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Prof Alexander Watson

Staff details

Prof Alexander Watson

Position

Professor of History

Department

History

Email

a.watson (@gold.ac.uk)

Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups

Alexander is a prize-winning historian of 19th- and 20th-century East-Central Europe, focusing on war and extremism

Professor Alexander Watson is an expert on late 19th- and 20th-century East-Central European History. He has written extensively on armies and warfare. His research also covers topics as diverse as the rise of nationalism, minority integration, political extremism and pre-Holocaust ethnic cleansing.

Alex is best known for his books on World War I. These have won prestigious prizes, including the Wolfson History Prize for best work by a British historian and the U.S. Guggenheim Lehrman Prize for best work of military history. He has written a Sunday Times 'Book of the Year' (2014) and BBC History Magazine and Financial Times 'Books of the Year' (2019 and 2020).

Alex's next book, to be published by Allen Lane and Basic Books in 2025, is a new history of the dramatic collapse of German's first democracy, the Weimar Republic, in the early 1930s.

Alex works with the media and as a historical consultant. You can see him on YouTube with Business Insider reviewing recent WWI movies.

Academic qualifications

  • D.Phil (Oxon) 2006
  • BA (hons.) (Oxon) 2000

Research interests

Alex’s latest book is 'The Fortress. The Great Siege of Przemysl' (London: Allen Lane, 2019). This is the story of the First World War’s longest siege, and of the opening of the brutal tragedy which befell East-Central Europe during the twentieth century. The book won a Society for Military History 2021 Distinguished Book Award and was a BBC History Magazine and Financial Times ‘Book of the Year’. The Times newspaper praised it as ‘a masterpiece’. ‘Vividly written and well researched …it deserves to become a classic of military history.’

Alex is best known as the author of 'Ring of Steel. Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918' (London and New York: Allen Lane and Basic Books, 2014). This book re-tells the First World War from its instigators’ and losers’ perspectives, and explains how this ‘total war’ bequeathed a fateful legacy of impoverishment, political extremism and racial hatred to East-Central Europe. The book won the 2014 Wolfson History Prize, the 2014 Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History, the Society for Military History’s 2015 Distinguished Book Award and the 2015 British Army Military Book of the Year. The Sunday Times named it ‘The History Book of the Year’ for 2014.

Alex is currently working on a new political-sensory history of the July 1932 election in Weimar Germany. This was a crucial campaign: the moment at which over half of the electorate chose radical, anti-system parties of the far left and far right, effectively voting Germany’s first, fragile democracy out of existence. The book will explore the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touch in this critical election campaign in order better to understand the popular reception of party propaganda and the impact on voters of this tense, technologically innovative, violent and emotional time. Through this exciting methodology, the book will illuminate how the Nazis became Germany’s largest political movement and took a decisive step to establishing the Third Reich.

Featured publications

The Fortress. The Great Siege of Przemysl (London / New York: Allen Lane & Basic Books, 2019/20).
Translated into Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Spanish

Ring of Steel. Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918 (London / New York: Allen Lane & Basic Books, 2014).
Translated into Chinese and Hungarian (with a Spanish translation forthcoming)

Enduring the Great War. Combat, Morale and Collapse in the German and British Armies, 1914-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Publications and research outputs

Book

Watson, Alexander. 2023. La fortaleza: Przemyśl, la ciudad que desafió a Rusia en la Primera Guerra Mundial [The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl - Spanish edition]. Madrid: Desperta Ferro Ediciones. ISBN 9788412496468

Watson, Alexander. 2022. Twierdza. Oblężenie Przemyśla i korzenie skrwawionych ziem Europy [The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl - Polish-language edition]. Poznań: Rebis. ISBN 9788381884242

Watson, Alexander. 2022. 血色要塞# 普热梅希尔之围与欧洲浩劫的降临%!英" 亚历山大 著% 范儒天译&& 广州# 广东人民出版社 [The Fortress: The Great Siege of Przemysl - Chinese (Mandarin) Edition]. Guangzhou: Guandong People's Publishing House. ISBN 9787218157658

