On 18 July 1917, a heavy artillery barrage was unleashed by the Allied forces against an entrenched German army outside the town of Ypres. It was to be the opening salvo of one of the most ferociously fought and debilitating encounters of the First World War. Few battles would encapsulate the utter futility of the war better than what became known as the Battle of Passchendaele. Paul Ham tells the story of an army caught in the grip of an extraordinary power struggle. Ham lays down a powerful challenge to the ways in which we have previously seen this monumental battle. Through an examination of the culpability of governments and military commanders in a catastrophe that destroyed the best part of a generation, Paul Ham argues that Passchendaele, far from being a breakthrough moment, was the battle that nearly lost the Allies the war.