The Last Battle: Victory, Defeat, and the End of World War I
Peter Hart
(Author)
Description
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.Product Details
Price
$37.99
$35.33
Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Publish Date
March 01, 2018
Pages
464
Dimensions
6.5 X 9.3 X 1.6 inches | 1.7 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780190872984
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About the Author
Peter Hart is Oral Historian of the Imperial War Museum. He is the author of Gallipoli, The Great War, and Fire and Movement, all published by Oxford University Press.
Reviews
"Written by one of Britain's best scholars of the Great War, The Last Battle follows Hart's usual synergy of well-paced analytical text with first-hand accounts by participants. These are especially well chosen: Hart's knowledge of and sensitivity to this material reflects his years of work at the Imperial War Museum. He evaluates the respective contributions of the Allies and the growing debility of the Germans with a sharp eye for both battlefields and home fronts as the combatants put their last, best efforts into a war that had exhausted both sides, and whose physical and spiritual scars endure today." --Dennis Showalter, Colorado College
"Well written, with an exceptional collection of personal narratives, this book provides a fascinating look at the last four months of World War I."--New York Journal of Books
"The account of the final campaigns of the war is told from a refreshing perspective that examines both the allied plan as well as the German response...I highly recommend this excellent addition to the historiography of the First World War." --Battles and Book Reviews
"A timely and compelling account of 'The Hundred Days Offensive.'" --Centenary News
"[An] excellent account... This book pays just tribute to the allied military achievement of 1918, too often forgotten in our preoccupation with earlier horrors."
--The Sunday Times (U.K.)
"Hart enlivens his lucid account of this final battle with quotes from memoirs, letters, and diaries. He shows how increased professionalism and better tactics allowed British and French troops, fortified by the arrival of the U.S. Army, to push back the German forces. He also opens a window into the minds of individual soldiers, relating how they accepted the possibility of death and their relief at the eventual armistice."--Foreign Affairs
"An eminent oral historian taps the voices of those who fought in the pivotal battles of 1918 for this sweeping account of how the Allied forces achieved total domination over the German army on the Western Front."--MHQ Magazine
"What sets Hart's history apart is that it is not the typical narrative description which includes the movements of major ground forces and the strategy behind those movements. While he does provide a well-structured chronological account of what happened in each of the final battles, he also tells that story through the words of hundreds of the men who were there and were lucky enough to survive." -- C. Douglas Kroll, The Northern Mariner
