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Sons of Freedom: The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I
The definitive history of America's decisive role in World War I
The American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, and yet it has all but vanished from view. Historians have dismissed the American war effort as largely economic and symbolic. But as Geoffrey Wawro shows in Sons of Freedom, the French and British were on the verge of collapse in 1918, and would have lost the war without the Doughboys. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, described the Allied victory as a "miracle"--but it was a distinctly American miracle. In Sons of Freedom, prize-winning historian Geoffrey Wawro weaves together in thrilling detail the battles, strategic deliberations, and dreadful human cost of the American war effort--first defending Paris, and then cutting the German army's lifeline in the Meuse-Argonne. A major revision of the history of World War I, Sons of Freedom resurrects the brave heroes who saved the Allies, defeated Germany, and established the United States as the greatest of the great powers.
The American contribution to World War I is one of the great stories of the twentieth century, and yet it has all but vanished from view. Historians have dismissed the American war effort as largely economic and symbolic. But as Geoffrey Wawro shows in Sons of Freedom, the French and British were on the verge of collapse in 1918, and would have lost the war without the Doughboys. Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, described the Allied victory as a "miracle"--but it was a distinctly American miracle. In Sons of Freedom, prize-winning historian Geoffrey Wawro weaves together in thrilling detail the battles, strategic deliberations, and dreadful human cost of the American war effort--first defending Paris, and then cutting the German army's lifeline in the Meuse-Argonne. A major revision of the history of World War I, Sons of Freedom resurrects the brave heroes who saved the Allies, defeated Germany, and established the United States as the greatest of the great powers.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published September 25, 2018
36 people are currently reading
495 people want to read
About the author
Geoffrey Wawro
16 books79 followersGeoffrey Wawro is the General Olinto Mark Barsanti Professor of Military History at the University of North Texas, and Director of the UNT Military History Center. His primary area of emphasis is modern and contemporary military history, from the French Revolution to the present.
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November 11, 2022
“In December 1918, President Wilson arrived in France to guide the Paris Peace Conference. He and the first lady visited a US Army hospital in Paris; they passed through the wards, shaking hands and expressing thanks and concern to the wounded. When leaving, Wilson asked if he’d been shown everything. Everything but the jaw ward, he was told. What’s that? the president asked. It was the ward where men who’d been disfigured were treated. The wounds were so ghastly that nurses there had shorter shifts than anywhere else: faces mutilated by shrapnel, mouths exploded by bullets – men who had to be fed gruel, raw eggs, or gravy through tubes placed directly into their exposed throats or nostrils. Wilson and Edith entered and went down the line, stoically greeting the men, commiserating, and conveying the thanks of the nation. When the president emerged from the ward, he was, a witness recalled, ‘white as death and his hands trembled. He appeared to stagger. A look of suffering was on his face and he seemed completely crushed.’ The commander in chief had come face-to-face with a small part of what the Doughs had seen at the front every day…”
- Geoffrey Wawro, Sons of Freedom: The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I
In 1918, Germany seemed poised to win the First World War. She occupied vast swaths of Belgium and France, to the extent that some French villages had changed the names of streets and shops to reflect the German language. Recently, Germany had knocked the Russian Empire out of the war, freeing hundreds of thousands of new troops for action on the Western Front. Meanwhile, the Allies were facing an acute manpower shortage. Great Britain was lowering its troop levels, while France was scraping the bottom of the barrel, gathering up the very old and very young. On top of that, the French Army had dealt with a mutiny, a keen indicator that morale could not get much worse.
Responding to these conditions, General Erich Ludendorff unleashed a series of five offensives, pushing massive bulges into the Allied lines, and coming within a stone’s throw of Paris itself.
These offensives turned out to be the German high tide. Within a few months of making them, the German Army would be in retreat, the Kaiser would abdicate and flee, and an armistice would be signed, halting four years of barbed wire entanglements, endless trench lines, poison gas, and industrialized slaughter.
To General Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, this abrupt turnaround was a “miracle.” Author-historian Geoffrey Wawro disagrees. As he argues in Sons of Freedom, if there was any divine intervention, it came in the form of one-million American soldiers flung hastily – sometimes disastrously – into battle.
Despite a somewhat simplistic and chest-thumping title (which Wawro credits to an editor), Sons of Freedom is a brutally honest account of America’s performance in the First World War, methodically recounting the shortcomings and failures, as well as the victories. It is earnest, engrossing, and both learned and accessible.
At over 500 pages of text, Sons of Freedom has some serious heft to it. Due to excellent structuring and fine pacing, however, you never feel that length. Every page is worthwhile.
Wawro begins with a fascinating discussion of America’s controversial entry into the war. He shows how Great Britain used its naval might to keep the United States from trading with the Central Powers, essentially abrogating America’s neutrality (which during the Napoleonic Wars, led to the War of 1812). American industrialists and farmers willingly accepted this, as both Great Britain and France made huge purchases of arms and food, ultimately causing massive disruptions to the economy of the United States. Wawro notes that French military intelligence believed that the U.S. would intervene simply to stabilize the economy. Of course, when President Woodrow Wilson – who had won a hotly-contested second term by promising to avoid war – eventually asked Congress for a declaration to begin hostilities, he framed the enterprise in wholly idealistic terms (leading, I suppose, to the appellation Sons of Freedom).
With the Allies on the verge of being demolished by Germany, the United States had to essentially form an army from scratch. Though it is hard to imagine now – with America’s vast, expensive military machine – the Regular U.S. Army of 1917 was tiny and underfunded, supplemented by National Guard units that were woefully deficient (and used by state governors for patronage). Eventually, the Regulars and certain Guard units formed the nucleus of the American Expeditionary Force, which was backed by a huge, poorly-trained, poorly-equipped National Army (four million men would be put under arms, though only one million made it to Europe).
These forces were led by General John “Black Jack” Pershing, who spent as much time fighting with Great Britain and France as he did the Germans. With the Allies clamoring to absorb the U.S. troops into their own armies, Pershing had to work hard to maintain American force independence. For all Pershing’s qualities, Wawro is very critical of his tactical acumen, his campaigns resembling the frontal assaults of 1914 (or, for that matter, 1864). Moreover, his personality certainly did nothing to smooth interallied relations, as Georges Clemenceau and General Ferdinand Foch tried desperately to get him fired. If nothing else, Pershing’s questionable performance makes one realize just how effective and important Dwight D. Eisenhower was in World War II.
