A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War: November 1918

by Stanley Weintraub

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 will live in history as a great moment--the hour the Armistice went into effect, bringing an end to the First World War. Guns were silenced, and worldwide the great and small alike celebrated the end of 51 months of fighting.
In this magnificent book, Stanley Weintraub recreates the days leading up to the armistice and documents the reactions of survivors on both sides of the front.
Thirty-year-old Major Omar Bradley lamented that his rank would be reduced to that of captain and that he was "professionally ruined." King George V celebrated with a bottle of brandy laid aside for the Battle of Waterloo. In America, for 16-year-old Charles Lindbergh the end of the war
meant the purchase of a war-surplus "Flying Jenny." In a German hospital, Corporal Adolf Hitler, temporarily blinded by teargas, wept.
Weintraub has delved into the archives, sifted through a large collection of letters and diaries sent to him by survivors and heirs to survivors, and interviewed many eyewitnesses to produce this vivid rendering of the end not just of a war but of an era. Here are notable literary, military,
and political figures of the 20th century as young men and women--their careers to come still at the mercy of a last bullet or burst of shrapnel. Here also are the reflections of such figures as Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann and Joseph Conrad on the effects of the war, and eerie premonitions of the
Second World War, whose seeds were sown in both the harshness and the paradoxical laxity of the peace agreement. A major evocation of the last days of the Great War, A Stillness Heard Round the World offers both historical vignettes and heartfelt visions of the horror of war and the ecstacy of
peace.

Genres: History, World War I, War, Nonfiction

496 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 1985

About the author

Weintraub was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 17, 1929. He was the eldest child of Benjamin and Ray Segal Weintraub. He attended South Philadelphia High School, and then he attended West Chester State Teachers College (now West Chester University of Pennsylvania) where he received his B.S. in education in 1949. He continued his education at Temple University where he received his master's degree in English “in absentia,” as he was called to duty in the Korean War.

He received a commission as Army Second Lieutenant, and served with the Eighth Army in Korea receiving a Bronze Star.

After the War, he enrolled at Pennsylvania State University in September 1953; his doctoral dissertation “Bernard Shaw, Novelist” was accepted on May 6, 1956.

Except for visiting appointments, he remained at Penn State for all of his career, finally attaining the rank of Evan Pugh Professor of Arts and Humanities, with emeritus status on retirement in 2000. From 1970 to 1990 he was also Director of Penn State’s Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies

Reviews

[Dropbear123 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 rounding down for Goodreads. It wasn't bad but I can't say I'd recommend it. The book starts with the 'false armistice' news a few days before the real end of the war. Then the signing of the armistice. Most of the rest of the book is about the reaction to it, for the soldiers and on the home front, as well as the fighting in the last hours. The author brings up a lot of people who would become famous later in life, American soldiers who would become famous WWII generals, Germans who were later high ranking Nazis, artists etc. It is mainly about the western powers and Germany, with the other fronts and areas outside Europe (excluding the USA) being relegated to one chapter. The book is fairly easy to read and narratively is fine.

[Gerry Connolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

In A Stillness Heard Round the World Stanley Weintraub has painstakingly reconstructed the reactions to the end of WWI. After false reports an armistice was agreed to and took effect at the 11th hour of November 11th, 1918. Despite Hitler’s big lie of a “stab in the back” Germany no longer possessed the capacity to wage effective war. Armies were in mutiny, red brigades were seizing government offices, food riots were everywhere. If the army was to be kept intact and order restored the Kaiser had to abdicate and an armistice achieved no matter the costs. Throughout Europe and North America there ensued universal celebration that the unrelenting horror of war had ended. Weintraub could have spent more space on the political machinations and less on the granular details of myriad celebrations.

[Greynomad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting read on that time period. An unnecessary blood bath of a war generated by fools and ego's.................

[Mark Hundley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great examination of the events of November 1918.