The First World War

32 hrs. 17 min.

Educational

Language Russian

Author Martin Gilbert

Narrator Alexey Voskoboynikov

Description

No one set out for the beginning of this war, yet the interweaving of circumstances—at first glance almost accidental—made it inevitable. Those who entered the escalating conflict were convinced it would be brief and end in their triumph by Christmas 1914, but the peace agreement was signed only more than four years later—in November 1918. World War I brought immeasurable suffering and losses on the front and in the rear, epidemics, genocide, the collapse of great empires, and revolutionary upheavals. It changed the course of world history and redrew borders on maps. Many believed that the war, given the name the Great War, would be the last, but it turned out to be a prologue to an even more devastating Second World War.

The world-renowned British historian Sir Martin Gilbert has created a comprehensive history of the First World War, drawing on documents verified for accuracy and on eyewitness testimony, and compellingly showing its origins and consequences. He managed to convey the human cost of a war that claimed and ruined millions of lives through the stories of specific people—among them were both heroes and deserters.