Wilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin & World War II
It is the last Sunday of the month, meaning I was supposed to be reading about our next president in line, meaning Woodrow Wilson, and to that end I purchased Wilson’s War: How Woodrow Wilson’s Great Blunder led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin & World War II by Jim Powell. I knew when I was reading the intro this is not actually a book about Woodrow Wilson. But I had already started it, it was already on my calendar, and I didn’t have time to get a replacement book here AND read, so I continued. This book is about how Wilson’s decision to enter the US into WWI in Europe ultimately led to the catastrophes of the 20th and into the 21st century.
Prior to World War I, the United States had done a pretty credible job of minding its own damn business when it came to global affairs. There was the very brief Spanish American war in 1898, but it could be argued that as we were fired on without provocation, we had every right to respond with force. Whether or not we WERE fired on is moot at this point, at the time this was believed to be true, and so we sent troops in response and had a brief like four-month war.
Literally every other war was to secure our own borders. Even the Mexican/American war in 1846-1848 was to defend American borders, with an ultimate eye towards annexing Texas and setting our southern border with Mexico. Both of these fell well within the province of the Monroe Doctrine, “The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for colonization by any European powers.” And that had held sway for American foreign policy for all of the 19th century.
Then came World War I, which started with “the shot heard round the world” when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and his wife Sophie, were assassinated on June 28, 1914, by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princep.
Now, Powell does a superb job building up the history that led to WWI, outlining how Europe as a whole, like ALL The European nations, had a history of colonialism extending back centuries, that often lead to European country fighting European country, citing the more recent example of Napoleon’s rampage across the continent and how the damage he did more or less laid the groundwork for the future conflict that would engulf the planet.
Powell describes how Wilson wanted to cut his own teeth militarily speaking and so just prior to WWI, when Mexico was experiencing its own growth paroxysms, Wilson, determined to stabilize our southern border in the wake of the Mexican Revolution, opted to try his own hand at nation building by sending in troops after Pancho Villa and instill our own preferred leader. This did not end well for Wilson, as Pancho Villa had the home turf advantage and the people in Mexico basically loved him and helped hide him from US Troops.
None of this won him popularity with the people, and he managed to win his re-election campaign in 1916 by promising to keep America out of the bruhaha that was going on in Europe. And of course, once he was re-elected, he started going back on that word, because…. politician. It’s literally what they do. Promise one thing until they get their way, then immediately back pedal.
Personally, I think he wanted a chance to enter the national stage as a peacemaker, much as Roosevelt did in 1905 with the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the Russo-Japanese War. That got Roosevelt a lot of international attention as someone who didn’t just know war, as per his time as head of the Rough Riders during the Spanish American War, but also someone who knew peace.
The problem is, with Wilson’s failed attempt at nation building in Mexico, and his own preference for all things English…he was a known Anglophile, it wasn’t enough for Wilson to just offer to be the neutral negotiator between warring nations. He wanted to play with the big boys of England and France on national stage. And what better way to prove to them that America was equal than to bail their butts out of a stalemated war?
Yep, I said it. The war was at a stalemate. Ok, Powell said it, but he proved his point admirably in the book. While the allied powers definitely had more bodies to throw at the problem, and better armaments, the Germans were not as careless with their people, so that after 3 years of war, the Central powers who WERE outmanned and out gunned, had basically fought the Allies to a standstill on two fronts. Because Russia, with her strong ties to British royalty, had sought to use the war to expand her own territories into Central power land.
However, Czar Nicholas II, while enjoying the pomp and circumstance of miliary regalia, was not himself a military leader. And the family he appointed to lead the Russian military were incompetent, leading to many Central power victories. And because of all this, the Czar was actually ready to withdraw Russia from the war…until Woodrow Wilson stepped in and offered him some of those sweet American greenbacks to stay in the fight. And while the Czar was deciding what to do, he was basically forced to abdicate by the Provisional Government. This didn’t even phase Wilson and the American diplomatic corps, as Elihu Root, who was the diplomat extending the offer on behalf of America, promised the provisional government the same funds…provided they stay in the fight. His slogan was literally “no fight, no loans.”
All of this played very nicely into the hands of one Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka, Lenin, who knew the longer the provisional government was pre-occupied with the war, the better his chances of agitating the people into Bolshevism was. And Wilson at first seemed to admire Lenin as a go-getter. By the time he recognized how dangerous Lenin was, it was too late: The catastrophe of socialism had taken firm root in the Soviet States.
But the provisional government did stay involved in the war long enough to force Germany into a disastrous armistice.
