Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War

This project fits within Dr Meighen McCrae’s wider work on the way coalitions fight, notions of ‘victory’, and how individuals think about future war during periods of conflict or great international tension.

This book project, based on research in fifteen archives across three countries, achieves what no other work has done to date—an evaluation of the Allied coalition of 1918 from the perspective of the four main nations involved; Britain, France, Italy, and the United States. It considers the global nature of the war by examining its various theatres, thus going beyond the trend to focus solely on the Western Front. By analysing the coalition from diverse angles – international, multi-national, and multitheatre— it reframes our understanding of both strategy in the First World War and the Supreme War Council as the mechanism for coalition relations.

Dr McCrae’s monograph won both the 2020 Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr., prize for the best work of History in English on World War One and the 2021 Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award.

More details about the book here.

Author

Dr Meighen McCrae

Publication year

2019