This is the description of one day of battle during World War I. That day, March 21, 1918, was the start of the German offensive in Northern France that the German leadership hoped would break the British Expeditionary Force as well as the British public. It involved perhaps a million German troops and 6000 guns over a few miles of front near St. Quentin. By the time the day was over about 40000 troops on each side were either dead, wounded, or taken prisoner. Middlebrook does a great job of detailing the strengths and weaknesses of the British defenses as well as the German strategic preparation, but the best part of this book is the incorporation of first person accounts from the soldiers of both sides who did the fighting. Middlebrook achieved this by placing ads in newspapers in Britain and Germany requesting information from surviving participants. This was done in 1975, just in time for many of the now elderly men to relate their experiences of this day in 1918. In addition to these first person accounts, in his final analysis, Middlebrook takes pains to produce accurate figures for the men lost in battle, something that until this work was apparently not previously done. All of this leaves the reader with the feeling that he has read a real work of military scholarship. ( )

History of the first day of the 1918 German spring offensive. Middlebrook did a great job with pulling together eyewitness accounts of the events of the first day. As other reviewers have pointed out this approach does not give the fully story of the "Kaiserschlacht" as the first day was overall rather successful for the Germans. It was the inability of the German forces eventually to keep pace and exploit those successes that lead to the stopping of the offensive, and the beginning of the long retreat leading to November and the end of the war.

Would be a good choice to go along with another work that covers the spring offensive as a whole. ( )

This story of the 1918 Kaiser's offensive is told in the same manner as Middlebrook's earlier, "First Day on the Somme." Like the Somme, the German offensive lasted for months, but in the opening days was quite successful. Middlebrook's first day analysis points out the pockets of resistance that held up or slowed down the German attacks, which, he claims, ultimately led to the failure of this effort to knock the Brits out of the war.

While the eyewitness accounts are great, it had less meaning to me than First Day on the Somme. Maybe that is because the first day was less of the story than subsequent developments in the campaign. ( )

Used - good condition