Eleventh month, eleventh day, eleventh hour
Subtitle: Armistice Day, 1918 : World War I and its violent climax
By: Joseph E. Persico.
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2004
Place of publication: United States
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 456
ISBN-13: 9780375508257
Description: "November 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, though, 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 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 final hour."--BOOK JACKET.
Table of contents: title: Introduction; title: The desperate hours; title: The boy who blew up the world; title: "A lovely war"; title: "Goya at his most Macabre"; title: Upon a midnight clear; title: "The God who gave the cannon gave the cross"; title: The three musketeers; title: A scar from Belgium to Switzerland; title: Every inch a soldier; title: "They shall not pass"; title: "What did you do in the great war, Dad?"; title: "Tomorrow I shall take my men over the top"; title: "Hindenburg! The name itself is massive"; title: "Keeping the world safe for democracy"; title: "Acts prejudicial to military discipline"; title: Doughboys; title: "Sweet and noble to die for one's country"; title: "Over there"; title: "If this is our country, then this is our war"; title: Ludendorff's grand gamble; title: "A German bullet is cleaner than a whore"; title: Baptism in Cantigny; title: "Do you want to live forever?"; title: "I don't expect to see any of you again"; title: "Do you wish to take part in this battle?"; title: A civilized end to pointless slaughter; title: A plague in the trenches; title: "Victims who will die in vain"; title: "We knew the end could not be far off"; title: "Pass the word. Cease fire at eleven!"; title: "Little short of murder"; title: The fate of Private Gunther; title: "This fateful morning came an end to all wars"; title: Greater losses than on D-Day; title: "Only the dead have seen the end of war"; title: Epilogue : Marching home; title: Appendix : Casualty statistics