A fair but not great book by Great War standards

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	• Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax Joseph Persico Random House Audio, 2004 average customer review:based on 18 reviews view larger image
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A New Look At An Old War

Just when I thought everything that could be written about World War I had been written, I found this book. Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour takes a fresh approach to this dreadful war. By focusing on the last day and flashing back to some of the worst moments, and some of the best, Joseph Persico brings a fresh perspective to World War I; its battles, generals, and the home front. It reads like a novel.

A fair but not great book by Great War standards

"Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour" by Joseph Persico is not at all a bad book. If it were an account about an earlier or later war, I might have rated it at four or five stars. However, this book chronicles the Great War, a war that has produced the finest and most captivating masterpieces in fiction (All Quiet on the Western Front, A Farewell to Arms) and nonfiction (The Guns of August, The Price of Glory) alike. When, for example, it is compared to Alistair Horne's account of the battle of Verdun ("The Price of Glory") Persico's book falls flat.

The title (Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour) seems to imply that the book will focus primarily on the events of the last day of the Great War. While many other WWI accounts will recall the last days with high-profile events such as the Kaiser's abdication or the German representatives' visit to Foch for terms, few mention how the trenches were blazing with gunfire and artillery right up to the final seconds of the Armistice. This is where Persico's book does well, although in my opinion he missed an opportunity to do better. Persico confined the actual account of the final day to a few chapters while scattering the personal accounts to bite-sized excerpts over several preceding chapters--chapters that chronicle the entire war from August 1914.

The personal accounts of the last days of the war were good but were unfortunately diluted by Persico's impulse to retell the war in its entirety. My only explanation for why Persico recounted the whole conflict was to make his book more palatable to lay readers. Oddly, many other authors (such as the fore-mentioned Horne) have a little more faith in their audience's ability to recall at least the basic course of the war. If readers need to brush up on their WWI history in order to understand the intended focus of this book, there is no shortage of great World War I overviews (such as those by AJP Taylor or a recent work by John Keegan.)

As with any book on the Great War, Persico does well in conveying the immense tragedy of the conflict from both sides on the Western Front. The diary and memior excerpts included in the book are not only from the American, British, and French perspective, but many German accounts are included as well.

As I have previously stated, "Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour" is not a bad read, but it simply lags in its special classification as a WWI account. For those that have read a multitude of Great War literature (fiction & nonfiction), they will likely be disappointed in the lack of new information presented in this book.

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Uneven, but Required Reading for WWI

The author's point concerning the sheer stupidity and callousness of Pershing and other allied commanders in continuing to attack German positions AFTER THE ARMISTICE HAD BEEN SIGNED is earthshaking and almost incomprehensible to today's reader. Yet there it is; probably 6,500 additional American, Canadian, French and British soldiers gave their lives in the six hours between 5:00 AM when the armistice was signed and 11:00 AM when the cease fire took effect. And this was not because of German perfidy or perverseness -- it was due to our own commanders continuing to send troops over the top to attack German trenches.

The French and British can be almost forgiven for ordering Americans to die up to the last moment; they looked upon the US troops as Johnny-come-latelys who were going to grab the spoils without paying their butcher's bill. But nothing can excuse Pershing, Bullard, and other American commanders for ordering their troops to attack and die. It is impossible to read Persico's treatise without experiencing mounting anger, but this last date, at whom or what?

I will be eternally grateful to author Persico for making this imformation public -- like probably most others I had accepted official reports of casualties (woefully understated for 11/11 in a cover-up) and did not realize the abject criminality of those involved. There were many rationalizations, and Persico offers them all, but to little effect. For this I would give the author 5 stars.

Unfortunately, the author flits back and forth from the morning of November 11th, 1918, to other days in the war starting with its beginning. Most of the coverage is through ancedotes from letters and works by participants, but the overall effect detracts from the book's main theme and makes for confusing reading. On this basis the book becomes a personalized narrative, rating only three stars. With respect to learning about the war in a wider context, the book is simply unsuitable.

The concluding chapters feature probably the author's best work. His provocative questions and thoughts concerning the armistice of 1918 as leading to World War Two are worth reading. Some of it is light, such as overlooking that the British continued their blockade of Germany until the Versailles Treaty was signed (in a very large sense, continuing the war after the armistice), and the proffered idea that the war needed to be fought through to Germany's total defeat to eliminate any chance of resurgent militarism. It needs to be remembered in this context that no European War had been fought at that time since the Romans to the complete and unconditional surrender of a nation. Prior to WWI, wars were fought to acquire land, resources, hegemony, or to place a particular ruler on a throne, and negotiated treaties had been the norm.

Another item treated lightly was that had Wilson not brought the US into the war through propaganda and pretense, the parties most probably would have had to negotiate a peace after fighting to exhaustion on both sides. Clearly this point was reached in 1918, and it was only the American intervention that brought about the German collapse. One is tempted to believe that Hitler would not have come to power and World War Two would not have occurred had the US stayed out of WWI. Unfortunately, Persico does not expound on this thesis.

There were a few minor problems such as saying the Germans said, "Der Krieg ist ueber." That's a literal translation for "The war is over", but a German would have said, "Der Krieg ist vorbei" or something more idiomatic. Overall, however, the prose is excellent and well-edited and the author's writing style is crisp and engaging.

In conclusion, author Persico makes many valid points and has produced an important work that adds to the World War One literature. At this late date, that is an achievement in itself. I recommend purchasing this book.

