A Not Too Distant Mirror (Rating 4 of 5)
» William Holmes
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.
A good compilation. (Rating 3 of 5)
» Michael MCCARTHY
The author has succeeded in capturing the emotions of the week leading up to the Armistice by collating a series of experiences recorded by a broad cross section of people. Much of the fascination is in the accounts by people who had experienced the war and who having survived went on to gain fame and fortune in later years. Some of the accounts are fairly well known but that does not detract from the book. The account of Wilfred Owen's parents receiving the fateful telegram just as the celebrations start, will always be a defining moment in the human history of the war, and is not diminished by its retelling in this context. The overwhelming message is that the unreality of peace was very strange to people conditioned by years of war, and that the insanity of fighting right up to the eleventh hour, often driven by personal ambition, was in some cases criminal. On the other hand many wanted to fight on, and largely because they saw the folly of allowing the German Army to retire `undefeated' and thus National Socialism with one of its greatest lies. This is not a demanding book but it is a good relaxed read and throws up a number of thoughtful points.
Mike McCarthy
Editor, The Battle Guide
Guild of Battlefield Guides.
(Rating 4 of 5)
(Rating 3 of 5)
