Chapter 1

1914

Go to war not for the sake of goods and gold, not for your homeland or for honour, nor to seek the death of your enemies, but to strengthen your character, to strengthen it in power and will, in habits, custom and earnestness. That is why I want to go to war.

KRESTEN ANDRESEN

Chronology 1914

28 June Murder of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo.

23 July Austria-Hungary delivers an ultimatum to Serbia.

28 July Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

29 July Russia mobilises against Austria-Hungary in support of Serbia.

31 July Germany demands that Russia cease mobilisation but Russia continues.

1 August Germany mobilises, as does Russia's ally, France.

2 August German troops enter France and Luxembourg; Russians enter East Prussia.

3 August Germany demands passage for German troops through Belgium. The demand is refused.

4 August Germany invades Belgium. Great Britain declares war on Germany.

6 August French troops enter the German colony of Togoland.

7 August Russia invades German East Prussia.

13 August Austria-Hungary invades Serbia. The campaign is ultimately unsuccessful.

14 August French troops enter German Lothringen (Lorraine) but are pushed back.

18 August Russia invades the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia.

20 August Brussels falls. German armies sweep south towards Paris.

24 August The Allied invasion of the German colony of the Cameroons begins.

26 August The Battle of Tannenberg begins. The Russian invasion of East Prussia is pushed back.

1 September The Battle of Lemberg begins. It turns into a major defeat for Austria-Hungary.

6 September Start of the Franco-British counter-offensive on the Marne. The German march on Paris is checked.

7 September The second Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia begins.

11 September Start of the so-called Race to the Sea in the west.

23 September Japan declares war on Germany.

12 October The first of a series of battles in Flanders begins.

29 October The Ottoman Empire enters the war on the German side.

3 November Russia invades the Ottoman province of Armenia.

7 November The German colony of Tsingtao in China is conquered by Japanese and British troops.

8 November The third Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia begins.

18 November The start of an Ottoman offensive in the Caucasus.

21 November British troops occupy Basra in Mesopotamia.

7 December The second battle for Warsaw begins.

Sunday, 2 August 1914

Laura de Turczynowicz is woken early one morning in Augustów

What is the worst thing she can imagine? That her husband is ill, injured or even dead? That he has been unfaithful?

It has been a perfect summer. Not only has the weather been perfect- hot, sunny, wonderful sunsets-but they have also moved into a newly built summer villa, tucked away by the lakes in the beautiful Augustów Forest. The children have played for days on end. She and her husband have often rowed out on the lake during the short, white nights of June to greet the rising sun. "All was peace and beauty...a quiet...

Translator: Peter Graves
Bio:  

Peter Englund is a Swedish historian, who has received numerous prizes in his own country and whose works have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also been working as a war correspondent in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Englund is a member of the Swedish Academy (which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature), and in 2008 was appointed its new permanent secretary, an office he still holds.

Author: Peter Englund
Bio:  

Peter Englund is a Swedish historian, who has received numerous prizes in his own country and whose works have been translated into fifteen languages. He has also been working as a war correspondent in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Englund is a member of the Swedish Academy (which awards the Nobel Prize in Literature), and in 2008 was appointed its new permanent secretary, an office he still holds.

"Intense and bighearted . . . The best books about World War I have often been oblique, like Paul Fussell's Great War and Modern Memory, or novels, like Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, rather than comprehensive histories. Englund's volume joins an unconventional pantheon . . . The accounts of [these] lives can be terrifying or stirring, but are most fully alive in Englund's accumulation of small moments, stray details . . . His book has the most devastating ending I can remember in a piece of nonfiction." - The New York Times

"A wonderfully wide and rich mosaic of personal experience from the First World War." - Antony Beevor, author of Stalingrad and D-Day: The Battle for Normandy

"Powerful and compelling . . . Of the many books about the First World War this is among the most strikingly original . . . Almost every page of Englund's book is fresh and revelatory." - Daily Express (UK)

"Englund covers a lot of ground in The Beauty and the Sorrow, geographically, topically, and in point of view . . . Englund succeeds in his goal to humanize the war." - Dallas Morning News

"Englund frees individual experience from the collective cloak of history and geography [in] this extraordinary book . . . The details build like a symphony." - Mail on Sunday (UK)

"They call them the lost generation, but you'll find their story here." - New York Post

"A brilliant feat of retrospective journalism . . . Englund's deft collation provides insights into more than the carnage . . . This book fleshes out the grim statistics of the Great War . . . The eloquence of everyday participants will link the reader to the era when the origins of the ensuing century's conflicts became apparent." - Publishers Weekly (starred)

"An exquisite book . . . There are adventures and battles, of course, but also many moments of quiet contemplation with closely observed details of street scenes, restaurants, railway stations, and deserted battlefields . . . By turns pithy, lyrical, colorful, poignant, and endlessly absorbing." - Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"[There are] hundreds of eerie, moving, upsetting, and surprising incidents from the First World War within this extraordinary book . . . Like a great novel, The Beauty and the Sorrow manages to be both more universal and more particular [than other books on WWI]. Peter Englund frees individual experience from the collective cloak of history and geography . . . The details build like a symphony . . . Englund writes with a calm clarity, beautifully conveyed by his translator." - Mail on Sunday (5 stars, UK)

"Anthologies of war reminiscences are often lazy stuff, mere compilations of extracted passages from diaries and letters . . . [But] Englund's choice of witnesses and his use of their material are admirably judged. This is an anthology well above the common run . . . This is a book about men and women living at the outer edge of human experience." - Max Hastings, Sunday Times (UK)

"Peter Englund is one of the finest writers of our time on the tactics, the killing and the psychology of war. In The Beauty and the Sorrow he superbly and humanely brings to life all the tragedy, chaos, death and gunsmoke of battle." - Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Stalin and Young Stalin

"The book is a masterpiece . . . as entertaining as [it is] thrilling. Peter Englund has truly outdone himself." - Svenska Dagb