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The Illusion Of Victory: America In World War I

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This is a fascinating, entertaining, and truly eye-opening book. Like Thomas Fleming's earler The New Dealers' War: FDR and the War Within World War II, "The Illusion of Victory" is not only a great survey of events that shaped the modern world, but also a much-needed puncturing of one of the twentieth century's most over-inflated reputations (in the former case, FDR's, in this one Woodrow Wilson's) and a very timely reminder of how war overthrows all aims. Most of all, though, this is just extremely well-written history. It is definitely worth a read.

Today, more than three-quarters of a century after the end of the first world war, the myths of that conflict, of America's place in it, and Woodrow Wilson's role in keeping us out, and getting us in, are more pervasive than ever. Fleming reveals not only what a failure Wilson truly was, but how the idealism for which he is so celebrated today was not only sacrificed on the altar of international politicking and hatred, but was poisoned even by the president's own messiah complex and uncompromising partisanship. Fleming paints Wilson as a truly unpleasant figure. And while I can imagine that many readers might consider this an overly negative portrayal -- and accuse Fleming of abandoning the serene and godlike objectivity so many historians maintain (or simulate) -- Fleming has the facts to back up his conclusions. The energy with which Thomas Fleming gores sacred cows like Wilson and FDR is one of his more distinctive characteristics, and it's one I, for my part, particularly value.

As I said, there are many especially timely lessons contained in this book. One of the most striking concerns the remarkably vicious campaign against anti-war, or even insufficiently pro-war, elements in the United States, led by the government itself and its partisans. Whatever your opinions on the contemporary "USA PATRIOT Act," you'll have to admit that John Ashcroft has not even remotely approached the reign of terror carried out in the U.S. during world war one in the name of "100 percent Americanism." This discovery is just one of the many unsettling things readers may learn for the first time between these covers.

Another concerns the equally vicious propaganda campaign against Germany, begun in the U.S. by the British and later enthusiastically adopted by the U.S. government. As other observers have argued, enciting hatred seems to be essential to carrying out the war aims of mass democracies. It's not enough to say we disagree with an opposing government's policies; the enemy -- citizens as well as governments -- have to be painted as subhuman, tarred with accusations of unimaginable atrocities, and condemned to nothing less than absolute, crushing defeat. Fleming does an excellent job showing how French, British, and even American leaders participated in the stirring-up of this blood-hatred of the Germans, and incited the American people to give in to it as well. The corollary of this, of course, is that such hatred can't turn on a dime, and it poisoned attempts to craft a peace treaty that solved legitimate grievances and created a new and better world. Fleming reveals, with sometimes painful clarity, how hatred fueled the creation of a Versailles Treaty designed to destroy Germany economically, militarily, and politically for generations to come. We all know the monsters that this created.

On the whole, I find it hard to recommend this title *too* enthusiastically. I truly enjoyed the time I spent reading it, regretted having to put it down, and looked forward to when I'd be able to dive in again. It's hard to ask more from a book than that, and when a title is not only entertaining and educational, but challengingly "revisionist" and eye-opening too ... well, it doesn't get a whole lot better than that.

Mr. Fleming has admitted that he had to abandon the prejudices of a liberal New Jersey upbringing to arrive at an objective assessment of FDR (The New Dealers' War) and Wilson. He certainly has done that. Frequently he crosses over the line of purely objective historian into political and personal commentary, but his assessments all stand scrutiny. While "Illusion" contains some factual errors (note that Fiorello LaGuardia flew in Italy, not France) none are related to the major subject and none detract from Fleming's thesis: Woodrow Wilson's hypocrisy, arrogance, and hunger for power overcame his early idealism, leading to one of the greatest failures of any American administration. Fleming's description of the scheming and lies of Edith Galt Wilson and presidential doctor, Adm. Grayson, foretold comparable lies from FDR's naval aides in WW II. Mrs. Wilson emerges as the Shrew From Hell, reminiscent of the Clinton White House but without Hillary's softer, feminine side (!)

Fleming details Wilson's failure in every major aspect: his refusal, after months of immobility, to hand over to his vice president; persistently ignoring vital domestic issues such as massive strikes and riots, a winter coal shortage, and persecution of minorities, to say nothing of the Prohibition debate. Wilson's tolerance for the continuing postwar naval blockade of Germany ("the worst atrocity of the war" says Fleming) led to thousands of deaths by starvation--this from the president who vowed to conduct "a war without hate."

Yet after all that, WW still felt he deserved a third term and declined to endorse his own son in law for the nomination.

Well done--again--Tom Fleming.

One of the first things I look for in books of this genre are the references. Had Fleming been less diligent in annotation, I might agree with critics who found errors or disagreed with his analysis. However, I found it a stimulating read precisely because it presents an alternative point of view.

