To Win a War: 1918: The Year of Victory

by John Terraine

The great disasters of World War I have lingered in men's minds for eight decades, but what precisely happened in the final campaign of 1918 remains a tale virtually untold. Yet in those three months that brought the war to a close, devastating battles were fought. Here is the full story of the second unknown--Battle of the Marne, continuing through the Battle of Amiens, and the breaking of the Hindenburg Line.

Genres: Military History, History, World War I, Nonfiction, War

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Dimitri · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent look at the last six months of the Great War, bar 50-odd pages of introduction that hurry forward from New Year 1918. The focus is squarely on the Western Front, with the Bulgarian & Turkish collapses wrapped up in singular background sentences. Terraine is a good writer who employs lengthy ad verbatim reproductions of correspondence and conversation to breathe life into such matters as the abdication of the Kaiser or the composition and deliverance of the Armistice terms. In lesser hands, the cohesive structure of the book would be fatally weakened; Terraine overplays his hand only in the final chapter, where politics and pursuit warfare alternate dizzingly.

Representative for his generation, he drew many parrallels between the embrionic unified command under Foch and the vastly expanded (staff)work necessary to keep the Allied coalition of the next World War running smoothly. Equally, the discrepancies between the American way of war as interpreted by Jack Pershing and the bitter caution by the exhausted Franco-British command receive a lot of attention, as do Foch's overly political decisions.

Tough elderly and brief (259), this book can still pose questions that sit well next to the more globally orientated No Man's Land: 1918, the Last Year of the Great War and exhaustiveWith Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a joint review with Hundred Days: The End of the Great War by Nick Lloyd

I think most people imagine that when World War One ended on November 11th, 1918, the soldiers were sat in more or less the same trenches they had been since late 1914. For the most part, this was not the case. By August the Allied forces had recovered from the devastating German offensives of March to July and embarked on a series of their own offensives, led by the British Empire forces in the north, which pushed the Germans out of one position after another, restoring mobility to the battlefield, breaking their army, and winning the war.

John Terraine's To Win a War: 1918 The Year of Victory and Nick Lloyd's Hundred Days: The End of the Great War both cover the final, decisive, victorious 100 days of World War One. Of the two, Lloyd's is a lighter read, providing a decent account of the fighting. But for analysis, Terraine's book remains superior. He asks why it is that the Allied victory of 1918 is largely forgotten and blames Allied politicians and German soldiers. He also argues that a consequence of this amnesia was the flourishing of the 'Stab in the back' myth in Germany, which played such a part in the rise of the Nazis.

Both books are worth reading, but Terraine's is a more ambitious work.

[Dropbear123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25/5

It is about the military details of the Western Front in 1918 and the politics of the armistice negotiations between Germany and the Allied powers in autumn 1918. It has almost nothing on the other fronts and the armistices of the other Central Powers are glossed over very quickly. The author is very critical of the politicians, especially Lloyd George, and is fairly positive about the British generals. There is some criticism of Pershing and the Americans. The author’s main arguments are that the German Army suffered heavily due to its lack of tanks, cavalry and armoured cars. He also argues that the 100 Days Offensive was one of Britain’s greatest victories but that is has been forgotten because politicians wanted to blame failures on the generals like Haig and because it doesn’t fit the narrative of WWI as bloody and pointless due to idiotic leadership.

I really liked it but I am very interested in WWI. If you’re not interested in the war then you’d probably find the book rather boring. I did learn some new things that I didn’t know about the war as well.

[Roger Burk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terraine wants to recover the story of the great Allied (especially British) victories in 1918, which he feels have been unfairly overshadowed by the great follies and horrors both before and after. After all, it was the greatest series of victories in British history in terms of number of troops defeated, prisoners taken, and guns captured. But his workmanlike narrative history doesn't really sell the story in my book. The Allies noted that the German will to resist was starting to crumble in a few local and minor attacks, and they had the good military sense to keep up the pressure until the enemy capitulated. I suppose they could have screwed up and lost the victory, and they deserve credit for not doing that. And they had finally learned to advance slowly, with massive and well-coordinated artillery support, against dug-in infantry. But the main factor in the Allied victory was just outlasting the Germans and being able to keep going when they crumbled.

[Phil Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Terraine is the giant on whose shoulders most modern Great War historians are standing - and this is a great book. 1918 is ludicrously under-explored in print (though the centenary is, at last, doing something to redress this). Terraine was writing at a time when Haig was seen as the blundering butcher of "Oh What a Lovely War" - rather than the far more complex figure of a soldier doing his job - winning the war. This book did a good job of presenting the reality rather than the myth.

[Errol Cavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like all Terraine's books this one is well and trenchantly written. We so often hear of the horrors and setbacks of the Somme and Third Ypres (or Passchendaele as it is often wrongly called) that we forget that the Allies actually won the Great War. The alternative would have been disastrous (as Russia and Roumania founbd out)

This victory over oppression was primarily down to Haig's British armies which in a number of victories knocked Germany out of the war a year before most politicians and some generals thought possible.

This extrordoinary feat of arms is here given the treatment it deserves. A must read for Great War buffs, and welcome alternative to thedepiction expressed by the 'futility' school of thought that has for so long distorted our view of the First World War that we can see nothing but loss, waste and futility in it, in comnparison with the Second World War (which cost even more lives).

Terraine was a pioneer and all that he wrote is worth reading if not necessarily concurring with. This volume is no exception.

[Andy Hart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1978 Terraine’s account of the last 8 months of The Great War effectively demolishes two of the most pernicious myths; that the German Army was stabbed in the back and returned to Germany undefeated; and that the British Army was led by ‘Donkeys’. This classic narrative from the chief screen writer and producer of the BBC’s seminal documentary ‘The Great War’ restores the credit for the complete and thorough defeat of the German Army in the field to those who deserve it; a British Army forged in the furnaces of battle led by Generals who had become masters of their grim trade.

[Aidan EP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting overview of the final year of the Western Front. It pretty much ignores every other theatre. This is a problem.

[Dominic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well researched book which dispels the myth that the first world war generals were stupid and unimaginative. In 1918 Haig achieved more that Eisenhower/Montgomery did in 44/45.

[David O'Neill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully erudite look at a little known aspect of the great war. How it was won and how the much maligned British Army did that almost alone.

[AskHistorians]

It remains a classic account of the war's final year, and has much to say about the circumstances that caused the Spring Offensive to fail and the Hundred Days Offensive to succeed.