Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I

A prize-winning, magisterial history of World War I from the perspective of the defeated Central Powers
For the Central Powers, the First World War started with high hopes for an easy victory. But those hopes soon deteriorated as Germany's attack on France failed, Austria-Hungary's armies suffered catastrophic losses, and Britain's ruthless blockade brought both nations to the brink of starvation. The Central powers were trapped in the Allies' ever-tightening Ring of Steel.
In this compelling history, Alexander Watson retells the war from the perspective of its losers: not just the leaders in Berlin and Vienna, but the people of Central Europe. The war shattered their societies, destroyed their states, and imparted a poisonous legacy of bitterness and violence. A major reevaluation of the First World War, Ring of Steel is essential for anyone seeking to understand the last century of European history.

• The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East
• The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
• The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
• The Eastern Front 1914-1917
• The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1914 (The Penguin History of Europe)
• The Ottoman Endgame: War, Revolution, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 1908-1923
• The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931
• The First World War
• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
• The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War