If Wilson had just kept his promise to the American people, the war would have resolved on its own. And make no mistake, despite his high ideals of “making the world safe for democracy” there was nothing about American interventionism that achieved that goal….not with all of Europe still performing land grabs for colonization. There is nothing diplomatic about colonization. And Wilson knew that going into Versailles. And despite his “14 points” where in he wanted open covenants of peace arrived at with no private diplomacy, the treaty of Versailles was, in fact, entirely negotiated between England, France, Belgium, and the United States, with the results merely handed over to Germany. And his belief that the colonial boundaries would be drawn based upon the will of the people in the colonies was patently absurd, as France and England carved up North Africa and the Middle East to suit their own colonizing aims.
Germany felt utterly betrayed…and rightly so. They entered negotiations in good faith and were bent over the proverbial barrel without benefit of any lubrication. And this, as we all know, led directly to the rise of Hitler. And as Powell points out, Hitler’s rise was by no means a foregone conclusion. The historical chips had to fall just so on the chess board of life for Hitler to rise and take over the way he did. But Powell also points out that if America had stayed fully neutral, just kept out of it, MAYBE offering a conference table for the belligerents to meet at but otherwise minded her own damn business, WWI would not have ended in such away to allow for a Hitler to rise.
And if he hadn’t offered Russia money to stay in the war, it’s fully possible the Royal family would not have been forced to abdicate, or, given how incompetent Nicholas II was, the provisional government would have withdrawn well ahead of Lenin’s ability to agitate and disrupt to the point of takeover, paving the way for a century of blood and death laid at the feet of communism. Hell, by this metric, it’s quite easy to say without Lenin and hence Stalin, communism would not have taken hold in China, as Stalin was the primary backer of Mao Zedong.
Chiang Kai Shek would have taken over. Now, I haven’t read much on Mao’s opposition, and my little understanding is that he was a war lord in his own right, but do we know he would have been as catastrophic as Mao? Well, we’ll never really know for sure, will we? I mean, we can accurately speculate to some degree, based on Chiang Kai Shek’s withdrawal to Taiwan following the Chinese civil war, and Taiwan is, or at least was until recent history, a democracy. It was a police state until like 1989, then moved to full democracy. Would any of that have happened without the Chinese Civil War? Who knows. But based on Powell’s thorough breakdown of the events that led up to WWII, I’m inclined to think no.
By any metric you wish to use, Wilson’s entry of the US into the world stage has had catastrophic consequences globally and locally. 100 years later, we are still funneling money overseas to help nations that are not the US to the profound detriment of US citizens. As a direct result of Wilson’s interference and picking of sides in WWI, we had the rise of the two most murderous regimes in history: Hitler on one side, and Communism on the other. I am lumping all communist regimes together for brevity and for the fact that all communism results in mass starvation and democide. There has not been a single instance of successful communism. Ever.
This book was a solid breakdown of why President Washington, when he stepped down as President, cautioned his successors to avoid entangling alliances and to remain neutral on the world stage. And why every president up to Wilson did so, and how failure to heed that warning led to disaster. I can’t say that I LOVED this book, it was well written and fairly easy to read through, but it’s a little depressing, having the fact that America is not, in fact, always the good guy, thrown back in my face. I mean, I am AWARE we aren’t always right. Look no further than Jackson and the Trail of Tears, or the fact that yes, as a free nation, we did allow slavery to flourish, to know that America has made some severe blunders historically speaking. But prior to this, the blunders only effected our internal persons, not embroiled the entire fucking planet in blood and warfare for a full century after the fact.
Fortunately, in the very last pages of the book, Powell does provide some guidance on how we might roll back some of the damage America has done.
1. Defend America. Like that’s it, the one thing the Constitution allows, is for our military to defend our own borders. We have no business maintaining military bases globally.
2. Stay out of other people’s wars. Why are we sending our men and women overseas to fight and die for other countries?
3. Don’t try to build other people’s nations. Literally, this one thing would save America so much heartache. Countries will choose democracy or not on their own, if nothing else, the catastrophic fall of Kabul in 2021 outlines what happens when America tries to nation build.
4. Be open to the world. We can open our borders to all but terrorist and known criminals and be a better nation for it. Powell even briefly takes a dig at the welfare state, pointing out that by denying immigrants access to welfare, we’re setting them up for better success in life than the welfare queens who live on government handouts.
His last paragraph truly sums up why it is so important that America returns to our non-interventionist roots. “America cannot save the world by fighting endless wars, but we can set an example. We must protect a flourishing free society that others are welcome to join, or to emulate in their own lands.”
Agreed, Mr. Powell. Now how do we convince Washington that you’re right?
This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on August 27, 2023, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.