As to the American forces themselves, Wawro is much more sanguine. With some exceptions, the men were not especially effective, their officers were amateurish, and thousands of them were – to use the parlance of the day – “skulkers” who simply wandered away from their units to avoid battle.
But by and large they were brave.
Thrown into the fire at places like Belleau Wood and the Meuse-Argonne, they made desperate assaults heedless of devastating casualties. Again, it’s strange to think about this now, since the modern American way of war is based on light footprints and high technology. In 1918, however, the U.S. soldier was borrowing his artillery from the Allies, and had to rely on his guts and perseverance to smash through German lines that had been perfected over the course of the war.
Wawro’s thesis that America “won” the war for the Allies is passionately argued, though it is not entirely convincing. The Allies, after all, had been bleeding Germany for years. Nonetheless, they certainly tipped the scales in terms of manpower (and forced Ludendorff to make some hasty moves to win before the Americans arrived). Furthermore, the historiography of Great Britain and France – who cared far more about the war than Americans, and lost far more – has vastly underplayed America’s vital contributions, and not simply in terms of money (though that is pretty damn vital itself). Wawro’s book is an important corrective to that narrative. Still, it was a complex combination of things that led to Germany’s collapse, not the least of which was the nascent socialist revolutions erupting in the cities.
Like the Napoleonic Wars – which were also fought on a global stage, owing to the participants’ colonial empires – the First World War was a Eurocentric affair, fought for territorial acquisitions, border adjustments, and hegemony on the continent. Over a hundred years later, it is hard not to see America as a cat’s paw of Great Britain and France, drawn into a fight that was arguably none of their business. This is really evident in the Treaty of Versailles, in which the Allies rearranged the pieces of various fallen empires – Austro-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottomans – to suit their own ends, while rolling their eyes at President Wilson’s ephemeral demands.
The irony, of course, is that in propping up their own faltering dominions, Great Britain and France set the stage for a more cataclysmic struggle down the road (a war that a shocking number of contemporaries accurately predicted). More than that, by maneuvering America into their widespread war of local interest, Great Britain and France created the conditions for the United States to emerge – however briefly – as the greatest power in the world.
- Geoffrey Wawro, Sons of Freedom: The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I
In 1918, Germany seemed poised to win the First World War. She occupied vast swaths of Belgium and France, to the extent that some French villages had changed the names of streets and shops to reflect the German language. Recently, Germany had knocked the Russian Empire out of the war, freeing hundreds of thousands of new troops for action on the Western Front. Meanwhile, the Allies were facing an acute manpower shortage. Great Britain was lowering its troop levels, while France was scraping the bottom of the barrel, gathering up the very old and very young. On top of that, the French Army had dealt with a mutiny, a keen indicator that morale could not get much worse.
Responding to these conditions, General Erich Ludendorff unleashed a series of five offensives, pushing massive bulges into the Allied lines, and coming within a stone’s throw of Paris itself.
These offensives turned out to be the German high tide. Within a few months of making them, the German Army would be in retreat, the Kaiser would abdicate and flee, and an armistice would be signed, halting four years of barbed wire entanglements, endless trench lines, poison gas, and industrialized slaughter.
To General Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, this abrupt turnaround was a “miracle.” Author-historian Geoffrey Wawro disagrees. As he argues in Sons of Freedom, if there was any divine intervention, it came in the form of one-million American soldiers flung hastily – sometimes disastrously – into battle.
Despite a somewhat simplistic and chest-thumping title (which Wawro credits to an editor), Sons of Freedom is a brutally honest account of America’s performance in the First World War, methodically recounting the shortcomings and failures, as well as the victories. It is earnest, engrossing, and both learned and accessible.
At over 500 pages of text, Sons of Freedom has some serious heft to it. Due to excellent structuring and fine pacing, however, you never feel that length. Every page is worthwhile.
Wawro begins with a fascinating discussion of America’s controversial entry into the war. He shows how Great Britain used its naval might to keep the United States from trading with the Central Powers, essentially abrogating America’s neutrality (which during the Napoleonic Wars, led to the War of 1812). American industrialists and farmers willingly accepted this, as both Great Britain and France made huge purchases of arms and food, ultimately causing massive disruptions to the economy of the United States. Wawro notes that French military intelligence believed that the U.S. would intervene simply to stabilize the economy. Of course, when President Woodrow Wilson – who had won a hotly-contested second term by promising to avoid war – eventually asked Congress for a declaration to begin hostilities, he framed the enterprise in wholly idealistic terms (leading, I suppose, to the appellation Sons of Freedom).
With the Allies on the verge of being demolished by Germany, the United States had to essentially form an army from scratch. Though it is hard to imagine now – with America’s vast, expensive military machine – the Regular U.S. Army of 1917 was tiny and underfunded, supplemented by National Guard units that were woefully deficient (and used by state governors for patronage). Eventually, the Regulars and certain Guard units formed the nucleus of the American Expeditionary Force, which was backed by a huge, poorly-trained, poorly-equipped National Army (four million men would be put under arms, though only one million made it to Europe).
These forces were led by General John “Black Jack” Pershing, who spent as much time fighting with Great Britain and France as he did the Germans. With the Allies clamoring to absorb the U.S. troops into their own armies, Pershing had to work hard to maintain American force independence. For all Pershing’s qualities, Wawro is very critical of his tactical acumen, his campaigns resembling the frontal assaults of 1914 (or, for that matter, 1864). Moreover, his personality certainly did nothing to smooth interallied relations, as Georges Clemenceau and General Ferdinand Foch tried desperately to get him fired. If nothing else, Pershing’s questionable performance makes one realize just how effective and important Dwight D. Eisenhower was in World War II.
As to the American forces themselves, Wawro is much more sanguine. With some exceptions, the men were not especially effective, their officers were amateurish, and thousands of them were – to use the parlance of the day – “skulkers” who simply wandered away from their units to avoid battle.
But by and large they were brave.
Thrown into the fire at places like Belleau Wood and the Meuse-Argonne, they made desperate assaults heedless of devastating casualties. Again, it’s strange to think about this now, since the modern American way of war is based on light footprints and high technology. In 1918, however, the U.S. soldier was borrowing his artillery from the Allies, and had to rely on his guts and perseverance to smash through German lines that had been perfected over the course of the war.
