Shocking News on Churchill and WW I
It is not often that I read something I find truly astonishing; here is one.
A piece by
Frank Johnson in the Spectator, October 25 issue, mostly about the leader who was soon to be dumped by his Caucus, Iain Duncan Smith. Johnson's main point is that if "everyone" says Smith should go, "everyone" ("a few media people at London dinner parties") is probably wrong, as they have been so often (he says always) before.
Suddenly he switches to Iraq. "'Everyone', then, says that Mr. Duncan Smith is doomed. This is the best sign that he might still avoid that crash.
"This is a difficult time for those of us who have come to think that, on balance, the United States should not have invaded Iraq, and that the occupation is going wrong, but who also want Britain and the United States to enjoy a 'special relationship'. It is possible to be pro-American without always approving of what America does.
"With this in mind, I would draw attention to a visiting British politician's speech on American soil as reported in the Washington Star on 31 December 1940, and quoted in one of the books of diplomatic reminiscences by the pre-war Italian ambassador to several countries, Daniele Vare.
"'America's entry into the [1914-18] war was disastrous not only for your country but for the allies as well because had you stayed at home and minded your own business we would have made peace with the central powers in the spring of 1917 and then there would have been no collapse of Russia, followed by communism; no breakdown in Italy, followed by fascism, and nazism would not be at present enthroned in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war and minded her own business, none of these 'isms' would today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government.'
"My sentiments entirely; but, had the neoconservatives existed in 1940, the author of those words have been denounced as just an ungrateful European anti-American envious of America's power. Absent though they are from Martin Gilbert, the words are Churchill's."
I have literally never before encountered the suggestion that the U.S. intervention in World War I was a mistake, or at least unfortunate--even disastrous--in its consequences. Nor have I heard anyone suggest that this was Churchill's view.
Can anyone help me with more information/background on what Churchill said? Did he mean that Lloyd George was wrong to welcome U.S. intervention in 1917, and that Wilson was wrong to supply it? Or simply that there were terrible unforeseen and unintended consequences, which none of the leaders involved could have expected?
Please e-mail me at robertson0425@rogers.com
Update: No response so far. I should have made clear that I have encountered the idea that Wilson's idealism screwed up the Versailles peace process after the war, just not the idea that the U.S. intervention in the war itself was bad news.
I only have one history of WWI at home--ironically, by Martin Gilbert. I have borrowed a little book called "Versailles and After" from the public library.
The logic probably goes like this. Wilson was re-elected in 1916, and inaugurated in January [oops! March] 1917. He said on April 2 that "the world must be made safe for democracy"; he may also have made this statement earlier. On April 4 the U.S. Senate voted to declare war; on April 6 the House of Representatives did so, and the U.S. officially declared war that day.
The war had been something of a stalemate, but with U.S. resources now coming to Europe (they would take months to actually arrive), "The Allied powers now outnumbered the Central Powers in manpower and resources." Russia was still fighting, despite an increasingly chaotic situation in Moscow, and mutinies among their troops. The Russian generals had concluded that only the abdication of the Tsar could prevent anarchy. On March 15-16, the Tsar abdicated and a Provisional Government was established, although it had to compete with the Petrograd Soviet which issued Order Number One on March 14.
The joint German and Ausrian High Command made plans to allow Lenin to travel to Russia by rail from Zurich through Germany. Their plan was not so much to help Lenin, as to take Russia out of the war (a direction in which it was already clearly moving). Lenin's alternative route would have been by rail through France, then by sea from Britain to North Russia. There is an excellent chance that if had tried this, the Western Allies would have arrested him in order to keep Russia in the war. Lenin set out on April 8, and arrived in Petrograd (now, once again, St. Petersburg) on April 16. The Kaiser approved of this plan to help Lenin, and there was also official German financial backing for the Bolsheviks, including a secret subsidy for the newspaper Pravda. Of course, this didn't stop the Germans from imposing harsh conditions on the new Soviet Union as the war drew to a close: huge pieces of territory were transferred from the Soviet Union to Germany, and then, as Germany was defeated in the West, these territories all began to demand their freedom or "national self-determination." More on that later.
Churchill's reasoning seems to have been that the Central Powers could have been offered a decent truce sometime in March 1917, just before the Communists took Russia out of the war completely.
Just from my brief glance here, it seems possible to argue that Russia was going to get out of the war anyway--doing so was hugely popular, and this was one of the major appeals of the Communists. As for whether it would have been better to come to terms with the Central Powers in March 1917: this gets back to the debate about Unconditional Surrender, or fighting until one side is thoroughly beaten. In 1918 the U.S. General Pershing, among others, thought it best to fight on until the Germany military was massively defeated. Many Western leaders, however, were confident that they could impose an armistice on the Germans which would be just as harsh as anything that was likely to be imposed on a thoroughly beaten enemy. That thinking led to the Versailles Treaty.