As it's the first printing, one hopes the factual errors will be corrected for later editions, however, the value of the book is in seeing the period as the prelude to a century of wars rather than the war to end war.

The wars within and without our borders evolved from this period. It was an ending and a beginning. Fleming makes his prejudices quite clear so that readers can take them for what they're worth. However, the book is very timely as we enter a new century defined, to date, by war.

Questions of succession and globalization as well as questions of homeland security are defined in a new way by seeing how they played out almost a century ago.

No one book should be considered the defining statement of such a tumultous time. But, I truly believe this work by Fleming is important to the dialogue.

The very idea of a president not respecting his own advisers, being out of the country for months at a time, and allowing his wife to have more control over his office than elected and appointed officials should be anathema in any age.

This is more than a discussion of Wilson and the war. It is an illustration of the politics of power and the reasons why our constitution defines things as it does. It also illustrates how the constitution can be sidestepped by egos over intellect.

Whether one agrees with Fleming or not, this is a timely and necessary discussion.

At a time when many Americans are revisiting the wisdom of the current war in Iraq, The Illusion of Victory provides a cautionary tale. When the United States joined the English and French in their fight against Imperial Germany in 1917, an overwhelming majority of the populace thought this was the right and honorable course of action.

Within a few years after the First World War ended, popular sentiment shifted dramatically and the majority of Americans believed that our participation in the European War was a mistake. Following Pearl Harbor and the Nazi declaration of war against the United States, the conventional wisdom shifted again and it was generally assumed that if fighting Hitler was right, going to war with the Kaiser must also have been correct.

The Illusion of Victory re-examines the justification for America's declaration of war against Germany in 1917 and the negotiation of the Versailles Peace Treaty following the armistice. Thomas Fleming's highly critical assessment of American policy with regard to both the war and the peace treaty is hardly novel. Walter Millis expounded these views in the best seller The Road to War in 1935. However, Fleming's book is a very readable account of the American experience in World War I. He is dismissive of the reasons we went to war. Foremost was Germany's resort to unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 to prevent ships of neutral countries from reaching England and France. As Senators Robert La Follette, Sr., George Norris, and a few others pointed out at the time, the United States had acquiesced in the equally illegal British blockade of German ports since 1914.

Fleming demonstrates utter contempt for President Woodrow Wilson, a figure whose conventionally good historical reputation is indeed difficult to understand. Wilson is most famous for his "Fourteen Points" speech and his crusade for American participation in the League of Nations. As Fleming points out, at Versailles in 1919, Wilson completely abandoned the Fourteen Points and agreed to British and French demands for a punitive peace.

During the War, Wilson repeatedly stated that we had no quarrel with the German people, only with their government. At Versailles, Wilson and the Allies forced the Kaiser's successors to pay reparations, acknowledge sole responsibility for the outbreak of the war and yield territory and its colonial possessions to its neighbors. These measures were regarded to be illegitimate by Germans of every political persuasion and sowed the seeds for World War II. Wilson also acquiesced in the continuation of the British naval blockade of Germany, which starved its civilian population for months after the armistice and the abdication of the Kaiser.

Fleming fails to fully acknowledge the domestic political pressures with which Woodrow Wilson had to contend. Beginning with the German sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, there was a very influential segment of American society passionately advocating war. The leader of this group was Theodore Roosevelt, the most notorious warmonger in this nation's history. The author appears to admire Roosevelt, who at least had the courage of his convictions. TR wanted to lead an American division to France and sent all four of his sons to fight. The youngest, Quentin Roosevelt, an aviator, was killed. Nevertheless, if Woodrow Wilson led the United States down the wrong path in going to war in 1917 and mishandled the Paris Peace Conference, Theodore Roosevelt and his allies bear as much responsibility for these errors as the President.

Wilson, due to his unwillingness for compromise, bears much responsibility for America's rejection of the League of Nations. However, it is highly unlikely that even with the United States as a member, that the League would have sent an adequate number of soldiers to oppose Hitler's early moves to nullify the Treaty of Versailles. Since Hitler's criticisms of the Treaty contained some half-truths, Americans would have been no more willing than the French and the English to contest German rearmament in the 1930s, remilitarization of the Rhineland and the absorption of Austria.

