Ebook: Hundred Days: The Campaign That Ended World War I

In the late summer of 1918, after four long years of senseless, stagnant fighting, the Western Front erupted. The bitter four-month struggle that ensuedknown as the Hundred Days Campaignsaw some of the bloodiest and most ferocious combat of the Great War, as the Allies grimly worked to break the stalemate in the west and end the conflict that had decimated Europe.

In Hundred Days, acclaimed military historian Nick Lloyd leads readers into the endgame of World War I, showing how the timely arrival of American men and materielas well as the bravery of French, British, and Commonwealth soldiershelped to turn the tide on the Western Front. Many of these battle-hardened troops had endured years of terror in the trenches, clinging to their resolve through poison-gas attacks and fruitless assaults across no mans land. Finally, in July 1918, they and their American allies did the impossible: they returned movement to the western theater. Using surprise attacks, innovative artillery tactics, and swarms of tanks and aircraft, they pushed the Germans out of their trenches and forced them back to their final bastion: the Hindenburg Line, a formidable network of dugouts, barbed wire, and pillboxes. After a massive assault, the Allies broke through, racing toward the Rhine and forcing Kaiser Wilhelm II to sue for peace.

An epic tale ranging from the ravaged fields of Flanders to the revolutionary streets of Berlin, Hundred Days recalls the bravery and sacrifice that finally silenced the guns of Europe.

Review

A Macleans Best Read of 2014

A sobering but essential read on the last days of a horrific conflict The American role in the final victory has been downplayed by Eurocentric historians Now we have an esteemed British historian giving Americas soon-famed doughboys their just due.
*The Washington Times*

A brilliantly enlightening approach to war and mens livesLloyd has provided an accessible overview of how strategic and tactical shiftslike the surge in Iraq and the associated urban outpostscan help alter the course of a war and indeed end it. But much more importantlyhe explores how those strategic and tactical shifts affected the lives of soldiers. As history progresses, it is their lives and experiences that are often most at risk of fading. There are no living veterans of the Great War, making it all the more essential that not only the tactics, tools, and economy of war, but also the soldiers themselves, remain the important pieces of history. At its best, Hundred Days does just this.
Daily Beast

Lloyds narrative is first-rateWith clarity and genuine sympathy for the combatants, Lloyd tells the story of the summer fighting that led to the long and increasingly rapid retreat of the German armies in the fallTen million soldiers died fighting in World War I, and perhaps as many as 20 million more were wounded. Their stories deserve to be told. Professor Lloyd has done so very well indeed.
*Army Magazine*

One of the few truly noteworthy WWI books to issue in the centennial flood from the presses of the Western world in observance of anniversary of the wars beginning Hundred Days is a bracing re-dramatization of the horrors that were most fresh in the minds of all concerned when those days were over.
Open Letters Monthly

Brisk and thoroughly engrossing Far from being a pointless stalemate in the mud, the last hundred days of [World War I] saw the Allied armies push their adversaries back from the Paris commuter belt all the way to the German border itself.
Evening Standard (London)

A readable, instructive, and compelling narrative of Allied successes and German failuresHundred Days succeeds in its ambition of covering all the major combatants on the Western Front in the final campaign of World War I. Lloyd adroitly combines sweeping historical scope with the perspectives of the men who did the fighting on the ground. All this in a history that taps the latest relevant scholarship without sidetracking the narrative.
Michigan War Studies Review

His accounts of each battle are both lively and clearthe real strength of Lloyds work is his treatment of the experience of the war from an individual perspective. He paints vivid portraits of the character and motivations of the various commanders and draws on a variety of first hand accounts from men at all levels on both sides of the front
History in the Margins

Lloyd enters the upper tier of Great War historians with this admirable account of the wars final campaign. Lloyds unfailing eye for telling anecdotes vitalize his narrative. The text brims with archival research.
Publishers Weekly

A fine account of the Allies dramatic but ultimately unsatisfying victory in World War I.
*Kirkus Reviews*

Lloyd effectively proves his thesis that Allied military might and leadership, with four hard years of strategic and tactical lessons learned, were what brought the war to a close. While most of the new books commemorating the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war will focus on its causes and origin, Lloyds analysis of the final campaigns brings a new perspective to the terrible conflict.
Library Journal

This culmination of four years of bloodshed has been largely forgotten... [Lloyd] gives the reader an insight into the raw emotions of the period.
The Oxford Times

This is a powerful and moving book by a rising military historian. Lloyds depiction of the great battles of July-November provides compelling evidence of the scale of the Allies victories and the bitter reality of German defeat.
Gary Sheffield, Professor of War Studies, University of Wolverhampton

About the Author

Nick Lloyd is Senior Lecturer in Defense Studies at Kings College London. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham and is the author of two previous books, Loos 1915 and The Amritsar Massacre: The Untold Story of One Fateful Day. He lives in Gloucestershire, England.