Leadership in WW1 and WW2

[sagegrouse]

Debs got six percent of the vote (winning no states). Roosevelt ended up trouncing Taft in both the popular vote and the electoral college, but the split in the Republican Party gave the nomination to the woefully unqualified Wilson with less than 42 percent of the vote ... a disaster for America, he turned out to be one of the worst Presidents of the 20th Century.



Lots of people disagree with you on Woodrow Wilson. And this Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_St ates) shows that most rankings of presidents put him in the top quartile.

How about?

The Federal Reserve Act (creating the Federal Reserve), which created a system for controlling currency and banking which has, since the early 1930's at least, served the country well.
The Federal Trade Commission Act (stopping unfair trade practices).
The Clayton Antitrust Act (making certain business practices illegal).
The Federal Farm Loan Act (providing issuance of low-cost long-term mortgages to farmers).
Adamson Act (imposing 8-hour workdays for railroads) and the beginning of a trend to protect worker's rights.
A progressive federal income tax.



His handling of World War I and later but decisive entry was done well.

He doesn't get much credit for intervening in Latin American and Caribbean countries or for wartime controls on free speech, but those don't outweigh his other accomplishments
Became a major advocate for women's suffrage, leading to the 19th amendment.

[Olympic Fan]

Lots of people disagree with you on Woodrow Wilson. And this Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_St ates) shows that most rankings of presidents put him in the top quartile.

How about?

The Federal Reserve Act (creating the Federal Reserve), which created a system for controlling currency and banking which has, since the early 1930's at least, served the country well.
The Federal Trade Commission Act (stopping unfair trade practices).
The Clayton Antitrust Act (making certain business practices illegal).
The Federal Farm Loan Act (providing issuance of low-cost long-term mortgages to farmers).
Adamson Act (imposing 8-hour workdays for railroads) and the beginning of a trend to protect worker's rights.
A progressive federal income tax.



His handling of World War I and later but decisive entry was done well.

He doesn't get much credit for intervening in Latin American and Caribbean countries or for wartime controls on free speech, but those don't outweigh his other accomplishments
Became a major advocate for women's suffrage, leading to the 19th amendment.


Can I argue this without crossing the PPG line? Is 1912-20 far enough in the past to be talked about without inflaming passions?

If not, I hope the moderators will quickly delete this message. But if OPK and sage are going to disagree, allow me to respond.

-- The idea that his handling of WWI and his later, but decisive entry was "well done" is absurd. He botched the US role in the Great War almost from the beginning. First, he refused to use the US position as a counterweight to end the war ... obviously, he had no power to stop it in the opening months, but a stronger president -- such as Teddy Roosevelt -- could have set the US up by the spring of 1915 (after the stalemate had set in) to arbitrate and end of the war. I know Wilson tried to do this much later, but at a time when his own personal reputation with European leaders was at an all-time low.

By 1917, he was regarded as a joke by the German leaders -- largely because of his wishy-washy response to their U-Boat campaign. Time after time, Wilson would respond to a crisis with a stern diplomatic note, but a refusal to take any kind of real action. Is it any wonder than Germany thought it was a good risk to resume unrestricted submarine warfare un the spring of 1917 and to negotiate with Mexico to invade the United States? They simply didn't believe Wilson would act. Read Scott Berg's description of a love-sick Wilson so distracted by his ongoing affair with Edith that he could barely be bothered to pay attention to the Lusitania crisis -- and that's from a generally laudatory biographer!

Wilson did finally act, but he led a woefully unprepared United States into the war. And whose fault was that? As early as 1914, many leaders (led by TR) urged Wilson to begin the expansion of the tiny US Army -- even if we were going to be neutral, it made good sense for preparedness. But Wilson absolutely refused to act -- he was so adamant that a volunteer organization had to be set up in Plattsburg, N.Y., to train prospective officers (which helped save our bacon in 1917-18). As it was, we went into war with an army that was untrained, unarmed (most of our weapons were supplied by the French and British) and absolutely unprepared. Our troops performed heroically and our numbers did gave a decisive impact -- but we also suffered thousands of probably unnecessary casualties because of lack of training -- due to Wilson's misjudgment.

-- The tragedy of the postwar period is also largely Wilson's fault. I understand that he couldn't really control Clemenceau and Lloyd-George in Paris, but he rolled over on everything in return for support for his baby, the League of Nations. Then he returned to America and killed the League by his refusal to compromise one whit with Lodge and the opposition. Even his supporters admit that there was a reasonable compromise on the table that could have passed and would have guaranteed American entry into the league, but Wilson's refusal to accept even the slighted compromise led to its defeat. That was a trait that he showed throughout his life -- he resigned as president at Princeton when he wouldn't compromise over his vision for the future of the university.

-- Wilson did oversee the passage of some significant progressive legislation and that's to his credit. Of course, Roosevelt was even more progressive and advocated many of the same measures -- and more.

-- Wilson was also a virulent racist who oversaw the most racist administration since before the Civil War. Understand that in 1912, we didn't have anything like racial equality in the government. But the role for Negroes was well defined -- they received a fixed percentage of patronage and government jobs. Black government workers were on the whole treated well. Wilson changed that. Blacks were cast out of real government jobs (other that janitorial or food services) and not appointed to any government jobs (such as postal workers). Those were huge steps back in racial relations. Berg, trying to excuse Wilson for the racial pogrom in his administration, insists that none of it came from Wilson, but from the men he appointed to Cabinet posts. Of course, Wilson did nothing to stop it, even when Black leaders protested. It's worth noting that in his time at Princeton, he kept that school lily-white, even as the other Ivy's were (very slowly) integrating. When he took the president's job there, there actually were a few black ministers who were studying religion as associate students -- Wilson quickly put an end to that.

-- As you say, he became an advocate of women's right to vote, but he was very late to the party. In fact, he long resisted the movement. As late as 1917, women's leaders picketed and rioted outside the White House

-- And, as you say, he was quick to sent the Marines to protect American business interests in Latin America.

-- And, as you say, he helped squelch free speech during the War ... and it was his attorney general Palmer, who initiated the first great Red Scare in American history.

-- I also blame him for holding onto office after his stroke in 1919, when he was bedridden and unable to function as president.

All in all, a disastrous presidency. I say that as a Democrat about a Democrat. I can't help dream how much better the world would be if Roosevelt had been elected president in 1912. We'd have gotten the same (or better) progressive reforms and America actually would have played a more decisive role in ending WWI (probably in 1915 or 1916). We wouldn't have had to deal with the racist setback in relations ....

[sagegrouse]

Can I argue this without crossing the PPG line? Is 1912-20 far enough in the past to be talked about without inflaming passions?

If not, I hope the moderators will quickly delete this message. But if OPK and sage are going to disagree, allow me to respond.

..

You have read more into Woodrow Wilson than I ever will. My primary interest in World War I has been the suicidal behavior of three monarchies, Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, which launched a war on flimsy grounds and ended up ceasing to exist. The Ottoman Empire is a different story, but it also failed to survive the Great War. The catastrophic and almost quixotic events that launched the war ended up creating Communism and Nazism, and resulted in World War II. Yes, I know, the peace conditions levied on Germany were an important cause of the rise of Hitler, but it all started with the Great War. In Britain and France, the political effects were also large (particularly the bloody-mindedness of the working class towards the upper class because of the needless casualties incurred by the British Army), but the governments continued.

I also have a personal interest in World War I because my grandfather served and was wounded, spending some considerable period in a hospital in France.

I do know something about Wilson's tenure at Princeton, and he was thought to have led a good but fairly nondescript college to the same general level as Harvard and Yale.

WRT to his tenure as President, no survey of historians rates him lower than 11th (out of 41 in the most recent surveys) and most rate him much higher. I suspect he gets a lot of credit for being on the winning side of World War I. Why do you differ so much from others?

Kindly,
Sage

[OldPhiKap]

Oly, I think much of your criticism overlooks that America was VERY isolationist and had absolutely no interest in fighting a war in Europe between old monarchies. Heck, folks still did not want to get into WW II and I am not so sure we would have absent Pearl Harbor. Even lend/lease was controversial. And, as you note, we did not have a large standing army because we had no need for one; the Atlantic and Pacific were the best defenses against any hostile force. So there was no national appetite for joining the war; no military with which to fight it; and frankly little reason to really care who won anyway. We were going to trade with the victor and rebuild the rubble regardless, and were focused on keeping Europe out of Central America and South America (i.e. The Monroe Doctrine, which had guided our foreign policy for almost a century by that point and which was championed by TRoosevelt as strongly as any president we have had).

Can't agree that the "tragedy of the postwar period is also largely Wilson's fault" -- not even remotely. Again, I think you overestimate our influence in Europe at the time. France was going to retake Alsace-Lorraine which had been annexed by Germany a generation before after the Franco-Prussian war. Of course the French were going to be punitive, and TR (my favorite president of the 20th Century) would not have carved a different result. At least, I have never seen real evidence that he would have.

As for the rest, I think a response would veer me off history and into PPB. Suffice to say, he was an imperfect man at an imperfect time. But my read of his body of work, viewed in the context of the time, puts him ahead of many that came before and since.

[davekay1971]

I've stayed away from the WW posts because (1) it's off topic for the thread and (2) its clear that Oly, Sage, and OPK know much more about him than I do. That being said, I have really enjoyed the back and forth and would love to hear more.

One point that Oly has made, and I think justifies both his view and Sage's at the same time: WW was our first Progressive president. That, alone, makes him a very important President (much more-so than the fact he happened to be in the White House when WWI happened). And I think that justifies both some of his praise and his criticism. You all know enough from my posts to know that I am anything but a Progressive. But the early Progressive movement was largely driven by abuse of workers, and it was important in attempting to correct those. On the other hand, the early Progressive movement was unfortunately tied to the late 19th century/early 20th century thoughts on eugenics and genetically driven racial superiority. WW had documented leanings in that, and he was hardly alone (another prominent early Progressive, Margaret Sanger's ties to eugenics have come into more focus recently, for example).

I've posted in other threads that I don't believe in judging people who lived long ago by 2015 values and beliefs. But I also don't believe in flinching from the complicated truths of history. WW was an incredibly important president, and his life and presidency are worthy of good, honest debate.

[sagegrouse]

Oly, I think much of your criticism overlooks that America was VERY isolationist and had absolutely no interest in fighting a war in Europe between old monarchies. Heck, folks still did not want to get into WW II and I am not so sure we would have absent Pearl Harbor. Even lend/lease was controversial. And, as you note, we did not have a large standing army because we had no need for one; the Atlantic and Pacific were the best defenses against any hostile force. So there was no national appetite for joining the war; no military with which to fight it; and frankly little reason to really care who won anyway. We were going to trade with the victor and rebuild the rubble regardless, and were focused on keeping Europe out of Central America and South America (i.e. The Monroe Doctrine, which had guided our foreign policy for almost a century by that point and which was championed by TRoosevelt as strongly as any president we have had).

Can't agree that the "tragedy of the postwar period is also largely Wilson's fault" -- not even remotely. Again, I think you overestimate our influence in Europe at the time. France was going to retake Alsace-Lorraine which had been annexed by Germany a generation before after the Franco-Prussian war. Of course the French were going to be punitive, and TR (my favorite president of the 20th Century) would not have carved a different result. At least, I have never seen real evidence that he would have.

As for the rest, I think a response would veer me off history and into PPB. Suffice to say, he was an imperfect man at an imperfect time. But my read of his body of work, viewed in the context of the time, puts him ahead of many that came before and since.

Thanks for weighing in OPK, and I appreciate OF's heartfelt views, which I haven't read before.

I started off on a peroration on the awful decisions of the Tsar, the Kaiser, and the Emperor/King of Austria-Hungary and then lost my train of thought. It was an utterly irrational world. Consider: Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary because of the threat to its ally Serbia (which was the site of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand). That triggered a declaration of war by Germany to aid its ally Austria-Hungary, which then triggered declarations of war by France and Britain to protects its ally Russia. I may have some of the details wrong, but you get the idea. Anyway, four years later, the aforementioned monarchies had vanished; 17 million were dead; and even the victors, Britain and France, were changed hugely as a result of the slaughter.

Based on those standards --- which could not be much lower -- Woodrow Wilson was the epitome of a strong and rational leader ("stay out of this mess") and deserves credit for that. Our entry was largely successful, and the U.S. had a couple of notable victories (albeit with an asterisk, according to the French generals), and our place on the world stage was achieved.

Kindly,
Sage
'My friend, Will O'Neil has a book, The Plan that Broke the World (http://www.amazon.com/The-Plan-That-Broke-World/dp/1481955853), on the German Army during WW I, that has access to more information than Barbara Tuchman had for her classic, The Guns of August'

[Olympic Fan]

Oly, I think much of your criticism overlooks that America was VERY isolationist and had absolutely no interest in fighting a war in Europe between old monarchies. Heck, folks still did not want to get into WW II and I am not so sure we would have absent Pearl Harbor. Even lend/lease was controversial. And, as you note, we did not have a large standing army because we had no need for one; the Atlantic and Pacific were the best defenses against any hostile force. So there was no national appetite for joining the war; no military with which to fight it; and frankly little reason to really care who won anyway. We were going to trade with the victor and rebuild the rubble regardless, and were focused on keeping Europe out of Central America and South America (i.e. The Monroe Doctrine, which had guided our foreign policy for almost a century by that point and which was championed by TRoosevelt as strongly as any president we have had).

Can't agree that the "tragedy of the postwar period is also largely Wilson's fault" -- not even remotely. Again, I think you overestimate our influence in Europe at the time. France was going to retake Alsace-Lorraine which had been annexed by Germany a generation before after the Franco-Prussian war. Of course the French were going to be punitive, and TR (my favorite president of the 20th Century) would not have carved a different result. At least, I have never seen real evidence that he would have.

As for the rest, I think a response would veer me off history and into PPB. Suffice to say, he was an imperfect man at an imperfect time. But my read of his body of work, viewed in the context of the time, puts him ahead of many that came before and since.

It's fascinating to compare Wilson's response to the war in Europe with FDR's response 25 years later when faced with almost exactly the same situation -- a brutal European war and an isolationist America. FDR did an amazing job walking a political tightrope, but he did things that Wilson refused to do -- he actually LEAD the American people in the direction he thought it should go and he began to prepare the nation for the possibility of war. We still weren't ready on Dec. 7 1941 ... but we were far closer to being ready than in 1917. I think it's instructive that in WWI we had to rely on British and French weaponry ... in WWII we armed our allies with American weapons to a large degree.

FDR was always careful to watch his political flanks, but he did a couple of things that were the height of political courage -- asking for a peacetime draft in the summer of 1940 (just two months before the presidential election) and forcing it through congress ... and his December, 1940 proposal for Lend Lease. (Could also include his quasi-legal destroyers for bases deal in early 1940 and his fight to extend the draft term of the 1940 draftees in the fall of 1941). Through it all, he was buffeted by the hard-liners on his right (General Marshall, Morganthau and Ickes were all demanding a declaration of war after the fall of France in 1940; and the isolationists on the left -- in both parties -- were trying to block every move he made to help Britain. The large and active Communist Party (very strong in war-related labor unions) were violently anti-war until June 22, 1941, then just as violent in their demands for entry into the war afterwards.

The contrast between Roosevelt's wisdom and courage and Wilson's short-sightedness and pacificism is incredible. You say Wilson was "an imperfect man in an imperfect time", but when it comes to race relations he was not anywhere near the norm of his "imperfect times" -- he was much more racist. He didn't just go along with the racism of the era, he turned back the clock to an even more virulent age.

And, granted, Wilson's role in some of the worst instances of the Versailles Treaty was secondary to the French and the British (who both wanted a Cathaginian Peace), but I don't agree that there was nothing he could have done. When Wilson arrived in Europe in early 1919 before the Paris Peace Conference, he was lionized by the public in Britain and France. He was for several months the most popular man in the Western world -- and probably more popular than any American has been before or since. He could have used that popularity -- which translates into political power -- to moderate the harsh demands of his compatriots ... instead, his only concern was the League of Nations, which he ended up neuterizing with his politican ineptitude a few months later.

PS One very small impact of Wilson's racism would have resonance in my lifetime. While at Paris a young kitchen worker from French occupied Indochina read and was mesmerized by Wilson's lofty rhetoric about nation's being governed by the consent of the governed. He headed a small revolutionary cell and that petitioned Wilson for a chance to present their case for independence to the conference. Wilson, who never meant for his words to apply to non-white people, brushed Nguyen Sinh Cung's petition aside. Two years later, the kitchen worker who had grown up admiring Thomas Jefferson and the American system, became a founding member of the French Communist Party. He went to China, were he worked with Mao. He returned to French Indochina with a new name -- Ho Chi Minh. The one-time admirer of the United States became one of our greatest enemies ... thanks in some part to Woodrow Wilson.