Wawro’s thesis that America “won” the war for the Allies is passionately argued, though it is not entirely convincing. The Allies, after all, had been bleeding Germany for years. Nonetheless, they certainly tipped the scales in terms of manpower (and forced Ludendorff to make some hasty moves to win before the Americans arrived). Furthermore, the historiography of Great Britain and France – who cared far more about the war than Americans, and lost far more – has vastly underplayed America’s vital contributions, and not simply in terms of money (though that is pretty damn vital itself). Wawro’s book is an important corrective to that narrative. Still, it was a complex combination of things that led to Germany’s collapse, not the least of which was the nascent socialist revolutions erupting in the cities.
Like the Napoleonic Wars – which were also fought on a global stage, owing to the participants’ colonial empires – the First World War was a Eurocentric affair, fought for territorial acquisitions, border adjustments, and hegemony on the continent. Over a hundred years later, it is hard not to see America as a cat’s paw of Great Britain and France, drawn into a fight that was arguably none of their business. This is really evident in the Treaty of Versailles, in which the Allies rearranged the pieces of various fallen empires – Austro-Hungary, Germany, and the Ottomans – to suit their own ends, while rolling their eyes at President Wilson’s ephemeral demands.
The irony, of course, is that in propping up their own faltering dominions, Great Britain and France set the stage for a more cataclysmic struggle down the road (a war that a shocking number of contemporaries accurately predicted). More than that, by maneuvering America into their widespread war of local interest, Great Britain and France created the conditions for the United States to emerge – however briefly – as the greatest power in the world.
September 10, 2023
F = ma.
The premise of this book is that America won the First World War for the allies, with its sheer force of men and material which it accelerated onto the Western Front. This is true, France and United Kingdom might have collapsed without any American support and I am very doubtful whether they could have achieved the victory they did without the US. However, my issue is that Geoffrey Wawro presents this as though the UK and France had not just spent three years wearing down Germany beforehand. It was not just America who won the war, but American was the force that got the job done at the end.
I have found that Wawro writes his history through a very negative lens. I found that with The Mad Catastrophe, where he hold a compete and utter contempt for the Austro-Hungarians. He holds it again her for Britain and France. I accept that the First World War is not a rosy subject, but not everyone was an evil despotic idiot. I find he writes his history like this, which caused me in places to roll my eyes. He starts the book with the premise that Britain and France were struggling, they were all but spent and could not continue for much longer. I feel this is true. 1917 saw a huge mutiny in the French ranks and Britain was running out of money and men. HH Asquith’s government had just fallen and David Lloyd George was brought in to finish the war, Passchendaele would prove a further failure. He states that allies were motivated by colonial ambitions in order to carve up the German colonies and were completely focused on in democratic imperial aims. He ignores much of Britain’s treaty obligations, they had gone to war to maintain Belgian neutrality had they not? He also is critical of the First Battle of the Marne and shows a disregard for Helmuth von Moltke’s alterations to the Schlieffen Plan. He is very critical of Douglas Haig, the French and the BEF in general, which he claims was incompetent until at least after the Somme.
When America finally enters the stage, John Pershing is presented as a cruel general, who thought that a lion’s heart and the bayonet was all that was needed to achieve the final victory. Any death of an American Doughboy is Wawro’s example of Pershing’s incompetence and bloodthirstiness in equal measure. He manages to again criticise Haig and the British during the Hundred Days as the ground they gained, Wawro explains was easily given up by the Germans as it was wrecked, shelled and soulless earth. Haig is blamed for the failures of the US 27th and 30th Divisions at Saint Quentin Canal even though this was the plan of Sir John Monash, who Wawro doesn’t even seem to know existed. He also fails to mention the successes of the US 46th or BEF divisions, which directly contradict Wawro’s general arguments.
Wawro’s writing style isn’t bad, he can get ink on a page. He just leaves much to be desired with his conclusions. Canadians and Australians alongside the US soldier is only what Wawro appreciates, everyone else you can forget. Four years or hard work, blood, toil, tears and sweat, you can forget. His general conclusion that the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) won the war by encircling the Germans in Belgium is absurd as the event shows this couldn’t be done without the efforts of all the allies. All nations and soldiers (equally brave) did their bit. This book isn’t published in the UK and with good reason. Leave it in the book shops and don’t seek it out like I did.
The premise of this book is that America won the First World War for the allies, with its sheer force of men and material which it accelerated onto the Western Front. This is true, France and United Kingdom might have collapsed without any American support and I am very doubtful whether they could have achieved the victory they did without the US. However, my issue is that Geoffrey Wawro presents this as though the UK and France had not just spent three years wearing down Germany beforehand. It was not just America who won the war, but American was the force that got the job done at the end.
I have found that Wawro writes his history through a very negative lens. I found that with The Mad Catastrophe, where he hold a compete and utter contempt for the Austro-Hungarians. He holds it again her for Britain and France. I accept that the First World War is not a rosy subject, but not everyone was an evil despotic idiot. I find he writes his history like this, which caused me in places to roll my eyes. He starts the book with the premise that Britain and France were struggling, they were all but spent and could not continue for much longer. I feel this is true. 1917 saw a huge mutiny in the French ranks and Britain was running out of money and men. HH Asquith’s government had just fallen and David Lloyd George was brought in to finish the war, Passchendaele would prove a further failure. He states that allies were motivated by colonial ambitions in order to carve up the German colonies and were completely focused on in democratic imperial aims. He ignores much of Britain’s treaty obligations, they had gone to war to maintain Belgian neutrality had they not? He also is critical of the First Battle of the Marne and shows a disregard for Helmuth von Moltke’s alterations to the Schlieffen Plan. He is very critical of Douglas Haig, the French and the BEF in general, which he claims was incompetent until at least after the Somme.
