The Greatest Day in History, by Nicholas Best

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, by Nicholas Best
Public Affairs, a Perseus Books Group, 2008
299 pages, 16 pages of glossy photos, Bibliography and Index
Library: 940.3 BES

Back Matter
The day the First World War finally came to an end was celebrated around the world, prompting the London Daily Express to triumphantly proclaim November 11 "the greatest day in history." Yet the 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, Germany's Imperial regime collapsed. The Kaiser fled to Holland. The Allies eventually granted an armistice to a new German government, and at 11:00 am on November 11, the guns officially ceased fire, but only after 11,000 casualties had been sustained that morning--almost as many as on the more celebrated D-Day 26 years later. The last American to die was Private Henry Gunther of "Baltimore's Own" 313th Regiment. Drafted against his will, Gunther was a German-American, killed at 10.59 am, one minute before the peace.

No other conflict in history better demonstrates the old truism that wars are easier to start than to finish. With more than 40 million casualties across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, the First World War was the bloodiest of the twentieth century, brutal and unflagging right up to the final seconds.

The Greatest Day in History tells the dramatic story of the war's last few days. Drawing on the testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses, among them Adolf Hitler, Charles de Gaulle, Harry S Truman, Ernest Hemingway, Marie Curie, Maurice Chevalier, and future generals MacArthur, Patton and Montgomery, the drama takes us from the general's headquarters to the frontline trenches, from the factories to the farms, revealing the twists and turns that led to the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when the guns at last fell silent.

Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chapter One: Monday, 4 November 1918
Chapter Two: Tuesday, 5 November 1918
Chapter Three: Wednesday, 6 November 1918
Chapter Four: Thursday, 7 November 1918
Chapter Five: Friday, 8 November 1918
Chapter Six: Saturday, 9 November 1918
Chapter Seven: Sunday, 10 November 1918
Chapter Eight: Monday, 11 November 1918, the early hours
Chapter Nine: Monday, 11 November 1918, 11 am
Chapter Ten: Monday, 11 November 1918, afternoon
Chapter Eleven: Monday, 11 November 1918, evening
Bibliography
Index


Photos
--unidentified dead German gunner, Villers Devy Dun Sassey, Nov 4, 1918
--Captain Charles de Gaulle
--Harry Truman
--Sergeant-Major Flora Sandes (woman who served in Serbian infantry)
--Herbert Sulzbach
--Matthias Erzberger, leader of the German delegation
--Chancellor of Germany, Prince Max von Baden
--General Wilhelm Groner
--Philipp Scheidemann, at the Chancellery in Berlin
--Princess Blucher
--Unidentified German soldiers on Brandenburg Gate
--Corporal Teilhard de Chardin
--Ludwig Wittgenstein
--George Coles
--The Kaiser waiting for his train at the Dutch border
--Lady Susan Townley
--Marshal Foch and three unidentified French officers
--Unidentified Canadian soldiers and a few civilian women on Armistice day.
--Patricia Carver
--Roy Howard
--Unidentified Austrian male and female civilians on Armistice day
--Unidentified American troops dancing the conga through the streets of Paris on Armistice day
--German-American Henry Gunther, and unidentified American soldier
--Eddie Rickenbacker in cockpit
--Californian in the RAF, Bogart Rogers
--Ernest Hemingway
--Agatha Christie
--John Maynard Keynes
--Mahatma Gandhi
--T.E. Lawrence (on camel, in Arabia)
--Marlene Dietrich and Erich Maria Remarque (decades after the war)
--Mistinguett and Maurice Chevalier
--Andre Maurois, author of Les Silences du Colonel Brable.
--Chancellor Friedrich Ebert on Brandenburg Gate