The soldiers have reached the breaking point. They want it to end. They want to go home. On the home front, behind the lines, anger seethes as hunger stalks the population. Wartime misery has penetrated every home, affecting every aspect of daily life. A solution must be found to end the war. Uprisings begin: in Germany, social unrest makes it seem as though the Reich might fall. The Austro-Hungarian Empire vacillates; Francis Joseph is dead, and his young successor, Charles I, begins to take tentative steps towards peace. On the front, the Battle of the Chemin des Dames leads to mutiny among the French infantry soldiers. The Russian soldiers, exhausted from hunger and fear, join the Revolution. The Tsar abdicates and prepares for a life in exile. At this point the German high command commits a strategic error that changes the course of the conflict and decides to engage in all-out submarine warfare on all foreign ships in the Atlantic, including American commercial vessels. The United States enters the war, joining the Allied forces, and in June 1917, General Pershing lands in France with the first American troops. A month later, while the American reinforcements are still in training, the Battle of Passchendaele begins in Belgium; under a torrential rain, thousands of soldiers from the British Empire forces are overcome in a sea of mud. Another failure, another senseless hecatomb. How can this obstinacy on the part of the European leaders be explained? Don't they, like their peoples, ardently desire deliverance?