At the dawn of the information age, the First World War produced blizzards of information, contained in countless official reports. Almost anything you can think of was recorded, from how many prisoners were taken in a given battle to the number of troops in each age group who contracted a venereal disease. Yet this variety of data is indispensible for understanding how Europe became locked in a devastating stalemate for four long years, and how the Central Powers were finally defeated, only four months after they seemed on the verge of victory.

The number of countries involved, the scale of the military and the civilian involvement and the all-consuming nature of this new, mechanised ‘total war’ make it almost impossible for traditional narrative history to interpret its many aspects in depth. The World War I Fact Book gives the reader access to the most important and revealing information available, using a variety of graphic tools to illustrate the raw data, for a uniquely concise and informative account of the ‘war to end all wars’.