When America finally enters the stage, John Pershing is presented as a cruel general, who thought that a lion’s heart and the bayonet was all that was needed to achieve the final victory. Any death of an American Doughboy is Wawro’s example of Pershing’s incompetence and bloodthirstiness in equal measure. He manages to again criticise Haig and the British during the Hundred Days as the ground they gained, Wawro explains was easily given up by the Germans as it was wrecked, shelled and soulless earth. Haig is blamed for the failures of the US 27th and 30th Divisions at Saint Quentin Canal even though this was the plan of Sir John Monash, who Wawro doesn’t even seem to know existed. He also fails to mention the successes of the US 46th or BEF divisions, which directly contradict Wawro’s general arguments.
Wawro’s writing style isn’t bad, he can get ink on a page. He just leaves much to be desired with his conclusions. Canadians and Australians alongside the US soldier is only what Wawro appreciates, everyone else you can forget. Four years or hard work, blood, toil, tears and sweat, you can forget. His general conclusion that the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) won the war by encircling the Germans in Belgium is absurd as the event shows this couldn’t be done without the efforts of all the allies. All nations and soldiers (equally brave) did their bit. This book isn’t published in the UK and with good reason. Leave it in the book shops and don’t seek it out like I did.
February 8, 2019
I try to read most books that I come across about World War I since my Grandfather fought in the war but did not talk about it. I still have his uniform and other items from that time. That being said the author takes an in-depth look at our involvement in the war. We started in April of 1917 but was so far behind training, and having men ready that it was not until 1918 that the troops would arrive in France. Perishing would fight with both English and French leaders the U.S. Force would remain separate. He would at times have the Marines in with the Army forces. The author takes you through different battles. The first to the very last. You get to see how the Marines would use machine guns and then advance, where the Army would just leave the trenches and attack by the sheer number of men, with no machine gun cover or artillery. In the beginning, Pershing did not think those were vital in any success. He wanted officers to have men leave the trenches and attack over open fields where the Germans already had fields of fire already targeted because they had been there for years. You get to see the politics of the Army that if you argued with Pershing your career as an officer was most likely over, of course, your men probably liked you the ones that made it out. The author will show you through maps the different battles and how each one changed the course of the war. He also shows you how Germany may have been able to win Europe before we entered but they stopped an advance because of supplies. All of this led to us coming in and being to actually move the Line that had been still for years but for us to also outflank them. This began the fall inside of the German hierarchy and then surrender. You, of course, will names like York, Truman who would become President, the story of the lost Battalion which really was not lost just farther ahead of everyone else during an attack in the Argonne Forest. What was sad about that is years after the war Maj. Charles Whittlesey committed suicide because he felt he let his men down by not leaving and fighting, sad. There are many, many more stories like this in this book and the author does a fine job showing you the good thing said about Pershing, and also the criticism. A lot of Veterans and families of veterans were not pleased with him and the way he wanted attacks to be done with the sheer number of men without any support from artillery, machine guns, or even from the air. When the Germans were using all of these successfully. I will also say the few battles that were led by the Marines, which used machine gun cover fire were more successful as far as fewer casualties for A.E.F. Overall I really enjoyed this book and I know that it is a history book but I think next year I will read it again. I received this book from Netgalley.com I gave it 5 stars. Follow us at www.1rad-readerreviews.com
July 30, 2018
I was quite happy when starting this book because it was very easy to read and the author clearly expressed the lead up to the United States involvement in World War I. As with any book about the war it became very complicated trying to keep up with all the battles, locations, combatants, and politicians. This book a better read than most but it does have some issues. The common term for American soldiers was Doughboys but the author utilized the rarely used term of Doughs throughout the book. Very annoying. Maps are a critical component of a military history text and just having them is not enough. They must be detailed without being cluttered and useless. Here they could be larger scale and be more numerous with legends. The author does get confused when describing the behaviour of american combat troops. He switches back and forth with high praise and abysmal action when in contact with the enemy.
January 1, 2019
Sons of Freedom by Geoffrey Wawro is published by Basic Books. Dr. Wawro is a professor of history at the University of North Texas and the author of six books (four of which I now own).
As the subtitle explains, this book is about “The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I.” I noticed a review that called this book “the definitive history” regarding America’s role in the war. I agree.
This book is a lengthy and powerful account of how America’s entry on the actual battlefields enabled the Allies to win the war. By 1918, both sides in the war were exhausted, bled white, and worn down by the grueling multiple fronts. Russia was finished by then. Revolution ended what the war itself had started on the Eastern Front. Italy was basically caput as well. How Austria-Hungary was hanging on is still beyond me. But there was Germany, now reinforcing the Western Front (the border areas in northern France and Belgium where the war had been raging since August of 1914). Freed from the Eastern Front, Germany was racing more and more divisions to the west.
Under the command of the talented, but sometimes unbalanced, Erich von Ludendorff, the German army began a series of offenses against the British and French lines. Any one of the offensive actions could easily have translated into the needed breakthrough that would have divided the Allied forces, pushed the British back into a Dunkirk situation (years before Dunkirk), or captured Paris.
The spent forces of the British and French armies sustained the front lines, but barely. The German forces erred most greatly in shifting from one offense to the next instead of maintaining pressure in just one area. But also, and most important, the American forces began hitting the fields of battle.
The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. But it took a year before the United States was able to start massing still under-trained and unequipped soldiers on French soil. Still, they were fresh troops, and so they began the process of filling in the gaps on the battlefields. The American commander was General John J. Pershing. Pershing’s greatest legacy in the war was his continual insistence on American troops being able to operate independently as American armies and not as replacements and gap fillers for the Allies.
In some cases, Americans got some useful baptism of fire by being used alongside of the British and French troops. But the goal was always an independent field of action by the U. S. Army. Pershing fought hard against his fellow Allied commanders to achieve this. On the negative side, he was greatly underequipped as a commander to lead an army in this type of war. He was somehow stuck in a time warp, not always realizing how the war had been fought for the past several years.
Americans focused on the offensive. (So had every other major army for the previous years.) In 1918, America had one resource that no other country had–a huge supply of troops. The American muscle was just beginning to be flexed as the troops began pouring into France. Sad to say, much of the story and much of the book is about the tremendous bloodbath Americans were thrown into in taking this war to the Germans.
Germany was a spent force, but far from a finished force by 1918. They still had plenty of crack troops, plenty of machine gun and artillery emplacements, and an abundance of fighting experience. Americans were the deciding factor in Germany’s defeat, but this was no cake-walk.
Even though Sons of Freedom is a lengthy and heavily detailed book, I found it engrossing. Granted, there were flank attacks, repulses, commander changes (many, in fact), and other details that slipped right my mind. Yet, the larger picture of this book was of the Americans pushing and hitting the German lines and, even with mounting casualties and increasing numbers of deserters, and winning the war.
As the subtitle explains, this book is about “The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I.” I noticed a review that called this book “the definitive history” regarding America’s role in the war. I agree.
This book is a lengthy and powerful account of how America’s entry on the actual battlefields enabled the Allies to win the war. By 1918, both sides in the war were exhausted, bled white, and worn down by the grueling multiple fronts. Russia was finished by then. Revolution ended what the war itself had started on the Eastern Front. Italy was basically caput as well. How Austria-Hungary was hanging on is still beyond me. But there was Germany, now reinforcing the Western Front (the border areas in northern France and Belgium where the war had been raging since August of 1914). Freed from the Eastern Front, Germany was racing more and more divisions to the west.
Under the command of the talented, but sometimes unbalanced, Erich von Ludendorff, the German army began a series of offenses against the British and French lines. Any one of the offensive actions could easily have translated into the needed breakthrough that would have divided the Allied forces, pushed the British back into a Dunkirk situation (years before Dunkirk), or captured Paris.
The spent forces of the British and French armies sustained the front lines, but barely. The German forces erred most greatly in shifting from one offense to the next instead of maintaining pressure in just one area. But also, and most important, the American forces began hitting the fields of battle.
The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917. But it took a year before the United States was able to start massing still under-trained and unequipped soldiers on French soil. Still, they were fresh troops, and so they began the process of filling in the gaps on the battlefields. The American commander was General John J. Pershing. Pershing’s greatest legacy in the war was his continual insistence on American troops being able to operate independently as American armies and not as replacements and gap fillers for the Allies.
In some cases, Americans got some useful baptism of fire by being used alongside of the British and French troops. But the goal was always an independent field of action by the U. S. Army. Pershing fought hard against his fellow Allied commanders to achieve this. On the negative side, he was greatly underequipped as a commander to lead an army in this type of war. He was somehow stuck in a time warp, not always realizing how the war had been fought for the past several years.
Americans focused on the offensive. (So had every other major army for the previous years.) In 1918, America had one resource that no other country had–a huge supply of troops. The American muscle was just beginning to be flexed as the troops began pouring into France. Sad to say, much of the story and much of the book is about the tremendous bloodbath Americans were thrown into in taking this war to the Germans.
Germany was a spent force, but far from a finished force by 1918. They still had plenty of crack troops, plenty of machine gun and artillery emplacements, and an abundance of fighting experience. Americans were the deciding factor in Germany’s defeat, but this was no cake-walk.
Even though Sons of Freedom is a lengthy and heavily detailed book, I found it engrossing. Granted, there were flank attacks, repulses, commander changes (many, in fact), and other details that slipped right my mind. Yet, the larger picture of this book was of the Americans pushing and hitting the German lines and, even with mounting casualties and increasing numbers of deserters, and winning the war.
July 21, 2021
It's hard to find good information about the United States in the First World War. You might be looking at that sentence like "what's she talking about?!" unless you've actually gone to research the topic yourself. It's only then you realize, "Wait a second...this was just a hundred years ago. Why is specific information so hard to find?"
That's when I stumbled on Wawro's book "Sons of Freedom". He tells his story well - how America jumped into a war it couldn't have been less prepared for, how the Army and National Guard had to find a way to combine into an effective force, how our doctrines and psychology of war had changed very little since the end of the Civil War. From there he describes the situation in Europe, something barely remembered or acknowledged today - the Allies shattered and exhausted, falling apart on the battlefield. Wawro quotes letters and communiques from British and French commanders, politicians, and journalists, everyone wondering if the Americans would arrive before everything collapsed. It's so hard to find documentaries - or popular history of any kind - that remembers the American role in this war as anything other than a footnote, but Wawro constantly shows how excited the Allies were to get Americans on the field - and how much American involvement changed everything, not just militarily but also psychologically.
Where the book really changed everything for me was in the sheer amount of helpful details about the AEF. Online research on this stuff got me *nowhere*. Half of the battles and big events seem like they're forgotten entirely, and the resources you find are hopelessly vague. So I was constantly impressed with how helpful this book is. Forgotten battles like Soissons and Montfaucon are in there in riveting detail, the author providing abundant information about units and order of battle - but also colorful (and often horrific) anecdotes about what it was really like on the ground. For an author like me, hoping to write a novel set within the AEF in 1918, books like "Sons of Freedom" are absolutely essential.
The US might have gotten into the war at the eleventh hour, but they turned the tide. Not just their manpower but their insane bravery helped to deliver Europe out of the most horrific disaster in human history up to that point. The American battles were just as horrific as any that had come before, their casualties just as high. I honestly had no clue, and neither do most people. There's no reason what the US went through in 1918 should be forgotten in favor of anything else that happened in that horrific war - and thankfully narratives like this exist to help us remember.
That's when I stumbled on Wawro's book "Sons of Freedom". He tells his story well - how America jumped into a war it couldn't have been less prepared for, how the Army and National Guard had to find a way to combine into an effective force, how our doctrines and psychology of war had changed very little since the end of the Civil War. From there he describes the situation in Europe, something barely remembered or acknowledged today - the Allies shattered and exhausted, falling apart on the battlefield. Wawro quotes letters and communiques from British and French commanders, politicians, and journalists, everyone wondering if the Americans would arrive before everything collapsed. It's so hard to find documentaries - or popular history of any kind - that remembers the American role in this war as anything other than a footnote, but Wawro constantly shows how excited the Allies were to get Americans on the field - and how much American involvement changed everything, not just militarily but also psychologically.
Where the book really changed everything for me was in the sheer amount of helpful details about the AEF. Online research on this stuff got me *nowhere*. Half of the battles and big events seem like they're forgotten entirely, and the resources you find are hopelessly vague. So I was constantly impressed with how helpful this book is. Forgotten battles like Soissons and Montfaucon are in there in riveting detail, the author providing abundant information about units and order of battle - but also colorful (and often horrific) anecdotes about what it was really like on the ground. For an author like me, hoping to write a novel set within the AEF in 1918, books like "Sons of Freedom" are absolutely essential.
The US might have gotten into the war at the eleventh hour, but they turned the tide. Not just their manpower but their insane bravery helped to deliver Europe out of the most horrific disaster in human history up to that point. The American battles were just as horrific as any that had come before, their casualties just as high. I honestly had no clue, and neither do most people. There's no reason what the US went through in 1918 should be forgotten in favor of anything else that happened in that horrific war - and thankfully narratives like this exist to help us remember.
December 8, 2020
This is of thorough and balanced narrative of the American Expeditionary Force in the first World War. I don't think there is any new ground broken here, although the author's introduction makes it sound like this is a revisionist history. Complaints: impossible to read tiny maps, an annoying tendency to make sophomoric observations (war is bad), a tendency to make unsupported broad generalizations, and just plain bad writing in places. Kudos: the author does a fine job showing how the American intervention brought Germany to her knees. Apparently General Pershing observed that by settling the war with an armistice instead of an unconditional surrender meant that another war would be forthcoming. Wawro makes the point that pushing the war to a final conclusion would have required an occupation of Germany, and the allied powers were beyond the ability to support that scenario. I recommend this as a standard history and for people like me, who had no appreciation of the sacrifice and suffering experienced by a huge American army in a battle that lasted for 4 months without respite.
November 12, 2018
Both sides, the Allies and the Central powers, couldn’t light fires because they’d be destroyed by artillery so they suffered in the wet mud and cold, many shoeless and diseased, in misery waiting to go over the top and die. One of many WWI facts I missed as a history major featured by Wawro in this awesome book. Didn’t understand how unprepared the US was and how many lives were lost due to troop charges barely supported by artillery, heavy guns or aircraft. US lives were simply traded for an Allied victory.
June 19, 2019
I can’t quite figure out where the broad loathing of all troops and officers in the First World War comes from, but the spiteful and arrogant tone of the author was a total turn off for me in this book. He spared no criticism for every officer, politician, military unit and even the civilians in the narrative. I continually asked myself about the author as I read, who the hell does this guy think he is?
March 12, 2019
Wawro has produced an amazing history. WWI has receded in the popular consciousness, becoming one of those old historical events that you stumble across occasionally, usually in passing reference to something more recent - WWII, the Mid-East, or other 20th Century trouble spots, all of which grew out of the woefully inept conclusion of WWI. America's involvement, and the incomprehensible scale of her contributions in men, arms and money, has a been largely overlooked or treated as little more than a footnote to the four years of blood and sacrifice by the main Allied contenders- specifically France and Britain. The historical record has been heavily weighted in favor of France and Britain to the detriment of the US... something Wawro makes abundantly clear. It is a long overdue correction.
When the US entered the war in April of 1917, the Allies were on the brink of defeat. Russia had capitulated; the Italians had been routed and defeated; the French had suffered multiple major battlefield defeats and French armies were in a state of mutiny; and the ruinous British casualties of the 1916-17 period (due to consistently, determinedly inept generalship) had the British government looking to reduce their involvement, driven as much by the complete depletion of reserve manpower as much as anything. German victory seemed almost certain. It was even conceded in the higher levels of military and governmental councils. And then came the Americans... creating and fielding a fresh army of millions. The regular US Army numbered 150,000 before America entered the war!
Wawro lays out the problems, the inconsistencies of leadership, the organizational and training woes, the logistical nightmares... all the issues confronted and dealt with - some far better than others. He narrates the battle experiences of the American Expeditionary Force, the many failures of US leadership in a combat environment for which they were vastly ill-prepared, the ground level experiences of the troops, the military culture that developed... it is a gripping and hugely enlightening reading experience. From the modern perspective, in time and in terms of modern war, the battlefields of WWI are incomprehensible - the vastness of scale, the inconceivable casualty rates (the US averaged 36,000 casualties a month - compared to 6000 a month in WWII), the tactical and strategic errors that served to maintain this exhaustive and often futile expenditure of lives, the weaponry, the inconceivably ghastly conditions in which troops had to fight and survive for months at a time ... Wawro reminds us that WWI was a truly historical event of unimaginable dimensions in costs, loves, human misery and post event significance. It is a great service to bring WWI back into the consciousness of modern history.
Wawro fleshes out his narrative with constant small asides and trivia (for want of a better term) that delight and intrigue - daylight savings time, Alvin York, the Lost Battalion, Captain Harry Truman, the culture of the Doughboys who sang as they marched - always, everywhere, and so much more. The one negative feature - and the reason I give this book four stars instead of the five it should have - is the paucity of maps. Wawro throws out so many French place names and labels, villages and woods, as he describes battles and movements and strategies that the reader unfamiliar with France in detail gets lost... he assumes a facility with French place names comparable to that of a local real estate agent. More, and smaller scale, maps would be immensely helpful to allay a lot of confusion as divisions move here and there, attack and seize various objectives, plan for follow-on movements and attacks. Nevertheless, accepting that flaw, this is a superb history!
When the US entered the war in April of 1917, the Allies were on the brink of defeat. Russia had capitulated; the Italians had been routed and defeated; the French had suffered multiple major battlefield defeats and French armies were in a state of mutiny; and the ruinous British casualties of the 1916-17 period (due to consistently, determinedly inept generalship) had the British government looking to reduce their involvement, driven as much by the complete depletion of reserve manpower as much as anything. German victory seemed almost certain. It was even conceded in the higher levels of military and governmental councils. And then came the Americans... creating and fielding a fresh army of millions. The regular US Army numbered 150,000 before America entered the war!
Wawro lays out the problems, the inconsistencies of leadership, the organizational and training woes, the logistical nightmares... all the issues confronted and dealt with - some far better than others. He narrates the battle experiences of the American Expeditionary Force, the many failures of US leadership in a combat environment for which they were vastly ill-prepared, the ground level experiences of the troops, the military culture that developed... it is a gripping and hugely enlightening reading experience. From the modern perspective, in time and in terms of modern war, the battlefields of WWI are incomprehensible - the vastness of scale, the inconceivable casualty rates (the US averaged 36,000 casualties a month - compared to 6000 a month in WWII), the tactical and strategic errors that served to maintain this exhaustive and often futile expenditure of lives, the weaponry, the inconceivably ghastly conditions in which troops had to fight and survive for months at a time ... Wawro reminds us that WWI was a truly historical event of unimaginable dimensions in costs, loves, human misery and post event significance. It is a great service to bring WWI back into the consciousness of modern history.
