When the Tide Turned

Few wartime pamphlets carry a title as literal as When the Tide Turned (1918), in which Otto Hermann Kahn (1867-1934), the German-born banker who became one of America’s leading arts patrons, describes the American attack at Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood in the first week of June 1918. Kahn was in France that spring and records the shift in French morale as the US Second Division, army regulars fighting alongside a Marine brigade, helped stop the German drive on Paris. Belleau Wood became the Marine Corps’ defining battle of the war, and Kahn’s booklet is one of the earliest published accounts of it. The text pairs Kahn’s impressions from wartime France with his case for seeing the offensive as the war’s turning point. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.