1914: The Year the World Ended

Few years can justly be said to have transformed the earth—1914 did. In July that year, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Britain, and France were poised to plunge the world into a war that would kill or wound 37 million people, tear down the fabric of society, uproot ancient political systems, and set the course for the bloodiest century in human history.

In the longer run, the events of 1914 set the world on the path toward the Russian Revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, the rise of Nazism, and the Cold War. In 1914: The Year the World Ended, award-winning historian Paul Ham tells the story of the outbreak of the Great War from German, British, French, Austria-Hungarian, Russian, and Serbian perspectives.

Along the way, he debunks several stubborn myths. European leaders, for example, did not stumble or sleepwalk into war, as many suppose. They fully understood that a small conflict in the Balkans—the tinderbox at the heart of the continent—could spark a European war. They well knew what their weapons could do. Yet they carried on. They accepted and, in some cases, even seemed to relish what they saw as an inevitable clash of arms.