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A companion to Into The Abyss Volume one (code 92672), this second volume begins with the Battle of Verdun, the longest battle of the Great War, and one of the most terrible ever fought. By the beginning of 1916 the French had already suffered two million casualties; Russia was crippled; Von Falkenhayn now believed 'The forces of France will bleed to death', through the unimaginable horrors of the Somme, the entry of the US into the war, and the 'Final throw of the dice', the spring 1918 Kaiserslacht, G. J. Meyer marshals the evidence brilliantly to show why the General was wrong. Much of the agony is in the detail - after the Armistice, while the victors debated the new world order, perhaps a ¼ million German civilians, many of them children, died of starvation and disease under a pointless naval blockade. 'This is an outstanding survey of a cataclysm that still casts a shadow over world affairs.' Global in scope and researched to the last possible dot, Meyer's sketches of the British Cabinet, the Russian Empire, the ageing Austro-Hungarian Empire are lifelike and plausible. He offers interesting and controversial insights into the motivations of many of the key participants in a masterful narrative history that eloquently conveys the sense of a civilisation engaged in massive self-destruction. 400 page large paperback, illus.