Dulce et Decorum Est

Jon Chait had a funny column over the weekend comparing the '06 midterms to World War One. At the very end, though, it offers up some fairly odd commentary on the war itself: "Woodrow Wilson didn't make the world safe for democracy, but he did manage to keep a pretty noxious regime from dominating a continent."

Wilhelmine Germany wasn't especially noxious. It was quasi-democratic and evolving in the direction of greater democracy. Among its opponents was Tsarist Russia, the most noxious regime on the European continent at the time. And, of course, the allied victory didn't exactly prevent noxious Germany from dominating Europe . . . the Germans came back, in much more noxious form, and tried again. Even though Nazism only lasted 1933-1945 it inflicted sufficient suffering that I think it's extremely plausible that the world would have been better off with a German victory. The real twist, however, is what would have been the fate of the Bolshevism in case of a German win. It would depend, I suppose, on how and why the German victory was achieved.

On top of that, reliable sources have contended to me that American intervention in the war wasn't especially decisive, though I'm not sure about that one way or the other.

Comments

Niall Ferguson's Pity of War makes just the argument that it would have been better for everyone if the UK had let the Germans win in 1914.

Posted by otto | September 5, 2006 10:54 AM

Well, uh, actually, the Germans did defeat the Bolsheviks in WWI (cf. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk).

Posted by MattF | September 5, 2006 10:57 AM

Had the Americans not entered the war, Germany likely wins on the Western Front in 1918. It was a pretty near run thing as it was.
And of course, Germany had already won in the East.

As incompetant as you may imagine the French and British high commands to have been, your imagination is likely insufficient to the task.

JC

Posted by John Casey | September 5, 2006 11:08 AM

It is true - the Germans were not that noxious in 1914. The seeds of virulent nationalism and anti-semitism were there but they would not have flowered had Germany won the war. Ironically in 1914 many East European Jews considered Germany their savior - for the previous 50 years Russia had been, without question, the most unfriendly country for Jews in Europe. Turkish Jews also thought they would get a better deal from Germany than from Russia or pro-Arab Great Britain and France and played a key role in getting the Ottoman Empire to throw its support to Germany.

Posted by vanya | September 5, 2006 11:13 AM

It's hard to see how millions of fresh troops entering the virtually deadlocked conflict was not decisive. Aside from the actual fighting the Yanks engaged in (over 100,000 killed and 200,000 wounded) the future dynamic of the American intervention must have weighed heavily on the Germans recognizing that they faced future defeat.

Posted by GregPStone | September 5, 2006 11:17 AM

It wasn't just the noxiousness of the regime in Wilhelmine Germany, but its expansionism that made it dangerous. This was doubly so once the war got going and German territorial ambitions both in the East and West became inflamed.

"otto's" comment about 1914 is beside the point, as Wilson after all attempted to stay out of WWI for as long as he could, and US entry came almost three years later, at a time (April, 1917) when the Entente powers were stretched very thin and the noxious Russian regime had undergone a liberal revolution and Nicholas had abdicated.

Can one really believe that (ignoring our 20/20 hindsight) the idea of Wilhelmine Germany dominating Europe from France to the Ukraine was one that anyone could view without alarm?

Posted by DaveL | September 5, 2006 11:17 AM

Where was the imminent threat to America, again? Seems to me to be just another preemptive war for America. And a failed preemption at that. (/snark)

Posted by Al | September 5, 2006 11:35 AM

Where was the imminent threat to America, again? Seems to me to be just another preemptive war for America. And a failed preemption at that.

This seems perfectly sensible, actually.

Posted by Christmas | September 5, 2006 12:28 PM

Al may have meant it sarcastically, but he has a very good point.

Of course, our WWI intervention was a moment in the creation of the American Century, which was wonderful and all to the good for us. But it was good because we paid almost none of the associated costs in human terms -- suffered small casualties in WWII, didn't really bear the brunt of communism, facism, etc. In fact the wrecking of old Europe in WWII turned out to be good for us economically.

Posted by MQ | September 5, 2006 12:59 PM

The physical intervention of the US was not decisive on the Western Front. But it would have been in 1919, as the Army manpower ramped steeply up. Knowing this, Ludendorff felt obliged to try and win outright in the spring of 1918. His offensive nearly succeeded, but did not and left the German Army in a weakend state and vulnerable position. In at least this sense, the American entry into the war was decisive.

Posted by Robert the Red | September 5, 2006 1:21 PM

"the wrecking of old Europe in WWII turned out to be good for us economically."

Why would you assume that? International competition and trade is not a zero sum game.

Posted by ed | September 5, 2006 2:06 PM

If they hadn't diluted the Schlieffen plan, the war might have been over long before America considered jumping in. As it was, Paris was saved by a hairsbreadth in 1914 - by taxicabs.

Posted by RT | September 5, 2006 2:56 PM

The idea that US intervention didn't tip the scales in WWI is silly academic paper mill grinding at its most obvious.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 5, 2006 3:14 PM

On top of that, reliable sources have contended to me that American intervention in the war wasn't especially decisive

For Germany, it changed a "we're going to lose" into a "we're going to lose bad and fast" that contributed to a faster end, i gather from some reliable source - some book over there, actually.

