Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
An account of the final months of the Great War, and how the Allies, including freshly arrived American soldiers, defeated Germany on the Western Front. While much has been made of-and written about-the guns of August 1914, the story of the guns of August 1918 is a different matter. Yet the campaigns of the summer and fall were the climactic battles of the Great War and determined its outcome. The triumph was not by any means "sudden," but rather the result of four months of bitter fighting. In The Last Battle, preeminent World War I historian Peter Hart offers an account of those final months and their main features: the Allied victories at the Fifth Battle of Ypres and the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne, where American forces made their decisive contribution; and the offensives coordinated by the Allied Supreme Command that cracked the Hindenburg Line and wore down the German resistance. Millions of men contributed to the eventual Allied victory, ending a conflict that had bled Europe dry. As The Last Battle illuminates, victory was partly a matter of German political unrest and internal collapse, but the Allied success on the battlefield precipitated it.
As with The Great War and Fire and Movement, The Last Battle features Hart's gift for illuminating the interplay of figures and events, bringing both intimacy and sweep to the history. He allows those who were there to tell the story, immersing the reader in the days leading up to November 11, 1918.
Synopsis
Author of
The Great War, as well as celebrated accounts of the battles of the Somme, Passchendaele, Jutland, and Gallipoli, historian Peter Hart now turns to World War One's final months. Much has been made of-and written about-August 1914. There has been comparatively little focus on August 1918 and the lead-up to November. Because of the fixation on the Great War's opening moves, and the great battles that followed over the course of the next four years, the endgame seems to come as a stunning anticlimax. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 the guns simply fell silent.
The Last Battle definitively corrects this misperception. As Hart shows, a number of factors precipitated the Armistice. After four years of bloodshed, Germany was nearly bankrupt and there was a growing rift between the military High Command and political leadership. But it also remained a determined combatant, and France and Great Britain had equally been stretched to their limits; Russia had abandoned the conflict in the late winter of 1918. However complex the causes of Germany's ultimate defeat, Allied success on the Western Front, as Hart reveals, tipped the scales-the triumphs at the Fifth Battle of Ypres, the Sambre, the Selle, and the Meuse-Argonne, where American forces made arguably their greatest contribution. The offensives cracked the Hindenburg Line and wore down the German resistance, precipitating collapse.
Final victory came at great human cost and involved the combined efforts of millions of men. Using the testimony of a range of participants, from the Doughboys, Tommies, German infantrymen, and French poilus who did the fighting, to those in command during those last days and weeks, Hart brings intimacy and sweep to the events that led to November 11, 1918.