Ring of Steel

For the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary the Great War - which had begun with such high hopes for a fast, dramatic outcome - rapidly degenerated as invasions of both France and Serbia ended in catastrophe. For four years the fighting now turned into a siege on a quite monstrous scale. Europe became the focus of fighting of a kind previously unimagined. Despite local successes - and an apparent triumph in Russia - Germany and Austria-Hungary were never able to break out of the the Allies' ring of steel. Alexander Watson's compelling history of the Great War shows all the major events of the war from the perspective of Berlin and Vienna - and tells how the genuine mass enthusiasm that flooded both these empires in 1914 turned into a devastating and nation-altering mood of disillusionment.