Pacifist, history expert, and fascinated by the wars he hates, Persico writes a work featuring the final hours of World War I when 2,738 lives were lost after the armistice was signed.

On November 11, 1918, at 5 a.m. a peace treaty was signed between Germany and the Allies to end all fighting in World War I. The treaty agreed for all fighting to stop at 11 a.m. But in those last six hours, many French and American generals still sent their men into battle, costing over two thousand lives, many of whom were taken in the final 30 minutes before 11 a.m. Of this war which was acclaimed as the “war to end all wars,” Winston Churchill said that his nation’s young men were engaged in “the hardest, cruelest, and the least-rewarded of all the wars that men have fought" (introduction, xvii).

Persico views war as senseless and pointless, but by the end of the book surrenders to what he believes is the inevitable:

Consider the analogy of a length of rope. It can be used to save a man or hang him. The rope itself is neutral. Given its apparent inevitability, perhaps we must judge war similarly. It is the purpose to which force is applied that determines its justification. Is it to stop aggression, free the subjugated, topple a despot, or end economic exploitation? Or is it to commit aggression, subjugate a people, impose tyranny, and carry out economic exploitation? We shrink from accepting war as a rational path to resolving earthly differences. But we are forced to accept—if five thousand years of recorded history tell us anything—that more often than not conflict is the solution mankind chooses (390).

Persico lets history proves his point. Since World War I, fifty million lives have been lost to war (389). So much for World War I being the “war to end all wars.”

Persico’s perspective throughout his work comes off as more consumed with the pointlessness of the taking of lives in those final fruitless hours after the armistice was signed then with the great sacrifice of lives made to stop tyranny and keep peace. In the end, nine million men lost their life in those four brutal years (1914-1918) of gas masks and dirty trench fighting.

Persico packs his work with personal stories of well known men like General Douglas MacArthur, the Christian Alvin G. York, General Erich Ludendorff, and Adolf Hitler, as well as people less known. It’s a bit difficult to follow, however, as Persico jumps back and forth in time, tracking both individuals and military units.

This book provides a powerful illustration on sin. Two bullets from the pistol of Serbian Gavrilo Princip, ending the life of the Austrian archduke, Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, gave Austria-Hungary an excuse to declare war on Serbia, that started a chain reaction involving Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire (the Axis Powers) as well as Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Belgium, America, and Serbia (the Entente Powers) in a four year war of trench-fighting and stalemates. Like the “‘for-want-of-a-nail’ school of history,” a single action started a chain of events that ended in the death of nine million men not to mention the deaths of many civilians (xvii).

Altogether, this book serves as a great illustration of Jesus’ death on the cross. Two thousand, seven hundred and thirty eight lives from both sides were lost for no cause in the final six hours of the war (378), not to mention 10,944 casualties. All they had to do was wait until 11 a.m. and they could go home alive. But stubborn generals were more interested in making sure Germany would not rise again (which the year of 1939 proved to be futile), so thousands of men ended up mowed down by machine gun fire. It was so insane that even some German machine gunners yelled at the Entente soldiers to go back or they would have to shoot.

But Jesus’ death was one death that did not happen in vain. By His death, He not only paid for the sins of those 2,738 men, but the sins of every man or woman who has or ever will live (1 John 2:2).

Joseph E. Persico. Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour.
New York: Random House, 2004. 455 pp.