who Ran Away with the Russian”: Sexual Infidelities in World War I Germany," Central European History, 44, 2 (2011), pp. 257-278.

• Richard Wall and J. Winter (eds), The Upheaval of War: Family, Work, and Welfare in Europe, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

• Dorothee Wierling, 'Imagining and Communicating Violence: The Correspondence of a Berlin Family, 1914–1918' in Christa Hammerle, Oswald Uberegger, and Birgitta Bader-Zaar (eds.), Gender and the First World War (Palgrave, 2014)
• David Welch, Germany and Propaganda in World War I: Pacifism, Mobilization and Total War (I. B. Tauris, 2014)