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Charles de Gaulle, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Winston Churchill, George Patton: five men whose names you can’t disassociate from WWII who, when you group them together, give the conflict its planetary dimension. Before being famous leaders in 1939-1945, these five men all went through the fighting of 1914-1918.
De Gaulle, straight out of Saint-Cyr, discovered Hell at Verdun, where he was wounded and taken prisoner;
Corporal Hitler who drew and sketched between two attacks, was gassed in the Ypres Sector;
the simple soldier Mussolini, an ardent pacifist at the beginning of the war was wounded in the ranks of the Bersaglieri, the elite soldiers of the Italian Army;
Lieutenant-Colonel Churchill was appointed Minister of Munitions after commanding on the Western Front.
As for the fiery cavalry lieutenant, Patton, he was the first American officer to become a specialist of a new arm which appeared twenty years later during WWII: the assault tank.
The experience these five men went through in the trenches affected them deeply and influenced lastingly the course of their life, but also the course of History.
Enhanced with exceptional illustrations, an indispensable book for understanding 1939-45 in the light of 1914-18.