1917
Page 48
My gratitude also goes to my agents, Keith Urbahn and Matt Lattimer, of Javelin DC, who embraced the project from the beginning and enthusiastically cheered it on from start to finish. Conversations with my editor at HarperCollins, Eric Nelson, helped to give the book its final shape, and thanks go to him and to his assistant editor, Eric Meyers, for seeing the text through to completion.
Above all, my gratitude goes out to my wonderful wife, Beth, for her advice, support, and patience with a husband who found himself with two full-time jobs—one as Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and the other as an author writing a book that devoured many weekends, evenings, and early mornings. This book is gratefully dedicated to her, because without her it could never have been written.
NOTES
PROLOGUE: A WORLD ON FIRE
1. Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (New York: Random House, 1985), 5.
2. Thomas Boghardt, The Zimmermann Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomacy, and America’s Entry into World War I (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2012), 80–81.
3. “Wilson’s First Lusitania Note to Germany,” World War I Document Archive, Brigham Young University Library, Provo, UT, last modified June 30, 2009, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilson’s_First_Lusitania_Note_to_Germany.
4. Arthur Herman, To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005), 511.
5. Helen Rappaport, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 271–72.
6. V. I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1960), 23:253.
7. Rappaport, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, 280.
PREFACE
1. Arno Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin: Political Origins of the New Diplomacy 1917–1918 (New York: Meridian, 1964).
2. “Bismarck’s Morality,” in A. J. P. Taylor, ed., Napoleon to Lenin (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 85.
3. Quoted in Arnold Wolpers, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962), 86.
CHAPTER 1. THE GERMAN NOTE
1. A. J. P. Taylor, The First World War: An Illustrated History (London: Penguin, 2009), 78.
2. Konrad Jarausch, Out of Ashes: A New History of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 249.
3. Gerhard Ritter, The Sword and the Scepter: The Problem of Militarism in Germany (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1973), 3:246.
4. Taylor, The First World War, 96.
5. Ibid., 28–29; Herman, To Rule the Waves, 510–11.
6. Adam Tooze, The Deluge: The Great War, America, and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916–1931 (London: Penguin, 2014), 37–38.
7. Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 289.
8. “Extract from the Speech of Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg in the German Reichstag, December 12, 1916,” World War I Document Archive, Brigham Young University Library, last modified January 16, 2016, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Extract_from_the_Speech_of_Chancellor_von_Bethmann-Hollweg_in_the_German_Reichstag,_December_12,_1916.
9. “Peace Note of Germany and Her Allies, December 12, 1916,” World War I Document Archive, Brigham Young University Library, last modified January 16, 2016, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Peace_Note_of_Germany_and_Her_Allies,_December_12,_1916.
10. Taylor, The First World War, 98–99.
11. Ibid., 40.
12. John Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader 1916–1918 (London: Faber and Faber, 2013), 19.
13. A. J. P. Taylor, The First World War, 5.
14. Ibid., 98.
15. Tooze, The Deluge, 37.
16. Ibid., 441.
17. Taylor, Lloyd George: Rise and Fall, 77.
CHAPTER 2. RUSSIA AND AMERICA CONFRONT A WORLD WAR
1. Alexander Kerensky, The Crucifixion of Liberty (Hudson, NY: Periodicals Service Company, 1934), 233.
2. Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Vintage, 1991), 191.
3. Ibid., 192.
4. Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2001), 14–15.
5. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 216.
6. Norman Stone, The Eastern Front 1914–17 (London: Penguin, 2008), 134.
7. Nicholas Werth, “Paradoxes and Misunderstandings Surrounding the October Revolution,” in Jean-Louis Panne, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 43.
8. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 210–11.
9. Ibid., 224.
10. Bernard Pares, A History of Russia (London: Marlboro Books, 1991), 482.
11. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 228.
12. “Speech of Nicolas Pokrovsky, Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, in the Duma, December 15, 1916,” in James Brown Scott, ed., Official Statements of War Aims and Peace Proposals: December 1916 to November 1918 (Getzville, NY: W.S. Hein, 1921), 9.
13. Ibid., 11.
14. “Durnovo Memorandum,” in Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 211.
15. Robert Service, Lenin: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 229, 235.
16. Arthur Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966), 1 (1856–1890): 3–4, 31.
17. “October 3, 1914,” in Elting E. Morison, ed., Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951), 821.
18. “TR to HCL, June 15, 1915,” in Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918 (New York: Scribner’s, 1925), 459.
19. “TR to Hugo Munsterberg, October 3, 1914,” in Morison, ed., Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. 8, 322–23, and “TR to Rudyard Kipling, November 4, 1914,” Ibid., 829–30.
