1918: GAMBLE FOR VICTORY: The Greatest Attack of World War I

Generously illustrated with black and white photographs, the emphasis here is on a tactical turning point of W W I-- Ludendorff's genius for generalship had the fatal flaw of deficient logistics. The German failure to move into the areas that they had weakened as well as the time lost when their troops ran amuck combined to defeat Ludendorff's gamble in France. The war is neither glorified nor sentimentalized here. Nevertheless, its discomforts and the horror and exhaustion of the trench war are well caught in superbly selected brief passages from the outstanding diaries and memoirs of German and English soldiers. This is the kind of short book that whets the appetite for further reading. The suggested reading list includes some of the quality adult fiction and non-fiction titles available. There are organizational charts of German and Allied forces and an index.