From the opening shots to the signing of the Armistice, the First World War lasted some fifty-two months. It was fought on, or in the waters of, six of the seven continents, and in all of the seven seas. For the first time, the fighting was on land, at sea and in the air. It became industrial, and unrestricted: poison gas, aerial bombing of cities, and the sinking without warning of merchantmen and passenger ships by submarines. Military and civilian casualties probably exceeded forty million. During its course, four empires collapsed – the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman. In all its military, political, geographical, economic, scientific, technological and above all human complexity, the First World War is almost impossible to comprehend.
Day-by-day narratives – excellent reference books – can be dizzying for the reader trying to make sense of the whole. Freer-flowing accounts help to convey the broader trends and factors, but offer less of a sense of the human dimension of time. The month is a digestible gauge. We remember months, because months have names, because they are linked to the seasons, and because they have their own characters. Looking at the First World War month by month reveals its complexity while preserving the sense of time.
Fight to the Finish is not intended to be a comprehensive account of the fighting, nor of all the other factors in the war. It does not examine the conflict’s causes or its consequences. It aims simply to give a picture of each of those fifty-two months: what was the predominant action, how and why it came about, and how it looked. The narrative, while not Anglocentric, is told in the main from a British perspective.
It is called Fight to the Finish because that is what David Lloyd George, the British prime minister for twenty-four of those fifty-two months, and minister for munitions and then secretary of state for war for the preceding eighteen, said that it must be. Such a demand – in effect, the Germans’ unconditional surrender – required a national effort of unprecedented proportions. It was this that gave the war its unique and terrible face, which Fight to the Finish seeks to portray.