The First World War

by John Keegan

Ludendorff paid a tribute the French would not. He attributed the growing malaise in his army and the sense of “looming defeat” that afflicted it to “the sheer number of Americans arriving daily at the front.” It was indeed immaterial whether the doughboys fought well or not. Though the professional opinion of veteran French and British officers that they were enthusiastic rather than efficient was correct, the critical issue was the effect of their arrival on the enemy. It was deeply depressing. After four years of a war in which they had destroyed the Tsar’s army, trounced the Italians and Romanians, demoralised the French and, at the very least, denied the British clear-cut victory, they were now confronted with an army whose soldiers sprang, in uncountable numbers, as if from soil sown with dragons’ teeth.