Book excerpt: Newly-found evidence presented in The Bulgarian Contract changes our understanding of how and why the Great War ended precipitously on November 11, 1918. Graeme Sheppard describes how two young British army officers, POWs in Bulgaria, witnessed a secret act of Balkan propaganda that proved to be 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 well into 1919 with hundreds of thousands of extra deaths.