Wawro fleshes out his narrative with constant small asides and trivia (for want of a better term) that delight and intrigue - daylight savings time, Alvin York, the Lost Battalion, Captain Harry Truman, the culture of the Doughboys who sang as they marched - always, everywhere, and so much more. The one negative feature - and the reason I give this book four stars instead of the five it should have - is the paucity of maps. Wawro throws out so many French place names and labels, villages and woods, as he describes battles and movements and strategies that the reader unfamiliar with France in detail gets lost... he assumes a facility with French place names comparable to that of a local real estate agent. More, and smaller scale, maps would be immensely helpful to allay a lot of confusion as divisions move here and there, attack and seize various objectives, plan for follow-on movements and attacks. Nevertheless, accepting that flaw, this is a superb history!
February 4, 2019
This book does a good job at covering the ordeal of the American army in the First World War. When it comes to accounts of combat, this book can't be topped.
The maps are both uninformative and too few.
When it comes to the big picture, I had a lot of problems with this book.
Wawro states that the Americans defeated Germany on the battlefield, that is, there was no "stab in the back." However, when he talks about the American breakthrough, he talks about how the German political situation and home front was collapsing, how the Germans who were taken prisoner were out of food, etc. He seems to undercut his argument for a clean-cut American military victory.
He clearly despises Woodrow Wilson and can't write about him without his contempt for Wilson showing. It seems he also views Sec. of War Newton D. Baker with contempt in what little he writes about Baker. Pershing starts out looking heroic and sensible, but then is revealed as much the same kind of general as Haig, one who orders his soldiers forward into slaughter with little understanding of what they faced. It isn't until we get down to Colonel George C. Marshall that we find someone who seems to know what is going on. Which raises the question, if the war effort was so badly run, how was victory possible.
Then there is the issue of peace and the Allies. Wawro hates Wilson, he hates Lodge, he hates the whole Treaty fight in the Senate. Wilson, in his view, by betting everything on the League of Nations, makes World War II possible. However, Wawro also views the British and French with disdain, because they (in his telling) deceive and trap Wilson.
Finally, Wawro ends this book with a quote from "Casablanca" about Americans marching into Berlin at the end of World War I.
But the Americans never reached Berlin in World War I or the aftermath. For a historian to end a book on such a note strikes me as irresponsible.
The maps are both uninformative and too few.
When it comes to the big picture, I had a lot of problems with this book.
Wawro states that the Americans defeated Germany on the battlefield, that is, there was no "stab in the back." However, when he talks about the American breakthrough, he talks about how the German political situation and home front was collapsing, how the Germans who were taken prisoner were out of food, etc. He seems to undercut his argument for a clean-cut American military victory.
He clearly despises Woodrow Wilson and can't write about him without his contempt for Wilson showing. It seems he also views Sec. of War Newton D. Baker with contempt in what little he writes about Baker. Pershing starts out looking heroic and sensible, but then is revealed as much the same kind of general as Haig, one who orders his soldiers forward into slaughter with little understanding of what they faced. It isn't until we get down to Colonel George C. Marshall that we find someone who seems to know what is going on. Which raises the question, if the war effort was so badly run, how was victory possible.
Then there is the issue of peace and the Allies. Wawro hates Wilson, he hates Lodge, he hates the whole Treaty fight in the Senate. Wilson, in his view, by betting everything on the League of Nations, makes World War II possible. However, Wawro also views the British and French with disdain, because they (in his telling) deceive and trap Wilson.
Finally, Wawro ends this book with a quote from "Casablanca" about Americans marching into Berlin at the end of World War I.
But the Americans never reached Berlin in World War I or the aftermath. For a historian to end a book on such a note strikes me as irresponsible.
January 28, 2019
This is a history of WWI and the role of the US Army (and Marines) from the period before the war through Wilson's failure to get the Treaty of Versailles and the proposed entry to the League of Nations ratified. There are clear analyses of the personalities and strategies of the British, French, and Americans against the Central Powers and, regrettably, among themselves. I've read dozens of WWII histories, but the details of what was really the first phase of WWII were far less familiar. You get to understand the strengths, and many weaknesses, principals such as Americans Wilson and Pershing, French Foch and Clemenceau, and British Lloyd George and Haig.
For a history buff, the book is fascinating, but there is a little too much recitation of the tactical maneuvers of individual divisions of each of the principal combatants; at times I felt as though I needed to spread out a detailed map of northeast France just to keep the activities clear; I quickly decided, however, to simply skim over those sections. Ignoring tactics, you get a great understanding of the underlying strategies, and the supporting tactical foolishness that led to the carnage. A lot of good personal vignettes. Warning: this book is about armies on the march and contains a good deal of unedited profanity and gore that is inherent in war on the front lines.
For a history buff, the book is fascinating, but there is a little too much recitation of the tactical maneuvers of individual divisions of each of the principal combatants; at times I felt as though I needed to spread out a detailed map of northeast France just to keep the activities clear; I quickly decided, however, to simply skim over those sections. Ignoring tactics, you get a great understanding of the underlying strategies, and the supporting tactical foolishness that led to the carnage. A lot of good personal vignettes. Warning: this book is about armies on the march and contains a good deal of unedited profanity and gore that is inherent in war on the front lines.
December 13, 2025
I've read better accounts of the American Expeditionary Force fighting in France. I like The Doughboys: The Story of the AEF, 1917-1918 by Laurence Stallings and Yanks: The Epic Story of the American Army in World War I by John Eisenhower. "Sons of Freedom" (not a great title) starts off strong but then fades and I found myself growing tired of his constant sniping at the various personalities as well as the British and French. One has to wonder how motivated the Americans would have been after three years of a brutal trench war that had consumed hundreds of thousands of our young men with nothing to show for it. I understand that Mr. Wawro is trying to put some light on what he believes is the overlooked and forgotten AEF and the United States contribution to the Allied victory in World War One. Fair enough, but a little research will show that there are quite a few books already in print about the AEF (in some cases for many years) and some of them are more readable.