My understanding is that many Germans were frustrated when their forces surrendered at a point when they were still in pretty good shape. The army was fighting in France--they had not been driven back into Germany, and the navy had lots of ships in fighting trim. Why the surrender? One big reason is that the Germans had been promised a treaty that they could regard as just; this was a promise that Wilson could not keep.
The question is whether American idealism did more harm than good here.
I need to do more reading on the spreading of mutinies and Communist rebellion among the Central armies.
By November 1918, the German high command knew they simply couldn't count on anyone to fight any more. There had been a massive mutiny both in the army (on the Western front) and in the navy. Austria and Turkey had both negotiated their own armistices. The Communists held out a promise of peace, not only in the Soviet Union but, it seemed, for everyone. It may be that a lot of common German soldiers mutinied in 1918, then later blamed their leaders for surrendering. Such things have been known to happen.
There were significant Communist movements, enjoying some success at taking railway stations and even cities, in both Austria and Germany.
Much of the talk was of "national self-determination," and Wilson was always front and centre here. On January 8, 1918 Wilson set out his "Fourteen Points" to the U.S. Congress. Mostly it was about giving peoples who had been subject to "the Empires"--Turkish, Austrian, German--some degree of autonomy. They were not--yet--promised complete independence.
On October 14, 1918 the Emperor Charles of Austria (Hungary I think had already flown the coop)offered "federal freedom" to major nationalities within his empire. He was getting the message, but he was too late. Four days later, "the decisive blow to the survival of Austria-Hungary was struck when President Wilson insisted that "autonomy" for subject peoples was no longer an adequate fulfillment of their national rights."
Wilson acted as though he was in a contest, not so much to win World War I--more and more a foregone conclusion--as to win the loyalty of these "new, emerging" peoples, some of whom actually had long histories. The point was to win as many as possible of them over to liberal democracy, in the face of a successful propaganda effort by the Communists. In fairness to Wilson, he was in a tough fight, but it still seems he promised more than he could deliver. If the U.S. intervention in the war indirectly helped bring the Communists to power in Russia, and create the Soviet Union, then Wilson's insistence on an overall moral purpose for the war helped reinforce the sense that Versailles was a terrible failure, and thus indirectly strengthened Hitler's hand in Germany.
In the period between the world wars it became a cliche that liberal democracy was one political model that was dead or dying. It was sure to be replaced soon by some model from the radical left or the radical right, depending on one's preference. Saul Bellow wrote that it was more than thrilling when FDR simply said in 1933 that he stood for the liberal democratic model.
The little book on Versailles by Ruth Henig includes the following nuggets.
In 1919 and 1920, many wars were fought over the territories "between" Germany and the new Soviet Union. The outcomes of these wars largely had to be accepted by the West. This had a huge effect on the way the West as a whole perceived Central and Eastern Europe. "Traditionally, the Habsburg dominions had stood as the west's bulward against the danger of Russian expansion. In more recent times, as Habsburg power had waned, Berlin had come to replace Vienna. At the end of the war, however, neither was a feasible proposition."
The biggest problem with trying to put any trust in Germany was that public opinion in the Western Allied countries--Britain, France, and the U.S.--was strongly in favour of making the Germans pay for the war, and hanging the Kaiser to boot. The war had gone on so long, and become so costly, that the desire for retribution was almost impossible to resist. Churchill's point may have been that there was less of this rage in March 1917.
"The difficulties which bedevilled international relations in the inter-war years stemmed in great measure from this power vacuum in eastern Europe."
Wilson stood out during the war for his willingness, even his impatience, to sweep away all these old empires--with no clear idea of what would replace them, except for the somewhat abstract formulas (abstract given the complexity of many international situations)like "antional self-determination" and "democracy."
"To Wilson, the outbreak of the war was tangible proof of the failure of traditional European diplomacy, based on balances of power, armed alliances and secret negotiations....Wilson believed that the United States should take the lead in the creation of [a new international system based on law], and should at the same time pursue a rleated goal, the extension of democracy throughout the world. He saw this as a moral commitment, entrusted to the American people...."
Of course, it could be argued that the biggest problems of World War I still came out of the "old" diplomacy. For the Germans to help Lenin was a cynical trick. Every major participant at Versailles, certainly including Britain, had made promises that were conflicting or simply pie-in-the sky--often by way of secret deals, the very publication of which caused outrage. Still: Did Wilson with his moralistic idealism actually do as much as was within his power to make democracy seem weak and even contemptible?
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