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Includes bibliographical references.

Frontmatter -- Table of Content -- Danksagung -- List of Abbreviations -- Introduction -- What Was the Great War about?: War Aims, Military Strategies and Political Justifications during the First World War -- Military Operations and National Policies, 1914-1918 -- War Aims and Strategies of the Entente Powers of 1914 -- French War Aims and Strategy -- British Strategy and War Aims in the First World War -- War as Legitimisation of Revolution, Revolution as Justification of War: Political Mobilisations in Russia, 1914-1917 -- Serbian War Aims and Military Strategy, 1914-1918 -- War Aims and Strategies of the Central Powers of 1914 -- Strategy, Politics, and the Quest for a Negotiated Peace: The German Case, 1914-1918 -- "A Life and Death Question": Austro-Hungarian War Aims in the First World War -- Reflection -- Mourir pour Li�ege? World War I War Aims in a Long-Term Perspective -- War Aims and Strategies of Powers Entering the Conflict Later than August 1914 -- Ottoman Strategy and War Aims during the First World War -- "An Act of Madness"?: Italy's War Aims and Strategy, 1915-1918 -- President Wilson and the War Aims of the United States -- Conclusion -- " ... eine Internationale der Kriegsversch�arfung und der Kriegsverl�angerung ..." War Aims and the Chances for a Compromise Peace during the First World War -- List of Authors.

Nearly fourteen million people died during the First World War. But why, and for what reason? Already many contemporaries saw the Great War as a "pointless carnage" (Pope Benedict XV, 1917). Was there a point, at least in the eyes of the political and military decision makers? How did they justify the losses, and why did they not try to end the war earlier? In this volume twelve international specialists analyses and compares the hopes and expectations of the political and military leaders of the main belligerent countries and of their respective societies. It shows that the war aims adopted during the First World War were not, for the most part, the cause of the conflict, but a reaction to it, an attempt to give the tragedy a purpose - even if the consequence was to oblige the belligerents to go on fighting until victory. The volume tries to explain why - and for what - the contemporaries thought that they had to fight the Great War.

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