1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder by Arthur Herman - Book Review

 

BOOK REVIEW: FIVE STARS

1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder by Arthur Herman

This true story tells the tale of the end of three hundred oppressive years in Russia, and America and Russia’s entrance into a world military power struggle which neither were prepared for.

It is an era that should never be forgotten, but history lessons have a disgustingly short memory.

Political power is governed by the very best politicians that money can buy.

A very impressive and well documented book deserving of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS:

The next word they decoded gave them pause. It was “Mexico.” De Grey and Montgomery looked at each other. This was an odd country name to turn up in a wartime communication. For one thing, Mexico was neutral in this war, although its president was hardly a friend of the Allies and had good relations with Germany and Berlin. The next name they decoded was even more incongruous: “Japan.” In fact, it popped up several times in this first part of the dispatch. Japan had been on the side of the Allies since August 23, 1914—but, alarmingly, the dispatch was worded as if Tokyo were about to become Germany’s ally. Thoroughly worried, the two code breakers worked with fierce determination for the next two hours. What emerged was a secret message from Berlin to Washington in two parts. The first contained what they knew was a diplomatic bombshell: on February 1, Berlin informed its ambassador in Washington, Germany would resume its unrestricted submarine warfare against neutral shipping.

German submarines, known as U-boats, had sunk merchant ships without warning, and without picking up survivors—making no distinction between cargo ships of enemy combatants such as Britain, France, and Russia, and neutral ships such as those from Holland, Spain, and America. All those ships unloaded cargo, including industrial goods and sometimes even ammunition, in Allied ports; all were therefore fair targets, in the German view. This ruthless approach to war,

While Europeans ruthlessly fought other nations for land and treasure, Americans did not—those holding this belief conveniently forgetting that, in the nineteenth century, the United States fought for land and treasure more than once: against various Native American tribes; against Mexico in 1844; and, that same year, very nearly against Britain over the Oregon Territory.

In 1915, the year that fighting on the Western Front was bogging down in stalemate and Russia was suffering its first major setbacks, Wilson imagined a conversation among European leaders as they realized they had been wrong, and Wilson right, about the war. “Do you not think it likely that the world will some time turn to America and say, ‘You were right, and we were wrong. You kept your heads when we lost ours. Now, in your self-possession, in your coolness, in your strength, may we not turn to you for counsel and for assistance.

The American president said, a position London and Paris vehemently denied. From their perspective, the whole justification since August 1914 had been that they were the forces of civilization fighting against their opposite, while the Germans were ruthless and bloodthirsty Huns whose aggression and violations of international law knew no bounds.

January 22, 1917, also marked a milestone in American history. Wilson decided to deliver the speech before the Senate, the first time a president had done so since George Washington. Copies would be distributed to every major capital in Europe at the same time. He also did what no president had ever done, not Washington nor Jefferson nor Abraham Lincoln nor even Theodore Roosevelt: he explained why American leadership was essential to the world.

“peace without victory” an international catchphrase just as Wilson’s note of December 18 had done with “league of nations.” Editor Herbert Croly of the New Republic, the house organ of high-grade Progressiveness, was quoted as calling it the greatest event of his life. Wilson’s secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, told the president that “the basis of peace you propose is a new philosophy. that is, new to governments but as old as the Christian religion.” It would put Wilson, Bryan averred, “among the Immortals.”

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