Collection · 1914 — 1919
The War to End All Wars
1914-1918: Words From The Trenches to The Treaty
This collection documents speeches from a war that killed roughly 20 million people — approximately 10 million military and 10 million civilian. We present these for historical understanding.
The speeches that mobilised empires, sustained nations through unimaginable slaughter, and shaped a peace that would plant the seeds of another war.
The collection opens with Grey at a Whitehall window on 3 August 1914 and closes with Wilson handing the Treaty of Versailles to a Senate that would reject it. Between them are Kaiser Wilhelm on the balcony of the Berliner Schloss, Poincaré's message of the “Union Sacrée”, Lloyd George at Queen's Hall and later in the Commons announcing the armistice, Clemenceau reclaiming Alsace-Lorraine, and Wilson twice — once to declare war, once to set out the Fourteen Points that Europe would then dilute at Paris.
Connected · Treaty consequences
Continue to the World War II collection →
The peace terms of 1919 structured the two decades that produced 1939.
Western Front Context · Major Battles
1914
Marne — first Western Front halt
Sept 1914. German advance stopped short of Paris; trench lines form.
1915
Gallipoli campaign
Apr 1915 – Jan 1916. ~390,000 combined Allied / Ottoman casualties.
1916
Verdun & the Somme
Two ten-month battles. Combined casualties estimated above 1.5 million.
1917
Passchendaele / 3rd Ypres
Jul–Nov 1917. ~500,000 combined British, Commonwealth and German casualties.
1918
Spring Offensive → Hundred Days
March–November 1918. German final push fails; Allied advance breaks the line.
Casualty estimates drawn from standard secondary sources (CWGC, Keegan, Stevenson). Figures combine killed, wounded and missing.
Interactive Timeline · 1914 — 1919
Further Reading & Viewing
Books on rhetoric & great speeches
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The Guns of August
Barbara W. Tuchman
Pulitzer-winning account of the first month of the war — August 1914.
View on Amazon →The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
Christopher Clark
The leading modern account of the July Crisis and the diplomatic chain that produced the war.
View on Amazon →Storm of Steel
Ernst Jünger
Jünger's Western Front memoir — the defining German frontline account.
View on Amazon →Goodbye to All That
Robert Graves
Graves's Western Front memoir and one of the canonical British war texts.
View on Amazon →The Poems of Wilfred Owen
Wilfred Owen / Jon Stallworthy (ed.)
The standard collected edition of the defining English poet of the war.
View on Amazon →The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston
Siegfried Sassoon
Sassoon's lightly-fictionalised war trilogy — the counterpart to Owen's verse.
View on Amazon →They Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson, 2018)
Peter Jackson / WingNut
Colourised and audio-restored BBC / Imperial War Museum footage.
View on Amazon →1914-1918: The History of the First World War
David Stevenson
The leading modern single-volume global history.
View on Amazon →Browse the full speech library
Beyond the Great War, our library catalogues hundreds of historic addresses with rhetorical breakdowns and verified transcripts.
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