Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent ClimaxNovember 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered–more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion. Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous–among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers’ lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war’s last hour. Persico recounts the war’s bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory. The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called “the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought.” |
Contents
3 | |
15 | |
A Lovely War | 25 |
Goya at His Most Macabre | 34 |
Upon a Midnight Clear | 43 |
The God Who Gave the Cannon Gave the Cross | 53 |
The Three Musketeers | 61 |
A Scar from Belgium to Switzerland | 66 |
Baptism in Cantigny | 231 |
Do You Want to Live Forever? | 246 |
I Dont Expect to See Any of You Again | 254 |
Do You Wish to Take Part in This Battle? | 267 |
A Civilized End to Pointless Slaughter | 278 |
A Plague in the Trenches | 292 |
Victims Who Will Die in Vain | 306 |
We Knew the End Could Not Be Far Off | 320 |
Every Inch a Soldier | 76 |
They Shall Not Pass | 80 |
What Did You Do in the Great War Dad? | 89 |
Tomorrow I Shall Take My Men over the Top | 101 |
Hindenburg The Name Itself Is Massive | 121 |
Keeping the World Safe for Democracy | 133 |
Acts Prejudicial to Military Discipline | 146 |
Doughboys | 157 |
Sweet and Noble to Die for Ones Country | 168 |
Over There | 179 |
If This Is Our Country Then This Is Our War | 201 |
Ludendorffs Grand Gamble | 210 |
A German Bullet Is Cleaner Than a Whore | 225 |
Pass the Word Cease Fire at Eleven | 327 |
Little Short of Murder | 337 |
The Fate of Private Gunther | 348 |
This Fateful Morning Came an End to All Wars | 362 |
Greater Losses Than on DDay | 375 |
Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War | 387 |
Marching Home | 393 |
Acknowledgments | 403 |
Casualty Statistics | 407 |
Notes | 409 |
Bibliography | 429 |
437 | |
Other editions - View all
Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I ... Joseph E. Persico No preview available - 2005 |
Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I ... Joseph E. Persico No preview available - 2005 |
Common terms and phrases
Adolf Hitler advance Albertine Allies American armistice Arthur Jensen artillery attack battalion battle bayonets began Black Jack Pershing boys brigade British Brittain Bullard called Canadian captain casualties civilian Colonel commander comrades Corps Cude dead death Desagneaux diary died Division doughboys enemy face field fighting Fighting 69th fire Foch force France French German Germany's ground Haig hand headquarters Hindenburg Hitler Ibid Infantry Jensen kaiser Kielmeyer killed Lanz later Lieutenant lines Lloyd George Ludendorff machine guns Marshal Meuse-Argonne miles military months morning never no-man's-land NOVEMBER 11 offensive officer Panichas and Read Passchendaele Pershing Pershing's poilus recalled Regiment rifle Roland Roland Leighton runner sector Serbia sergeant shell shot Siegfried Sassoon soldiers Somme staff Stenay Sulzbach Testament of Youth told Tommies Triplet troops Truman U.S. Army Vera Brittain Verdun victory war's watched western front wire World wounded wrote York Ypres
References to this book
Ready, Begin! Practical Strategies for Cultivating Courage Lawrence M. Kryske No preview available - 2008 |