[77devil]

France was going to retake Alsace-Lorraine which had been annexed by Germany a generation before after the Franco-Prussian war.

Alsace-Loraine has changed hands so many times everyone speaks German and French just in case. Both sides want the wine.

[davekay1971]

Alsace-Loraine has changed hands so many times everyone speaks German and French just in case. Both sides want the wine.

I remember when I conquered Alsace-Lorraine. I had barely set up my flag when I saw OPK's army coming and I had to flee. Of course, he got his when Sage and Oly made a peaceful resolution to the WW War (WWW or W3) and assaulted his position. Finally Jason Evans decided enough was enough and dropped a Moderator Bomb on Alsace-Lorraine and claimed it for the Republic of DBR. I'd say the Alsace-Lorraine won't change hands again, but 77Devil has been spotted on the borderlands and he looks like he wants all the wine for himself.

At least we know Devildeac won't enter the fray. He's staying firmly put in Germany because he likes the beer.

[sagegrouse]

Alsace-Loraine has changed hands so many times everyone speaks German and French just in case. Both sides want the wine.

The wine is admirable, but I really enjoy the party feel of the Alsatian wine towns, Ribeauville and Riquewehr.

[El_Diablo]

WW was our first Progressive president.

You mean Teddy Roosevelt???

[OldPhiKap]

Alsace-Loraine has changed hands so many times everyone speaks German and French just in case. Both sides want the wine.

It is interesting to note that the French generally describe their wines by region (Bordeaux, Chablis, Bugundy, Champaigne, etc.) while the Germans describe theirs by varietal. Alsace-Lorraine wines generally use the German approach -- Riesling, Gewürztraminer, etc.


It's fascinating to compare Wilson's response to the war in Europe with FDR's response 25 years later when faced with almost exactly the same situation -- a brutal European war and an isolationist America. FDR did an amazing job walking a political tightrope, but he did things that Wilson refused to do -- he actually LEAD the American people in the direction he thought it should go and he began to prepare the nation for the possibility of war. We still weren't ready on Dec. 7 1941 ... but we were far closer to being ready than in 1917. I think it's instructive that in WWI we had to rely on British and French weaponry ... in WWII we armed our allies with American weapons to a large degree.

FDR was always careful to watch his political flanks, but he did a couple of things that were the height of political courage -- asking for a peacetime draft in the summer of 1940 (just two months before the presidential election) and forcing it through congress ... and his December, 1940 proposal for Lend Lease. (Could also include his quasi-legal destroyers for bases deal in early 1940 and his fight to extend the draft term of the 1940 draftees in the fall of 1941). Through it all, he was buffeted by the hard-liners on his right (General Marshall, Morganthau and Ickes were all demanding a declaration of war after the fall of France in 1940; and the isolationists on the left -- in both parties -- were trying to block every move he made to help Britain. The large and active Communist Party (very strong in war-related labor unions) were violently anti-war until June 22, 1941, then just as violent in their demands for entry into the war afterwards.

The contrast between Roosevelt's wisdom and courage and Wilson's short-sightedness and pacificism is incredible. You say Wilson was "an imperfect man in an imperfect time", but when it comes to race relations he was not anywhere near the norm of his "imperfect times" -- he was much more racist. He didn't just go along with the racism of the era, he turned back the clock to an even more virulent age.

And, granted, Wilson's role in some of the worst instances of the Versailles Treaty was secondary to the French and the British (who both wanted a Cathaginian Peace), but I don't agree that there was nothing he could have done. When Wilson arrived in Europe in early 1919 before the Paris Peace Conference, he was lionized by the public in Britain and France. He was for several months the most popular man in the Western world -- and probably more popular than any American has been before or since. He could have used that popularity -- which translates into political power -- to moderate the harsh demands of his compatriots ... instead, his only concern was the League of Nations, which he ended up neuterizing with his politican ineptitude a few months later.

PS One very small impact of Wilson's racism would have resonance in my lifetime. While at Paris a young kitchen worker from French occupied Indochina read and was mesmerized by Wilson's lofty rhetoric about nation's being governed by the consent of the governed. He headed a small revolutionary cell and that petitioned Wilson for a chance to present their case for independence to the conference. Wilson, who never meant for his words to apply to non-white people, brushed Nguyen Sinh Cung's petition aside. Two years later, the kitchen worker who had grown up admiring Thomas Jefferson and the American system, became a founding member of the French Communist Party. He went to China, were he worked with Mao. He returned to French Indochina with a new name -- Ho Chi Minh. The one-time admirer of the United States became one of our greatest enemies ... thanks in some part to Woodrow Wilson.

First off, tried to Spork you but must be more promiscuous. Good, fair, fun debate.

Wilson led towards where his heart was -- peace, and nonintervention in foreign wars. We can debate the merits of that position, but it is a view that persists today too and was not without its merit in that conflict and in that time. It was in fact the overwhelming position of the country. And I assume we can agree that Hitler and the threat he posed was a bit different than Kaiser Wilhelm to say the least. (Does Godwin's law apply when comparing the German who launched WWI from the one that launched WW II?). Even then, in WW II the war raged for two years and London was on its knees before we got in -- and then only because of Pearl Harbor. I would argue that our involvement in the war was due to getting sneak-attacked and losing 2,400 servicemen (the 9-11 of its time) and not anything that any politician in Washington did including FDR.

As far as the rest, I think the debate (or at least the points you raised that launched this interesting discussion) is Wilson's qualifications and job performance -- not whether he was a good person. I would argue that Jimmy Carter was a good person for example, but not a good president. I would also argue that Bill Clinton was a good president but that I wouldn't let him near my wife. That is just a different question.

I must admit, this is the first time I have heard someone posit or infer that the entire Viet Nam uprising was due to Wilson's racism in the aftermath of WWI. Seems like a stretch to me.

[Bob Green]

I agree this is an excellent discussion.


I must admit, this is the first time I have heard someone posit or infer that the entire Viet Nam uprising was due to Wilson's racism in the aftermath of WWI. Seems like a stretch to me.

One of my history professors made identical statements. Ho Chi Minh was devastated by his experiences with the Paris Peace Conference and turned to Communism because Democracy failed him. My professor was no fan of Wilson. Unfortunately, Wilson was not the only U.S. President to ignore Ho Chi Minh. President Truman repeatedly ignored him in 1945 when Vietnam declared their independence.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html


Ho declares himself president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and pursues American recognition but is repeatedly ignored by President Harry Truman.

[OldPhiKap]

One of my history professors made identical statements. Ho Chi Minh was devastated by his experiences with the Paris Peace Conference and turned to Communism because Democracy failed him. My professor was no fan of Wilson. Unfortunately, Wilson was not the only U.S. President to ignore Ho Chi Minh. President Truman repeatedly ignored him in 1945 when Vietnam declared their independence.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html

Interesting, I will read up on it and may owe a walk-back to Oly on that point then. My question is really whether the U.S. had much to do or much say in French Colonialism in Indo-China following WW II. My guess is that it was pretty low on the radar, especially as the Iron Curtain came down over Eastern Europe and the boys came home.

To the extent the lesson is that we should pay more attention to developing countries and lesser-developed countries, I don't think we have changed much on that score absent a strategic military or economic reason. Our policies towards many African nations and Pacific Rim nations, for example, is one of benign neglect at best. Which is how we seemed to treat the European powers' colonial reach after WW II as well except in our hemisphere (where, as noted above, we had staked our claim against increased European influence since President Monroe).

Again, interesting discussion.

[sagegrouse]

It's fascinating to compare Wilson's response to the war in Europe with FDR's response 25 years later when faced with almost exactly the same situation -- a brutal European war and an isolationist America. FDR did an amazing job walking a political tightrope, but he did things that Wilson refused to do -- he actually LEAD the American people in the direction he thought it should go and he began to prepare the nation for the possibility of war. We still weren't ready on Dec. 7 1941 ... but we were far closer to being ready than in 1917. I think it's instructive that in WWI we had to rely on British and French weaponry ... in WWII we armed our allies with American weapons to a large degree.

FDR was always careful to watch his political flanks, but he did a couple of things that were the height of political courage -- asking for a peacetime draft in the summer of 1940 (just two months before the presidential election) and forcing it through congress ... and his December, 1940 proposal for Lend Lease. (Could also include his quasi-legal destroyers for bases deal in early 1940 and his fight to extend the draft term of the 1940 draftees in the fall of 1941). Through it all, he was buffeted by the hard-liners on his right (General Marshall, Morganthau and Ickes were all demanding a declaration of war after the fall of France in 1940; and the isolationists on the left -- in both parties -- were trying to block every move he made to help Britain. The large and active Communist Party (very strong in war-related labor unions) were violently anti-war until June 22, 1941, then just as violent in their demands for entry into the war afterwards.

The contrast between Roosevelt's wisdom and courage and Wilson's short-sightedness and pacificism is incredible. You say Wilson was "an imperfect man in an imperfect time", but when it comes to race relations he was not anywhere near the norm of his "imperfect times" -- he was much more racist. He didn't just go along with the racism of the era, he turned back the clock to an even more virulent age.

And, granted, Wilson's role in some of the worst instances of the Versailles Treaty was secondary to the French and the British (who both wanted a Cathaginian Peace), but I don't agree that there was nothing he could have done. When Wilson arrived in Europe in early 1919 before the Paris Peace Conference, he was lionized by the public in Britain and France. He was for several months the most popular man in the Western world -- and probably more popular than any American has been before or since. He could have used that popularity -- which translates into political power -- to moderate the harsh demands of his compatriots ... instead, his only concern was the League of Nations, which he ended up neuterizing with his politican ineptitude a few months later.

.

Olympic Fan: Likening the circumstances of the pre-WW I and pre-WW II seems very weak to me. Pre WW I, the US was hardly a player on the world stage, either in fact or in the eyes of the American public. Wilson (and Blackjack Pershing) changed that,both in the was and in the subsequent international deliberations. Moreover, there was no "Gathering Storm" prior to the Great War -- it was a series of mishaps and miscalculations that suddenly occurred in 1914 that changed the world forever. In World War II, it was clear from the mid-1930's that Hitler was a threat to Europe and to world peace. It was also clear that our allies -- particularly France but also Britain -- were pacifistic after the brutal slaughter of the First World War. Moreover, by this time the U.S. was an international player, even if there was some isolationist sentiment at home.

Not a good comparison, in my view.

[Olympic Fan]

Olympic Fan: Likening the circumstances of the pre-WW I and pre-WW II seems very weak to me. Pre WW I, the US was hardly a player on the world stage, either in fact or in the eyes of the American public. Wilson (and Blackjack Pershing) changed that,both in the was and in the subsequent international deliberations. Moreover, there was no "Gathering Storm" prior to the Great War -- it was a series of mishaps and miscalculations that suddenly occurred in 1914 that changed the world forever. In World War II, it was clear from the mid-1930's that Hitler was a threat to Europe and to world peace. It was also clear that our allies -- particularly France but also Britain -- were pacifistic after the brutal slaughter of the First World War. Moreover, by this time the U.S. was an international player, even if there was some isolationist sentiment at home.

Not a good comparison, in my view.

It may be clear in hindsight, but it certainly wasn't clear to the US public or most American politicians at the time.

FDR saw it and tried to sound an early warning sign, but he found himself out on a limb and had to walk it back. Plus, in his early years, he was consumed by domestic affairs (like trying to get us out of the Great depression).

If anything, it was actually harder for Roosevelt to get the public prepared for war BECAUSE of the WWI experience. Most Americans in the late '20s and '30s had come to believe that we were duped into that war by big money interests. They were bitterly resistant to his efforts to warn of the dangers of Nazism (which many actually saw as a useful bulwark against the spread of Communism).

Interesting that you use the term "The Gathering Storm" which was, of course, the title Churchill's first volume in is WWII history. Remember, most of that volume is about his futile attempt to warn the British about the Nazi threat. They didn't see it ... and they were a heck of a lot closer and endangered by it than Americans.

And contrary to what you suggest -- America was recognized as a Great Power after the Spanish American War -- when America acquired a world empire that was second only to the British Empire in scope. As WWI opened, the US was -- with Britain and Germany -- one of the three great economic powers in the world. We had the third largest Navy in the world (and that was to a large degree how such things were measured). Even in the first months of the war, British papers referred to the United States as "The Great Neutral."

PS One small correction to an earlier point about Alsace-Lorraine. While it's true that Alsace was a somewhat Germanic region in many ways, Lorraine was all French and always had been. Actually, Alsace had never been part of Germany before it was annexed in 1871 (along with Lorraine) as part of the Franco-Prussian War settlement (of course, there WAS no great Germany before 1871 -- just Prussia and a bunch of independent states). Bismark actually opposed the annexation of the two provinces, insisting that it would make an enemy of France forever (he was the master of beating nations and war, then forging a lasting peace as he did with Denmark and Austria). But von Moltke, the commanding general, demanded the two province to forever put France on the defensive geographically. Neither was annexed because of any ties or former status as German provinces.

[cato]

Can I argue this without crossing the PPG line? Is 1912-20 far enough in the past to be talked about without inflaming passions?

If not, I hope the moderators will quickly delete this message. But if OPK and sage are going to disagree, allow me to respond.

-- The idea that his handling of WWI and his later, but decisive entry was "well done" is absurd. He botched the US role in the Great War almost from the beginning. First, he refused to use the US position as a counterweight to end the war ... obviously, he had no power to stop it in the opening months, but a stronger president -- such as Teddy Roosevelt -- could have set the US up by the spring of 1915 (after the stalemate had set in) to arbitrate and end of the war. I know Wilson tried to do this much later, but at a time when his own personal reputation with European leaders was at an all-time low.

By 1917, he was regarded as a joke by the German leaders -- largely because of his wishy-washy response to their U-Boat campaign. Time after time, Wilson would respond to a crisis with a stern diplomatic note, but a refusal to take any kind of real action. Is it any wonder than Germany thought it was a good risk to resume unrestricted submarine warfare un the spring of 1917 and to negotiate with Mexico to invade the United States? They simply didn't believe Wilson would act. Read Scott Berg's description of a love-sick Wilson so distracted by his ongoing affair with Edith that he could barely be bothered to pay attention to the Lusitania crisis -- and that's from a generally laudatory biographer!

Wilson did finally act, but he led a woefully unprepared United States into the war. And whose fault was that? As early as 1914, many leaders (led by TR) urged Wilson to begin the expansion of the tiny US Army -- even if we were going to be neutral, it made good sense for preparedness. But Wilson absolutely refused to act -- he was so adamant that a volunteer organization had to be set up in Plattsburg, N.Y., to train prospective officers (which helped save our bacon in 1917-18). As it was, we went into war with an army that was untrained, unarmed (most of our weapons were supplied by the French and British) and absolutely unprepared. Our troops performed heroically and our numbers did gave a decisive impact -- but we also suffered thousands of probably unnecessary casualties because of lack of training -- due to Wilson's misjudgment.

-- The tragedy of the postwar period is also largely Wilson's fault. I understand that he couldn't really control Clemenceau and Lloyd-George in Paris, but he rolled over on everything in return for support for his baby, the League of Nations. Then he returned to America and killed the League by his refusal to compromise one whit with Lodge and the opposition. Even his supporters admit that there was a reasonable compromise on the table that could have passed and would have guaranteed American entry into the league, but Wilson's refusal to accept even the slighted compromise led to its defeat. That was a trait that he showed throughout his life -- he resigned as president at Princeton when he wouldn't compromise over his vision for the future of the university.

-- Wilson did oversee the passage of some significant progressive legislation and that's to his credit. Of course, Roosevelt was even more progressive and advocated many of the same measures -- and more.

-- Wilson was also a virulent racist who oversaw the most racist administration since before the Civil War. Understand that in 1912, we didn't have anything like racial equality in the government. But the role for Negroes was well defined -- they received a fixed percentage of patronage and government jobs. Black government workers were on the whole treated well. Wilson changed that. Blacks were cast out of real government jobs (other that janitorial or food services) and not appointed to any government jobs (such as postal workers). Those were huge steps back in racial relations. Berg, trying to excuse Wilson for the racial pogrom in his administration, insists that none of it came from Wilson, but from the men he appointed to Cabinet posts. Of course, Wilson did nothing to stop it, even when Black leaders protested. It's worth noting that in his time at Princeton, he kept that school lily-white, even as the other Ivy's were (very slowly) integrating. When he took the president's job there, there actually were a few black ministers who were studying religion as associate students -- Wilson quickly put an end to that.