But i doubt the word will spread. "We kinda tipped scales from 17 to 18 in the first and opened a second front in the second, followed by a judicious plan to rebuild europe!!!!!" is not nearly as catchy as the usual "saved your asses twice".

Posted by yabonn | September 5, 2006 4:58 PM

"Wilhelmine Germany wasn't especially noxious. It was quasi-democratic and evolving in the direction of greater democracy."

Actually, it was a fairly noxious regime and was rapidly getting worse. It's true that, in 1914, Germany wasn't the worst country among the major powers to live under - but that's the point: Tsarist Russia had neither the ability nor the ambition (except perhaps in the most fantastical and insanely deluded minds)to rule Europe as a whole. It was bad if you had to live in Tsarist Russia, but it was extremely unlikely that any Frenchman or Englishman or Italian would be ruled from St. Petersburg anytime soon.

Wilhemine Germany, on the other hand, clearly had the ability and near-term desire to do so - the Austro-Hungarian Empire was not going to last more than 20 years on the outside, and the pieces or results would have either de facto or overtly been ruled from Berlin (with perhaps various insurgent movements at the periphery, which probably leads down the same path as WWI anyway). Which means that essentially all of the continent except for France and various tiny bits and pieces would have been weilded into a gigantic, incredibly powerful superstate (the Austrian military resources, which Austria was very inefficient at utilizing, would have been quickly re-resourced into much more efficient German military forces).

Posted by burritoboy | September 5, 2006 5:18 PM

While Wilhelmine Germany wasn't particularly noxious in 1914 (though it was dangerous, as pointed out above), the country that Wilson went to war against in 1917 was not the same country that went to war in 1914. It had become quite a bit more noxious as the German military effectively assumed all political power.

It is also the case that American intervention was not decisive in determining who won the war; by the end of 1917, it was clear that it was going to be the Allies regardless of whether the US entered the war, but it did mean that the war ended in 1918 rather than 1919 or 1920. The British manpower crisis, which was as much political maneuvering by the also noxious Lloyd George as it was real, had passed. British industrial capacity, aided by US trade of course, had allowed the British to amass a sufficiently large artillery advantage that they had the power to break German defenses.

The Passchendaele offensive was a huge blunder by Haig. It ignored all of the lessons learned by the British up to that point. It is possible to argue that Haig was grossly incompetent; I'm ambivalent about it myself. However, the argument that the British learned nothing over the course of the war and kept doing the same thing has been exposed as the fraudulent claim that it is. British tactics by 1918 were very different than those of July 1, 1916, which was the birthdate of the modern British Army.

Absent US intervention, the Germans might not have launched the initially impressive but ultimately ruinous Spring 1918 offensive. However, they had no answer once the Allies began to employ overwhelming artillery advantages and stopped advancing from under its cover as they attacked. They were doomed to either bleed away under the impact, or slowly but steadily retreat back to Germany.

Posted by J. Michael Neal | September 5, 2006 5:25 PM

I think that the substance of the German regime was secondary to the primary reason the war was fought over in the first place: to avoid a German hegemony over the continent; that was essentially the major issue after 1890 as it was clear that Britain was slowly declining and Bismark retired, replaced by a leadership of not similar stature.

As for the character of the regime per se, I think it's arguable that in one sense, the unstable history from 1890 to 1945 is the history of Germany's growing pains and the transition from an agricultural society to a modern industrial one. This is an argument that draws from Huntington's 1968 thesis or even the recent book about the J curve. Again, arguably, a similar phenomenon occured when France went through her revolution.

Posted by Nick Kaufman | September 5, 2006 6:41 PM

One of Germany's aspirations was to acquire foreign colonies with natural resources like the rest of the European big boys. A German win in WW11 would have meant more misery, if not necessarily any worse misery than under the others in the third world.

Posted by Mark Garrity | September 5, 2006 10:27 PM

I don't think we should attribute the outbreak of the First World War to German territorial expansion, at least not entirely. The Germans were more motivated by a fear of Russia than domination of the continent. Russia in 1914 (though still largely agrarian) had vast amounts of potential power (for industrialiation and rapid military build up). Germany was acting in fear of what might happen in the future; that Russia would become powerful and expansionistic (which was not an unreasonable fear by any stretch of the imagination, seeing as how a Russian ascendence would be happening at the same time as a German decline).

Posted by Jamelle Bouie | September 5, 2006 11:48 PM

Well, uh, actually, the Germans did defeat the Bolsheviks in WWI (cf. Treaty of Brest-Litovsk).

I don't know if this is properly characterized as a "defeat" for Lenin & Co., considering that getting Russia out of WWI was their aim all along.

Posted by ersatz | September 6, 2006 10:11 AM

flu hunting 1918

Posted by epedemic 1918 flu | May 13, 2007 7:08 PM