January 17, 2019
Geoffrey Wawro's Sons of Freedom offers an energetic narrative of America’s military involvement in the First World War. Wawro essentially skims over the war’s background and political leaders (unlike G.J. Meyer's recent work), opting to focus on the American Expeditionary Force’s experiences in the climax of the Western Front. Wawro insists that American intervention in the war was decisive, coming at a moment when Britain and France’s armies were on the verge of collapse and unable to stop the Germans in their Spring Offensive without a massive infusion of American reinforcements, materiel and morale. Despite claims on the dust jacket that this argument’s “revisionist,” it’s actually a well-worn, constantly-argued interpretation of events; how valid it is comes down to the individual reader. Regardless, the book’s main virtues are its immediacy and quick-paced narrative, offering blow-by-blow accounts, alternately exciting and horrific, of the AEF’s battles and the experiences of the Doughboys, quickly trained and thrown into a maelstrom, forced to become an expert army under fire. By Wawro’s account, at least, they succeeded handsomely.
April 17, 2019
An excellent summary of the year of action by the American's in World War I. Before this book all that I knew was that Black Jack Pershing had kept the US Military separated from the French and British and refused to have to retake any ground. He is often thought of as a hero, but this book lays out the case that he was merely a skilled and lucky politician and an incompetent military strategist whose lust for the offensive got thousands of young men killed unnecessarily. Wawro does not hide the fact of American incompetence when first entering the war and points out the many blunders of the leaders. But it is clear from reading this book that America had a decisive impact on the war and that the political bungling and absurd idealsim of Woodrow Wilson was part of the reason that World War II happened shortly after. A fascinating read. I will read more books by this author.
December 15, 2020
I read Wawro's book on the Franco Prussian War first, and this book is quite similar in style and quality. This book was generally easy to read and follows American combat troops in the First World War, starting from mass conscription in 1917 to the war's end in 1918. The book has a bit of content about the post war peace. I strongly recommend reading this book with a map - unless you are adept at French geography, the battles become very hard to track without a map. The maps provided in the Kindle version are also far too small to be useful, but appropriate maps can fairly easily be found online. Some parts of the book delve in almost too much detail; heroic stories of assaulting ridges and machine gun nests sometimes obscure the wider strategic picture. Overall I enjoyed this book and recommend it.
May 24, 2020
Sons of Freedom is an intriguing retelling of America’s role in WWI. Geoffrey Wawro makes a compelling case that but for the US doughboys the Allies would have lost the war. Untrained and ill equipped the Americans had a million men at arms in France by 1918, and brought energy and raw nerve to an allied front battered by 4 years of trench warfare. Led by Pershing the AEF broke German lines across their front ultimately encircling the Boche at Sedan forcing them to sue for an armistice. It actually was the Americans who completely reversed the war’s outcome in six months. Great military history writing.
July 18, 2019
Making the brave claim and supporting with evidence is that the US military was instrumental in the defeat of Germany in WWI. He spends less time on the ways in which this is covered up by Great Britain and France which would be interesting. The military actions of the US Army can be a little repetitive in the book, but he does a good job of showing the ineptness of many US leaders, including Pershing from time to time. I am not sure if this book will sway the dominant narrative that the Entente had done most of the work, but it is an admirable attempt and worth engaging with.
January 6, 2019
Difficult but worth the effort!
This well written book was difficult to read but worth the effort. The highly detailed description of events were tedious at times, but necessary. The brutalities described were also difficult to read, but necessary for an accurate telling as well.
This well written book was difficult to read but worth the effort. The highly detailed description of events were tedious at times, but necessary. The brutalities described were also difficult to read, but necessary for an accurate telling as well.
February 23, 2024
The forgotten American soldiers who defied Germany in WW1. The French and British were on the verge of collapse in 1918, and would have lost the war without the Doughboys.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, described the Allied victory as a "miracle" - but it was a distinctly American miracle.
Field Marshal Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, described the Allied victory as a "miracle" - but it was a distinctly American miracle.
July 18, 2020
Great book highlighting the bureaucratic hell as well as actual hell that occurred around these events and America's role in it. Really liked the first hand accounts interspersed in the book as it made the story so much more personal. Get it if you want a good read!
September 30, 2025
Claims to have written this book in order to focus on the stories and experiences of the soldiers who have been “forgotten” through time --> proceeds to talk more about the operational history of the war, therefore forgetting the men who he claims are…forgotten
Read
August 21, 2019The USA won WW1. No doubt about it according to the author.
January 10, 2020
heartbreaking, with incredible detail; Prof. Wawro does justice to the soldiers of the AEF, who turned the tide on the Western Front in 1918 - a great, necessary account -
January 26, 2020
US role in winning WWI
November 11, 2020
One of the best I've read on WWI, not a history of the war itself but more a study of America's part in the war. Incredibly well done and highly recommended.
January 25, 2022
American Warriors
Wawro's unapologetic case for the American warrior and their, somewhat forgotten, decisive contribution to The War to End All Wars (WWI). An excellent read!
Wawro's unapologetic case for the American warrior and their, somewhat forgotten, decisive contribution to The War to End All Wars (WWI). An excellent read!
August 25, 2023
The story of America overseas during World War One, and how they made a major contribution in winning the war.
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November 24, 2024A good story but badly overwritten, didn’t finish it
March 13, 2025
I was introduced to author Geoffrey Wawro by his excellent updated history of the Franco-Prussian War so I was delighted to find his account of America's entry into the First World and specifically the experiences of the soldiers, officers, and commanders of the American Expeditionary Force. I was frankly concerned as I read further and further into the volume that this was a 'hit job' on the AEF and the American contribution, but as I continued I realized that Wawro was accurately portraying how unprepared so many of the American doughboys were for war on the Western Front, from the man in the ranks up to some of the division, corps, and army commanders. Pershing was ruthless in his efforts to get his army trained up to the necessary level was fighting on another front as he fended off repeated efforts by the British and French to push him aside and draft the AEF to fill the ranks of their depleted divisions. The French were in fact able to make better use of African American formations in combat than the AEF was though Wawro doesn't belabor that story. What I really appreciated getting from this book was a deeper and better understanding of the harsh experience of the AEF even as they pushed on to making the contribution to final victory and seeing how this would inform decisions made by George Marshall and other senior American leaders in the year before World War II as they strove to avoid the experiences detailed here. Recommended.
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