« Inside Baseball | David Seaton's Blog | Who are they trying to kid? Just about everyone I think. »
Woodrow Wilson Worship
There is a polemic going on at TPM as if the the comparison of George W. Bush to Woodrow Wilson were some sort of sacrilege. Wilson's heroic reputation is not universal. Quite a few people think that his leading the USA into WWI was the direct cause of the rise of Adolph Hitler and with him the Holocaust and most of the problems we have today in the Middle East. I'll explain.
Advertisement
If those people think that our entry into WW I led by Wilson was the leading/direct cause of the rise of nazism, then they really have no grasp of the politics and history of the era.
There was no leading or direct cause of the rise of nazism and Hitler, there was a convergence of events and circumstances which allowed Hitler to steal elections putting himself in power. The United States was a minor player during the aftermath of WW I, it simply did not have the political power or the will to force Wilsonian doctrine at the conference. The "peace process" was underway and near final settlement long before Wilson arrived in Europe.
May 20, 2009 3:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think you have understood what I said. America's entry into WWI tipped the balance of what was a draw into the defeat of Germany, this defeat and the subsequent social and economic fractures opened the door for Hitler, just like HIV opens the door for opportunistic infections that any healthy immune system would have no trouble fighting off. If Wilson hadn't meddled in WWI the European powers would have fought to a draw and in this case I think Hitler would have earned his living selling pornographic postcards. I believe Wilson was inadvertently one of history's most destructive characters, the geopolitical equivalent of Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau.
May 20, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I understand your point, David, I think you're wrong.
First of all, there is no evidence to suggest that the warring parties would have fought to a draw, in fact Germany was not only fighting a war on two fronts, the German empire along with the Austro Hungarian empire was crumbling from within. There were constant strikes and food riots, the ruling houses were both without apparent heirs who were strong enough to consolidate power and hold the empires together, the baltic states were either changing sides or making their own bid for autonomy and the funding was just about gone.
Secondly, if anything can be characterized as a leading or direct cause of the rise of nazim, it would be the shortsighted, criminal interference by German intelligence in the internal affairs of Russia with their financial and logistical support to Lenin and the bolsheviks. It was the failure by Great Britain and France to follow the urging and the lead of the United States in recognition of the provisional government of Russia that led to the disastrous treaty by Lenin with the Germans to suspend fighting on the eastern front, giving Germany the last great impetus to continue fighting. Great Britain and France's policy of waiting to see what would shake out of the revolution of 1917, their misunderstanding and ineptness in Russian politics was the greatest disaster of that war. Wilson may not have been the greatest of statesmen but he was certainly prescient in his immediate recognition of the provisional govt. of Russia and the fact that G. Britain and France failed to listen to Wilson and follow suit was a major factor in prolonging that war and the spread of bolshevism.
Wilson made mistakes, but he wasn't the bumbling, colloquial hayseed you are portraying him to be. Our entry into WW I was a factor in shortening the war by a few years, but it wasn't the single cause of the end of that war and the defeat of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires by France and Great Britain. Hitler wasn't Wilson's fault - if anything it was France and Great Britain in their push to punish Germany that was a cause of the rise of nazism.
May 20, 2009 5:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who's the old dude in the black suit? Woodrow? Is that you? ;-)
May 20, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I share your disdain for Wilson. My understanding is that he ran AGAINST the war in 1916, then jumped in with both feet after he had bamboozled the electorate. His fascist - even totalitarian restrictions on WWI opponents and dissidents were real crimes against the letter and spirit of the Constitution.
However, this argument strikes me as naive. It seems like a canard you see all the time on the left. My favorite one is that if Henry Wallace had been VP in 1945 instead of Truman we would have had universal health care and no cold war.
First of all, it's been understated and forgotten just how much the freshly minted (1870) German state hungered for new land and 'lebensraum' long before Hitler was drafted.
Kaiser Wilhem was widely regarded as frighteningly divorced from reality and exceedingly vainglorious - wearing a full dress military uniform anytime he might be seen in public for example. Much of Hitler's German chauvinism - and the claim to 'need' more land for the German people was staked out by Kaiser Wilhelm decades before.
Knowing the damage one madman can accomplish - like Dick Cheney - I can see why the US left is open to these kind of Da VInci Code theories where a few conspirators can ruin the world.
But if 'humiliation' or heaping reparations on a people makes them hostile and war-like, then most of the wars of the 20th Century should have been started by American Indians - or in the Congo by the victims of King Leopold.
WWII may have been avoided - but then who's to say a bigger war wouldn't have sprung up in 1955 - say with Stalin?
I think the right wing's version of this is "We (sh)(c)ould've won Vietnam." My brother was in the Air Force in the 1990's and this was taught essentially as a 'fact' - that the fault for the loss lay with LBJ and his wuss-ass civilian leadership - like the fey McNamara. But what if LBJ had taken their advice and then Russia would've made it a real live super-power war? Or we would've dropped an H bomb and started a nuclear war?
My take is yes - we could've 'won' Vietnam' but by the same token then we would have to be open to the notion that we could've 'lost' every war we 'won' - but of course the right doesn't countenance the notion of questioning our wins - only our losses.
Though it's hard to imagine anything worse than WWII, once you start playing the 'what if' parlor game, I think you at least have to imagine the downsides of these alternate universes and not just the upsides.
May 20, 2009 6:29 PM | Reply | Permalink