Book Section

Watson, Alexander. 2024. Tactical Learning and Innovation in the Habsburg Army, 1914-1918. In: Michael P.M. Finch; Aimée Fox and David G. Morgan-Owen, eds. Framing the First World War: Knowledge, Learning, and Military Thought. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

Watson, Alexander. 2018. Ego-Documents from the Invasion of East Prussia, 1914-15. In: Richard Bessel and Dorothee Wierling, eds. Inside World War One? Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198820598

Watson, Alexander. 2018. Kształtowanie się narodu, upadek społeczności lokalnej: Kraków w czasie wojny, 1914-1918’ [‘Building a Nation, Breaking a Community: Cracow at War, 1914-18’]. In: Katarzyna Sierakowska, ed. Pierwsza wojna światowa na ziemiach polskich. Oczekiwania-doświadczenia-konsekwencje [‘The First World War on Polish Territory. Expectations – Experiences – Consequences’]. Warsaw: Instytut Historii PAN. ISBN 9788365880291

Article

Watson, Alexander. 2018. The Greek Catholic Church and the Problem of Ruthenian Desertion in Przemyśl, January 1915: Documents from the Kriegsarchiv, Vienna. Rocznik Przemyski, 54, pp. 287-301. ISSN 2449-7347

Watson, Alexander. 2016. Managing an 'Army of Peoples': Identity, Command and Performance in the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1914-1918. Contemporary European History, 25(2), pp. 233-251. ISSN 0960-7773

Watson, Alexander. 2014. "Unheard-of Brutality": Russian Atrocities against Civilians in East Prussia, 1914-1915. The Journal of Modern History, 86(4), pp. 780-825. ISSN 0022-2801

Professional projects

Alex undertakes a variety of professional activities and historical consultancy work alongside his research and teaching. Public engagement is a core role, and he has widely and influentially disseminated his work on the First World War. For example, Alex made a significant contribution to the design of the government’s flagship First World War educational initiative of the 2014-18 centenary, ‘The Great War Debate’. He also advised the BBC on its historical coverage of the conflict. He has collaborated with a diverse range of stakeholders, including, for example, the U.S. National World War II Museum and the computer games developer, Blackmill Games, to raise knowledge of the First World War. For further details, see his REF 2021 History Impact Case Study.

Media engagements

2024: Historians Rate 51 Military Battles in Movies and TV
Compilation Film in Business Insider's 'How Real Is It? YouTube series

2023: World War I Expert Rates More WWI Battles in Movies Warfare
Film in Business Insider's 'How Real Is It? YouTube series

2023: World War I Expert Rates 6 WWI Battles in Movies
Film in Business Insider's 'How Real Is It? YouTube series

2022: Christmas 2022 University Challenge (Alumni Edition)
Represented Exeter College, Oxford in the First Round and in the Semi-Finals

2018: France 24
Current affairs commentary on World War I Centenary, 11 November 2018

2016: Herrenmenschen für den Kaiser „Ober-Ost“ – die vergessene Kolonie
Interviewee on this Franco-German ZDF / ARTE documentary

2016: France 24
Current affairs commentary on World War I Centenary and Brexit, 1 July 2016

2014: BBC News Channel
Current affairs commentary on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 17 August 2014

2014: Die Suche nach den verlorenen Söhnen. 100 Jahre Erster Weltkrieg
Interviewee on this German ZDF documentary

Areas of supervision

Alex welcomes research proposals on any aspect of nineteenth and twentieth-century East-Central European history or on the history of modern war. He is very happy to supervise single country and local topics, but also encourages prospective students to consider taking on comparative, transnational and interdisciplinary studies. He is open to proposals for joint supervision with colleagues at Goldsmiths or at other University of London colleges.