-- As you say, he became an advocate of women's right to vote, but he was very late to the party. In fact, he long resisted the movement. As late as 1917, women's leaders picketed and rioted outside the White House

-- And, as you say, he was quick to sent the Marines to protect American business interests in Latin America.

-- And, as you say, he helped squelch free speech during the War ... and it was his attorney general Palmer, who initiated the first great Red Scare in American history.

-- I also blame him for holding onto office after his stroke in 1919, when he was bedridden and unable to function as president.

All in all, a disastrous presidency. I say that as a Democrat about a Democrat. I can't help dream how much better the world would be if Roosevelt had been elected president in 1912. We'd have gotten the same (or better) progressive reforms and America actually would have played a more decisive role in ending WWI (probably in 1915 or 1916). We wouldn't have had to deal with the racist setback in relations ....

Boom!

Seriously, though, I really appreciate the discussion.

[gumbomoop]

Unfortunately, Wilson was not the only U.S. President to ignore Ho Chi Minh. President Truman repeatedly ignored him in 1945 when Vietnam declared their independence.

The best short-book overview of the American war in Vietnam is George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. The book's opening paragraph depicts a most ironic, and ultimately heartbreaking, scene from 1945:

"When Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of Vietnam from French rule on September 2, 1945, he borrowed liberally from Thomas Jefferson, opening with the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal." During independence celebrations in Hanoi later in the day, American warplanes flew over the city, U.S. Army officers stood on the reviewing stand with Vo Nguyen Giap and other leaders, and a Vietnamese band played the "Star-Spangled Banner." Toward the end of the festivities, Giap spoke warmly of Vietnam's "particularly intimate relations" with the United States, something, he noted, "which it is a pleasant duty to dwell upon." The prominent role played by Americans at the birth of modern Vietnam appears in retrospect one of history's most bitter ironies. Despite the glowing professions of friendship on September 2, the United States acquiesced in the return of France to Vietnam and from 1950 to 1954 actively supported French efforts to suppress Ho's revolution...."

It made sense for the U.S. to support Ho, as his revolution seemed an examplar of the 20th-century American commitment to anti-colonialism. But as it turned out, that "commitment" was weak, and faded quickly when tested by a powerful, newly-emerging American ideology: the belief that communism was monolithic, that it must be contained, and that weakened Western European powers must be strengthened so as help in that containment. Ho was both a fierce Vietnamese nationalist and a communist. American Presidents and most of their advisers, ignorant of Asian history, decided that Ho's communism made his nationalism irrelevant.

Willful ignorance is dangerously stupid.

[Olympic Fan]

The best short-book overview of the American war in Vietnam is George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. The book's opening paragraph depicts a most ironic, and ultimately heartbreaking, scene from 1945:

"When Ho Chi Minh proclaimed the independence of Vietnam from French rule on September 2, 1945, he borrowed liberally from Thomas Jefferson, opening with the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal." During independence celebrations in Hanoi later in the day, American warplanes flew over the city, U.S. Army officers stood on the reviewing stand with Vo Nguyen Giap and other leaders, and a Vietnamese band played the "Star-Spangled Banner." Toward the end of the festivities, Giap spoke warmly of Vietnam's "particularly intimate relations" with the United States, something, he noted, "which it is a pleasant duty to dwell upon." The prominent role played by Americans at the birth of modern Vietnam appears in retrospect one of history's most bitter ironies. Despite the glowing professions of friendship on September 2, the United States acquiesced in the return of France to Vietnam and from 1950 to 1954 actively supported French efforts to suppress Ho's revolution...."

It made sense for the U.S. to support Ho, as his revolution seemed an examplar of the 20th-century American commitment to anti-colonialism. But as it turned out, that "commitment" was weak, and faded quickly when tested by a powerful, newly-emerging American ideology: the belief that communism was monolithic, that it must be contained, and that weakened Western European powers must be strengthened so as help in that containment. Ho was both a fierce Vietnamese nationalist and a communist. American Presidents and most of their advisers, ignorant of Asian history, decided that Ho's communism made his nationalism irrelevant.

Willful ignorance is dangerously stupid.

The American commitment to anti-colonialism essentially died with FDR. He was determined to cut the colonial ties of the European nations after the war -- an attitude that almost drove a wedge between FDR and Churchill. Unfortunately, his key State Department advisors (inherited by Truman) didn't share that view and after his death, the US not only acquiested, but assisted in the re-establishment of several colonial empires -- including, tragically, French Indochina.

[gumbomoop]

The American commitment to anti-colonialism essentially died with FDR. He was determined to cut the colonial ties of the European nations after the war -- an attitude that almost drove a wedge between FDR and Churchill. Unfortunately, his key State Department advisors (inherited by Truman) didn't share that view and after his death, the US not only acquiested, but assisted in the re-establishment of several colonial empires -- including, tragically, French Indochina.

Yes, I agree. I suppose one could debate -- and I don't propose to -- whether it ended on April 12, 1945, sometime that summer, before the end of the year, sometime in 1946. One could pick key events, signals, decisions. For me, September 2, 1945 is a portentous symbol.

[sagegrouse]

The American commitment to anti-colonialism essentially died with FDR. He was determined to cut the colonial ties of the European nations after the war -- an attitude that almost drove a wedge between FDR and Churchill. Unfortunately, his key State Department advisors (inherited by Truman) didn't share that view and after his death, the US not only acquiested, but assisted in the re-establishment of several colonial empires -- including, tragically, French Indochina.

See Chris Mathews's panegyric on JFK. He makes the point that JFK's travels around the world as a Congressman and Senator really impressed him about the strength of nationalist sentiment and the desire for independence in the colonial entities overseas. He was rather skeptical of the claims of empire by the British and the French. Whether a second-term JFK would have avoided the Vietnam War can never be known.

I'm older than most of you guys, and I remember how powerful the voices of the senior military leaders were in the 1950s and 1960s. Curtis LeMay and the others of the time never failed to see a Communist threat in any colonial effort for independence. Kennedy had two successes in the Cuban Missile Crisis -- getting Khrushchev to back down and overcoming the desires of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to use nuclear weapons on Cuba.

The influence of the senior military leadership ended in the early 1970's, when it became evident to all that the military was lying or deluded about Vietnam.

[sagegrouse]

Interesting that you use the term "The Gathering Storm" which was, of course, the title Churchill's first volume in is WWII history. Remember, most of that volume is about his futile attempt to warn the British about the Nazi threat. They didn't see it ... and they were a heck of a lot closer and endangered by it than Americans.

And contrary to what you suggest -- America was recognized as a Great Power after the Spanish American War -- when America acquired a world empire that was second only to the British Empire in scope. As WWI opened, the US was -- with Britain and Germany -- one of the three great economic powers in the world. We had the third largest Navy in the world (and that was to a large degree how such things were measured). Even in the first months of the war, British papers referred to the United States as "The Great Neutral."

.

Let me first deal with two side issues. Maybe tomorrow I will have time for the central thrust about the U.S. prior to World War I (and II).

Yes, the use of Churchill's volume I title,"The Gathering Storm," was intentional because there wasn't one prior to the onset of hostilities in August 1914.

Second, the U.S as the second greatest colonial power after the victory in the Spanish-American War? That's not correct. The U.S. acquired the Philippines, Guam and American Samoa as a result of the war. Cuba was freed and was never an American colony. The colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands were far greater. Germany's (East and Southwest Africa) and Portugal's (Mozambique, Angola and Goa) may also have been greater, depending on the definitions used.

[Olympic Fan]

Let me first deal with two side issues. Maybe tomorrow I will have time for the central thrust about the U.S. prior to World War I (and II).

Yes, the use of Churchill's volume I title,"The Gathering Storm," was intentional because there wasn't one prior to the onset of hostilities in August 1914.

Second, the U.S as the second greatest colonial power after the victory in the Spanish-American War? That's not correct. The U.S. acquired the Philippines, Guam and American Samoa as a result of the war. Cuba was freed and was never an American colony. The colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands were far greater. Germany's (East and Southwest Africa) and Portugal's (Mozambique, Angola and Goa) may also have been greater, depending on the definitions used.

Wrong on both counts ...

There WAS a Gathering Storm before the first world war -- a growing set of incidents -- the Agadir Crisis in 1911 ... the Balkan War of 1912 -- both of which nearly precipitated the world war. Europe was on a knife's edge -- fueled by the Anglo-German naval building race, the French desire for revenge after the Franco-Prussian War, the Pan-Slav movement in the Balkans (backed by Russia and threatening Austria -- this is the factor that eventually sparked the war) and the Kaiser's frequent demands for German hegemony in central Europe to be recognized. Many wise men saw the war coming ... just as wise men saw the coming onset of WWII. But in both cases, the general population -- and many of the national leaders -- didn't see it coming. Or more accurately, refused to see it coming.

Actually, I don't think it matters much. I'm not criticizing Wilson for unpreparedness from his inauguration in March, 1913 to the start of the war in late July 1914 ... I'm criticizing him for his ineffective response to the war that did break out in the late summer of 1914 ... and contrast that with FDR's brilliant response to the war that btoke out in early Sept. of 1939.

As for the American Colonial Empire -- you conveniently forget Alaska, Hawaii and Wake, which were colonial possessions we either possessed or acquired at the end of the 19th Century. We added Panama in the first decade of the 20th Century and bought the American Virgin Islands in 1916. BTW: before 1912, you could also count New Mexico and Arizona as American territories. And while we granted Cuba "independence" we maintained control of the island for at least half a century (much as Great Britain granted fictional independence to several of its possessions).

And BTW: I didn't call the United States "the second greatest colonial power" -- I said "America acquired a world empire that was second only to the British Empire in scope". No nation -- other than Great Britain -- has the same geographically diverse spread of Empire. Germany's "empire" was pathetic in relation to the US -- and the Kaiser recognized that and complained about it frequently.

(Time out -- there is a great alternate history novel by Robert Conroy that addresses this subject -- in "1901" Kaiser Wilhelm is so jealous of the US empire that he goes to war with us to steal our overseas possessions).

America's growing empire was certainly recognized at the time. In 1899, British poet Rudyard Kipling addressed the poem "The White Man's Burden" to the United States,. The actual title was "The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands". The 1899 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships first the first time ranked the United States among the first-rate powers -- with Great Britain, Germany and France (ahead of Italy, Russia, Japan and the other second-rate powers).

Wilson WAS in a position of strength in 1914 ... he just didn't have the wit to use that strength to help end the war in 1915 or 1916.

[devildeac]

I remember when I conquered Alsace-Lorraine. I had barely set up my flag when I saw OPK's army coming and I had to flee. Of course, he got his when Sage and Oly made a peaceful resolution to the WW War (WWW or W3) and assaulted his position. Finally Jason Evans decided enough was enough and dropped a Moderator Bomb on Alsace-Lorraine and claimed it for the Republic of DBR. I'd say the Alsace-Lorraine won't change hands again, but 77Devil has been spotted on the borderlands and he looks like he wants all the wine for himself.

At least we know Devildeac won't enter the fray. He's staying firmly put in Germany because he likes the beer.

Holy hops, Fritz, I've can't believe I've been dragged into a WWI and WWII debate. The Germans brew good beers but have these funny purity laws from the 14th and 15th centuries so I'm outta here and headed west to Brussels where I hope to find a good monastery and settle down, brew lots of ales and serve God.

[Jim3k]

It made sense for the U.S. to support Ho, as his revolution seemed an examplar of the 20th-century American commitment to anti-colonialism. But as it turned out, that "commitment" was weak, and faded quickly when tested by a powerful, newly-emerging American ideology: the belief that communism was monolithic, that it must be contained, and that weakened Western European powers must be strengthened so as help in that containment. Ho was both a fierce Vietnamese nationalist and a communist. American Presidents and most of their advisers, ignorant of Asian history, decided that Ho's communism made his nationalism irrelevant.

Willful ignorance is dangerously stupid.

Well...Don't forget that Stalinism was at its height until his death in 1953. His track record included the execution/starvation of countless people. And, simultaneously in Asia, not far from Vietnam, was the sudden appearance of Mao in China. Philosophically, Stalin and Mao had long since left Marx behind. Violent overthrow had become the aim.

It's easy to understand the view that communism was monolithic--and implacable. Giving Ho the benefit of the doubt favoring localized democratic nationalism was not realistic, due to the not-wrong perception that communism was intent on taking over the world. All of eastern Europe and most of Asia had been swallowed by it. Not to mention that there were active communist parties in most western European countries. The view that freedom as practiced by western democracies could lead to communist dictatorships and hence to democracy's own demise was well understood by most people. And don't forget the blood of the Cuban revolution in the western hemisphere. (Yeah, I know that already there were dictatorships in place in Cuba and throughout Central and South America. It is a great irony that they were regarded as controllable and favored US interests.) We even protected the Shah of Iran after a democratically chosen prime minister, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was elected in 1953, based on the incorrect assumption that he was part of a communist takeover. Basketball lingo: Truman and Ike had to pick their poison.

Insofar as Ho is concerned, once the French were gone in 1954, in hindsight we should have just left Vietnam alone instead of propping up a fascist dictator. (Certainly we should not have false-flagged ourselves into that war.) Wilson's isolationist approach of 45 years earlier would have served us better. Same for Iran.

Communism as a world threat was real, at least for a long while. If Khrushchev was saying, as late as 1959, that the USSR would bury us, we were obligated to believe him. The evidence was easy to see. The right road to evade burial was not so visible.

[sagegrouse]

Wrong on both counts ...

There WAS a Gathering Storm before the first world war -- a growing set of incidents -- the Agadir Crisis in 1911 ... the Balkan War of 1912 -- both of which nearly precipitated the world war. Europe was on a knife's edge -- fueled by the Anglo-German naval building race, the French desire for revenge after the Franco-Prussian War, the Pan-Slav movement in the Balkans (backed by Russia and threatening Austria -- this is the factor that eventually sparked the war) and the Kaiser's frequent demands for German hegemony in central Europe to be recognized. Many wise men saw the war coming ... just as wise men saw the coming onset of WWII. But in both cases, the general population -- and many of the national leaders -- didn't see it coming. Or more accurately, refused to see it coming.

Actually, I don't think it matters much. I'm not criticizing Wilson for unpreparedness from his inauguration in March, 1913 to the start of the war in late July 1914 ... I'm criticizing him for his ineffective response to the war that did break out in the late summer of 1914 ... and contrast that with FDR's brilliant response to the war that btoke out in early Sept. of 1939.

As for the American Colonial Empire -- you conveniently forget Alaska, Hawaii and Wake, which were colonial possessions we either possessed or acquired at the end of the 19th Century. We added Panama in the first decade of the 20th Century and bought the American Virgin Islands in 1916. BTW: before 1912, you could also count New Mexico and Arizona as American territories. And while we granted Cuba "independence" we maintained control of the island for at least half a century (much as Great Britain granted fictional independence to several of its possessions).

And BTW: I didn't call the United States "the second greatest colonial power" -- I said "America acquired a world empire that was second only to the British Empire in scope". No nation -- other than Great Britain -- has the same geographically diverse spread of Empire. Germany's "empire" was pathetic in relation to the US -- and the Kaiser recognized that and complained about it frequently.

(Time out -- there is a great alternate history novel by Robert Conroy that addresses this subject -- in "1901" Kaiser Wilhelm is so jealous of the US empire that he goes to war with us to steal our overseas possessions).

America's growing empire was certainly recognized at the time. In 1899, British poet Rudyard Kipling addressed the poem "The White Man's Burden" to the United States,. The actual title was "The White Man's Burden: The United States and the Philippine Islands". The 1899 edition of Jane's Fighting Ships first the first time ranked the United States among the first-rate powers -- with Great Britain, Germany and France (ahead of Italy, Russia, Japan and the other second-rate powers).

Wilson WAS in a position of strength in 1914 ... he just didn't have the wit to use that strength to help end the war in 1915 or 1916.

