got this on Audible with the initial intent of simply having something to listen to outside because Grover Gardner, my favorite audiobook narrator, reads it and because WWI and WWII literature makes up a sizeable portion of my reading diet.
My expectations weren't high, but I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would, so much so that I picked up the hardback from my library so I could pick up where I left off when I came in from outside.
Toland has his biases e, g. , very proHaig, but that's not so unusual and I can live with it, The quality of the writing is very good and Toland, like the best history writers, knows how to weave bigpicture events with personal interactions and engagements, with the former setting the stage for the latter and the latter giving color to the former.
Warmly recommended, and I hope to read more of Toland soon, John Toland's books are a safe bet for engaging histories, This one covers the last year of the first world war from the perspectives of the major statesGermany, France, Russia, the UK and the USAinvolved and from individuals both in the trenches and in the halls of power.
I've read a number of histories dealing with this conflict before, but, at over six hundred pages devoted to a single year, this history has substantially informed, even revised, my understanding of the war and its consequences.
Insofar as there are weaknesses it is as regards the other players: Serbia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Belgium, Holland, Japan etc.
They are barely mentioned and then only tangentially, This is neither a perfectly objective nor an exhaustive history, If, however, the goal is seen as setting the stage for the interwar years and the conflict to follow, then the job may be said to have been well done.
What particularly interested me was, first, the attention Toland played to events in the Soviet Union, both in the west and in the far east and, second, his treatment of the social revolution in Germany which actually ended the war, albeit on less favorable terms than might have been if the revolt had not occurred.
My opinions of Foch had been negative before reading this book, Now they are
more positive, And while Woodrow Wilson had descended from being, in my imagination, a hero, while I was in high school, to a villain, since college, Toland's treatment of him has given me a greater appreciation of his breadth and complexity.
Toland, a worldclass historian, recounts the last year of the Great War, Every move by every key general and politician in four countries they kept a lot of diaries and notes and sprinkled with the experiences of frontline soldiers and diplomats.
The book is too long, the detail too much particularly in its retelling of every meeting between the top peopledozens, maybe hundreds of meetings that end in no decision or in a decision that will be changed the next day, or end with the promise of the principals to meet with other top people, find out what they think, and then have another meeting.
But what part should be cut This is the stepbystep process that ended the deadlock in the French and Belgian trenches.
Lenin and his Bolsheviks had overthrown the Czar and pulled Russia out of the war, Germany brought troops from the east for a decisive offensive in the west at the same time, American soldiers were arriving in large numbers, tipping the balance for the western powers.
After three years of static slaughter, things happened rapidly, The Germans almost won, but they ran out of steam a little short, The French almost rebelled, but they held out, The British almost quit, but they persuaded the French to help just enough,
In the end, Corporal Hitler and many of his fellow soldiers felt betrayed, unaware that their generals had thrown up their hands and declared the war lost.
Because civilians in Germany were starving, because Austria and Turkey had given up, and perhaps most importantly, soldiers, sailors, and workers were revolting against the Kaiser and moving to create a Bolshevik revolution in Germany.
Even though he concentrated on only one year of the war and the book was almostpages long, the author still tried to cover too much.
He did a pretty good job highlighting the political aspects but shortchanged the conduct of the war and what was happening in other parts of the world outside the Western Front.
Rereading, for reference to my current wargame, A thorough, infinitely readable account of the last year of the Great War, Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August is indespensible for understanding the elements that culminated in the outset of The Great War.
I read No Man's Land to understand how the war ended with that oftmisunderstood term, an armistice.
I had thought that WWI was simply a fouryear stalemate over the same ground.
It was suprising to learn how close the Germans came to capturing Paris at the end of May, and how desperate the French and British were until the Americans arrived.
It's a good book that can make a known outcome dramatic, The closer it got to Novemberth, the harder it was to put the book down.
There were long swathes of grimness, Trench warfare and tank warfare are two of the highest species of misery,
As a afficianado of Anthony Trollope I relished this side note by Lt, Patrick Campbell
The bombardment had turned him into "another person, one out of whom all courage had been poured away.saw the end of three dynastic rulers in Russia, Germany and Austria, It also brought the influenza pandemic to which more people succombed than deaths from all the battles of the Great War.
" His fear haunted him and he thought if he had something to do he might forget it.
Afterward he had read Trollope's Framley Parsonage, "It was delightful. Nothing happens in the book, And one day, I thought, we may return to a life in which nothing ever happens.
"
The book, the writing, the choice of stories and narratives all held my interest.
