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Home / Periods / World War I & Interwar Era

Period

World War I & Interwar Era

1914–1939 CE

World War I and the Interwar Era covers the war of 1914–1918 and the two unsettled decades that followed. It includes the Western Front, the home front, revolution, peace settlements, trauma, espionage, fascism, the Spanish Civil War and the political crises that led toward another world war.

Combining these periods at the top level gives readers a clearer route through early twentieth-century fiction. Many novels about the 1920s and 1930s are shaped directly by the memory of the First World War, while wartime stories often lead into disillusionment, grief, radical politics and intelligence work.

This category supports war fiction, literary novels, family sagas, spy fiction and political thrillers. It works for books about trench warfare, nurses, conscientious objectors, veterans, aristocratic decline, revolutionary Europe, interwar Britain and France, Weimar Germany and the road to the Second World War.

Related people for World War I & Interwar Era

Abraham Lincoln1809–1865 Ada Blackjack1898–1983 Adolf Hitler1889–1945 Al Capone1899–1947 Alice Wheeldon1866–1919 Anna Anderson1896–1984 Anni Albers1899–1994 Anthony Blunt1907–1983 Arnold Wilson1884–1940 Arthur John Brock1879–1947 Arthur Maurice Hocart1883–1939 Asa Jennings1877–1933 Augusto Pinochet1915–2006 Beatrix Potter1866–1943 Benito Mussolini1883–1945 Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881 Bernard Montgomery1887–1976 Bertrand Russell1872–1970 Charles George Gordon1833–1885 Christiaan de Wet1854–1922 Christopher Wood1901–1930 Dabulamanzi kaMpande1839–1886 David Lloyd George1863–1945 Diana, Princess of Wales1961–1997 Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig1861–1928 Edward VII1841–1910 Edward VIII1894–1972 Eleanor Roosevelt1884–1962 Elizabeth II1926–2022 Enver Pasha1881–1922 Ernest Hemingway1899–1961 Erwin Rommel1891–1944 Francisco Franco1892–1975 Frank Foley1884–1958 Franklin D. Roosevelt1882–1945 Frank Pick1878–1941 Franz Joseph I of Austria1830–1916 Franz von Soden1856–1945 Geoffrey H. Malins1886–1940 George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon1866–1923 Georges Ladoux1875–1933 George V1865–1936 George VI1895–1952 Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia1901–1918 H. H. Asquith1852–1928 Haile Selassie1892–1975 Hans Oster1887–1945 Harry Beck1902–1974 Harry S. Truman1884–1972 Heinrich Himmler1900–1945 Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston1784–1865 Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener1850–1916 Howard Carter1874–1939 Ian Fleming1908–1964 Ian Hamilton1853–1947 James Willcocks1857–1926 Jan Smuts1870–1950 Jeremy Wolfenden1934–1965 Joe Hill1879–1915 Jomo Kenyatta1893–1978 Josef Albers1888–1976 Joseph Chamberlain1836–1914 Joseph Goebbels1897–1945 Joseph McCarthy1908–1957 Joseph Stalin1878–1953 Józef Piłsudski1867–1935 Louisa Pesel1870–1947 Louis Armstrong1901–1971 Louis Botha1862–1919 Lucky Luciano1897–1962 Luisa Casati1881–1957 M. M. Kaye1908–2004 Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948 Manfred von Richthofen1892–1918 Mao Zedong1893–1976 Margaret Thatcher1925–2013 Mary Lindell1895–1987 Mata Hari1876–1917 Maud Allan1873–1956 Menelik II1844–1913 Mikhail Gorbachev1931–2022 Muhammad Ahmad1844–1885 Mustafa Kemal Atatürk1881–1938 Napoleon III1808–1873 Neville Chamberlain1869–1940 Nicholas II of Russia1868–1918 Noel Pemberton Billing1881–1948 Otto Hahn1879–1968 Otto von Bismarck1815–1898 Pablo Neruda1904–1973 Pablo Picasso1881–1973 Paul Kruger1825–1904 Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck1870–1964 Reginald Hall1870–1943 Reinhard Heydrich1904–1942 Richard Hillary1919–1943 Robert Graves1895–1985 Rudolph Valentino1895–1926 Rupert Brooke1887–1915 Salvador Allende1908–1973 Siegfried Sassoon1886–1967 Sigmund Freud1856–1939 Thomas Joseph Kendrick1881–1972 Vera Atkins1908–2000 Victoria1819–1901 Vilhjalmur Stefansson1879–1962 Virginia Woolf1882–1941 Vita Sackville-West1892–1962 Vladimir Lenin1870–1924 Wallis Simpson1896–1986 Walthère Dewé1880–1944 Wilfred Owen1893–1918 Wilhelm Canaris1887–1945 Wilhelm II1859–1941 William Halse Rivers Rivers1864–1922 William Noel Hodgson1893–1916 William Randolph Hearst1863–1951 Winston Churchill1874–1965 Woodrow Wilson1856–1924 Édouard Daladier1884–1970

Series

Series about World War I & Interwar Era (5 series)

Assegai Sequence in Order

by Wilbur Smith 6 books 4.4(33,351)

The Assegai Sequence follows Leon Courtney and his daughter Saffron from British East Africa before the First World War through the rise of Nazism, the Second World War and the early post-war struggle over colonial Kenya. The books combine family conflict, espionage and military history across Africa and…

The Century Trilogy in Order

by Ken Follett 3 books 4.3(838,293)

The Century Trilogy follows five interconnected families from Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States from the years before the First World War to the collapse of Communist rule in Europe. Across three generations, miners, aristocrats, diplomats, political organisers, soldiers and journalists experience public events through marriages, rivalries…

Tom Wilde in Order

by Rory Clements 8 books 4.3(42,038)

The Tom Wilde series follows an American-born Cambridge history professor drawn into British and Allied intelligence work from the crises of 1936 through the Second World War and the early Cold War. The novels combine espionage with political extremism, scientific research, royal scandal, propaganda and contested wartime memory.…

All Quiet on the Western Front in Order

by Erich Maria Remarque 2 books 4.1(562,157)

The All Quiet on the Western Front sequence follows a generation of German soldiers through the First World War and its aftermath. All Quiet on the Western Front places Paul Bäumer and his school friends in the trenches of the Western Front, while The Road Back turns to…

French Trilogy in Order

by Sebastian Faulks 3 books 4.1(117,646)

The French Trilogy is a loose sequence of three novels set in France across the first half of the twentieth century. The Girl at the Lion d’Or explores private love and political unease in 1936; Birdsong moves between pre-war Amiens and the Western Front of the First World…

Books

30 Best Novels About World War I and the Interwar Era

Non-Fiction

30 Best Non-Fiction Books About World War I and the Interwar Era

Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.