Toward the end of the war, German General Erich von Ludendorff, despairing that his country might have to surrender, began fantasizing that a miracle would save Germany. The flu epidemic, he decided, would demolish the French Army. But when his own surgeon general told him that was not going to happen, he refused to believe it, even having his conviction conveyed to Kaiser Wilhelm, whose spirits it lifted. The German surgeon general was correct, of course, since the Germans were at least as devastated by the flu as were the French.
