World War I

Michael Neiberg, Army War College

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, scholars are beginning to reassess their ideas.  Once dominant images of a senseless war fought with pointless tactics by idiotic generals have yielded to a view of the war as an astonishingly complex series of events that impacted the entire world.  This course will study the war in all of its complexity.  We will not be looking for simple answers nor will we merely see the First World War as a protracted dress rehearsal for the Second World War.  Instead, we will seek to understand why the world went to war in 1914 and why citizens of the most “civilized” nations on earth killed one another at unprecedented rates for four years.  I hope that by the end of this course you will share some of my interest in and endless fascination with the “war to end all wars.”