Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAn Able Account of the End of World War I on the Battlefield
Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2014
Nick Lloyd has written a straightforward and compelling account of the final battles of World War I.
The author observes that their are many books on the origins and events of the beginning of the war, but few on the end. In particular, there is an inadequate understanding of the impact of American participation on the battlefield. Mr. Lloyd remedies that by providing a clear and readable history of the battles of the final days. He has vivid portraits of the leading allied generals: Foch, Pershing, Haig and Petain. He personalizes the story with battlefield accounts by the soldiers themselves, including an account of a relative who died in the war's closing days. Despite all the tragedy and horror we have witnessed in the intervening years, there is still nothing quite as desperate and heart-rending as the story of foot soldiers in the mud, gas and barbed wire of WWI.
Lloyd makes it clear how the German war machine had effectively lost its bearings and was grinding to a halt. Field Marshal Ludendorff had become irrational, despondent one minute and full of bravado the next. After the Kaiser sacked him, the army was probably better off, but it had lost cohesion. The Kaiser remained in a state of delusion himself, confident that the people and Army stood behind him. He was soon to learn better.
Congratulations to Mr. Lloyd for illuminating the end of the conflict in this well-written and helpful account.
