With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918

The final months of WWI have been subjected to increasing attention by specialists. What has been lacking to date is a comprehensive analysis explaining why the conflict ended when it did. Stevenson, of the London School of Economics, complements Cataclysm, his political history of the war, with this definitive account of the final stages. He makes the case that even after American intervention and Russian revolution, the Great War's endgame remained open. Allied victory might seem a good prospect, but its scale and cost remained opaque. The coalition's back was genuinely to the wall in early 1918. But the German spring offensives fatally weakened the Central Powers' fighting might. Allied lines held, morale revived, and their effectiveness improved. The decisive counteroffensive, extending across Europe and into the Middle East, reflected above all the ability to manage resources at all levels, from a "superstructure of intergovernmental institutions" to the front lines of increasingly open, mobile warfare. Stevenson's detailed, lucid description of the development and maturation of that ability reflects encyclopedic mastery of published and archival sources while synergizing military, economic, political, and social-cultural factors. It is a professor's page-turner. It is also a door-opener to any reader seeking to understand the Great War's last stage. Illus.; maps. (Sept.)