Part I. Hybris. The road to war ; 'It can hardly go wrong now': The Schlieffen Plan and its failure. ; Tannenberg and the rise of Hindenburg ; The European stalemate. ; A strategy of muddling through? The war in 1915 ; 'An unparalleled act of barbarism': the naval blockade, submarine warfare and the battle for American neutrality ; 'Potato-bread spirit': the German home front in 1914-16 ; Squaring the circle: Falkenhayn and Verdun 1916 ; Summer 1916: The Allied attack on all fronts and its failure
Part II. Climax: At the apex of war. 'Only a miracle can save us now': Germany and the war in the autumn of 1916 ; Action stations, panic stations: the radicalisation of Germany's strategy under the Third OHL ; 'A stroke of genius': tentative offers of peace in December 1916 ; The misjudged stand-off: unrestricted submarine warfare and the USA's entry into the war
Part III. Nemesis: the defeat of the Central Powers and the destruction of the European Order. Military developments in the first half of 1917 ; The first Russian Revolution and the opportunity for a peace agreement with the Russian democracy ; 'War psychosis?' the Reichstag's peace offer and Bethmann Hollweg's demission ; 'The unmasking of the Central Powers?' Victory and peace in the East ; 'Glorious, but hopeless': Germany's position at the turn of the year 1917/18 ; 'Ludendorff's hammer': the Western offensive of 1918 ; 'Now the war was lost': the military collapse of the Central Powers ; 'Savage in victory, contemptuous in defeat': Germany's route out of the war
The final reckoning: a terrible debt that must be paid.