OF, I like you so much that I am going to go easy on you. :)

Here's your original post on the American "empire:"


And contrary to what you suggest -- America was recognized as a Great Power after the Spanish American War -- when America acquired a world empire that was second only to the British Empire in scope. As WWI opened, the US was -- with Britain and Germany -- one of the three great economic powers in the world. We had the third largest Navy in the world (and that was to a large degree how such things were measured). Even in the first months of the war, British papers referred to the United States as "The Great Neutral."


You linked the American "world empire" to the Spanish-American war, which added only the Philippines. Then you add Hawaii and Alaska to the list of colonial possessions. Wikipedia, at least, doesn't recognize these U.S. territories as colonial possessions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colonial_possessions), which -- by definition -- are exploited by the ruling power. Didn't Hawaii ask to join the US of A? So much for the U.S. "colonial empire:" the Philippines, Guam and American Samoa. Still, small potatoes. I believe you are utilizing the unfair sports practice of "moving the goal posts."

The isolationist sentiment was very strong in the U.S. prior to entry into the war in 1917. In fact, wasn't the Wilson campaign slogan in 1916 -- "He Kept Us out of War?" Could he have been more assertive about building American armed forces? You bet. How successful he would have been with the Congress is unclear. I don't believe the U.S public would have tolerated a draft in 1915 and 1916. And, of course, modern armaments for ground forces would have had to rely on French weaponry (or maybe German).

In the years before World War II we had natural allies in Britain and France, with whom we had fought the first war and with whom we had helped structure the peace. But in the years before World War I, weren't we still observing Washington's and Jefferson's original guidance?


"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world": it was George Washington's Farewell Address to us. The inaugural pledge of Thomas Jefferson was no less clear: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none."

Sure, the US in 1915 and 1916 was a "babe in the woods," but it is not clear to me what Wilson could have done about it. By the late 1930's we had crossed that barrier, despite some isolationist sentiment remaining, and FDR had a clearer basis for acting, as well as strong natural allies. Moreover: "Was Hitler scarier than the Kaiser had been?" My parents sure thought so.

[gumbomoop]

Well...Don't forget that Stalinism was at its height until his death in 1953. His track record included the execution/starvation of countless people. And, simultaneously in Asia, not far from Vietnam, was the sudden appearance of Mao in China. Philosophically, Stalin and Mao had long since left Marx behind. Violent overthrow had become the aim.

It's easy to understand the view that communism was monolithic--and implacable. Giving Ho the benefit of the doubt favoring localized democratic nationalism was not realistic, due to the not-wrong perception that communism was intent on taking over the world. All of eastern Europe and most of Asia had been swallowed by it. Not to mention that there were active communist parties in most western European countries. The view that freedom as practiced by western democracies could lead to communist dictatorships and hence to democracy's own demise was well understood by most people. And don't forget the blood of the Cuban revolution in the western hemisphere. (Yeah, I know that already there were dictatorships in place in Cuba and throughout Central and South America. It is a great irony that they were regarded as controllable and favored US interests.) We even protected the Shah of Iran after a democratically chosen prime minister, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was elected in 1953, based on the incorrect assumption that he was part of a communist takeover. Basketball lingo: Truman and Ike had to pick their poison.

Insofar as Ho is concerned, once the French were gone in 1954, in hindsight we should have just left Vietnam alone instead of propping up a fascist dictator. (Certainly we should not have false-flagged ourselves into that war.) Wilson's isolationist approach of 45 years earlier would have served us better. Same for Iran.

Communism as a world threat was real, at least for a long while. If Khrushchev was saying, as late as 1959, that the USSR would bury us, we were obligated to believe him. The evidence was easy to see. The right road to evade burial was not so visible.

I don't agree with several of your larger points here, but I don't see how to respond without getting into PPB stuff. So I'll simply note a couple of (loosely call them) subject areas about which I don't agree with your post.

1. Whether communism was a monolithic world threat because implacably expansionist, as opposed to the existence of powerful nation-states intent on expanding.

2. Whether what was understood by policy-makers was based on a careful reading of the history of several nations and centuries-old international relations, as opposed to simplistic assumptions filtered through a meta-assumption about irrational ideology (theirs) versus rational, non-ideological objectivity (ours).

If this sounds too vague to debate, that's my intent: to avoid debating the history of the Cold War, and particularly the American war in Vietnam. I will do my best to allow you the last word, only insisting in advance that I may not, probably will not, entirely agree.

[Olympic Fan]

You linked the American "world empire" to the Spanish-American war, which added only the Philippines. Then you add Hawaii and Alaska to the list of colonial possessions. Wikipedia, at least, doesn't recognize these U.S. territories as colonial possessions (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._colonial_possessions), which -- by definition -- are exploited by the ruling power. Didn't Hawaii ask to join the US of A? So much for the U.S. "colonial empire:" the Philippines, Guam and American Samoa. Still, small potatoes. I believe you are utilizing the unfair sports practice of "moving the goal posts."

The isolationist sentiment was very strong in the U.S. prior to entry into the war in 1917. In fact, wasn't the Wilson campaign slogan in 1916 -- "He Kept Us out of War?" Could he have been more assertive about building American armed forces? You bet. How successful he would have been with the Congress is unclear. I don't believe the U.S public would have tolerated a draft in 1915 and 1916. And, of course, modern armaments for ground forces would have had to rely on French weaponry (or maybe German).

In the years before World War II we had natural allies in Britain and France, with whom we had fought the first war and with whom we had helped structure the peace. But in the years before World War I, weren't we still observing Washington's and Jefferson's original guidance?

Sure, the US in 1915 and 1916 was a "babe in the woods," but it is not clear to me what Wilson could have done about it. By the late 1930's we had crossed that barrier, despite some isolationist sentiment remaining, and FDR had a clearer basis for acting, as well as strong natural allies. Moreover: "Was Hitler scarier than the Kaiser had been?" My parents sure thought so.

First, you're splitting hairs over definitions over what is colonial property. Alaska was a huge distant property that we obtained by purchase from Russia. That doesn't qualify as a colonial possession?

Hawaii was an extremely valuable property that we stole from the native Hawaiian people. Your description that Hawaii "asked to join the US of A" is ridiculous. American merchants forced through the treaty of 1887, giving America special rights (including possession of the naval base at Pearl Harbor) which provoked riots by the Hawaiian people (riots suppressed by the US Marines). The minority of white American merchants seized the government by force and forced the King to accept what was known as the Bayonet Constitution (which put all the power in the hands of whites from America). A rebellion of natives to restore the power of the monarchy was crushed by a white militia (using weapons supplied by the US Government). In 1893, US marines landed to protect a provisional government formed by American Stanford Dole -- and under this military pressure the Queen abdicated, issuing the following statement:

I Liliʻuokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government. Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.

After considerable wrangling in Congress (the first senate report confirmed that the US had seized the islands by force). There was a counterrevolution in 1887 that was suppressed by US troops. The island was finally annexed in 1897, despite the refusal of the Senate to confirm the treaty of annexation.

If that is not a colonial power grab, I don't know what is.

Also, you are shortchanging the extend to which the American Colonial/non-colonial empire expanded after the Spanish American War. We added not just the Philippines (we actually [paid $20 million for the Philippines) ... and Guam and Samoa, but also Puerto Rico (and extremely valuable island) and Cuba officially became a US protectorate. We only withdrew our occupying troops in 1903 with the passage of the Platt Amendment which forced Cuba to accept US dominance of the island. We didn't annex it, but we controlled it.

Again, this whole discussion rose because it was suggested that the United States only achieved Great Power status after WWI ... when in fact, the victory in the Spanish American War -- and the expansion of the American Empire -- is what caused America to be recognized as a great power.

As for your other point, I've never claimed that the US was anything but isolationist before WWI. Indeed, Wilson pandered to that isolationism. He did run under "He kept us out of war". Then, barely a month after his second inauguration, he led us into the war that we were not ready for -- because he had fought against any efforts to prepare for a possible entry into the contest ... condemning thousands of barely trained American soldiers to die unnecessarily.

Yes, earlier attempts at preparing the army for overseas service would have met resistance in Congress, But Wilson didn't try. He led the faction that wanted to keep their heads in the sands. Then he changed his mind and led the nation into a war it wasn't prepared for. That's good leadership?

I merely contrasted that with FDR, who also confronted an isolationist public and a Congress that was growing more and more resistant to his programs (he lost a lot of Congressional good will with his court-packing plan, then his futile effort to purge enemies in Congress in the 1938 elections). Yet, FDR patiently worked in front of and behind the scenes to prepare us for the war. He tried not to get too far in front of the public, but he was willing to take huge gambles -- I still say that proposing the first peacetime draft in American history just a few months before a presidential election was one of the great acts of political courage in American history -- and something the lily-livered Woodrow Wilson would have never dared.

I think your last note is absolutely misleading. You statement about "some isolationist sentiment remaining" is an absurd depiction of America in the late 30s. As I said earlier, the popular view of WWI at that time was that we were tricked into the war by wealthy men who made a fortune in war munitions. That view was fostered by the Nye Committee hearings from 1934-36 and by the popular book by H. C. Engelbrecht "The Merchants of Death". In response, Congress passed increasing restrictive neutrality laws in 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1939 -- forbidding any war loans to any power and forbidding the shipment of any military supplies (which were widely defined) to any belligerent power -- without regard to whether that power was an aggressor or a victim of aggression.

Wilson never had to contend with anything like that.

As for those "natural allies" you mention, I'm not sure England and France weren't less popular in the 1930s than before WWI. The issue of unpaid war debts was a bitter pill for most Americans. Both nation's repudiated their WWI war debts to the United States and that created a lot of unpopularity for those so-called "allies". England and America were major commercial rivals in the 1930s ... and the image of the ungrateful French was a very popular theme in the inter-war period.

I would argue that it was much tougher for FDR to steer the county towards support of the Allies in 1939 than it was for Wilson in 1914-7. But he did it and Wilson didn't.

Finally, I agree that Hitler was much scarier than the Kaiser ... but I continue to insist that most Americans didn't see it that way in the 1930s. Again, he was regarded by many as a bulwark against the spread of Communism, which was a much bigger fear. His early aggression was dismissed as an understandable attempt to reconstitute the German nation. When he reoccupied the Rhineland (in violation of the Versailles Treaty), a British appeaser said, "Well, he's only walking into his own back yard." Two years later when he occupied the Sudatenland, many actually believed his claim that, "This is my last territorial claim in Europe."

FDR knew better. Winston Churchill knew better. But at that point, the great majorities in American (and Britain and France) didn't see Hitler as all that scary. It's revisionism to suggest tat the American public in the 1930s saw Hitler as anything like the monster he was perceived to be in the 1940s.

[Indoor66]

See Chris Mathews's panegyric on JFK. He makes the point that JFK's travels around the world as a Congressman and Senator really impressed him about the strength of nationalist sentiment and the desire for independence in the colonial entities overseas. He was rather skeptical of the claims of empire by the British and the French. Whether a second-term JFK would have avoided the Vietnam War can never be known.

I'm older than most of you guys, and I remember how powerful the voices of the senior military leaders were in the 1950s and 1960s. Curtis LeMay and the others of the time never failed to see a Communist threat in any colonial effort for independence. Kennedy had two successes in the Cuban Missile Crisis -- getting Khrushchev to back down and overcoming the desires of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to use nuclear weapons on Cuba.

The influence of the senior military leadership ended in the early 1970's, when it became evident to all that the military was lying or deluded about Vietnam.

It became evident that the military was reporting what the politicians demanded they report. High body counts and successes while the politicians tied one hand behind their back. That is the story there, Rory.

[Jarhead]

My view? Seems that nobody asked, so I'll just say that although very, very interesting, this thread can best be described as a bowl of spaghetti. It would be nice if we could find a flow chart linking the facts from colonial days to today.

[Jim3k]

I will do my best to allow you the last word, only insisting in advance that I may not, probably will not, entirely agree.

Very nice of you to offer, but not necessary. I know where you are coming from. But perspectives over time and generations will differ. I lived in those times; younger folks did not. Were the leaders of my time right? Or were their judgments in error? Either way, did they have the benefit of long term accuracy or suffer from the drawbacks of short term myopia? Hard to say. On the ground at the time, would any of us have made choices any differently based on what we knew then? As I see it, I don't think so. Maybe you would have taken another path, but maybe not. I do think, though, that long term perspective on acute short term problems is never likely.

A similar generational disconnect can be seen in the differing analyses over our use of atomic weapons to end WWII. At the time, my own family benefited from their use and the nation unanimously believed we had saved millions of American lives. Twenty-five years later, many younger folks questioned whether such weapons were necessary to end the war, asserting that nuking two entire cities was both immoral and excessive. I leave that discussion to others. I am simply observing that long term perspective and short term problem-solving will always be seen in different lights, just as some next-generation historians may view the communist threat of post-WWII differently from the way it was seen at the time.

[sagegrouse]

I don't agree with several of your larger points here, but I don't see how to respond without getting into PPB stuff. So I'll simply note a couple of (loosely call them) subject areas about which I don't agree with your post.

1. Whether communism was a monolithic world threat because implacably expansionist, as opposed to the existence of powerful nation-states intent on expanding.

2. Whether what was understood by policy-makers was based on a careful reading of the history of several nations and centuries-old international relations, as opposed to simplistic assumptions filtered through a meta-assumption about irrational ideology (theirs) versus rational, non-ideological objectivity (ours).

If this sounds too vague to debate, that's my intent: to avoid debating the history of the Cold War, and particularly the American war in Vietnam. I will do my best to allow you the last word, only insisting in advance that I may not, probably will not, entirely agree.

Communism looked like a "monolithic world threat" in 1950: The Soviet Union had taken over Eastern Europe. China, our wartime ally, had fallen to the Communist insurgency. North Korea had attacked South Korea. The Communists were strong politically in a number of countries of Western Europe. Indeed, being such a world threat was probably a desire of Stalin.

In 1970 it was clear there was no monolithic world threat. There was a huge gap between the two largest Communist powers, the Soviet Union and China. But both, however, were nuclear powers and sworn enemies of the United States.

By the 1980's one thing was clear: the communist economic model didn't work. Not only had the western democracies continued to grow and prosper but Asian countries without the cultural and educational advantages of the Western World (hmmm... need a better term) had surged ahead: not just Japan, but also Korea, Thailand, Singapore and Taiwan.

Gorbachev took the Soviet Union in the direction of great political and economic change, effectively blowing up the soviet model -- freeing the SSR's and allowing the Eastern European countries to go their own way. China's leaders made drastic economic changes but kept the same political model -- essentially, the Communist Party in China became the Capitalist Party.

The Cold War ended circa 1990. There was no longer the same magnitude of threat, monolithic or not.

I dunno, Gumbomoop. I guess the West won the Cold War through "soft power," a better economic and political model, but it was pretty scary back in the early 1950's.

[sagegrouse]

It became evident that the military was reporting what the politicians demanded they report. High body counts and successes while the politicians tied one hand behind their back. That is the story there, Rory.

My arguments with the senior military leadership of the 1950's and 1960's was their evident belief that they should strongly and loudly state their opinions outside the chain of command (which, ahem, goes to the commander in chief). Curtis LeMay, who had done an utterly fantastic job of creating the Strategic Air Command from scratch, was not shy about expressing his opinions about threats to America. And he wasn't the only one. This was one of the problems JFK faced in working the Cuban Missile Crisis. After Vietnam, the military leadership returned to (what I view) as their proper place.

You may be interested in Thomas Ricks's book, The Generals, which traces the management of Army commanders from before World War II to the present. Ricks had an interesting finding -- after Korea (or after MacArthur was fired by Truman), no one ever wanted to fire a general any more. In fact, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall had fired scores if not hundreds of generals during WW II (many of them recycled into other positions). The political leadership in both parties began to believe that firing an Army commander was equivalent to admitting failure, and didn't want to do it. Westmoreland, who was in over his head in Vietnam in the view of many other Army generals, was promoted to Chief of Staff of the Army to get him out of the theater.

[gumbomoop]

Communism looked like a "monolithic world threat" in 1950....

I do not rejoin this fray happily, as I doubt we will agree on the major point(s) of difference, and as we are likely to drift ever closer to PPB. So rather than jumping back in, I tiptoe.

I agree, as I noted in post #18, that by the mid-late 1940s, communism "looked" a threatening monolith. I think the comment that led to this side-debate was my reference to the belief that communism was monolithic and had to be contained.


Were the leaders of my time right? Or were their judgments in error? Either way, did they have the benefit of long term accuracy or suffer from the drawbacks of short term myopia? Hard to say. On the ground at the time, would any of us have made choices any differently based on what we knew then?

