Edward M. Coffman.
The War to End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I
Reprint Edition, University of Kentucky Press, 1998.

Military history classics tend to surface from time to time to satiate the reading appetites of historians, wargamers, and buffs. The War to End All Wars was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1968, then reprinted by the University of Wisconsin Press in 1986. Kentucky has recently revived this classic study of American involvement in the First World War. It can be obtained from the publisher, Amazon Books (www.amazon.com), and Barnes and Noble (www.barnesandnoble.com).

Coffman, the biographer of Peyton Marsh and the author of a study ofAmerica’s pre-World war I army, traces the evolution of the American military establishment from a small, peacetime institution into a force capable of manning a fifth of the Western Front in 1918. He covers most aspects of the U.S. military effort including strategic planning, wartime mobilization and transportation, Allied relations (with special emphasis on the controversy over whether to amalgamate the U.S. forces into the other Allied armies, or to allow them to operate independently), leadership, the American Expeditionary Force’s combat role, and naval and air forces. Coffman also examines postwar intervention in Russia and demobilization. Overall, the author looks at World War I mainly from the American perspective, from Woodrow Wilson down to the soldier in the trenches.

The book contains extensive data on the American forces in Europe in 1918, an annotated bibliography and detailed maps. Wargamers with an interest in Germany’s last offensive, the American role in the war, or simply the war in general would find this work of interest.