Joseph E. Persico

“divisions in the Meuse-Argonne sector that continued fighting to 11 A.M. ran as high as four and a half times more than…

— Joseph E. Persico

“Had Marshal Foch accepted Matthias Erzberger’s plea to stop the fighting on November 8 while negotiations were under way, likely, 6,750 lives…

— Joseph E. Persico

“Hitler would later claim that his evacuation from the front had ended the happiest chapter of his life. In the trenches he…

— Joseph E. Persico

“Conciliation now would only lead to future war. A negotiated peace rather than a peace dictated by the Allies “would jeopardize the…

— Joseph E. Persico

“Before them stood a small, erect man who fixed them with a withering gaze, Marshal Ferdinand Foch. After cool introductions, Foch opened…

— Joseph E. Persico

“It became impossible for me to sit still one minute more,” Hitler recalled. “Again everything went black before my eyes; I tottered…

— Joseph E. Persico

“If one were to stand on a street corner at 9 A.M. and watch the spirits of the British dead march by…

— Joseph E. Persico

“The artillery officer had mastered the technique of firing accurately in the dark by registering the guns beforehand, that is, determining the…

— Joseph E. Persico

“the Germans had built redoubts both sturdy and comfortable, homes away from home. Behind the lines, German soldiers cultivated gardens of fresh…

— Joseph E. Persico

“No comparable mortality had been experienced since the bubonic plague nearly five hundred years before, and modern medical science stood impotent before…

— Joseph E. Persico

“artillery pieces were lined up, only more of them, 4,000 in all, a gun every six yards stretching for fifteen miles. The…

— Joseph E. Persico

“the millions of shells, rather than destroying German defenses, had churned the ground between the attackers and the defenders into a boot-sucking…

— Joseph E. Persico

“The retaking of Mons, site of the first retreat, might be seen as poetic closure. It could also symbolize futility. The British…

— Joseph E. Persico

“One last unexploded mine remains, its exact location unknown and its hidden potency serving as something of a symbol of the Great…

— Joseph E. Persico

“All that Lanz experienced—the burial of comrades as if they were animals, the abandonment of the wounded, the decimation of the once…

— Joseph E. Persico

“He expected results, he said, “no matter how many men were killed.”

— Joseph E. Persico