World War I has consistently attracted the attention of European and North American scholars. In recent years international academic interest in this conflict has, if anything, increased: A number of major conferences have been devoted to the war, and more are planned for the near future. A spate of books and articles has recently appeared, and many more research projects are currently underway. This scholarship covers aspects of the war that have hitherto been neglected. World War I, along with its origins and aftermath, has thus returned to center stage in international research.

The current interest in the “Great War” is due largely to the currency of new methodologies in historical scholarship. Previous research laid the groundwork for todays debates, but it left many questions unaddressed. Historians of earlier generations focused on diplomatic, political, and sometimes economic history, but more often on narrow military aspects of the war. Recent research on the history of modern warfare, by contrast, has encompassed social dimensions, gender, culture (broadly understood), and “mentalities,” to name but a few of the new areas of interest. New approaches have challenged long-established methods, and military history is itself a case in point. Decades ago, Basil Liddell Hart denounced traditional approaches to the “battle history of war” in characteristically harsh words. “To place the position and trace the actions of battalions and batteries,” he wrote, “is of value only to the collector of antiques, and still more to the dealer of faked antiques.” Military historians today have begun to apply a rich variety of methods to their topic. “War and society,” an innovative concept in the 1960s and 1970s, is still of great value. Even the analysis of battles and campaigns, traditionally the focus of military history, has changed under the influence of new approaches.