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 - Softcover

Best, Nicholas

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9781586487720: 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

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1586487728 ISBN 13: 9781586487720

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2009

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Unlike 1945, the First World War did not end neatly with the unconditional surrender of the Germans. After a dramatic week of negotiations, military offensives and the beginning of a Communist revolution, the German Imperial regime collapsed. The Allies eventually granted an armistice to a new German government, and at eleventh hour on the 11th of November, the guns officially ceased fire, but only after 11,000 casualties had been sustained—almost as many as on D-Day.

Nicholas Best tells the story in sweeping, cinematic style, revealing that events were far from pre-ordained. From the generals' headquarters to the frontline trenches, from the factories to the farms, he reveals the twists and turns that led to the end of the Great War.

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About the Author:

Nicholas Best is the former fiction critic for the Financial Times and the author of a number of novels, travel and history books. He lives in Cambridge, England.

From Publishers Weekly:

Historian and novelist Best, former fiction critic for the Financial Times, offers a sophisticated presentation of the effects of the Great War's final week on its military and civilian participants. Day by day, he presents firsthand accounts from a spectrum of familiar and unfamiliar sources. On November 5, 1918, Scots Guards Pvt. Stephen Graham took part in an attack with an elite British division, while American artillery Capt. Harry Truman picked flowers to send his fianc�e and contemplated running for Congress when—and if—he got home. On November 8, Evelyn Bl�cher, an Englishwoman married to a German prince, feared an outbreak of riots or revolution in Germany. And on November 11, Armistice Day, a crowd of Australians celebrated by storming Boulogne's red light district to the battle cry of let's fuck 'em free! What might have been merely a kaleidoscopic series of vignettes is given shape and focus by Best's skill at paraphrasing the narratives and synergizing the experiences of those who lived through the greatest day in history, knowing they had survived the deadliest war up to then—and suddenly asking, What happens now? 16 pages of b&w photos. (Nov.)
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