Review: Wilson’s War

Wilson’s War
Jim Powell

On the surface, this book is about how Woodrow Wilson’s many mistakes in World War I led to the conditions that beget World War II; historians have recognized, for years, that the two wars are essentially one, just with different technologies and different scales of outcome. The subtext of this book, however, is that arrogance combined with power always has unintended consequences. Woodrow Wilson, in the name of doing good, stepped beyond the bounds of his knowledge, and produced World War II, and even, to some degree, built the conditions that are still alive and causing war in the Middle East today. No-one can know the future, of course, but Mr. Powell argues persuasively that much of what we see today in the political sphere is a direct result of Woodrow Wilson’s assured arrogance —that he knew what was right and what was wrong, and how to solve the world’s problems.

The book begins by examining the roots of World War I, with details about the origins of the war I’d not read before. The author then discusses why the war was stalemated for three years, how no single army could gain an advantage over the other because of the superiority of the defensive measures available compared to the offensive measures available. Why the US enter the war to break the stalemate on the ground? The author answers this question in some detail, and then he discusses the reasons and methods Woodrow Wilson used to convince the provisional government of Russia to stay in the war beyond the point where they could afford to.

After describing the actual chain of events, the author works through the various consequences of the war, including the fall of the provisional government in Russia to the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Stalin, and the rise of Hitler in the aftermath. Both of these leaders played on the results of World War I; Stalin on the anti-war feelings among Russians, Hitler on the wounded pride of a country forced to repay huge amounts of money which it couldn’t ever hope to repay. Woodrow Wilson set Hitler’s rise up by making it impossible for Germany to ever repay the wartime damages, bowing to the wishes of France that Germany never be allowed to rise to the status of world power again. In the final section, the author discusses how the world can avoid another series of blunders of this sort.

The argument traced by Mr. Powell is well documented, although I think he shifted back and forth between the situation in Germany and the situation in Russia a little too often, particularly starting in the latter half of the book. The solution the author suggests, to have all world powers “mind their own business,” might, or might not, be effective in the real world. The real culprit in World Wars I and II is the overwhelming arrogance of people who think they can run the world “scientifically,” pushing this button to get that reaction, etc. Human hubris is the dark angel of the tale throughout.

Overall, a well argued book with some flaws. Recommended.