The descriptions of the end were poignant: an "orgy of rejoicing" in London, the silence on the battlefield, the bitterness in Berlin.
In France they celebrated by singing, Opera singers sang the three anthems of America, Britain, and France, Choruses and folk songs followed, It was a community song festival the like of which no city has ever seen and the like of which may never come again.
. . the singing brought the great and exultant day to a close,
I enjoy reading about military history, so I read this in commemoration of the centenary of the end of WWI.
I hadn't known much at all about the last year of that war, Although the US entered the war in, they really had no impact until the spring of.
Even though the US forces were pretty small compared to the large numbers of other forces on the Western Front, they tipped the balance toward the allies.
Their enthusiasm, and the promise of many more US troops and supplies to come, made the difference in the stalemate between the much larger but exhausted forces in place.
My great uncle Ben fought in the warbut he died before I was born, and I never knew much about him.
I did, however, inherit his WWI era sleeping bag, which I used for innumerable sleepouts and camping vacations growing upto the point that I worn it out.
It was an odd sleeping bagit was an insulated sleeve which was wrapped in a removable canvas cover that tied around it.
Ina fairly small allied force invaded Russia from the north, I had never heard about that, The book did not make the motive for this very clearbecause I think the allies themselves had various motives and were not clear themselves.
There was a mixture of opposing the communists, fearing the Germans might gain too much influence, and the Japanese wanting to control some land.
Anyway, it seemed not to amount to anything much,
The book ended with the armistice but before the Treaty of Versailles,
The book had a combination of views from the trenches, from the commanders and from the politicians.
It focussed mostly on the British, with less on the French, less on the Germans, less on the US, and very little on Russia.
So it was not really a balanced account, but it tried to offer fairly broad coverage.
As a self described first war history nerd, this book is full of details many of us never knew about.
Fascinating illumination of the egos of generals and politicians, While this book provides detailed accounts of the German Spring Offensive, the Russian Revolution and the politics of Woodrow Wilson, it is far too lacking in information on the Middle East theatre, actions on the Italian Front and the military details of theDay Offensive to be an encompassing recounting of the final year of WWI.
I'm a little shocked that this was considered peak pop history in thes/s, This thing is a mess, a mish mash of stream of thought snippets that does has no organization.
It's well and good to focus on the 'everyman' experience in war, but it becomes meaningless if that makes it impossible to understand the broader narrative.
This book was one of the first books that I read covering the First World War and I found it to be a great account and very easy to read.
A very readable account of the last year of the Great War it almost reads like a novel.
It goes almost day by day, giving stories about what trench warfare was like, based on experiences told about by survivors.
Also gives accounts of what the top brass and the politicians were doing and bickering about.
Toland covers both the Allies the UK, France, the USA and Germany, The book is at its best covering the Western Front and events in Russia, If you want to know in depth about what was happening elsewhere, e, g. in Italy or the Middle East, you will need to read other accounts, Likewise, to fully understand what happened in, it helps a lot to know what all had happened since the outbreak of the war in.
Through vivid and welldocumented vignettes from the trenches to cabinet rooms, Toland describes the last year of World War I extremely well.
The military side is interesting but the political sides a shocker, For example, Col. House intimated that the US would withdraw from the war if the other Allies didnt accept the Fourteen Points.
The maps are great. WWI was expected by the participants to last approximately a year and was seen as a "great adventure".
The Allies and the Central Powers were each convinced of their military superiority, They couldn't have been more wrong as the war dragged on for four years in the blood soaked battle of the trenches where millions were killed for the attainment of a few miles or even yards of territory which was promptly lost the next day.
It was a slaughter that boggles the imagination, The author begins this book with the last yearof WWI, when the Allies may have been near defeat.
It appeared that the only hope was persuading the United States to physically join the war against the Central Powers the US had declared war in April,and bring the resources of men and matérial to the battle.
Toland follows the negotiations, plans, and selfserving actions of President Woodrow Wilson, as well as the battles that continued to rage.
Maps are included . hooray! Wilson believed that his Fourteen Points would secure him a place as one of the greatest leaders in history.
I don't feel that the author was particularly biased against Wilson since his facts are based on diaries and letters that clearly define Wilson's position.
He wanted to be in charge even though the Allies Britain, France, Italy, et al had lost a generation of young men in the first years of the war.
Toland follows each month ofwith clarity and his writing style is smooth and consistent.
He also gives a few pages explaining the "stab in the back" theory that eventually led to the rise of Hitler and WWII.
Highly recommended. .