In The Illusion of Victory, Fleming is too easy on Imperial Germany, which was dominated by militarists, many of who believed war with France and Russia was inevitable and preferred it sooner than later. The harsh terms the Germans dictated to Russia at Brest-Litovsk in 1918 indicates that Germany would have been no more magnanimous than the Allies had they been victorious in the west. General Erich Ludendorff, who for all practical purposes ran Germany during the war, was only a slightly less despicable person than Hitler. As it turned out, had the Germans been more patient and not provoked the United States with submarine warfare, they most certainly would have defeated the French and British after the Russians collapsed. By bringing America into the War, the Kaiser's government clutched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Fleming covers the military aspects of American participation in World War I without much analysis. The biggest issue to arise was General John J. Pershing's insistence that American soldiers fight as an American army rather than as replacements in decimated French and British units. The Americans played a vital role in stopping the last German offensive and bringing about the German collapse when the Allies counterattacked. However, one wonders how history would judge General Pershing had the Germans broken through the Allied lines while he was resisting French and British pleas for reinforcements.

The Illusion of Victory is an easily digestible introduction to a war whose unintended consequences plague us to this very day. While the Nazis and the Soviet Union no longer threaten us, we are at this very moment dealing with the fallout from the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Iraq for hundreds of years.

The reviewer, Arthur J. Amchan, is the author of The Kaiser's Senator: Robert M. LaFollette's Alleged Disloyalty during World War I.

Thomas Fleming's study of how and why America got into World War I is indeed a polemic, and a scathing portrait of President Woodrow Wilson, both as political leader and as chief negotiator for the United States at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. While Fleming purports to relate a history of the times (and does a decent, if somewhat abbreviated job of it), he uses that history to paint a portrait of Wilson as a seriously flawed man who was totally unsuited for the presidency. Wilson was at heart an autocrat and a demagogue, and his ambition, arrogance, and complete inability to compromise did his, and America's, undoing. Fleming's book is not a balanced narrative by any means. He has a breezy, informal style that makes for easy reading. Fleming is sarcastic, and his obvious disdain for Wilson can be annoying; but knowing how things turned out, one can readily concur with Fleming's ultimate judgment on Wilson.

Mr. Fleming has written a very informative, readable, and witty book on the American experience during World War I. Mr. Fleming's book does not only contain a vast amount of factual material but presents this material about a very tragic period in a manner that is both readable and entertaining.

Mr. Fleming doe not hesitate to gore sacred cows, particularly of the Allied hagliographies. He names Douglas Haig as one of the worst generals in history. He demolishes Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, and Poincare. He exposes Summerhill for his leading more young Americans to their death just before the armistance. Then there is Lord Northcliffe, aka Alfred Harmsworth, who owned a lot of the bigger newspapers in Great Britain and exposed his readers to mounds of often fallacious hate propaganda.

Mr. Fleming takes a quite critical look at President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson had his ideals. But he was both arrogant and often removed from reality. He permitted great violations of civil liberties in America during the war period. His fanatical devotion to the League of Nations caused him to allow Lloyd George and Clemenceau to destroy any semblence of a just peace based on the Fourteen Points.

Mr. Fleming demonstrates that entering World War I was a colossal mistake. He narrates the opposing Senators as demonstrating that many other countries including Brazil were quite willing to live with the German U boat blockade. He exposes the ship Lustiana, whose sinking was a prime argument of the warmongers, was a munitions ship as much as a passenger ship. He also demonstrates Great Britain was also violated freedom of the seas by blockading Germany causing starvation in the country.

Also exposed is the food blockade of Germany after the signing of the armistance. Thus starvation continued in Germany. The greatest success of the blockade was to recruit kids who went hungry and helplessly saw their families starve as SS officers.

Of course Imperial Germany was far from perfect too. But this war was a vast waste and and devasting in its effects. The war enabled such monsters as Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin to rise. Again, U.S. entry was a big mistake.

If there was any hero in this period it was Robert La Follette, who saw through the nationalist rot and maintained human decency while others around descended to madness and pagan tribal rage. Fleming's book provides an important warning about ultra nationalism and state worship. This book should be read by all Americans.

One final quote (p. 39): "James Heflin of Alabama told Kitchen [Democratic House leader who voted against the war] that he should have resigned as house leader before he made such a statement - and then resigned his seat. John Lawson Burnett of Alabama said that Heflin ought to prove his patriotism first by enlisting in the army as a private."

