Aimée Fox – författare

This innovative approach to the history of World War I looks at ways in which military actors saw and perceived war, and how that exerted a significant influence over the decisions they made and the actions they took.The character of the conflict that erupted in 1914 defied the expectations of many political leaders and military analysts. Despite the mountains of books and articles published on World War I, there has been surprisingly little systematic or comparative research on how military commanders and politicians framed and interpreted the conflict - or, indeed, on how they understood war itself - and how that understanding shaped their decision-making.Wars are fought by organizations and people who have disparate visions of the world they live in and the conflict they are fighting. In Framing the First World War, a team of leading scholars explore the gulf between imagined warfare and the realities of battle. By doing so, they investigate how the military forces that contested the First World War framed the conflict they were involved in and how those perspectives shaped and influenced the ways in which they sought to understand, conduct, and respond to the war. They use the notion of 'frames' and the concept of 'framing' to enable us to engage directly with the complexity and diversity of the conflict, which was fought for different reasons and in different ways, incorporating a range of issues with implications for the conduct of the war. Improving our appreciation of how commanders saw the world around them and their views on the war they were conducting opens up valuable new approaches for understanding debates over the higher direction of the conflict and the civil-military relations that underpinned them. The contributors to Framing the First World War work towards a fuller historical appraisal of how military figures understood the war, moving beyond a purely military analysis to incorporate broader cultural and social topics, including education, medicine, politics, and law.

Major General Guy Dawnay (1878-1952) was a man of complexity and contradiction. Though passionate about the profession of arms, he set aside a promising military career to pursue business ambitions. Rejoining the British Army on the outbreak of war, he served in several staff appointments across four different military theatres. In 1915, he joined the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force's headquarters, planning the April landings and the ill-fated August offensive. Following the evacuation of Gallipoli, he served on the staff in Egypt and Palestine as part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. It was here that he masterminded the plan for the Third Battle of Gaza. In early 1918, he was appointed to Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's staff where he oversaw important changes to training and doctrine on the Western Front. Based on the Dawnay papers at the Imperial War Museum and material in private hands, this volume offers important insights on contrasting theatres of war, the challenges of planning operations, and Dawnay's relationships with key politicians and commanders. The volume reveals a passionate, introspective officer who, according to T.E. Lawrence, was 'the least professional of soldiers, a banker who read Greek history, a strategist unashamed, and a burning poet with strength over daily things'.