Hundred Days

by Nick Lloyd
Category: "World History - Military"
Pages:279
Year of Publication:2014
Date Added:06/27/2024
Date Read:10/21/2024
Notes:Subtitle: The Campaign that Ended World War I

A look at the Allies (English, French, American, Canadian, Australian) armies and their final campaign against Germany. Still at the cost of thousands of lives, the Allies finally learned how to counteract trench warfare — creeping bombardments, tanks, spread-out infantry. Once they got the Germans moving backwards, a series of attacks in different areas, directed by French General Foch, kept things going until the Germans were faced with war in their own country. The author considers the question of whether the Germans gave up without actually losing—the argument Hitler used to gain power. He shows how there were still ardent militarist who fought hard and wanted to keep fighting, but that revolution and mutiny was breaking out all over Germany and, if the government had waited longer to surrender, the nation would probably have become Communist. On the other hand, he makes a good argument that it was the Allies who should have continued fighting — occupying Germany and eliminating their ability to start the war all over again 20 years later. The French especially, and also the British to a large degree, were worn out, but the Americans were arriving in vast numbers and proving themselves capable of continuing the fight.
My Rating: 6

Reviews for Hundred Days

Review - Hundred Days

So close to being an excellent book, but it failed for two main reasons. One was redundancy. Battle after battle was described, all of which involved the same strategy (bombs, tanks, infantry), and achieved the same results (gaining of ground until the attackers outdistanced their supply lines). The other reason was poor maps — so general in nature that they illustrate nothing. The author is British, so he didn't have much, or much good, to say about the Americans other than that they were sure they could win the war but ended up slogging it bit by bit like the rest of the Allied armies. I've been looking for a book that described the American battles in detail. This wasn't it.

Reviewed by Roger on 2024-10-21 12:45:22

Back to the list