Customer Reviews

The Greatest Day in History: How, on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, the First World War Finally Came to an End

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November 11, 2008 will be the 90th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the fighting in World War I. Nicholas Best, a novelist, historian and former fiction critic for the Financial Times, delivers a well-written narrative of the week leading up to what The London Daily Express called "The Greatest Day in History."

He tells the tale from many perspectives--German soldiers retreating in good order in the face of the Allied onslaught, Allied troops fighting hard to settle scores for fallen comrades and murdered civilians, combatants on both sides trying (but often failing) to avoid dying in a war that was almost over. In Berlin, aristocrats watch as Germany descends into chaos and mutinous soldiers raise the red flag of Bolshevism. The book recounts the experiences of the famous of the time and of the future--Wilfred Owen, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Conan Doyle, Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, Adolph Hitler, George Patton, Harry Truman, Douglas McArthur and many others.

Such a narrative is bound to be kaleidescopic. With German civilians dying of starvation and the threat of civil war growing by the day, German leaders force Kaiser Wilhelm to abdicate and sign an Armistice that amounts to a complete capitulation. Many Allied leaders believe that the sooner the war is ended, the better--others fear that unless Germany itself is invaded and beaten, the German army will eventually be back for a rematch. Though most soldiers want the war to end before they are killed, there are a few that want the war to continue, for personal glory, or to settle old scores, or to beat Germany so thoroughly that it will never again dare to start a fight. And for the thousands who celebrate ecstatically and often drunkenly at the cease fire, there are those, like Vera Brittain, who have no one to celebrate with, her fiance, her brother, and their best friends having been killed in the War.

Juggernauts like a world war do not stop smoothly. Some soldiers didn't know that the war was scheduled to end, and they died in some final, pointless skirmish. Others died because their commanders, anxious for glory and reputation, pushed their units forward until the moment the cease fire took effect. 2,738 people died on the Western Front on the last day of the Great War, almost as many as were killed a generation later on D-Day. Amid all the tumult and mixed feelings, the book ends abruptly, as a convalescing Adolph Hitler resolves to enter politics so he can wreak revenge on Germany's enemies.

My one disappointment with "The Greatest Day in History" is that it doesn't bring some of the individual narratives to a conclusion--as the book ends, many of the story's protaganists are still in peril, and the fates of some are revealed only in the notes that accompany the book's photographs. What happened to these people, one wonders, in the days and weeks following the Armistice? That said, I recognize that the power of the book's narrative lies in capturing the end of World War I in all its tragedy, glory, celebration, confusion, uncertainty and ambiguity. A coda might have detracted from the sense of immediacy, so I'll defer to the author's judgment on the point.

The author captures much of the spirit of the times -- the rise of Bolshevism, the anger at Germany and the Kaiser, the infighting among the Allies -- and for that I thank him.

But I wonder how thoroughly he researched when I see this on page 52: "The Germans and Irish were not the only ones who had voted against (Wilson). Large numbers of blacks had too, and women and farmers and businessmen." Women did not vote in national elections until after ratification of the 19th amendment to the Constitution, which took place on August 26, 1920.

This is a well written narrative on the days leading up to Armistice Day even if it is a little lightweight.
Author Best paints a good illustration of German and Allied actions and reactions in the final days of WWI. He provides a very clear picture of the turmoil and tumult that engulfed Germany in its final days - a country wracked with rebellion and Bolshevik insurrection. While the rest of the world saw the Germans as the bad guys, it is awful to read that so many young allied lives were lost even in the last 24 hours of battle, because many officers wanted to be seen to have a `good war.'

It is now a well accepted fact that the seeds of WWII came from the Armistice and the terms imposed on Germany. Interestingly, many allied leaders foresaw this - Haig and Clemenceau among them - but were not in a position to change the terms.

Some quibbles about an enjoyable book that is worth reading - I would have liked to have seen a more in depth portrait of the Kaiser and he introduces a number of characters whom he forgets to clarify what happened including the crew of U-67 who have no idea the war is over as they "sneak through the straits of Gibraltar," and we never hear from them again!

Minor quibbles about an enjoyable book. Read it.

It takes a long series of events to start a war, and it takes a long series to end it. "The Greatest Day in History: How, On the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month, The First World War Came to an End" chronicles the series of events that led to the conclusion of World War I and the unconditional surrender of the Germans. The story covers the events leading up to the surrender including the final bloody morning in great detail, informing readers with the intriguing tale. "The Greatest Day in History" is a must for anyone who wants to call themselves World War I history buff.

This is absolutely not a scholarly work, and there is precious little to recommend it as a popular work. There is nothing original, no analysis, no significant narrative, and the entire content appears to have been lifted piece by piece - unattributed - from the list of memoirs that constitutes the bibliography. There are no footnotes or endnotes. There are many, many totally uncredited direct quotes. Not even 'casual' credits like "As Joe Schmoe wrote in his memoirs after the war...". I suppose this is technically not plagiarism because of the age of the original works, but it really colors the impression left on the reader.
In the first third of the book it seems that we will follow a few key characters through the events leading up to and immediately after Armistice day. Of particular interest are the political convulsions within Germany that drove the collapse of the military effort. However, this narrative thread soon dissolves into an endlessly repetitive series of vignettes highlighting the experiences of just about everyone who ever wrote a memoir covering the period - mostly 'celebrities'. None of these segments appear to be the products of original research. Of course, the complete lack of notes makes it impossible to be sure. The subject of all of these is the anticipation of, and ultimately, the celebration after, the signing of the armistice. The only originality contributed by this author seems to have been to group these vignettes somewhat (theater people, diplomats, military, etc....), and to mold them into a somewhat common narrative form. But that process in itself leads to monotony, which, indeed, sets in quickly in the latter half of the book. So - not a complete waste of time, but could have been done much more authoritatively and more interestingly.

I have to say in praise of this work was that it did a very credible job of following the last few hours of the First World War and what took place in the scramble to conclude the Armistice. I can also agree with the author that the terms that were concluded helped to sow the seeds of the second world war. The book does have a great weakness in that it is overly technical and as was mentioned earlier there is too little time spent on the reaction of the common troops. The author also can't help himself but focus on the well known and famous/infamous or soon to be so.

All in all this is an interesting, if deeply flawed history of the final days of World War One and how the allied need for revenge sowed the seeds for World War Two.

This book covers the history of the last week of the First World War, from Monday November 4 to Monday November 11 1918, through short anecdotes centered on some famous figures of the time (Pershing, Marechal Foch, Erzberger, Kaiser Wilhelm, FeldMarshall Hindenburg, General Groener, and many others) and some more obscure soldiers and civilians. It is an easy read but not always a very interesting one.

The numerous stories of Allied attacks and German withdrawals would have benefited from a map. Without it the names of those small French and Belgian villages and creeks are of little interest.
The celebrations of the Armistice around the Allied world are of moderate interest but they are depicted on some 84 pages. I found that a bit long and repetitious after a dozen pages.
Since several dozens of soldiers and civilians are mentioned by name I would have found it interesting if the author had written an appendix on what happened to the survivors. The Kaiser for example lived long enough to see Hitler succeed where he had failed when France (militarily led by the "Generalissime" Weygand who had been Marechal Foch's chief of staff) was defeated in June 1940. The anti-republican FeldMarshall Hindenburg, somewhat surprisingly, died as the last President of the Weimar Republic. Etc.

However, the accounts of the Bolshevist, or more accurately the pacifist anti-imperialistic, revolution in Germany and those of the travels and trials of the German Armistice delegation are quite interesting.