“I fear that the war will now lead to revolution.”

Those words were uttered by Erich von Falkenhayn on the 29th of August 1916, the day he was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Paul von Hindenburg and his associate, Erich Ludendorff. Those words proved to be prescient: the wardid in fact lead to revolution, in fact to several. Indeed, the First World War led to the cataclysmic collapse of entire societies and of the European order that had underpinned almost a century of relative stability and peace among thegreat powers.  

And yet the war lasted for another 2 years, resulting in millions more dead, both soldiers and civilians.

Why did the war last so long? And why did Germany ultimately lose it? 

Those are just some of the questions Professor Holger Afflerbach returns to the center of historiographical attention in his sweeping and masterfully written account ofthe Great War, titled, “On a Knife Edge: How Germany lost the First World War”.

Holger Afflerbach is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Leeds and is the author of a number of groundbreaking monographs on Erich von Falkenhayn, Kaiser Wilhelm II, as well as on the Triple Alliance.