It's a tricky task historians set for themselves: how to avoid being overly "judgmental" of historical actors [sometimes referred to as "presentism"] while not avoiding the task of rendering some "assessment" of the behavior, actions, decisions of those same historical actors.

We can both acknowledge the power of what American policy makers believed while subjecting said beliefs to accuracy tests. What did they "know" then, say, by the early 1950s? They seem to have believed that international communism, Moscow-directed, was on the march. Believed it so firmly that they "knew" it to be true. And although they were not literally-entirely ignorant of, e.g., the histories of Russia and the USSR, China, Greece, French Indo-China (including Vietnam), some of what they believed was historically dubious, facile.

Are we to avoid that assessment-task of the historian by excusing historical actors -- especially major decision-makers of world historical powers -- of their responsibility actively to seek "the benefit of long-term accuracy" (by carefully studying the available history of nation-states, movements, etc.) precisely to avoid "the drawbacks of short term myopia"? [Only a step away from application to more recent events, and thus PPB.]

It may be that in some cases we amateur historians must conclude that they couldn't have known anything else. In other cases we might -- must? -- conclude that their myopia was self-inflicted.

Is that overly judgmental, or a hard, fair assessment?

In the post that set us off onto this discussion of monolithic communism I described the scene of Ho's declaration of Vietnamese independence as "heartbreaking." That's probably less judgmental. To which end, can we say that the belief that Moscow was directing a monolithic movement of world expansion was understandable but misguided?

I've tiptoed way too far back into this conversation.

[Jim3k]

Gumbo, what they believed and what they knew were essentially the same thing.

See Churchill's Iron Curtain speech (http://history1900s.about.com/od/churchillwinston/a/Iron-Curtain.htm) of March 5, 1946.

In his speech Churchill mentions Czechoslovakia and Greece as the only countries behind his newly-named Iron Curtain who still had elected governments. Even as Churchill spoke, Czechoslovakia was becoming undone: Korbel, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1948 (Princeton University Press, 1959). Two years later came the Berlin blockade, relieved only by the famous airlift. And, as that was occurring, Mao's revolution (civil war) was underway, ousting the Nationalists on October 1, 1949.* Only a month earlier, Russia had successfully detonated its first nuclear bomb, having stolen the plans from us.

I do not think any historian can reasonably say that Churchill/Atlee/Eden, Truman and Eisenhower suffered from short-term myopia about the future. They had good reason to fear communism and/or military expansionism under whatever name.

----------------

*Sun Yat-sen had tried to set up a Chinese democracy but his death in 1925 led to weak leadership. Our WWII ally Chiang Kai-shek seemed to have had a democratic point of view worth backing, but, sadly, his model was a corrupt one. Mao, too, was a warlord of sorts; his mass murders are said to be far worse than Stalin or Hitler (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/opinion/09iht-edmirsky_ed3_.html). Probably not as personally corrupt as Chiang Kai-shek, but much more dangerous. His behavior in the 1950s was another known example of the ruthlessness of communism. China exploded its first A-bomb in 1964, during the middle of the Cold War--the Johnson years.

[sagegrouse]

Gumbo, what they believed and what they knew were essentially the same thing.

See Churchill's Iron Curtain speech (http://history1900s.about.com/od/churchillwinston/a/Iron-Curtain.htm) of March 5, 1946.

In his speech Churchill mentions Czechoslovakia and Greece as the only countries behind his newly-named Iron Curtain who still had elected governments. Even as Churchill spoke, Czechoslovakia was becoming undone: Korbel, The Communist Subversion of Czechoslovakia, 1938-1948 (Princeton University Press, 1959). Two years later came the Berlin blockade, relieved only by the famous airlift. And, as that was occurring, Mao's revolution (civil war) was underway, ousting the Nationalists on October 1, 1949.* Only a month earlier, Russia had successfully detonated its first nuclear bomb, having stolen the plans from us.

I do not think any historian can reasonably say that Churchill/Atlee/Eden, Truman and Eisenhower suffered from short-term myopia about the future. They had good reason to fear communism and/or military expansionism under whatever name.

----------------

*Sun Yat-sen had tried to set up a Chinese democracy but his death in 1925 led to weak leadership. Our WWII ally Chiang Kai-shek seemed to have had a democratic point of view worth backing, but, sadly, his model was a corrupt one. Mao, too, was a warlord of sorts; his mass murders are said to be far worse than Stalin or Hitler (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/opinion/09iht-edmirsky_ed3_.html). Probably not as personally corrupt as Chiang Kai-shek, but much more dangerous. His behavior in the 1950s was another known example of the ruthlessness of communism. China exploded its first A-bomb in 1964, during the middle of the Cold War--the Johnson years.

Jim, this is national Defense 101. You have a threat, and you seek to counter it. The U.S. led the formation of NATO; we opposed the invasion of South Korea; and we rebuilt our military to counter a threat from the Soviet Union and its (erstwhile) ally, China. We built a huge nuclear force as a deterrent to attacks by other nuclear powers ("mutually assured destruction" it was later called).

The U.S. response was justified by the "facts on the ground:" conquest of countries, build-up of Soviet and Chinese military forces, and rhetoric on further expansion.

But we went too far in seeing what were nationalist movements as Communist threats and part of a global Soviet strategy.

[Indoor66]

Jim, this is national Defense 101. You have a threat, and you seek to counter it. The U.S. led the formation of NATO; we opposed the invasion of South Korea; and we rebuilt our military to counter a threat from the Soviet Union and its (erstwhile) ally, China. We built a huge nuclear force as a deterrent to attacks by other nuclear powers ("mutually assured destruction" it was later called).

The U.S. response was justified by the "facts on the ground:" conquest of countries, build-up of Soviet and Chinese military forces, and rhetoric on further expansion.

But we went too far in seeing what were nationalist movements as Communist threats and part of a global Soviet strategy.

I agree with most of you post but the highlighted portion suffers from, IMO, 20-20 hindsight. At the moments, decisions had to be made and the courses chosen were to err on the side of safety for the U.S. Hindsight might allow us to view the choices made differently.

[sagegrouse]

I agree with most of you post but the highlighted portion suffers from, IMO, 20-20 hindsight. At the moments, decisions had to be made and the courses chosen were to err on the side of safety for the U.S. Hindsight might allow us to view the choices made differently.

Yes, it is hindsight, and my hindsight is, at best, 20-40. I was trying to distinguish between our actions to counter a perceived Soviet threat and other world situations, including Vietnam and other places, which may (or may not) have been linked. The Gumbomoop-Jim3K colloquy seemed to be about whether a response to a Communist threat at all was reasonable.

[gumbomoop]

The Gumbomoop-Jim3K colloquy seemed to be about whether a response to a Communist threat at all was reasonable.

Whoa. Either I misspoke/wrote or you misread. Translated: one of us is a dolt. Probably best to have a secret ballot. Before the voting commences, let me clarify my position : I have no doubt whatsoever that a response to Soviet expansion was reasonable. I have grave doubts, however, that decisions about military, economic, diplomatic, and geopolitical responses were likely to be sensible when premised on misperceptions: particularly the substitution of a simplistic, Manichaean, [I]ideological threat [monolithic communism] for several real but distinct nation-state threats.

George Kennan spent the last 50 years of his life bemoaning the misapplication, virtually from the very beginning, of his ideas about containment [1946 "Long Telegram" and 1947 "Sources of Soviet Conduct"]. Sometimes he blamed himself, or at least gravely regretted not having been more precise about virtually every word in those two documents; sometimes he blamed the stupidity and/or deliberate distortions of the historical players.


Gumbo, what they believed and what they knew were essentially the same thing.

See Churchill's Iron Curtain speech (http://history1900s.about.com/od/churchillwinston/a/Iron-Curtain.htm) of March 5, 1946.

I do not think any historian can reasonably say that Churchill/Atlee/Eden, Truman and Eisenhower suffered from short-term myopia about the future. They had good reason to fear communism and/or military expansionism under whatever name.

I have spent some years reading bits and pieces of the voluminous the historiography of the Cold War. On almost any possible sub-issue, you will find a profound debate of what can be reasonably said. At times the profundity seems more like a philosophical, ideological, or even epistemological cat-fight. But agreement about what can be reasonably said? Maybe some, within particular schools of interpretation. But across and among the competing analyses? Not much, if any.

And I'm skeptical that any historian would cite Churchill's Iron Curtain speech as definitive proof of the identity in the late 1940s between belief and fact. Churchill's perspective played a major role in the developing Cold War, and his Iron Curtain speech is a primary source document of enormous importance to historians who analyze the causes and consequences of the Cold War. But few if any historians would depend on his speech for its explanatory power as anything like reasonable analysis.

[sagegrouse]

Whoa. Either I misspoke/wrote or you misread. Translated: one of us is a dolt. Probably best to have a secret ballot. Before the voting commences, let me clarify my position : I have no doubt whatsoever that a response to Soviet expansion was reasonable. I have grave doubts, however, that decisions about military, economic, diplomatic, and geopolitical responses were likely to be sensible when premised on misperceptions: particularly the substitution of a simplistic, Manichaean, [I]ideological threat [monolithic communism] for several real but distinct nation-state threats.

George Kennan spent the last 50 years of his life bemoaning the misapplication, virtually from the very beginning, of his ideas about containment [1946 "Long Telegram" and 1947 "Sources of Soviet Conduct"]. Sometimes he blamed himself, or at least gravely regretted not having been more precise about virtually every word in those two documents; sometimes he blamed the stupidity and/or deliberate distortions of the historical players.



I have spent some years reading bits and pieces of the voluminous the historiography of the Cold War. On almost any possible sub-issue, you will find a profound debate of what can be reasonably said. At times the profundity seems more like a philosophical, ideological, or even epistemological cat-fight. But agreement about what can be reasonably said? Maybe some, within particular schools of interpretation. But across and among the competing analyses? Not much, if any.

And I'm skeptical that any historian would cite Churchill's Iron Curtain speech as definitive proof of the identity in the late 1940s between belief and fact. Churchill's perspective played a major role in the developing Cold War, and his Iron Curtain speech is a primary source document of enormous importance to historians who analyze the causes and consequences of the Cold War. But few if any historians would depend on his speech for its explanatory power as anything like reasonable analysis.

Please excuse. This is the internet, and I am trying to deal with complex issues in a few not-so-tidy paragraphs.

I am less concerned about public explanations and reasoning (Godless communism, global communist threat, etc.) than about actions and consequences. How would the US response have differed between a perception of a specific Soviet threat (and a separate threat from China) and a more general threat of, say, a world communist movement? Usually, you try and counter the military threat, which might be largely the same because the military forces are predominately Soviet or Chinese.

[Olympic Fan]

I've spent most of my time in this thread defending my condemnation of Woodrow Wilson, but I'm also a child of the Cold War, so allow me to offer some thoughts on the debate going on.

I think my position is similar to gumboomoop's -- basically, I think the US and the free world DID face a threat of expanding Communism after WWII. The expansion of Communism had been a goal of the Soviet Union almost since the first days of the revolution, but it really took off after WWII -- the evil philosophy basically spread everywhere the powerful Red Army marched -- imposed at the point of a bayonet. And Stalin didn't want to stop there. He and his successors looked for any opportunity in any part of the world to impose their philosophy.

For the most part, I think the American leaders of the period were justified in opposing the threat of Communism, And I think that for the most part, they did well. The Marshall Plan (which cut the legs out of the Communist movements in Western Europe), NATO, the Berlin Airlift, the Truman Doctrine were all brilliant countermoves to the Red expansion. I think that politically, we were right to go into the Korean War, even if MacArthur's inept military performance (other than Inchon) turned the war into a quagmire.

Vietnam was a different story. We talked earlier in this thread about how Ho Chi Minh was once an admirer of American democracy and dreamed of leading a US-styled revolution against French control of his nation. His abrupt rejection by Wilson (and the other Big Three leaders) at the Paris Peace talks pushed him into the Communist Party. But even when he established his revolutionary state in 1945, he reached out to the US. The fact is that there is a long historical antipathy between the Vietnamese and the Chinese. If the US had responded differently, Ho Chi Minh could have become an Asian version of Tito.

But we did everything wrong (politically) in Vietnam. We repeated our singe worst mistake of the Cold War era. Time after time, we threw our wholehearted support to a corrupt and/or oppressive dictator, simply because he was anti-communist. We did it with Chang Kai-shek in China, with Bautista in Cuba, with Somoza in Nicaragua. We did it in Vietnam when we rejected the 1954 Geneva Peace Accords (because we knew the general election would give the country to the popular Ho Chi Minh) and threw our support to Ngo Dinh Diem, who was staunchly anti-communist, but wildly corrupt and a Catholic who used his power to oppress non-Catholics. How corrupt was he? He won his first election with a plebiscite vote of 600,000 when there were just 450,000 voters. But we supported him until his corruption became too much to bear (Senate leader Mike Mansfield said he stole more than $2 billion) and we either engineered or acquiested to (it's not clear which) Diem's assisination and his replacement with Air Force general Nguyen Khanh.

We basically had to fight in Vietnam because our leaders were so afraid of the spread of Communism that we chose to ignore the will of the Vietnamese people in 1954 and impose an unwanted government on them. We were blinded by our rational fear of Communism. But in hindsight, which was worse -- accepting the will of the Vietnamese people in 1954 or fighting a long, bloody, divisive and ultimately losing war over the next two decades?

But that was merely the worst example of our myopia. All over the world, we set ourselves up against the aspirations of people yearning to be free because we were afraid those movements were Communist inspired. Many were -- but only because the Communists offered the only alternative to Colonial oppression.

That even happened to an extent in the United States, during the McCarthy era of anti-Communist hysteria. Some of the targets were actually Communists, but most were social progressives or Socialists or anti-fascists who joined Communist front organizations in the days before WWII when only the Communists were willing to oppose the rise of Hitler (interesting that McCarthy himself was something of Nazi apologist in the pre-war days ... in a large sense, the McCarthy era was the revenge of those who were wrong in the pre-war era against those who were right).

I'm not saying the choices our leaders made during the Cold War were easy. And on the whole, I think they made good choices -- the fact is we WON the Cold War and won it decisively. Communism is not gone, but even in places such as China, the leaders are driven more by capitalist concerns than anything Marx taught.

But I just wish our leaders had had the wisdom to be a little less reflexively anti-communist and more understanding of the impulse of many Third World people to be free.

[sagegrouse]

First, you're splitting hairs over definitions over what is colonial property. Alaska was a huge distant property that we obtained by purchase from Russia. That doesn't qualify as a colonial possession?

Hawaii was an extremely valuable property that we stole from the native Hawaiian people. Your description that Hawaii "asked to join the US of A" is ridiculous. American merchants forced through the treaty of 1887, giving America special rights (including possession of the naval base at Pearl Harbor) which provoked riots by the Hawaiian people (riots suppressed by the US Marines). The minority of white American merchants seized the government by force and forced the King to accept what was known as the Bayonet Constitution (which put all the power in the hands of whites from America). A rebellion of natives to restore the power of the monarchy was crushed by a white militia (using weapons supplied by the US Government). In 1893, US marines landed to protect a provisional government formed by American Stanford Dole -- and under this military pressure the Queen abdicated, issuing the following statement:

I Liliʻuokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government. Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.

After considerable wrangling in Congress (the first senate report confirmed that the US had seized the islands by force). There was a counterrevolution in 1887 that was suppressed by US troops. The island was finally annexed in 1897, despite the refusal of the Senate to confirm the treaty of annexation.

If that is not a colonial power grab, I don't know what is.

Also, you are shortchanging the extend to which the American Colonial/non-colonial empire expanded after the Spanish American War. We added not just the Philippines (we actually [paid $20 million for the Philippines) ... and Guam and Samoa, but also Puerto Rico (and extremely valuable island) and Cuba officially became a US protectorate. We only withdrew our occupying troops in 1903 with the passage of the Platt Amendment which forced Cuba to accept US dominance of the island. We didn't annex it, but we controlled it.

Again, this whole discussion rose because it was suggested that the United States only achieved Great Power status after WWI ... when in fact, the victory in the Spanish American War -- and the expansion of the American Empire -- is what caused America to be recognized as a great power.

As for your other point, I've never claimed that the US was anything but isolationist before WWI. Indeed, Wilson pandered to that isolationism. He did run under "He kept us out of war". Then, barely a month after his second inauguration, he led us into the war that we were not ready for -- because he had fought against any efforts to prepare for a possible entry into the contest ... condemning thousands of barely trained American soldiers to die unnecessarily.

