Reviews

Lowry (history, North Texas Univ.) uses newly opened archives in Great Britain, France, and the United States to argue that the Compiègne Armistice of November 1918 ending the hostilities between the Allied and Central powers actually delineated the peace terms. This thesis breaks little new ground. (Until World War I, armistice and peace negotiations were held separately.) However, Lowry's conclusions at the end of the book finally alert the reader to the significance of his thesis. He states that "events in the waning months of 1918 illustrate wonderfully well the problems of waging a coalition war, or, more precisely, ending a coalition peace. Mutual mistrust, conflicting national ambitions, indifference to the hopes and fears of one's partners" all would become, more significantly, the seeds of World War II. There have been almost no new works specifically on the armistice since the early 1920s. Hence, Lowry's study is conditionally recommended for academic libraries and World War II collections.‘Harry V. Willems, Southeast Kansas Lib. System, Iola

Beginning on October 3, 1918, with Germany's initial armistice inquiry to President Woodrow Wilson, Lowry's exhaustive study follows the murky negotiations based on Wilson's Fourteen Points that led to the Compiegne Armistice signing on November 11, 1918. This is dense history, but Lowry, who teaches history at the University of North Texas, makes much of his account of the backbiting, threats, jealousy and ignorance, that arose from both national and personal interests read like a novel. The Supreme War Council, whose key members included Georges Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Marshall Ferdinand Foch and President Wilson, was wary not only of the Germans' intentions (they seemed "prepared to admit lack of success in the war, but not defeat" as Lowry puts it) but also of one another‘as each country differed in its goals (i.e., total vs. partial disarmament, freedom of the seas, evacuation and reparations, leniency vs. vengeance). While this isn't the first study of its kind, Lowry's is definitive rather than derivative, with over 600 footnotes, an index and selective bibliography. Though the book is occasionally weighed down by its own density, Armistice 1918 will be invaluable to scholars and historians while others will revel in its trenchant insight into the minds and machinations of men and the inevitable consequences. Photos and maps not seen by PW. (Dec.)