In the final hours before the armistice ending World War I would take effect, Allied generals flung men against an already beaten Germany, resulting in 11,000 casualties. Did commanders want to punish the enemy to the very last moment, or were career officers chasing a fast-fading chance for glory and promotion? The answers prove to be complex and often uncomfortable, suggests the author of Franklin & Lucy. Putting the war's final day in context, Joseph Persico recaps the causes and effects of the conflict, while tracing the early careers of Corporal Adolf Hitler, Captain Harry Truman, and Colonels Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.