Yes, earlier attempts at preparing the army for overseas service would have met resistance in Congress, But Wilson didn't try. He led the faction that wanted to keep their heads in the sands. Then he changed his mind and led the nation into a war it wasn't prepared for. That's good leadership?

I merely contrasted that with FDR, who also confronted an isolationist public and a Congress that was growing more and more resistant to his programs (he lost a lot of Congressional good will with his court-packing plan, then his futile effort to purge enemies in Congress in the 1938 elections). Yet, FDR patiently worked in front of and behind the scenes to prepare us for the war. He tried not to get too far in front of the public, but he was willing to take huge gambles -- I still say that proposing the first peacetime draft in American history just a few months before a presidential election was one of the great acts of political courage in American history -- and something the lily-livered Woodrow Wilson would have never dared.

I think your last note is absolutely misleading. You statement about "some isolationist sentiment remaining" is an absurd depiction of America in the late 30s. As I said earlier, the popular view of WWI at that time was that we were tricked into the war by wealthy men who made a fortune in war munitions. That view was fostered by the Nye Committee hearings from 1934-36 and by the popular book by H. C. Engelbrecht "The Merchants of Death". In response, Congress passed increasing restrictive neutrality laws in 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1939 -- forbidding any war loans to any power and forbidding the shipment of any military supplies (which were widely defined) to any belligerent power -- without regard to whether that power was an aggressor or a victim of aggression.

Wilson never had to contend with anything like that.

As for those "natural allies" you mention, I'm not sure England and France weren't less popular in the 1930s than before WWI. The issue of unpaid war debts was a bitter pill for most Americans. Both nation's repudiated their WWI war debts to the United States and that created a lot of unpopularity for those so-called "allies". England and America were major commercial rivals in the 1930s ... and the image of the ungrateful French was a very popular theme in the inter-war period.

I would argue that it was much tougher for FDR to steer the county towards support of the Allies in 1939 than it was for Wilson in 1914-7. But he did it and Wilson didn't.

Finally, I agree that Hitler was much scarier than the Kaiser ... but I continue to insist that most Americans didn't see it that way in the 1930s. Again, he was regarded by many as a bulwark against the spread of Communism, which was a much bigger fear. His early aggression was dismissed as an understandable attempt to reconstitute the German nation. When he reoccupied the Rhineland (in violation of the Versailles Treaty), a British appeaser said, "Well, he's only walking into his own back yard." Two years later when he occupied the Sudatenland, many actually believed his claim that, "This is my last territorial claim in Europe."

FDR knew better. Winston Churchill knew better. But at that point, the great majorities in American (and Britain and France) didn't see Hitler as all that scary. It's revisionism to suggest tat the American public in the 1930s saw Hitler as anything like the monster he was perceived to be in the 1940s.

First of all, we are in agreement ("violent agreement," I suppose) as to whether the United States was a major power prior to World War I. Of course it was. The differing definitions of "colonial empires" is a distraction from our main discussion. I can only imagine why Alaska and Hawaii are not apparently listed as "colonial possessions." I suppose, in both cases, we eventually married the girl (they became states), which made the original acquisition legitimate -- or some such reason.

Indeed, there are more reasons beyond the vast continental territory of the Untied States and our position in the Pacific (incl. Alaska, Hawaii Philippines, U.S. West Coast, etc.) and Latin America (Monroe Doctrine). By 1900 the United States was the largest economy in the world, almost twice the size of the next largest (Germany), with a per capita income 50 percent larger than Western Europe (source: Piketty).

But our disagreement, if any -- heck I am still trying to learn -- is that Wilson's and FDR's situations were fundamentally different. In 1915, the U.S. was still under the thrall of the advice of the founders to avoid "permanent alliances" (Washington) and "entangling alliances" (Jefferson). We were almost totally focused on the Western Hemisphere and the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. The round-the-world tour of the U.S. Navy's "Great White Fleet" was aimed more at discouraging military adventurism in the Americas than at projecting U.S. power in Europe and Asia. Moreover, the largest group of foreign-born Americans and children of foreign-born Americans were German-Americans, including my grandfather. We had 125 years of "stick to our Western Hemisphere knitting." In addition, we had no formal allies overseas, like France and Britain. Did all these factors limit Wilson's potential actions or shape his own perceptions of what he should do? I say, probably both.

By the time of FDR, the United States had moved well past its Western Hemisphere boundaries. It was a major participant in World War I, thankfully missing the bloodiest parts of that awful struggle. We had formal allies, stemming from that war, and American forces had fought successfully in Europe. The U.S. played a major role in the Armistice that ended the war (Wilson's 14 Points), was at the table during the peace process and played a major role in creating the League of Nations. Of course, somewhat ironically for this discussion, Woodrow Wilson was the central American figure.

Moreover, German-Americans no longer had any influence, subtle or otherwise, on American positions.

As we got to the late 1930's, the threat from Hitler was clear to all, far clearer than the amorphous threats of continental instability preceding World War I. Also, we were much closer to our vulnerable ally, Britain, than before WW I. Yes, there was strong isolationist sentiment, particularly from the Republican-oriented press, but there was not the national assumption of stay-at-home politics that was the general assumption before World War I. And, of course, it is true that the Army learned from its lack-of-preparedness in World War I, as did FDR. Marshall was especially brilliant in preparing the Army for war before and after the resumption of the draft in 1940. Anyway, you get my argument that the two eras are very difficult to compare.

You have clearly thought a lot about the Wilson Era, and I encourage you to keep on keeping on. Your arguments seem to be fresh material.

My one remaining question is, how do you square your disregard for Wilson with the evaluation of historians and scholars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_St ates)? In 18 separate surveys of learned folks since 1948, Wilson is ranked between #4 and #11 among all U.S. presidents. He is a "great" or "near great" president in the opinions of these voters. You clearly have a dramatically different point of view.

Kindly,
Sage Grouse

[Olympic Fan]

But our disagreement, if any -- heck I am still trying to learn -- is that Wilson's and FDR's situations were fundamentally different. In 1915, the U.S. was still under the thrall of the advice of the founders to avoid "permanent alliances" (Washington) and "entangling alliances" (Jefferson). We were almost totally focused on the Western Hemisphere and the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. The round-the-world tour of the U.S. Navy's "Great White Fleet" was aimed more at discouraging military adventurism in the Americas than at projecting U.S. power in Europe and Asia. Moreover, the largest group of foreign-born Americans and children of foreign-born Americans were German-Americans, including my grandfather. We had 125 years of "stick to our Western Hemisphere knitting." In addition, we had no formal allies overseas, like France and Britain. Did all these factors limit Wilson's potential actions or shape his own perceptions of what he should do? I say, probably both.

By the time of FDR, the United States had moved well past its Western Hemisphere boundaries. It was a major participant in World War I, thankfully missing the bloodiest parts of that awful struggle. We had formal allies, stemming from that war, and American forces had fought successfully in Europe. The U.S. played a major role in the Armistice that ended the war (Wilson's 14 Points), was at the table during the peace process and played a major role in creating the League of Nations. Of course, somewhat ironically for this discussion, Woodrow Wilson was the central American figure.


As we got to the late 1930's, the threat from Hitler was clear to all, far clearer than the amorphous threats of continental instability preceding World War I. Also, we were much closer to our vulnerable ally, Britain, than before WW I. Yes, there was strong isolationist sentiment, particularly from the Republican-oriented press, but there was not the national assumption of stay-at-home politics that was the general assumption before World War I. And, of course, it is true that the Army learned from its lack-of-preparedness in World War I, as did FDR. Marshall was especially brilliant in preparing the Army for war before and after the resumption of the draft in 1940. Anyway, you get my argument that the two eras are very difficult to compare.

You have clearly thought a lot about the Wilson Era, and I encourage you to keep on keeping on. Your arguments seem to be fresh material.

My one remaining question is, how do you square your disregard for Wilson with the evaluation of historians and scholars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_St ates)? In 18 separate surveys of learned folks since 1948, Wilson is ranked between #4 and #11 among all U.S. presidents. He is a "great" or "near great" president in the opinions of these voters. You clearly have a dramatically different point of view.

Kindly,
Sage Grouse

I appreciate the tenor of you comments, but I continue to disagree.

First point (the first bolded item). I disagree that we were totally focused on the Western Hemisphere in the pre-WWI days. Remember, it was an American naval squadron that forced Japan to open its ports to the West (and Western commerce). Americans and American business was heavily invested in China and to protect that investment, we maintained a permanent military presence there. We did our best to enforce the "Open Door Policy" in China. It was in this period that we stole Hawaii and claimed Wake Island -- to connect us to China (although they came in handy when we obtained the Philippines and Guam.

Our expanding commercial interests pushed far beyond the Western Hemisphere -- and where commerce goes, so go our military protection -- as far back as the first decade of the 19th century when we fought a war in the Mediterranean to protect our commercial interests. Keep in mind that in 1906, Teddy Roosevelt sent half the US Fleet -- eight battleships -- to the Med in 1906 to protect US interests during the Algecisas Crisis.

I would argue that the main purpose of the Great White Fleet (1907-09) was to overawe the Japanese, but also to demonstrate the reach of the US Navy. In that era, no other nation had ever sent its main battle fleet on such an extended journey. The closest thing was the voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet to the Pacific in the Russo-Japanese War, but that fleet arrived in Japanese waters unfit to fight. The Royal Navy could have done it, but never did. The growing German Navy never could have duplicated the feat -- its battleships were extremely short-range weapons.

Second (the second bolded part) I appreciate the strong German-American contingent in America that Wilson had to cope with. The irony is that many -- maybe a majority -- of those people left Germany to escape German militarism -- and the mandatory military service required of all young men by the new German state. Yes, it's a problem that Wilson had to deal with -- there were many German-Americans who supported the old country in the first days of the war -- but many did not -- they knew better than anybody how dangerous the Prussian militarists were (and when we did enter the war in 1917, the German-Americans on the whole supported the war and served with distinction). Beside, I never suggested that Wilson take us into war in 1914 ... only that he should have begin to build up the US Army to give us a louder voice in world affairs ... hopefully as a counterweight that might have forced the warring powers to accept a negotiated settlement in late 1915 or early 1916 when the stalemate in the West was clear the losses had become horrific. That's what Teddy Roosevelt did with the Russo-Japanese War, ending the war and winning a Nobel Peace Prize. Failing that, we could have entered the war in 1917 with an Army better prepared to have a decisive impact ... one better prepared to take care of itself.

Third, I wish you had not used the adjective "formal" in the bolded segment. I don't want to split hairs over words, but in point of fact, we had no "formal allies" in WWI, we were an "associate belligerent". Wilson made it clear that we were not "formal allies" with Britain, France of anybody else. We were in it on our own, for our own motives.

Fourth, unlike the "allies" comment, this is a biggie ... maybe THE biggie. Yes, the US played a major role in the post-war settlement. But I think it's important to separate the Armistice, which German specifically accepted on the basis of Wilson's 14 points, and the Versailes Treaty that totally ignored Wilson's idealistic vision of the world (although, as I've noted, his idealistic vision only extended to whites). Wilson gave in on everything to project his idea -- the League of Nations. That could have been a lasting legacy, instead he destroyed any chance it had of being effective when he went home and made sure due to his intransience that the US would never ratify the league.

To back up a second, you suggest that by the pre-WWII period, the USA had moved past its Western Hemisphere boundaries ... I think that is not true. After WWI, the US actually pulled back from the world in many ways, especially from Europe. I previously cited the US perception that the first war was forced on us by big business and the overwhelming congressional opposition to any European involvement (reflected by the four Neutrality Acts of the mid and late 1930s).

Fifth, your continued assertion that by the late 1930s, the threat of Hitler was evident to all is absolute revisionist. You flatter me by suggesting that I've read a lot about the Wilson era ... I have. But I've read much, MUCH more about the pre-WWII era and I can tell you that Hitler was not generally perceived either as a threat or even as a bad guy. Just one example was the visit by Avery Brundage to investigate the Nazis before the 1936 Olympics and his glowing report on how the negative view of Hitler was propagated by a few left-wing journalists and Jews. Privately, Brundage was even more laudatory -- in one letter, he suggests Hitler is a "God on earth" and is the West's best hope of staunching the spread of Communism.

Now Brundage is just one (evil) man, but his view was widely shared. Even in the late 1930s, the American public was widely split on Hitler -- lefties and Jews hated him, but most right-wingers loved him ... and the great bulk of the public was indifferent to him and the threat he posed. Just one sign -- Warner Brothers made a film in 1939 called "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" that was strongly anti-Nazi. The studio was called to testify before the Dies Committee in Congress and was raked over the coals for making such a piece of propaganda -- even though the film was based on a true espionage case broken by the FBI. It worth noting two more things -- the film was a commercial flop in 1939 (the public was not ready to worry about the Nazis) and the FBI agent who reported the espionage case was fired for going public with the news.

I think you underestimate isolationist sentiment -- or as you put "it stay-at-home politics". A Gallup Poll taken the first week of the war in Europe (Sept,. 1939) showed that 95 percent of American believed that we should not get involved. It's to FDR's credit that he was able to change that view over the next two years. By the fall of 1941, the Gallup Poll showed that almost 60 percent of Americans were convinced that we'd have to get in at some point. Pearl Harbor precipitated American entry into the war, but it would have happened before long after that anyway.

As for General Marshall, I too admire him in many ways. But it's amazing how much bad advice he gave FDR in the years leading up to the war. For instance, he opposed aid to Britain, arguing that we needed the weapons FDR was sending overseas to rebuild or own army. He was definitely wrong on that count -- not only did it help us immensely to keep Great Britain in the war, we essentially ended up sending them tons of obsolete weapons -- as our industry got on a war footing (thanks in large degree to British weapons orders), we were able to arm our troops with more advanced weaponry. Marshall also opposed FDR's effort to walk the political tightrope between war and peace -- arguing that if FDR thought Nazi Germany a threat, he should go ahead and declare war (first argued in the spring/summer of 1940) -- not understanding how deeply divided America was at that time. And, finally, when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, Marshall argued against extending lend-lease to the Russians -- insisting that they wouldn't hold out six months against the Nazi onslaught.

Marshall did a great job building and leading the US Army in WWII, but we can thank God that we had FDR to offset some of Marshall's serious misjudgments (including his opposition to the Torch landings ... which is a subject of another debate at least as long as this one is so far).

Finally, as to your question about the variance between my view of Woodrow Wilson and the majority view of historians ... all I can say is the majority can be wrong. I wonder how many of the voters in the poll you cite are actual students of the Wilsonian era? How many sports historians today think Dean Smith was a saint who never did anything wrong? How many historians have revised their view of Robert E. Lee in the last few decades?

If you don't agree with me, fine. But attack me with facts and arguments (as to your credit you've tried to do). Don't hit me over the head with a poll of historians.

[gumbomoop]

I am less concerned about public explanations and reasoning (Godless communism, global communist threat, etc.) than about actions and consequences. How would the US response have differed between a perception of a specific Soviet threat (and a separate threat from China) and a more general threat of, say, a world communist movement? Usually, you try and counter the military threat, which might be largely the same because the military forces are predominately Soviet or Chinese.

Kennan is a good example of a perceptive critic of Soviet expansionism who nevertheless came pretty soon after his influential 1946-47 writings to be appalled at the implementation of containment almost entirely through military, as opposed to political and diplomatic, means. For example, although the Truman Doctrine announced that "support[ing] free peoples .... should be primarily through economic and financial aid," the Marshall Plan did not become the model for containing communism. Kennan was further dismayed by the inability and/or unwillingness of Truman, Atcheson, etc., to think and speak in anything other than all-or-nothing terms. Thus, Kennan thought policy makers almost never distinguished between primary and secondary interests, Soviet or American.

Many historians -- not all, but a whole, whole bunch -- see the Truman Doctrine as problematic, both because it was based on a fundamental misreading of events in Greece after WWII and because it exemplified the (intentional) fear-inducing rhetoric of history itself on the precipice.

The Greek communist insurgency, which did receive aid from Yugoslavia, was thereby incorrectly assumed to be a puppet of a Moscow-led international conspiracy [a monolith]. In fact, Stalin had agreed with Churchill that he would not support the Greek communists. That Stalin stuck to this promise ultimately led to a bitter falling-out with another communist, Yugoslavia's Tito. Not for the first time did the monolith-meme crumble. As Olympic Fan has noted in his post #41, we mistook Ho as a puppet of Chinese masters. Henry Kissinger, upon visiting a military museum in Hanoi years after the war noted ruefully that if he had seen the museum's set of amazing dioramas depicting centuries of conflict between China and Vietnam, that, well, things would have been different. Rueful, indeed. Willful ignorance is dangerously stupid.

