We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected]
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
The war’s last year began with the Germans in negotiations with Soviet Russia that resulted, in March 1918, in the draconian Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but only after they had countered Bolshevik stalling tactics by continuing to march eastward, to the detriment of their own plans to withdraw troops for a final offensive in the west. Nevertheless, the final German drive was strong enough to compel unprecedented Allied cooperation, including making Marshal Foch supreme commander. By July the Germans were closer to Paris than at any time since 1914, but American troops gradually assumed a greater role against them, with two-thirds of the 2.1 million to cross the Atlantic deployed to the front by the armistice. British and Imperial troops ultimately mastered combined arms warfare, using artillery, infantry, tanks, and air power to achieve a breakthrough at Amiens in August from which the Germans never recovered. On the Balkan front, a multinational Allied army achieved a breakthrough in September that knocked Bulgaria out of the war, and a month later a breakthrough on the Italian front precipitated the collapse of Austria-Hungary. In the war’s last hundred days, the Allies liberated almost all of France and half of Belgium, prompting Germany to sign the armistice on November 11.