Bøger af James Emerson Loyd

1918: The Great War, as it was becoming known, had reached an inflection point. The course of the war and the future of European civilization now rested on one decision: Would Germany, having prevailed in the East against a Russia crumbling into revolution and chaos, now attempt to crush her British and French enemies in one last desperate offensive before the emergent American Army arrived in its overwhelming force? Or could a small band of patriotic Germans led by a General and a Crown Prince use their high positions to influence their unyielding leadership to simply declare victory and withdraw homeward, leaving their opponents to justify a continuing and increasingly senseless slaughter? Their conspiracy gathers in such figures as Winston Churchill, the Communist firebrand Rosa Luxemburg and the Irish rebel leader Michael Collins along with an enigmatic Princess, an impetuous English Lord and a beautiful Belgian war refugee. Their story careens from swordfighting in France to a secret mission to London to Bolshevik-inspired upheavals in Berlin. Who Desires Peace..., the first book in the Great War Won trilogy, chronicles the schemes and adventures of the conspirators laying the foundations for their peace offensive; the second installment, ...Should Prepare for War, veers from Russia and Ukraine to the West as those peace efforts falter; the final volume, A Power of Recognized Superiority, traces the resumption and resolution of the war as America's looming presence finally tips the balance.

As 1917 waned, the collapse of the old Russia, the Tsarist Empire, turned the world on its head. Its foes saw its weakness as did its friends, not least its allies in France and Britain, but the latter saw, too, a perverse blessing of sorts. Under Alexander Kerensky's ascendant Socialist government, the Entente no longer had to explain its collaboration with the worst of the autocratic regimes in Europe. For a time, Russia seemed revitalized, even retaking the offensive against Germany. It was not to be. After a bare half year of military futility and political unrest, in October(under the old Julian calendar, November under the western Gregorian), Lenin's small but organized band of Bolsheviks took charge, then quickly sued for peace with Germany. In the West, first the French, then the British had suffered horrendous casualties in ill-conceived offensives, the French in Champagne country, the British in Flanders. Mutiny infected France, dismay enveloped England and enervation pervaded the entire Western Front. When Germany proclaimed its resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in the spring of 1917, America, now freed of the yoke of association with the Tsar, entered the war against Germany but not the other Central Powers. Its new Associates, Britain and France, embracing the new world's seemingly unlimited resources, thought they could now see the beginning of the end. But American was months away from fielding an effective fighting force. The new year began unfolding in the East as Germany began settling matters on its own terms, ending its strategic nightmare of a war on two fronts, able to turn its full and fearsome attentions to the West...

1918: The Great War, as it was already known, had reached an inflection point. The course of the war and the future of European civilization now rested on one decision: Would Germany, having prevailed in the East against a Russia crumbling into revolution and chaos, now attempt to crush her British and French enemies in one last desperate offensive before the emergent American Army arrived in its overwhelming force? Or could a small band of patriotic Germans led by a General and a Crown Prince use high position to persuade their unyielding leadership to simply declare victory and withdraw homeward, leaving their opponents to justify a continuing and increasingly senseless slaughter? Who Desires Peace..., the first book in the Great War Won trilogy, chronicled the schemes and adventures of the conspirators laying the foundations for their peace offensive. Book Two, ...Should Prepare for War, began with the unleashing of Germany's armies as peace talks with Bolshevist Russia fail. Several calls for a peaceful resolution to the war proved inconclusive, including an intrepid mission to meet face-to-face with the American General Black Jack Pershing. Finally, the tenuous state of inaction along the Western Front was shattered by first, an unexpected Allied offensive, then a fierce German counterattack, stopped only by the courage and vigor of the new American Expeditionary Force at Chateau Thierry and Belleau Wood. Thus is set the stage for the final showdown between and American and Germany in this Book Three, A Power of Recognized Superiority, opening with a devious scheme to disrupt the Allied rear with a flood of influenza-stricken prisoners and a distaff Fifth Column subversion by the radical Rosa Luxemburg and her unlikely comrade Estelle Vandenberg, culminating in their arrest and imprisonment. Then Pershing's American Expeditionary Force enters large-scale combat for the first time in the Saint-Mihiel salient and then the Meuse-Argonne sector. As the latter offensive slogs on bloodily, Germany begins to falter, then crumble, but her foes find themselves in desperate straits of their own, as morale, manpower and a continuing slaughter take their toll. Finally, an unexpected rapprochement brings the War to End All Wars to a fitful end, each power reckoning the loss of young men and treasure and their peoples asking, 'Why'?