As for fear-mongering, Truman announced in his Doctrine: "At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life." More than a few historians have written about the negative influences of the Truman Doctrine for nearly the entirety of the last half of the 20th century. Including on non-aligned countries not persuaded by all-or-nothing pronouncements. American foreign policy has yet to escape fully from Wilsonian moralism [other thread-theme debate].

[sagegrouse]

Finally, as to your question about the variance between my view of Woodrow Wilson and the majority view of historians ... all I can say is the majority can be wrong. I wonder how many of the voters in the poll you cite are actual students of the Wilsonian era? How many sports historians today think Dean Smith was a saint who never did anything wrong? How many historians have revised their view of Robert E. Lee in the last few decades?

If you don't agree with me, fine. But attack me with facts and arguments (as to your credit you've tried to do). Don't hit me over the head with a poll of historians.

More later, but are you kidding me on this point? It is unfair to you for me to ask why your views differ from 18 polls that rank presidents and rank Woodrow Wilson pretty highly? It appears the first two polls ranking presidents were conducted by Arthur Schlesinger (1948) and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1962), both of which ranked Wilson only after Lincoln, Washington and FDR. As Willie Mays said when told he came in second in a poll of the greatest players of all time, "Second to Babe Ruth? That's pretty good, isn't it?"

I suppose my rejoinder could be, "Shouldn't you label your views as contrary to the majority of presidential historians?" But this thread is far too interesting to get personal.

[Olympic Fan]

More later, but are you kidding me on this point? It is unfair to you for me to ask why your views differ from 18 polls that rank presidents and rank Woodrow Wilson pretty highly? It appears the first two polls ranking presidents were conducted by Arthur Schlesinger (1948) and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1962), both of which ranked Wilson only after Lincoln, Washington and FDR. As Willie Mays said when told he came in second in a poll of the greatest players of all time, "Second to Babe Ruth? That's pretty good, isn't it?"

I suppose my rejoinder could be, "Shouldn't you label your views as contrary to the majority of presidential historians?" But this thread is far too interesting to get personal.

Sage, to keep it short ... I quite willingly admit that my views are contrary to the majority of presidential historians. But I still think I'm right -- and have offered my reasons for that belief -- while they are wrong.

I am also an amateur baseball history and know that at least through the 40s and maybe into the 50s, the majority of baseball historians thought Ty Cobb was the game's greatest player. Their views have been eclipsed. The admiration of Wilson will be eclipsed in time. BTW: I know that in my youth and when I was at Duke (in the late '60s and early '70s), Harry Truman was regarded as a poor president ... in my lifetime, I've seen his reputation grow and grow.

Views do change over time ... and I'm confident the view of Wilson will change too.

PS Actually, those views are already changing -- Wilson ranked 4th in the 1948 Schlesinger poll (the earliest I can find). He's been dropping ever since ... in the most recent polls he floats around 10 or 11. Twenty years from now, he won't be in the top 20. In the most recent poll I can find rank Wilson behind Bill Clinton (Washington Post, Feb. 2015):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/02/16/new-ranking-of-u-s-presidents-puts-lincoln-1-obama-18-kennedy-judged-most-over-rated/

[Bob Green]

Kennan is a good example of a perceptive critic of Soviet expansionism who nevertheless came pretty soon after his influential 1946-47 writings to be appalled at the implementation of containment almost entirely through military, as opposed to political and diplomatic, means. For example, although the Truman Doctrine announced that "support[ing] free peoples .... should be primarily through economic and financial aid," the Marshall Plan did not become the model for containing communism. Kennan was further dismayed by the inability and/or unwillingness of Truman, Atcheson, etc., to think and speak in anything other than all-or-nothing terms. Thus, Kennan thought policy makers almost never distinguished between primary and secondary interests, Soviet or American.

According to my history/political science professor (the guy who disliked Wilson), George Kennan believed his "Long Telegram" was misinterpreted or at a minimum misapplied. President Truman and his staff made more of Kennan's commentary than was actually there. Kennan never intended to paint the Soviet Union as an imminent military threat.

This discussion is intriguing. You guys are all better versed on the topic than I am so my participation will be more reading than commenting. However, I am motivated to breakout my "American Defense Policy" text book and reread "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" and "NSC-68."

[Jim3k]

Jim, this is national Defense 101. You have a threat, and you seek to counter it. The U.S. led the formation of NATO; we opposed the invasion of South Korea; and we rebuilt our military to counter a threat from the Soviet Union and its (erstwhile) ally, China. We built a huge nuclear force as a deterrent to attacks by other nuclear powers ("mutually assured destruction" it was later called).

The U.S. response was justified by the "facts on the ground:" conquest of countries, build-up of Soviet and Chinese military forces, and rhetoric on further expansion.

Agree fully.


But we went too far in seeing what were nationalist movements as Communist threats and part of a global Soviet strategy.

I think I agree here, as well. However insofar as American leadership was concerned, it was handicapped by at least two things. First, the Iron Curtain and its twin, the Bamboo Curtain, barred any real dialogue under which a different perspective could be discerned. We probably continued the anti-communist Truman policy longer than we needed to. But who knew what was really happening behind those curtains? If Stalinism was failing, there was little to show that to be true. Second, the spying and brinkmanship continued unabated; neither side would call a halt. The Korean peninsula was at a delicate stalemate with a communist foe who barred the door (and still does). We had the U-2 and the Turkish-based missiles while Khrushchev had his Cuban missile sally. We had NATO and Russia had the Warsaw Pact. As you observed, the nuke stockpiling got way out of hand, and there were provocations on both sides all around the world. After Stalin's death, the USSR continued to be led by grey-headed Reds whose policies seemed exactly the same as before. Neither new hope nor trading opportunities arose. No one on either side did anything, though level heads would not pull the trigger due to that concept of 'mutually assured destruction.' There was really nothing to be seen but the monolithic and murderous Eastern bloc. Couldn't learn anything new from that.

Learning about one particular country's nationalist tendencies (Vietnam's) was pretty far down the attention chain. I agree that we may have applied the policy for too long. Still, I'm not sure we ever had the knowledge to warrant a different policy until Gorbachev came on the scene. Even then, despite the Nixon/Ford efforts of the early 70s, China remained closed in fact--and pretty much still is, even if its communist goals and behavior have passed. It continues to play with militaristic expansionism today and internally remains an arbitrary and capricious nation.

[sagegrouse]

This is in response to OF's latest response to my previous post.

Olympic Fan:

Please let me extend and clarify my remarks.

The U.S., in fact, was an actor on the world stage prior to World War I. We had commercial interests everywhere, and as you pointed out, were not afraid to make a show of force if necessary.

Fact is, however, the U.S. was resolutely opposed to being involved in a European conflict, much less a European-wide conflict that metamorphisized into a world war. As you pointed out, immigrants from Europe were often fleeing repression and compulsory military service. More important in my view, was the tradition set out by the Founding Fathers. They were troubled by the perpetual conflicts within Europe, many of them sectarian in nature. This was one reason the United States was created without a national religion. I have already quoted Washington’s warnings about “perpetual alliances” and Jefferson on the dangers of “entangling alliances.” The United States did not make such alliances or enter any European conflicts, despite some sentiment to aid France against Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.

Also, as you pointed out, Europe was a volatile continent in the years before the hostilities of 1914. Britain was far from a traditional ally. The French, who were united in case of war on the continent, were no longer as close to the United States as in the early days of the republic. And then we have the Russian empire versus the German, and Austria-Hungarian empires, all threatening to go to war.

Although you may say that the isolationism in the 1930’s was every bit as strong, I do not believe it was. There was little appetite in 1914 (or earlier) for lining up with any one side or one particular party to potential conflict. Why? It was our national tradition to avoid entangling alliances. We had commercial interests throughout Europe, especially with Britain, Germany and France, that would be threatened if we took one side or another. We were culturally divided, with ancestors from every country involved (including many who were very happy to leave their despotic homelands). Moreover, picking one side or another would more than likely draw the United States into the Great War.

So, we kept our powder dry and tried to maintain trade and commercial relations with all the Western European countries. During the war, Britain gained the upper hand on the seas and imposed a devastating blockade against Germany. From one source: “The results of the blockade were astonishing. Trade with England and France more than tripled between 1914 and 1916, while trade with Germany was cut by over ninety percent. It was this situation that prompted submarine warfare by the Germans against Americans at sea. After two and a half years of isolationism, America entered the Great War.”

While there was clearly opportunity for Wilson to do more, the official U.S. policy of neutrality tended to cut the legs out from under a military buildup. (It shouldn’t have, but it did.) After the German submarine attacks, American opinion about the war drastically changed and the Army and the Navy were expanded. Conscription was instituted just before the United States entered the war.

For all of the above reasons, I do not think Wilson’s and Roosevelt’s respective responses can be fairly compared, which is not to say that FDR wasn’t the far superior national leader. The choices for the U.S. in the 1930’s was simpler, as well. We were either neutral or allied with Britain. The barbarism of the Nazis was readily apparent by the late 1930’s and certainly by the time aid to Britain began in 1940.

As far as Gen. George Marshall goes, I am not surprised that he opposed military aid to Britain. He was, above all else, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, one that was poorly-armed and under-equipped and headed towards a wartime expansion. He had to object to diverting arms to Britain; he had to prove to his generals, staff and soldiers that he was doing everything he could to help the U.S. Army. Perhaps you have more specifics, but that’s my view reinforced by a lot of time in the Pentagon. (While I didn’t know General Marshall, I did sit next to Gen. Westmoreland for two days during a conference in about 1979.)

All the best--
Sage Grouse

[Olympic Fan]

Sage,

It's beginning to look like we're engaged in a fundamental disagreement -- in that we're going back and forth over the same subjects.

Clearly, I think you are absolutely wrong in your assumption that the isolationism that confronted Wilson in the 1914-17 period was so much stronger than what faced FDR in the 1939-41 period. I honestly can't see how you continue to hold that view. Can you site any legal hurdles thrown in Wilson's path that compared to the Neutrality Acts that FDR had to deal with? Can you suggest an organized anti-war movement in the 1914-17 period to compare to America First? And even with all the pro-German sentiment when the war began, can you cite any organized group to compare to the German American Bund in 1938-41?

Frankly I think your approach to the pre WWII period is shaped by hindsight. Contrary to your repeated assertion, Hitler was not viewed as a monster or even a major threat to America by the great majority of the American people until we got in the war. Britain and France were not loved by the American public -- indeed, both nations were probably more popular in the pre-WWI period (before both nations repudiated their war debts).

You assert that public opinion in WWI "drastically changed" due to Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare is a little curious. When did it change drastically? In 1915 when the Lusitania was sunk with the loss of more than 100 American lives? But that was in early May of 1915 -- almost two years before Wilson asked for a declaration of war. It's curious to me that he runs under the claim "He kept us out of war" then a month after his inauguration, he wants war -- a war he had steadfastly refused to prepare for.

I love your quote: "So we kept our powder dry" ... what does that mean? To me, that sounds as if we were prepared for something ... but that's precisely what Wilson didn't do.

I admire Franklin Roosevelt for doing what was right, even if the public didn't know they needed it. He actually showed leadership, nudging the public towards preparedness against a monstrous evil.

I hold Wilson in contempt for burying his head in the sand until it was too late and he finally asked a nation unprepared for war to fight -- and thousands of young Americans to die unnecessarily. I blame him -- more that Clemenceau or Lloyd George -- for the botched peace that led to a worse war two decades later.

I thank God that we had someone with the courage and wisdom of FDR in office leading up to that one.

PS No need to defend Marshall to me. I think he was a great American and one of the heroes of WWII. But I wanted to point out that he was wrong on a number of occasions (including his understandable reluctance to help Britain) and in every case where he clashed with FDR, I believe that history has shown that he was wrong and the president was right.

PPS No comment about the Washington Post poll -- the most recent survey of historians that I linked in my last post -- that had Bill Clinton ranked ahead of Woodrow Wilson? I thought you were the one who believed in those polls.

[sagegrouse]

Sage,

It's beginning to look like we're engaged in a fundamental disagreement -- in that we're going back and forth over the same subjects.

Clearly, I think you are absolutely wrong in your assumption that the isolationism that confronted Wilson in the 1914-17 period was so much stronger than what faced FDR in the 1939-41 period. I honestly can't see how you continue to hold that view. Can you site any legal hurdles thrown in Wilson's path that compared to the Neutrality Acts that FDR had to deal with? Can you suggest an organized anti-war movement in the 1914-17 period to compare to America First? And even with all the pro-German sentiment when the war began, can you cite any organized group to compare to the German American Bund in 1938-41?

Frankly I think your approach to the pre WWII period is shaped by hindsight. Contrary to your repeated assertion, Hitler was not viewed as a monster or even a major threat to America by the great majority of the American people until we got in the war. Britain and France were not loved by the American public -- indeed, both nations were probably more popular in the pre-WWI period (before both nations repudiated their war debts).

You assert that public opinion in WWI "drastically changed" due to Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare is a little curious. When did it change drastically? In 1915 when the Lusitania was sunk with the loss of more than 100 American lives? But that was in early May of 1915 -- almost two years before Wilson asked for a declaration of war. It's curious to me that he runs under the claim "He kept us out of war" then a month after his inauguration, he wants war -- a war he had steadfastly refused to prepare for.

I love your quote: "So we kept our powder dry" ... what does that mean? To me, that sounds as if we were prepared for something ... but that's precisely what Wilson didn't do.

I admire Franklin Roosevelt for doing what was right, even if the public didn't know they needed it. He actually showed leadership, nudging the public towards preparedness against a monstrous evil.

I hold Wilson in contempt for burying his head in the sand until it was too late and he finally asked a nation unprepared for war to fight -- and thousands of young Americans to die unnecessarily. I blame him -- more that Clemenceau or Lloyd George -- for the botched peace that led to a worse war two decades later.

I thank God that we had someone with the courage and wisdom of FDR in office leading up to that one.

PS No need to defend Marshall to me. I think he was a great American and one of the heroes of WWII. But I wanted to point out that he was wrong on a number of occasions (including his understandable reluctance to help Britain) and in every case where he clashed with FDR, I believe that history has shown that he was wrong and the president was right.

PPS No comment about the Washington Post poll -- the most recent survey of historians that I linked in my last post -- that had Bill Clinton ranked ahead of Woodrow Wilson? I thought you were the one who believed in those polls.

Well, this has been fun, OF, but I am signing out. Our disagreements are too broad:

1. I believe, and you don't, that in the years before World War I, the U.S. never seriously considered entering a European conflict. Nothing in our history at that time suggested we would enter a conflict involving all of Britain, France, the Russian Empire, the Austria-Hungary Empire, the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Holy cow! Who wanted to be part of that? We didn't need neutrality acts or other measures to express isolationism; it was racing through our historical bloodstream since the founding of the Republic.

2. You have a vendetta against Woodrow Wilson that is hard to fathom. You should put your ideas in a longer form and circulate among people who have written extensively on this era. For example, you are now blaming the failure of the peace after World War I on Woodrow Wilson? WTF? The claims for reparations against Germany by Britain and France devastated Germany, prevented the recovery of its economy, and led to the rise of a totalitarian state. The disaster, although not the details, was predicted at the time by John Maynard Keynes in the Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). As one of many references, from Wikipedia:


The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) is a book written and published by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes attended the Versailles Conference as a delegate of the British Treasury and argued for a much more generous peace. It was a best-seller throughout the world and was critical in establishing a general opinion that the Versailles Treaty was a "Carthaginian peace".

Uhhh,... this was Lloyd George and Clemenceau, responding to the demands for vengeance by their citizens. I don't see the hand of Wilson in any of this.

3. I can't see that the U.S. and FDR did a darned thing to help Britain until Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and Churchill came to power. Churchill understood immediately that Britain's prospects in the war depended almost totally on an alliance with the United States. By that time, and especially after the invasion of France with the following May, Hitler certainly looked like a big threat to world peace. The U.S. began aid to Britain and started its own military buildup. FDR provided sterling leadership, overcoming strong isolationist sentiment, in a time when there was a clear threat.

4. Yep, Wilson may not have been a great President, but he was a good President and not the disaster you imagine. Does he rate behind Bill Clinton? Heck, I like Bill Clinton -- maybe so.

