Hundred Days: The End of the Great War

Description

The brutal, heroic and extraordinary final days of the First World War On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in November 1918, the guns of the Western Front fell silent. The Armistice, which brought the Great War to an end, marked a seminal moment in modern European and World history. Yet the story of how the war ended remains little-known. In this compelling and ground-breaking new study, Nick Lloyd examines the last days of the war and asks the question- how did it end? Beginning at the heralded turning-point on the Marne in July 1918, Hundred Days traces the epic story of the next four months, which included some of the bloodiest battles of the war.

Nick Lloyd is Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies at King's College London, based at the Joint Services Command & Staff College in Shrivenham, Wiltshire. He specialises in British military and imperial history in the era of the Great War and is the author of two books, Loos 1915 (2006), and The Amritsar Massacre- The Untold Story of One Fateful Day (2011).

This is a powerful and moving book by a rising military historian. Lloyd's depiction of the great battles of July-November provides compelling evidence of the scale of the Allies' victories and the bitter reality of German defeat -- Gary Sheffield (Professor of War Studies) Lloyd enters the upper tier of Great War historians with this admirable account of the war's final campaign * Publishers Weekly * Writing about the last 100 days of the war on the Western Front, Lloyd asks whether the Allies had learnt anything from the previous years of conflict and whether the Germans were really defeated in 1918 -- Joanna Bourke * The Telegraph * Lloyd's brisk and thoroughly engrossing book leaves no doubt that the Germans were beaten fair and square where it really mattered - on the battlefield -- Dominic Sandbrook * The Evening Standard * There is a grim fascination to the endgame, as the hopes still nursed by the Germans were finally extinguished and the Allies won a victory that in seemed inevitable in retrospect * Metro * Gives the reader an insight into the raw emotions of the period and lends immediacy to the more sober narrative * The Oxford Times * Compelling, very readable * Books Monthly * As Nick Lloyd's account of the great Allied counter-offensives of summer 1918 convincingly shows, the Allies had learned (if painfully slowly) how to win battles . . . the German army was absolutely, totally defeated in the field -- John Lewis-Stempel * The Express * Hundred Days is a bracing re-dramatization of the horrors that were most fresh in the minds of all concerned when those days were over -- Steve Donoghue * Open Letters Monthly * Very well-researched and well-written. Reminds us just how important this crushing endgame was -- Andrew Roberts Conveys the epic sweep of events, as the allied troops relentlessly pushed the German divisions back, with staggering losses . . . Lloyd also gives the worm's eye-view of what it was like for the men on the ground. He is expert at bringing to life, in a few lines, the characters of the top brass -- Brandon Robshaw * The Independent *