#To end all wars summary full
#To end all wars summary series

It had been pushed back to the battlefields of 1914 and was moving in only one direction. By November the German Army could fight no longer.

Casualties were still significant, but the gains were decisive.

#To end all wars summary series

A series of co-ordinated hammer blows forced increasingly exhausted German forces back.ДЄllied attacks were flexible, utilising surprise and mobility but also the methodical approach of 1917 when necessary to break German defences.

After four days of fighting at AmiensВ the battle was halted as its effects diminished, with a fresh offensive launched elsewhere. But unlike offensives of the past, the Allies now knew when to stop. Click to read more about To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild. Secretive preparations ensured surprise and the BEF made gains of seven miles on that one day вЂ“ German General Erich Ludendorff described it as the 'black day' of the German Army. The first Allied counter-attacks began in July and the Battle of Amiens opened on 8 August. Both sides had suffered heavy casualties, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had made no strategic gain. Many soldiers felt utterly demoralised and the government's confidence in Haig hit a low point. Although the Canadians finally captured Passchendaele ridge on 10 November, the vital railway still lay five miles away. But the rain returned and conditions once again deteriorated.

This period encouraged Haig to continue the offensive in October. This demoralised the Germans, who did not have an answer to the British 'bite and hold' tactics of taking limited portions of German positions and holding it against counter-attacks that cost the German Army further casualties. Britain, France, the US, and other allies defeat Germany, bringing an end to World War I, billed as the war to end all wars. The drainage of the low-lying battlefield had been destroyed by the bombardment, creating muddy conditions that made movement difficult.Дrier conditions in September enabled British forces to make better progress during this phase of the offensive. Initial attacks failed due to over-ambitious plans and unseasonal rain. British commanders learned difficult but important lessons on the Somme that would contribute to eventual Allied victory in 1918.ДЄ preliminary operation to seize the Messines Ridge was a dramatic success, but the Germans had reinforced their position by the time the main battle was launched on 31 July. But the Allied offensive on the Somme was a strategic necessity fought to meet the needs of an international alliance.

#To end all wars summary full

See full summary, As the Great War begins, Billy and Jack Kelly together. The Somme, like Verdun for the French, has a prominent place in British history and popular memory and has come to represent the loss and apparent futility of the war. To End All Wars is a 2001 war film starring Robert Carlyle, Kiefer Sutherland. British casualties on the first day вЂ“ numbering over 57,000, of which 19,240 were killed вЂ“ make it the bloodiest dayВ in British military history. Citizens faced poor economic conditions, skyrocketing unemployment, political instability, and profound social change. More than one million men from all sides were killed, wounded or captured. Over the next 141 days, the British advanced a maximum of seven miles. Despite a seven-day bombardment prior to the attack on 1 July, the British did not achieve the quick breakthrough their military leadership had planned for and the Somme became a deadlocked battle of attrition. Today, hundreds of military cemeteries spread across the fields of northern France and Belgium contain the bodies of millions of men who died in the вЂњwar to end all wars.вЂќ Can we ever avoid repeating history? ( From the publisher.They were faced with German defences that had been carefully laid out over many months. Two well-known sisters split so bitterly over the war that they ended up publishing newspapers that attacked each other. These critics were sometimes intimately connected to their enemy hawks: one of BritainвЂ™s most prominent women pacifist campaigners had a brother who was commander in chief on the Western Front. Thrown in jail for their opposition to the war were BritainвЂ™s leading investigative journalist, a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and an editor who, behind bars, published a newspaper for his fellow inmates on toilet paper. Hochschild focuses on the long-ignored moral drama of the warвЂ™s critics, alongside its generals and heroes. In a riveting, suspenseful narrative with haunting echoes for our own time, Adam Hochschild brings it to life as never before. World War I stands as one of historyвЂ™s most senseless spasms of carnage, defying rational explanation. To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918