Kindly,
Sage Grouse

[Olympic Fan]

Well, this has been fun, OF, but I am signing out. Our disagreements are too broad:

1. I believe, and you don't, that in the years before World War I, the U.S. never seriously considered entering a European conflict. Nothing in our history at that time suggested we would enter a conflict involving all of Britain, France, the Russian Empire, the Austria-Hungary Empire, the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Holy cow! Who wanted to be part of that? We didn't need neutrality acts or other measures to express isolationism; it was racing through our historical bloodstream since the founding of the Republic.

2. You have a vendetta against Woodrow Wilson that is hard to fathom. You should put your ideas in a longer form and circulate among people who have written extensively on this era. For example, you are now blaming the failure of the peace after World War I on Woodrow Wilson? WTF? The claims for reparations against Germany by Britain and France devastated Germany, prevented the recovery of its economy, and led to the rise of a totalitarian state. The disaster, although not the details, was predicted at the time by John Maynard Keynes in the Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919). As one of many references, from Wikipedia:



Uhhh,... this was Lloyd George and Clemenceau, responding to the demands for vengeance by their citizens. I don't see the hand of Wilson in any of this.

3. I can't see that the U.S. and FDR did a darned thing to help Britain until Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and Churchill came to power. Churchill understood immediately that Britain's prospects in the war depended almost totally on an alliance with the United States. By that time, and especially after the invasion of France with the following May, Hitler certainly looked like a big threat to world peace. The U.S. began aid to Britain and started its own military buildup. FDR provided sterling leadership, overcoming strong isolationist sentiment, in a time when there was a clear threat.

4. Yep, Wilson may not have been a great President, but he was a good President and not the disaster you imagine. Does he rate behind Bill Clinton? Heck, I like Bill Clinton -- maybe so.

Kindly,
Sage Grouse

Sage, I love this debate ... you question my "vendetta" against Woodrow Wilson ... I'm simply passionate about historical figures and events. Check out some of our treads on baseball and movies and you'll see the same kind of passions from posters. Is being passionate about the question of Woodrow Wilson's competence any stranger than debating the merits of the latest Avengers movie or the latest inductions into the Hall of Fame? Or how about the long thread we just had about Tom Brady's Inflationgate scandal?

To answer some of your questions:

1. I never suggested that we should have gotten in WWI at the beginning. But I do think we should have begun to prepare our Army for the possibility of war. Obviously, that was not a ridiculous possibility -- we DID go to war and we did it with a woefully unprepared Army (because of Wilson). I do believe that had Wilson behaved differently -- maintaining our neutrality while building our Army -- we could have exerted a decisive influence on the war, possibly without entering it ourselves. My suggestion that the US would have been in position to mediate a just peace in 1915 or 1916 (when the bloody stalemate in the West was obvious) is based on Teddy Roosevelt's comments at the time about our proper course of action.

Your quite: "Nothing in our history at that time suggested we would enter a conflict involving all of Britain, France, the Russian Empire, the Austria-Hungary Empire, the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire. Holy cow! Who wanted to be part of that? We didn't need neutrality acts or other measures to express isolationism; it was racing through our historical bloodstream since the founding of the Republic."

Yet, we DID enter the very conflict you describe in the spring of 1917. Why, what changed? You mentioned German's unrestricted submarine warfare in an earlier post, yet the timing doesn't work out -- that had been going on for more than two years with Wilson ineffectually filing protest notes, but refusing to take action. One of the reasons Germany wasn't afraid to draw America into the war was their contempt for Wilson. They thought he would never act ... and if he did, they were convinced they could win the war before an American Army was trained, armed and shipped to France. They were almost right -- the first American troops arrived at the front in the nick of time in the spring of 1918, just in time to play a decisive role in stopping the last great German offensive -- one that was on the brink of success before running into the American vanguards at Chateau-Thierry and the first American counterattack at Belleau Wood.

2. Why am I blaming the failure of peace on Woodrow Wilson when it was Lloyd George and Clemenceau who insisted on the most draconian measures? I blame Wilson because he had the power to effect a more just settlement, but refused to fight any of the worst demands by the French and British (and Italians, who might have been the greediest of all the postwar victors). It's impossible to recapture now the power Wilson held in 1919 when he arrived in Europe for the press conference. The hysteria of the crowds praising him was like nothing ever seen ... he was viewed by the general populace as a savior -- and that popularity was important in the democratic nations of France and Great Britain. In addition, Wilson held another trump card in his pocket -- the American naval building program of 1917, which was going to give the United States naval superiority by 1921 -- a prospect that filled the British (broke and unable to match the American building program) with terror. Wilson didn't want to finish the program either, but he did wield it as a weapon to get what he wanted in Paris.

And that was the League of Nations. That was the only thing he chose to fight for. He forgot the rest of the 14 Points and rolled over on the outrageous reparations and the geographic atrocities and the restrictions that Clemenceau and Lloyd George imposed on the Germans. He refused to fight any of those points.

It's my assertion that the man with the ultimate power in any situation bears the responsibility for the results. Wilson had the power in 1919 ... he used it for one thing (the League), then destroyed the league with his political intransience back in the United States.

3. I don't understand your point about the US timetable before WWII. Roosevelt did sound the warning with his 1937 "quarantine" speech and he began re-building the Navy (hiding his rearmament as part of the WPA). The day after Germany invaded Poland, he called Congress back into session and asked for revisions of the Neutrality Acts, so that Britain could buy goods in the United States. It's true he didn't do a lot to help Britain in the first months of the war -- Britain didn't think they needed much help -- that winter, Chamberlain famously declared that "Hitler missed the bus." But behind the scenes, he began to work to rebuild the US Army -- Was it just coincidence that George Marshall was promoted to Chief of Staff in September of 1939 (over the heads of 31 senior officers)?

The real drive to help Britain started when France fell in the first weeks of June, 1940. That was the same time Churchill became Prime Minister. Interesting factoid, Churchill was trying to keep the French in the war, even as a government in exile. Reynaud told him that the only thing that would keep France in the war was an immediate declaration of war by the United States. Reynaud also telegraphed FDR directly and begged the United States to send France "clouds of airplanes" (which, quite obviously, we did not have in June of 1940).

From the fall of France, FDR did everything in his power to keep Britain in the war. He almost immediately shipped the British thousands of rifles and ammunition and hundreds of 75 mm cannon to arm their Home Guard (and make up for the lost equipment on Dunkirk). He began "selling" Britain surplus US airplanes (it was a US-built plane that found the Bismark in the North Atlantic in May of 1941) even thought we didn't have enough planes for our own air forces. He negotiated the destroyers for bases deal in August of 1940, when Britain was fighting for its life. He shipped Britain food and weapons. He opened our ports to repair British warships. He gradually extended our "neutrality patrols" to relieve the British of convoy duty.

And he did all this in the face of strong political opposition -- from both parties. Several opponents wanted to impeach him for short-circuiting congress on the destroyer deal.

I'm not sure what else you wanted him to do. BTW, I believe that it was only after the Fall of France that Americans began to see Hitler as a danger to them. A threat to world peace? yes -- but a threat to America? That idea only started to spread when France -- reputed to have the strongest army in the world -- fell in two weeks to the German assault.

4. We'll just have to disagree on the final point. You can have the comfort of knowing that a majority of historians currently share your view. I have the comfort of knowing I'm right.

If you (or anyone else reading this thread -- although I fear it's become a dialogue between you and me, Sage) wants to read more about this subject, may I suggest Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919", the best account I've read of the Paris peace talks -- and a national book winner. Also, you might check Scott Berg's "Wilson" a recent biography by a Pulitzer Prize winner (for his Lindbergh biography). But I ask that you read it with a skeptical eye -- Berg is clearly an admirer of Wilson, but he can't help addressing his racism (and, worse, his racist policies), his inept handling of diplomacy in 1914-17 and his refusal to allow the nation to prepare for war.

[Olympic Fan]

I know that my negative views toward the esteemed Woodrow Wilson have become something of as punch line on these forums, but for those of you interested in this debae, I thought it interesting that Wilson's reputation is starting to be assailed by others:

For instance, students at Princeton are protesting his racist legacy -- trying to get his name removed from the school's graduate school of policy and trying to get a large mural of Wilson removed from the undergraduate dining hall:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/23/nyregion/at-princeton-addressing-a-racist-legacy-and-seeking-to-remove-woodrow-wilsons-name.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1

From the article:

Raised in the South, he wrote of “a great Ku Klux Klan” that rose up to rid whites of “the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant Negroes.”

During Wilson’s tenure as president of Princeton, no blacks were admitted — “The whole temper and tradition of the place are such that no Negro has ever applied,” he wrote — though Harvard and Yale had admitted blacks decades earlier. Princeton admitted its first black student in the 1940s.

The protests at Princeton provoked Gordon Davis to write an op-ed for the New York Times earlier this week that lambasts Wilson for his racist policies as US President:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/24/opinion/what-woodrow-wilson-cost-my-grandfather.html

History is catching up with the great fraud .. about time.

[YmoBeThere]

So using this sort of lens, which former President shouldn't be erased from history?

[OldPhiKap]

No offense, but are we really doing this again?

"Raised in the South . . . ." Well, that seals it.

I mean, we all understand that our beloved Duke University did not admit African-Americans to our various schools until the 1960's or later, right? http://spotlight.duke.edu/50years/african-american-firsts-at-duke-university/

Measuring historical figures by modern social norms is kinda silly IMO. Any further response spins into PPB.

[Olympic Fan]

So using this sort of lens, which former President shouldn't be erased from history?

There is quite a bit of validity in this point -- few historical figures measure up to modern political correctness.

The problem with Wilson is that he was a racial reactionary even by the standards of his own time. As president of Princeton, he was promoting racism and blocking integration at a time when the other Ivy League colleges were either beginning to integrate or (in the case of Yale and Harvard) had long been integrated (and his statement that no Negro had ever applied for admission was a lie or at least a gross evasion of the truth -- Princeton had several Negro students from the nearby Princeton Theological Seminary studying in Princeton's graduate school when Wilson took over -- and he promptly put a stop to that). As President, his administration turned the clock backwards on racial tolerance in government, reducing black government employees to nothing more than menials. Hard to believe, but before Wilson, blacks played a significant role in the civil service.

Again, few historical figures measure up to what we would expect today -- but some of our leaders were ahead of their own times.

Ben Franklin founded the first anti-slavery society in the new world ... John Adams was personally very prejudiced against people of color, but he was a political opponent of slavery and fought to end the slave trade. His son, John Quincy Adams, became the loudest and most persistent anti-slavery voice in Congress after he returned to the House after serving as president. Washington was a slave owner who rejected slavery -- freeing his slaves on his death.

Sadly, Jefferson (another slave owner) seemed on the verge of rejecting slavery during the Revolution, but as he got older, be moved farther and farther from that position, becoming a very powerful defender of the Slaveocracy. Alexander Hamilton was another strong anti-slavery advocate -- the original secretary and later the President of the New York Manumisson Society.

Teddy Roosevelt, probably because of his experience in Cuba (where he charged Kettle Hill alongside black troopers), became a progressive on civil rights movement. My hero, FDR, never seemed to be personally invested in civil rights (not like his wife was), although Northern Blacks were part of his political coalition, so he did advocate some progressive measures ... then again, Southern whites were also part of his coalition, so he was always walking a political tightrope on racial matters. I just feel like his decisions were all driven by politics, not by any sense of racial justice.

Harry Truman was another interesting case -- personally, he was quite bigoted (he usually used the N-word and like to tell racist jokes), but as president, he pushed for racial justice -- finally integrating the Armed Services for one thing. His progressive racial policies were what led Strom Thurmond to break away and form the Dixiecrats in 1948.

My rule rule of thumb is that a historical figure has to be measured against the attitudes of his time. By that measure, heroes such as Franklin, Washington, Adams, Quincy Adams and Teddy Roosevelt come out on the plus side in historical hindsight ... ultimately, Jefferson has to fall on the minus side. But no American leader was more racist -- compared to his times -- than Woodrow Wilson.

[OldPhiKap]

My rule rule of thumb is that a historical figure has to be measured against the attitudes of his time. By that measure, heroes such as Franklin, Washington, Adams, Quincy Adams and Teddy Roosevelt come out on the plus side in historical hindsight ... ultimately, Jefferson has to fall on the minus side. But no American leader was more racist -- compared to his times -- than Woodrow Wilson.

How does this not just spin into PPB? Ben Stein for example thinks a different President is "the most racist" -- http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/3/ben-stein-obama-most-racist-president-in-american-/ .

This list, while admittedly having Wilson #1, has your models Teddy Roosevelt and FDR at two and three respectively: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/who-was-the-most-racist-modern-president-here-are-5-surprising-candidates/ .

This opinion has Andrew Jackson at #1 and Washington at #5: http://www.thetoptens.com/most-racist-u-s-presidents/ .

This does not even include "forgotten" folks like Polk and Van Buren, who strongly opposed the abolition of slavery in the first place (which, I would argue, trumps everything on the subject).

I mean, is his really what we are arguing over? We all agree that racism is bad. Wilson, like many of his time, fell short on a personal level. Regardless, this is all personal political opinion -- PPB stuff. I am arguing whether he was a good president, it seems that you are arguing about whether he was a good man. Two very different things IMO.

Just my two cents -- and not looking to fight with a poster I respect. I just think this is getting way out of bounds. And I apologize to the extent I helped or lead us on the path.

Truce?

OPK

[Olympic Fan]

How does this not just spin into PPB? Ben Stein for example thinks a different President is "the most racist" -- http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/3/ben-stein-obama-most-racist-president-in-american-/ .

This list, while admittedly having Wilson #1, has your models Teddy Roosevelt and FDR at two and three respectively: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/01/who-was-the-most-racist-modern-president-here-are-5-surprising-candidates/ .

This opinion has Andrew Jackson at #1 and Washington at #5: http://www.thetoptens.com/most-racist-u-s-presidents/ .

This does not even include "forgotten" folks like Polk and Van Buren, who strongly opposed the abolition of slavery in the first place (which, I would argue, trumps everything on the subject).

I mean, is his really what we are arguing over? We all agree that racism is bad. Wilson, like many of his time, fell short on a personal level. Regardless, this is all personal political opinion -- PPB stuff. I am arguing whether he was a good president, it seems that you are arguing about whether he was a good man. Two very different things IMO.

Just my two cents -- and not looking to fight with a poster I respect. I just think this is getting way out of bounds. And I apologize to the extent I helped or lead us on the path.

Truce?

OPK

Fair enough ... but I did ask this question when we first (okay when I) first started this spinoff -- was it PPB territory to argue about historical figures? I guess with the current movement to condemn Wilson and some other historical characters, it does move out of the isoteric range of historical debate into modern PPB territory. But I can't leave without responding to the bolded portion of your statement -- I won't renew the debate, merely suggest that you go back and read my original post on why I think Wilson was a bad president -- a very bad president (as well as a bad man).

On that note, I'll walk off the stage and return to my bunker to await the day mainstream historians come around to my view of these guys.

[OldPhiKap]

Fair enough ... but I did ask this question when we first (okay when I) first started this spinoff -- was it PPB territory to argue about historical figures? I guess with the current movement to condemn Wilson and some other historical characters, it does move out of the isoteric range of historical debate into modern PPB territory. But I can't leave without responding to the bolded portion of your statement -- I won't renew the debate, merely suggest that you go back and read my original post on why I think Wilson was a bad president -- a very bad president (as well as a bad man).

On that note, I'll walk off the stage and return to my bunker to await the day mainstream historians come around to my view of these guys.

Fair enough, my friend. On to what we agree upon - Carolina sucks!


(Cannot send Sporkz 'cause I have to spread the love)

[YmoBeThere]

This is where it can all get surreal, when one person notes herodom(albeit for other reasons) while another might note that person's responsibility for interning members of their family. Some will argue degrees, while others will use a binary scale.

[grad_devil]

Flew out of GSP recently and saw this bumper sticker.

6792

Olympic Fan, is that you? :D

[Olympic Fan]

Flew out of GSP recently and saw this bumper sticker.

6792

Olympic Fan, is that you? :D

No, but I wish I knew where I could get that bumper sticker

[Jeffrey]

No, but I wish I knew where I could get that bumper sticker

Germany

[OldPhiKap]

No, but I wish I knew where I could get that bumper sticker

Got a poster for you:

6794


And a shirt:

6795

[BLPOG]

No, but I wish I knew where I could get that bumper sticker

Aquel día yo juré