BOOK REVIEW: World War I was their finest hour

OPINION:

THE LESSONS OF WAR: THE EXPERIENCES OF SEVEN FUTURE LEADERS IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR

By William van der Kloot

The History Press/Trafalgar Square/IPG Books, $34.95, 240 pages

Reviewed by Martin Rubin

It has long been one of the great truisms of 20th-century historiography — and even of popular culture — that World War I was the crucible that inevitably forged a second global conflagration a mere two decades later. Countless historians and books have made this point on a grand scale, perhaps even proved beyond any reasonable doubt its veracity and validity.

But in this unusual book, William van der Kloot, distinguished professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, takes a different approach. Eschewing any overt links or conclusions from the case studies he presents, he allows readers to draw their own conclusions as to the effect “the war to end all wars” had on seven men caught up in its maelstrom, every one of them destined to govern his own nation later in the century.

And what a septet they are, all of course indubitably world-renowned figures, but some better known than others to the general reader. Perhaps because of their unique horribleness and the terrible effect they had on their own nations and the world, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are still pretty prominent on the radar screen. It has been a while, though, since Kemal Ataturk, Charles de Gaulle, Harold Macmillan or Herbert Hoover have been in the spotlight at center stage. As for the seventh man, Gustav Mannerheim, the founding father of modern Finland, his fame does not extend much these days beyond his own land.

That’s just what makes this book so interesting. Whether one is reading about well-trodden subjects such as Hitler’s bravery as a common soldier in World War I, or discovering lesser-known facts that Mr. de Gaulle was not merely a prisoner of war in Germany but made innumerable attempts to escape, or finding out that Mr. Mannerheim was a dedicated officer in the czarist army of Russia, longtime oppressor of Finland, this book throughout is highly informative and compelling.

It is interesting to learn that it was Hitler’s military experience that politicized him and that his refusal to rise beyond the lower echelons of noncommissioned officers in a way prefigured his amazing, meteoric rise to lead the German Reich. As his first position in government was right at the top as chancellor, clearly nothing less than immediate promotion to field marshall would have satisfied this megalomaniac corporal.

The strutting poseur Mussolini, known more for his oratory and for striking attitudes than as a man of action was quite a brave soldier fighting the Austrians and was wounded grievously. Of course, it is true that as one whose newspaper articles had been instrumental in pushing Italy to join the Allies in the first place (it had been aligned with the Central Powers), he felt enormous pressure to join up and fight. Still, there was physical courage in the man better known as a demagogue.

Both Mr. de Gaulle and Mr. Macmillan experienced firsthand the horrors of war on the Western Front and suffered very painful wounds. Each might have died as a result — and indeed, Mr. Macmillan only survived because his American mother removed him from military custody without proper authorization into a private facility, where surgery saved his life. Neither man became antiwar as a result of his experiences, but both achieved a camaraderie with their fellow men that their rather aloof and diffident personalities otherwise might not have allowed them to do, and this enhanced their leadership capabilities.

Of all those profiled here, Ataturk clearly was the most spectacularly successful soldier: He was responsible, among other victories, for decimating the Allied forces involved in the disastrous Dardanelles initiative at Gallipoli. Mr. Mannerheim, too, had his notable successes in the early years of the war as the Russian army inflicted defeats and heavy losses on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yet both men tasted the degradation of defeat, the Ottomans being on the losing side and Russia being taken out of the war by the Bolshevik Revolution.

Remarkably, both were able to create and lead nations born amid the chaos resulting from those setbacks: Turkey and Finland. The taste of victory one way or another was an invigorating experience for those six leaders who tasted it. Only Hitler plumbed the depths of disappointment and despair attendant on abject defeat. The bitterness of that experience probably was the formative experience of his already twisted life and psyche, with disastrous consequences for his own nation and the rest of the world.

Hoover was the only one of the subjects in “The Lessons of War” who did not serve as a combatant. He played a vital part in the years 1914-19, using his enormous drive and executive skills to help feed those who otherwise might have starved as a result of the war and of the blockade of Europe, which was one of its lesser-known and most destructive aspects.

His name became a byword for helping the needy, ironic in view of his failure as president of the United States to cope with the Great Depression. This book shows how even at the times of his great achievements during the war and its aftermath, his abrasive personality and poor communication skills were apparent.

Pithily summing up Hoover’s downfall, Mr. van der Kloot writes: “He was a wizard at directing great enterprises, using skills honed in the war, but inept as the leader of a democracy, because he was unable to rally a dispirited, fearful people.” It is Mr. Hoover’s tragedy that having been a light unto the dispirited, fearful Europeans as they were starving and dying of disease — one of the very few to emerge from the war as a genuine, universally admired hero — he should have failed his own stricken countrymen so miserably. If he had never become president, he would have gone down in history as one of the greatest Americans of the 20th century.

It might be said, in fact, that for all seven of these seven, World War I was their finest hour — even the despicable Hitler and Mussolini were brave soldiers, after all. Despite the different lessons these seven future leaders took away from their experiences in those years, the absolute centrality of that dreadful conflict to its century emerges unmistakably once again from the pages of this book.

Martin Rubin is a writer and critic in Pasadena, Calif.