for the personal shortcomings of Woodrow Wilson. He was full of personal righteousness & never could acknowledged it. Thomas Fleming is an excellent & prolific historian. I disagreed vigorously with his revisionist book on FDR's administration, The New Dealer's War. Please see my review of 7-11-02 on that book. But his The Illusion of Victory, an apt title, delivers. It's an important book even for a person with an above average understanding of World War I. Wilson was vain, ill-tempered, vindictive & inflexible. Very few people even liked him. With his god-like pretensions he of course did not recognize any failings in himself. In our history we have been blessed with extraordinary leadership in times of our worst peril such as Washington, Lincoln & FDR. With Wilson we were not well served in World War I.
Let's be clear. Without the United States help Britain & France could not win the war against Germany. They didn't have the will or the resources. Russia was knocked out of the war & Germany could devote its full attention to the western front. At best they could have gotten a cease-fire. If Wilson had been the true neutral he professed The United States to be before 1917 & remained so, he would have been able to broker a peace. But he didn't want that. So the U.S. was dragged into the war. He promptly lost the peace: for the United States. His mismanagement of the peace teaty assured the United States would not emerge as the premier world power. The U.S. was the only power that could have assured world peace by the fair treatment of the German people. Instead, what was guaranteed was that Germany would seek to avenge their World War I shame as soon as they could, which turned out to be about 20 years later.
Wilson was aided by sycophants in the White House, the most important of these being his loving & devoted wife, Edith. Anyone questioning the president's vision was gone. Unfortunately, Lloyd George of Britian & George Clemenceau of France were not his toadies. Neither were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge & the Republicans. In perhaps his biggest breach of diplomacy, Wilson failed to take even one Republican to Europe with him to paticpate in, or at least observe the peace being made. That slight alone assured that whatever Wilson brought home for congressional approval would be rejected in it's orginal form. America's entry into the League of Nations was doomed.
Most egregious of all was out of Wilson's control. That was the massive stoke he suffered shortly after his second trip to Europe & more that a year before the 1920 election. He never fully recovered was not fit to govern. All contact with the world was through his his wife. Edith became the de facto president. During this cover-up she handled the presidency as she thought her husband would, a ploy that seems impossible today. The trouble was, she was more like Wilson than he was. That is she was totally inflexible. A few minor changes by Congress to the treaty to get the United States into the League of Nations might have moved Wilson just to get it past. These were not allowed by Edith in the president's name. For this the course of history was changed. How large a change we will never know. Mr. Fleming covers all this & more including another swipe at FDR as assit. Secretary of the Navy. Agree or disagree it's great stuff & a great book.

Thomas Fleming has written an excellent disturbing history of American's experience in the First World War--and an equally excellent, disturbing biography of the president who "kept us out of war," and then brought us into that war, Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson is generally rated as among our best presidents. He was, as Fleming reveals, a disaster--as a war leader, as a politician, as a diplomat, even as a person. Should be required reading in any class on the time period.

It is astonishing that anyone could write something new and interesting about World War I after all of these years and all of the books already written about that sad, deadly, conflict. Thomas Fleming has written a book that is both new and interesting however like many of the recent crop of books about World War I it is more of an argument than a book of history. In that sense the book is well argued, but in the back of my mind as I read it, I wondered where the argument stopped and the facts began. A specialist will have to answer that. As it is, it is a well written, very interesting story of many of the military and political things that went wrong, and why they went wrong, before, during and after World War I.

It is a wonder how Mr. Fleming could tolerate spending so much time with someone, Woodrow Wilson, that he obviously dislikes and does not respect either as a leader or as a person. The acceptance of the still troubling idea of a nation state for almost every little group that demands it can be traced directly to Woodrow Wilson. Few ideas have caused as much misery as the principle of a right of self determination for all peoples. Leaders as disparate as Ho Chi Minh and Eamon de Valera both heeded this call and used it to justify acts that Wilson would never have approved of, nor even thought possibly related to what he thought that he had proposed in one of his Fourteen Points. When you add in Fleming's bad opinions of Wilson's second wife Edith, England's Lloyd George and France's Georges Clemenceau, there are really a lot of people not to like in this book.

One of the author's points is that it is important to understand how bad things can get when there is little or no objective information available for a democracy at war. How are the decision makers, the voters, to know what is the right thing to do if they are being force fed a constant torrent of lies. That the propaganda, particularly the British propaganda, during World War I took on a life of its own that still influences even supposedly objective histories of the war is another of the books points. According to the author there are many victories that little deserve that name and defeats that are still unknown. The case Fleming makes for each of these is persuasive, but it is not always history. You need to have some understanding of the history of World War I to fully appreciate the arguments that Fleming makes, but if you do this is a very good read. I will have to leave it to others to answer whether the book is good history, or just good argument.

I knew almost nothing about WWI besides the standard high school history textbook line that glorifies Wilson as a visionary leader. Clearly, as Thomas Fleming demonstrates conclusively - the evidence clearly shows Wilson out to be a demagogue, a myopic idealist and a fool.

I learned a great deal about the story of WWI from America's perspective, about how British propoganda fooled millions into supporting the war in Britain's favor and I gained a new perspective about Germany in WWI vs. Germany in WWII - the 2 are vastly disimilar.

At times I thought Fleming to be very biased, but I couldn't find any flaws in his reasoning or his use of sources. He backs it all up and makes a convincing revisionist case against Wilson.

Entertaining, well written and elucidating!