The Last Four Years

Includes the First World War Illustrations Pack – 73 battle plans and diagrams and 198 photos The epic story of the last campaign of the Allied armies that shattered the German Army on the Western Front in 1918 bringing the First World War to a close. Renowned military writer Major-General Sir Frederick Maurice brings together the stories of the victorious armies who advanced from the Belgian coastline to the Swiss frontiers in vivid detail. “WHO won the war? is a question that has been often asked. In the countries of all the great Allied Powers there have been found those who answered it to their own satisfaction as patriots, because it is easy to demonstrate that the war would not have been won, as and when it was won, had any of those countries failed to do what it actually achieved. Most of us, however, are agreed that victory was the result of combination, and I am convinced that that opinion will grow stronger the better the story is known... In this book I have sought to give a picture of Foch’s great campaign and to sketch in due proportion the parts which went to make up the whole. I have reduced my descriptions of the battles to the simplest terms, because my object is to explain the broad causes of success and of failure, and there is danger, in entering into details of operations on so vast a scale, of losing sight of the wood for the trees. As no story of a campaign can be complete unless it describes the intentions, aims and feelings of the enemy, at least at the most critical periods, I have collected the best information available on these points from captured documents or from publications in Germany. Fortunately, there has in that country been considerable public discussion between Hindenburg, Ludendorff and their critics as to the conduct of the former during the period with which I am here chiefly concerned, and material has not been lacking.”-Author’s Preface.