P. F Clarke

"'War is the locomotive of history,' claimed Trotsky, a remark thought to acknowledge the opportunity the First World War offered the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia 1917. And here Peter Clarke uses it on a broader canvas to explore how war, rather than socioeconomic forces or individuals, is the prime mover of history. Twentieth-century warfare, based on new technologies and mass armies, saw the locomotive power of war geared up to an unprecedented...