Invaded by foreign armies and threatened by the terrors of civil strife, Russia's leaders mobilized more than fifteen million fighting men between 1914 and 1918 only to find that at least a quarter of them had no boots, rifles, or ammunition. With field casualties soaring into the millions, scourges of starvation and disease joined the enemy's guns to double and treble Russia's human losses. Never in modern history had war so devastated a nation. Recounting the tale of the Russians' passage through the shattering experience of the First World War and the revolutions of 1917, W. Bruce Lincoln offers a profoundly intelligent and detailed chronology of the watershed events and devastating hardships that led to the Bolshevik Revolution. Mining an abundance of resources, including letters, diaries, memoirs, government reports, military dispatches, and testimony given to the revolution's first Supreme Commission of Inquiry, he allows the reader to step directly into army headquarters, state council chambers, boudoirs, trenches, and underground revolutionary hideaways of the men and women who shaped the events of this crucial era.

Facing Armageddon is the first scholarly work on the 1914-18 War to explore, on a world-wide basis, the real nature of the participants experience. Sixty-four scholars from all over the globe deliver the fruits of recent research in what civilians and servicemen passed through, in the air, on the sea and on land.

Facing Armageddon is the first scholarly work on the 1914-18 War to explore, on a world-wide basis, the real nature of the participants experience. Sixty-four scholars from all over the globe deliver the fruits of recent research in what civilians and servicemen passed through, in the air, on the sea and on land.

Over the past 225 years the oak savannah at the mouth of the Niagara River -- designated as a Military Reserve but regarded by the local citizenry as their common lands-- has witnessed a broad spectrum of military, political and cultural happenings. Perhaps most compelling is the story of Niagara Camp, established in the 1870s on the Reserve as the summer camp for Military District #2. By the eve of the Great War this District that encompassed most of central Ontario from Niagara to Sault St. Marie including Toronto, Hamilton and St. Catharines, was the most populous and patriotic District in all of Canada. Niagara Camp and the training that went on within it endeavoured to prepare over 50,000 young men for the Overseas Canadian Expeditionary Force; however, the Camp's vigorous daily routines, comprehensive instruction and discipline could not ready them for the horrors of the Western Front and ...Armageddon. Many never returned. In 1917 Niagara Camp also became the unique training centre for 22,000 Polish Army volunteers, American and Canadian boys eager to fight for a distant land many had never set foot on. The horrific Spanish Flu Pandemic soon followed with dire consequences for the soldiers and their volunteer caregivers. Niagara was also a training camp for Canada's ill-fated and little-known Siberian Expedition. Remarkable sagas are recounted of some of the Camp's veterans. On the centennial of the Great War this in-depth recognition of the brave young volunteers during their preparation for war is long overdue....