20. “McAdoo to Wilson, August 21, 1915,” in Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 34: 275.
21. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 30: 248–55.
22. Woodrow Wilson, The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1925–1927), 1: 224–25.
23. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 32: 41.
24. Quoted in Tooze, The Deluge, 45.
25. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 33: 134.
26. “President Wilson’s Peace Note, December 18, 1916,” World War I Document Archive, Brigham Young University Library, last modified January 19, 2016, https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/President_Wilson%27s_Peace_Note,_December_18,_1916.
27. Tooze, The Deluge, 52.
28. Ibid., 51.
29. Woodrow Wilson speech to Congress, January 22, 1917, in Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 29.
30. Richard Striner, Woodrow Wilson and World War I: A Burden Too Great to Bear (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2014), 94.
31. Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 1162–63.
32. Striner, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 94.
33. John Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 332.
34. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 34: 41. Emphasis mine.
35. Tooze, The Deluge, 57.
36. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 51–52.
37. Tooze, The Deluge, 55.
38. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline (New York: International Publishers, 1969), 10–11.
39. Ibid., 86–87, 91.
CHAPTER 3. TOMMY AND VOLODYA
1. H. W. Brands, Woodrow Wilson, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (New York: Times Books, 2003).
2. Robert Conquest, V. I. Lenin (New York: Viking Press, 1972), 51.
3. Brands, Woodrow Wilson, 17.
4. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 21.
5. Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1998).
6. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 58: 270–71.
7.
Striner, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 10.
8. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 120.
9. August Heckscher II, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York: Scribner’s, 1991).
10. Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 13.
11. Ibid., 13; Brands, Woodrow Wilson, 11.
12. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 6.
13. Constantin de Grunwald, Tsar Nicholas I: The Life of an Absolute Monarch (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 5.
14. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 13.
15. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 54–55.
16. Ibid., 60.
17. Ibid., 77–78.
18. Ibid., 112.
19. Ibid., 126.
20. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 31.
21. V. I. Lenin, Essential Works of Lenin, Henry Christman, ed. (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1987), 74, 104, 105, 57.
22. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, 139.
23. W. Barksdale Maynard, Woodrow Wilson: Princeton to the Presidency (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 71.
24. Ibid., 66; Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, 145.
25. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, 199.
26. Striner, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 194.
27. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism, 14–19.
28. Ronald J. Pestritto, Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005).
29. Brands, Woodrow Wilson, 17; “Acceptance Speech, September 15, 1910,” in Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 21: 91–94.
30. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, 274.
31. “Inaugural Address, March 4, 1913,” Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 27: 151–52.
32. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 55–56.
33. Ibid., 39.
34. Rosa Luxemburg, Leninism or Marxism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961).
35. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 50.
36. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 186.
37. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 57.
38. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 237.
39. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 61.
40. Ibid., 64.
41. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 228.
42. Conquest, V. I. Lenin, 69.
CHAPTER 4. NEUTRALITY AT BAY
1. Admiral von Holtzendorff to Field Marshal von Hindenburg, Memo on Unrestricted Submarine Warfare, December 22, 1916, www.gwda.org/naval/holtzendorffmemo.htm.
2. Jarausch, Out of Ashes, 299.
3. Ibid., 300.
4. Ibid., 301; Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 129.
5. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 34: 41.
6. Striner, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 99.
7. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 87.
8. Ibid., 41: 108–12; Congressional Record, February 3, 1917.
9. “TR to HCL, February 12, 1917,” in Roosevelt and Lodge, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 494–95.
10. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 103.
11. Ibid., 138.
12. “Wednesday, January 31, 1917,” in Maurice de Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs, Brigham Young University Library, trans. F. A. Holt, O.B.E., http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/memoir/FrAmbRus/palTC.htm.
13. Ibid., “Monday, February 5, 1917.”
14. Ibid., “Thursday, February 8, 1917.”
15. Ibid., “Friday, February 9, 1917.”
16. Ibid., “Wednesday, February 21, 1917.”
17. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 145–46.
18. Ibid., 107.
19. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 280–82.
20. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 152.
21. Ibid., 156–57.
22. Ibid., 160.
23. “HCL to James Ford Rhodes, March 27, 1917,” in Henry Cabot Lodge, Papers of Henry Cabot Lodge, 1890, Massachusetts Historical Society.
CHAPTER 5. BREAK POINT
1. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 272.
2. “Tuesday, March 6, 1917,” in Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs.
3. Ibid.
4. Kerensky, Crucifixion of Liberty, 261.
5. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 275.
6. “Saturday, March 10, 1917,” in Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs.
7. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 276.
8. “Saturday, March 10, 1917,” in Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs.
9. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 281.
10. “Sunday, March 11, 1917,” in Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs.
11. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 280.
12. “Monday, March 12, 1917,” in Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs.
13. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 285.
14. Henry Cabot Lodge, “HCL to Roosevelt, March 2, 1917,” in Papers of Henry Cabot Lodge, 1890, Massachusetts Historical Society.
15. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 161.
16. Boghardt, The Zimmermann Telegram.
17. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 163.
18. Ibid., 164.
19. “HCL to TR, March 2, 1917,” in Roosevelt and Lodge, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 499–500.
20. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 164.
21. Boghardt, The Zimmermann Telegram, 175–76.
22. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, 432.
23. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 167.
24. Ibid., 168.
25. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, 436–37.
26. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 285.
27. Ibid., 291.
28. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 287.
29. Kerensky, Crucifixion of Liberty, 270.
30. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 310.
31. Ibid., 312.
32. Nicolas de Basily, Diplomat of Imperial Russia, 1903–1917 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973), 128.
33. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 317.
34. Ibid., 319.
35. Kerensky, Crucifixion of Liberty, 270.
36. Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 303.
37. Lenin, Collected Works, 23:282, 290–91.
38. Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (New York: Lightyear Press, 2000), 462.
CHAPTER 6. PRESIDENT WILSON GOES TO WAR; LENIN GOES TO THE FINLAND STATION
1. Norman Saul, War and Revolution: The United States and Russia (1914–1921) (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 97–98.
2. Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, 437.
3. Ibid.
4. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 528–29.
5. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 249.
6. Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin, 91.
7. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 256; Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin, 92.
8. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 41: 519–27.
9. Ibid., 41, 537–39.
10. Michel Winock, Clemenceau (Paris: Tempus Perrin, 2007), 418–19.
11. Link, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42: 140–48.
12. Ibid., 41, 483.
13. Striner, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 103.
14. “HCL to TR, April 4, 1917,” in Roosevelt and Lodge, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918, 506–7; Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography, 333–34.
15. Wilson, To the Finland Station, 464.
16. Rappaport, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, 288.
17. J. Alvarez Del Vayo, The Last Optimist (New York: Viking, 1950), 124.
18. Rappaport, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, 291.
19. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 257.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 258.
22. Rappaport, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, 294.
23. Wilson, To the Finland
Station, 469.
24. Z. A. B. Zeman, Germany and the Revolution in Russia, 1915–1918 (Bethesda, MD: Oxford University Press, 1958), 51.
25. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 261.
26. Ibid., 262.
27. Lenin, Collected Works, 24:19–26.
28. Service, Lenin: A Biography, 266.
CHAPTER 7. RUPTURES, MUTINIES, AND CONVOYS
1. Sir Edward Spears, Prelude to Victory (London: J. Cape, 1939), 41.
2. Rod Paschall, The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917–1918 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1989), 19.
3. Ibid.; John Keegan, The First World War (New York: Vintage, 2000), 322–23.
4. Taylor, The First World War, 108.
5. Paschall, The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917–1918, 38.
6. Keegan, The First World War, 325.
7. Alexander McKee, Vimy Ridge (London: Endeavour Press, 2016), 116.
8. Paschall, The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917–1918, 48.
9. Keegan, The First World War, 327.
10. Spears, Prelude to Victory, 489–90.
11. Keegan, The First World War, 314.
12. Spears, Prelude to Victory, 493.
13. Paschall, The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917–1918, 49.
14. Keegan, The First World War, 329.
15. Paschall, The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917–1918, 51.
16. Keegan, The First World War, 331.
17. Paschall, The Defeat of Imperial Germany, 1917–1918, 51.
18. Taylor, Lloyd George: Rise and Fall, 271–74.
19. Taylor, The First World War, 54.
20. “Alcohol and the First World War,” last modified August 2014, http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWalcohol.htm.
21. Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader, 48.
22. David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London: Odhams Press, 1943), 1223.
23. Tooze, The Deluge, 207.
24. Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 1234–35.
25. Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader, 50.
26. Herman, To Rule the Waves, 512.
27. Grigg, Lloyd George: War Leader, 50–51.
28. Burton J. Hendrick and William S. Sims, The Victory at Sea (London: J. Murray, 1920); Herman, To Rule the Waves, 513.
29. Naval Investigation, Hearings Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Naval Affairs, 66th Cong., 2nd sess., (1921).
30. Taylor, Lloyd George: Rise and Fall, 115.
31. Charles Seymour, ed., The Intimate Papers of Colonel House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928), 2: 129.