ial Germany’s last bid for victory, though the
Allies, commanded now by Marshal Ferdinand
Foch, did not know it.
The Allied counter-offensives found a weak-
ened enemy losing the will to fight. The greatest
defeatism was not, however, to be found on the
battlefront but among the so recently revered
German generals, Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
Germany’s allies were collapsing in September- The Turkish army was defeated in Palestine.
The Bulgarians could not resist an Allied advance
from Greece and requested an armistice. Though
Austrian troops were still stoutly defending the
Italian front, the Dual Monarchy was disintegrat-
ing and its various nationalities were proclaiming
their independence. In France, the arrival of new
masses of fresh American troops had not only
blunted Germany’s earlier thrust against Paris, but
filled the German high command with a sense of
hopelessness. Successful Allied offensives broke
their last will to resist.
Ludendorff, towards the close of September
1918, demanded that the government in Berlin
should secure an immediate armistice to save the
army. In Berlin the politicians tried to win a little
time. Later, Ludendorff propagated the lie, so
useful to the Nazis, that the army had been
‘stabbed in the back’. The truth is that Ludendorff
wished to end a war that was militarily lost while
the army still preserved its discipline and cohesion.
He got his way. On 11 November 1918 the last
shot was fired in France.