What Wilson Wrought
O'NEILL, WILLIAM L.
What Wilson Wrought The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I By Thomas Fleming Basic Books. 576 pp. $35.00. Reviewed by William L. O'Neill Professor of history, Rutgers; author, "A...
...America prolonged the disastrous struggle by lending the Allies money, and then by joining the Allied side...
...The author's chief weakness is his appearing to know little about the other major powers...
...The High Seas Fleet's purpose was to advance the policy of Weltpolitik—literally, world political offensive—designed to make Germany a colonial power...
...Fleming dislikes Britain and France, while he portrays Germany chiefly in its role as postwar victim...
...Fleming succeeds in showing how President Woodrow Wilson, through his megalomania, rich fantasy life and colossal incompetence helped turn the Allied victory in World War I into a shattering political defeat that condemned the world to a far more terrible war...
...The most important aspect of the War was not which side would come out on top, but how quickly it could be ended...
...When Wilhelm ascended to the throne in 1888 Germany had good relations with all the other European powers except one...
...Real neutrality would have forced the Allies to negotiate a settlement when they ran out of money, probably in 1916...
...The exception was France, which it had defeated in 1870 and profoundly alienated by seizing the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine...
...With all Allied armies now on the offensive, Germany had to accept Wilson's terms— unconditional surrender...
...In the service of Weltpolitik the Kaiser delivered many threatening remarks and twice attempted to interfere in France's relations with Morocco, forcing Britain and France closer together and further poisoning Europe's political climate...
...Germany, defining Russia's move as an act of war, began mobilizing too and, without any provocation, invaded Belgium and then France...
...Field Marshal Erich Ludendorff, the real ruler of Germany by 1917, was a proto-Nazi and went on to actually join the National Socialist Party...
...In 1890 Wilhelm fired Bismarck and allowed the Reinsurance Treaty to lapse, driving Russia into an alliance with France...
...The British responded by enlarging the Royal Navy, repairing their strained French relations, and forming what became the Triple Entente with the addition of Russia...
...It is also a matter of record that his leadership could hardly have been worse...
...This leads him to make questionable assumptions and, until almost the end of his book, prevents readers from getting the big picture...
...He chose to enter instead because without a seat at the peace conference he could not save the world, his divinely ordained mission...
...Fleming asserts that Germany did not start the Great War...
...Fleming understands that by 1918, with Germany close to victory, the President had to send untrained and poorly led men into battle...
...His re-election in 1916, at a time when Republicans substantially outnumbered Democrats, resulted from his party's slogan that Wilson had "kept us out of war...
...But he does not realize that "amalgamation" would have benefited U. S. troops...
...Because the War's origins and conduct prior to America's entry had a great deal to do with shaping its outcome, the U.S...
...If Americans had been in a more rational mood, his contention that this would become a war "to make the world safe for democracy," the "war to end all wars," would have been recognized as rubbish...
...This stipulated that Germany would side with Russia if it were attacked by Austria-Hungary, while Russia would come to Germany's aid in the event of a French attack...
...To allay Russian fears that the alliance might be directed at it, he also negotiated a Reinsurance Treaty with Moscow...
...He paints a truly ludicrous portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II as an amiable, sincere leader who bore scant responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities...
...Wilson actually opposed military alliances, agreeing to them in bad faith at Versailles for bargaining purposes...
...The author is right, however, to argue that the United States should not have supported the Allied War effort by allowing Britain and France to sell bonds in its capital markets...
...role cannot be fully understood without mat context...
...Otto von Bismarck, "the iron chancellor," who had opposed that annexation but could do nothing about French rancor, aligned Germany with Austria-Hungary...
...After the military took total control of Germany, hundreds of thousands of laborers were enslaved in the territories it occupied, and by the end of the War they included a large part of Russia...
...All historians regard the Kaiser's mistake as a major cause of the Great War...
...Without this "blank check" Austria would never have dared to invade Serbia for fear that Russia might mobilize—as it did...
...The treaty thus isolated France and at the same time kept the peace in Europe...
...After the murder of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in June 1914, Berlin fully supported the Austrian decision to declare war on Serbia in retaliation, knowing it could lead to a general conflict in Europe...
...When it rejected Whitehall's ultimatum to return to its borders, Britain joined the Allied side...
...Army under their own officers...
...But at the very least he supported and articulated the policies that led to the fighting...
...Although Fleming does not get everything right in The Illusion of Victory, he is scathingly on target when it comes to Woodrow Wilson...
...He starts in 1917 with the United States on the verge of entering a conflict that had been going on for years...
...Easily manipulated, he fronted a collection of Rightwing aristocrats, militarists and businessmen who were behind most of the decisions made in his name...
...Wilhelm's role in bringing about the War is not entirely clear...
...In 1898 Germany began building its giant High Seas Fleet, whose only possible use would be against Great Britain...
...Germany not only opened the Western Front, it waged war with devastating cruelty, executing upward of 5,000 Belgian and French civilian hostages...
...Since American opinion about the War was sharply divided in 1917, Wilson enjoyed an unusual freedom of action and could have decided to stay out of it...
...Fleming is also right to put much of the blame for the failed peace on Woodrow Wilson...
...Wilson has often been called an idealist, but Flemimg is on the mark in saying the President was really a Utopian, for only in a perfect world could the League of Nations have repaired the damage done at Versailles, as he naively thought it would...
...Fleming sees amalgamation as simply a power play, when the object was to save lives...
...His astounding ignorance and arrogance did Europe immeasurable harm...
...troops took heavy casualties in relation to the number of Germans they fought...
...The British and French wanted to integrate American units into their armies so that green Americans would fight alongside, and under the command of, experienced soldiers...
...Aiming at the general public, he does not bring much that is new to the table, but he tells a gripping story many will find unfamiliar...
...This led to frontal assaults on strong fortifications, with the men walking upright into withering fire...
...The author does not make the mistake of thinking that Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who led the opposition against the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, is the villain here...
...He believed the League would keep the peace effortlessly by imposing sanctions on errant nations, a policy we have seen fail time and again...
...He therefore proposed ratifying the military alliances with Britain and France that Wilson had signed but never submitted to the Senate...
...Having entered the War so late without any preparation, U.S...
...Britain won the naval arms race, neutralizing the High Seas Fleet Germany had launched to the detriment of its good relations with London...
...In fact, it was the most culpable of the big powers...
...This did happen on a small scale with considerable success, but General John J. Pershing insisted that American soldiers would only fight in a U.S...
...The problem, as the Senator saw it, was not how to keep the world safe for democracy but how to keep Europe safe from the Germans...
...But there were 2 million Americans in France by the War's end, so even badly executed battles were successful...
...The Great War was a tragedy in every respect...
...Yet he does not recognize that Lodge had a better alternative to the League...
...Fleming's failure to study the origins of the War, and his legitimate sympathy for German civilians, who did suffer greatly owing to the British blockade, probably explain his antipathy to France and especially Britain, as well as his misrepresentation of Germany...
...Historians differ on how big a share of the responsibility for this senseless War should be assigned to Wilhelm, but there is general agreement that he was bellicose, eccentric and unstable—even insane, according to a few scholars...
...author, "A Democracy at War" Thomas Fleming knows a lot about the American war experience in 1917-18, and his latest book is filled with wonderful quotations, salient facts and deft characterizations...
...Similarly, the new German civilian government had to agree to the conditions imposed on it at Versailles, which bore no relation to the Fourteen Points that Wilson had said peace would be based on...
Vol. 86 • May 2003 • No. 3