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the big, the small, the whole picture

There are many who have not read every First Great war book out there, and this is a good one for such to read (even though I have read many). The author admirably gives us what's going on in each phase of the war, and details each battle in a style of Strategy, then Big-Picture, then Zoom in showing the viewpoint of an individual corporal or captain. Plenty of descriptions of what corps or brigades must do and obstacles, but also plenty of quotes from diaries and letters and journals of participants. It doesn't matter that two hundred authors have given the big picture; you must still give your own version of the big picture in order to fit your new private letters quotes and details in it. But I must say this is not a fun read: Here's one detail:
"During the fight the men under MacArthur imagined they had witnessed every permutation of human suffering until they observed the fate of private Jim Gallagher, 168th Infantry. In an anemy night attack illuminated by star shells, a flare lodged in Gallagher's gut. There was nothing his comrades could do to remove the hissing projectile but watch the man die in agony."

I've read several recent Civil War offerings and see that today's history trend is offering diaries, letters-back-home and journals from corporals, privates and lieutenants; Persico has followed this with much illuminating source content; but he had to give the brigade and corps picture, the generals and strategies too, so we can fit the small into the big and get a clear picture, and Persico fully gives us this. The notes and bib pages, in packed small print, total twenty-seven pages (plenty for volumes way under six or seven hundred pages; this text is 410), including not only books but journals, archives, and gov docs collections, covering the gamut from 1914 to 1999. This is not stale stuff, we get a fresh lot in a full picture of the early glory-seeking and later "just survive!" actions and feelings, the soldiers' downtime and the few up times; and it's a balanced picture between the Brits, the French, the AEF (American Expeditionary Force) and the Germans; the privates, and the generals.

Here's another in it: "Troops of the 37th and 79th Divisions were arrayed before Montfaucon, a hill dominating the center of the front. Its earth was steeped in ancient blood. More than a thousand years before, men had died on its slopes in battles between warring tribes. Rain appeared to be the inevitable concomitant of a new offensive on the western front, including this day. Numerous creeks crisscrossing the region flooded and turned fields into quagmires. Troops dumped tens of thousand of sandbags into washed-out roadbeds to allow supply wagons to reach the front. The infantrymen had to lay down duckboards to advance."

I sure can't quote whole pages here, but every chapter gives good stuff: you hear and touch and smell every forest, every road, every mudpit, every man, besides see it like you are there; and thus gain the understanding. One could easily wish to choose 200 paragraphs to quote trying to give a picture of the illuminating success of this author's efforts: you could in fact read only this book to get a competent view of the daily doings and surviving efforts, and criminal career-motivated orders of many commanders, leading to his main point.

He drives home his point of exactly why the men who died that final November morning didn't have to: nothing gained, wasted lives. And woe to infantry advancing against entrenched machine guns.

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worth your time

This book seems to give a decent overview of the Western Front concerning WWI. While it mentions the war with Russia, the war in Africa, the Ottoman empire, naval battles, and the effect of air power, it does not cover them in depth at all; you will have to look elsewhere for that. What it does do is integrate the decisions of the various governments with the thoughts of the men in the trenches, especially after the armistice had been signed. I found it a bit difficult to follow in that the narrative skips back and forth from various people/places/times on the last day of the war to various people/places/times earlier in the war, so you get a "German/front line/1918" chapter, followed by a "British/prime minister/1915" chapter, followed by a "French/homefront/ 1918" chapter", etc.

I felt the author was fairly even-handed in his treatment, showing both the extreme pacifist views and the extreme militaristic views, and drawing, at the end, this conclusion: "Consider the analogy of a length of rope. It can be used to save a man or hang him. Given its apparent inevitability, perhaps we must judge war similarly. It is the purpose to which force is applied that determines its justification." He later says, "As we look over the graves of those who died a useless death in the last moments of a senseless war, we can only hope, with more optimism than history supports, that just causes will outnumber the unjust."

As I intend to use this book to supplement our homeschool curriculum for our high-school aged son, I will include a note for other parents: the book does have a certain amount of "PG-13" type profanity, mostly in quotations (not unusual for a book about war), but also one instance of the f-word (not in a quotation, page 129), which I found completely unnecessary. There is an entire chapter titled "A German Bullet is Cleaner than a Whore", which, while not too explicit, you would do well to read before handing the book over to your younger teen. Other similar references are sprinkled throughout the text, but probably nothing a mature teen couldn't handle, especially in the context.

I do recommend the book, despite its limited scope, especially if you are not terribly familiar with WWI. Other than its convoluted timeline, I found it easy and enjoyable to read.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

November 11, 1918. The final hours pulsate with tension as every man in the trenches hopes to escape the melancholy distinction of being the last to die in World War I. The Allied generals knew the fighting would end precisely at 11:00 A.M, yet in the final hours they flung men against an already beaten Germany. The result? Eleven thousand casualties suffered?more than during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Why? Allied commanders wanted to punish the enemy to the very last moment and career officers saw a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion.

Joseph E. Persico puts the reader in the trenches with the forgotten and the famous?among the latter, Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. Mainly, he follows ordinary soldiers? lives, illuminating their fate as the end approaches. Persico sets the last day of the war in historic context with a gripping reprise of all that led up to it, from the 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, which ignited the war, to the raw racism black doughboys endured except when ordered to advance and die in the war?s last hour. Persico recounts the war?s bloody climax in a cinematic style that evokes All Quiet on the Western Front, Grand Illusion, and Paths of Glory.

The pointless fighting on the last day of the war is the perfect metaphor for the four years that preceded it, years of senseless slaughter for hollow purposes. This book is sure to become the definitive history of the end of a conflict Winston Churchill called ?the hardest, cruelest, and least-rewarded of all the wars that have been fought.?

From the Hardcover edition.

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