The Bulgarian Contract:

the secret lie that ended the Great War
A new book by
Graeme Sheppard
History; Politics; Propaganda; War;
Assassination; Armistice;
Balkans; Germany
Newly found evidence presented in The Bulgarian Contract changes our understanding of how and why the Great War ended precipitously on 11 November 1918.  Two young British army officers, Bulgarian POWs, witnessed a secret act of Balkan propaganda that proved the catalyst for the collapse of the Central Powers, panicking the German high command into seeking an armistice in a conflict that was otherwise destined to continue into 1919. The Bulgarian Contract: politics, revolution, treason, and deceit; how the Great War was won and lost on the Macedonian front 
ISBN-13 978-988-8552-86-3
Published 2021 in softback and e-book
“Terrific ... [combining] the German and the Bulgarian, the political and the military, the personal and the general in mastery fashion” - Professor Richard Crampton, emeritus fellow, Oxford University 
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“This book proves in a perfect way how, a century later, we can still learn of significant episodes and data about WW1” - Professor Dr. Jordan Baev, Faculty of History, Sofia University
In September 1918, with the Great War reaching its climax, two junior British officers, for three years prisoners-of-war, escaped their Bulgarian captors and thread their way through roads jammed with fleeing soldiers to the country's capital, Sofia, a city engulfed by the chaos of looming defeat by the Allies. There, the pair walked into the enemy’s War Ministry and brazenly announced to its subdued staff that they had come to take possession of the capital on behalf of His Majesty the King. They then demanded the best rooms at Sofia’s Grand Hotel, where in the dining room they displaced a host of sullen German officers already seated for dinner. Centre-stage, the pair raised glasses of champagne and toasted "Long live England - vive les alliés." To which the Germans could only stare back miserably. For the young friends, it was giddy stuff: "We had partaken in a piece of history ... we had assisted in pulling down a pillar of the Central Powers." But though unaware of the fact at the time, over the previous year the pair had also witnessed first-hand a momentous act of propaganda and misinformation, one that propelled Axis Bulgaria out of the war and proved to be the catalyst for the November 11 armistice a mere six weeks later. Introducing new and previously unseen evidence, ​The Bulgarian Contract is the story of how a clever Balkan lie brought an early end to World War I and saved hundreds of thousands of lives.           
Just a few of those caught up in The Bulgarian Contract: