Moment of Battle

Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire 3 hours of my radio show commercial-free every single day, become a member of Prager Utopia. You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives as well as the daily show prep. Subscribe at pragertopia.com. Hello, my friends. Dennis Prager here, and this is what we call on the show a history hour, because if you don't know what happened before, then you don't understand what's happening now. I think it's the most important subject that people can study to understand the world in which we live. And that's the reason for the dedication of these times and shows to some great work of history. As I consider this book, Moment of Battle: The 20 Clashes That Changed the World— yep, war changes the world indeed. The author is James Lacey. He's published quite a number of books. He's a defense analyst. He's written for Time, National Review, Foreign Affairs. He teaches at the Marine Corps War College. James Lacey, welcome to The Dennis Prager Show.

Um, thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Thank you very much. Uh, was it hard to choose the 20? I mean, you had to disqualify another 20 at least.

Um, we actually considered it, putting at the end of the book, but talked ourselves out of it list of another 100 battles to explain why we didn't put them in there.

Oh, you shouldn't have talked yourselves out of it. By the way, it is multiple. It's James Lacey and Williamson Murray. So I just want people to understand that James Lacey is not talking in the royal we.

Okay.

Oh, true enough. Thank you. Yeah, we sat down. We added pretty strict criteria, which we tried to maintain the entire time with reasonable success, I think, that we were looking for battles that, um, have created the world we live in, that we still feel the effects of those battles today. Uh, human society still feels the effects of those battles today.

Oh, that was one of the criteria, right? So, wow.

I think that's the biggest of the criteria. Now, within there, you could have a lot of, uh, a lot of disagreement and a lot of argument and As I look over the reviews that have come in, mostly from individuals, it's, you know, if you look at Amazon, you usually lose 1 star or 2 stars because it says, this is a great book, great, well-written book, easy to read. I sat through it in one sitting. I can't believe it doesn't have the Battle of Manzikert.

And then you star off. That's right. The book deserves 5 stars, but it didn't have my battle, so I'm giving it no stars.

That's right.

And I told the publisher that would happen, and the publisher said, No, no, people don't do that. They'll just judge the book. You just don't know historians, professional or amateur. If their favorite battle isn't on my list or on the list of—

Then forget it. Then you're disqualified.

Yeah, I'm too dumb to know it's important or I may not have heard of it.

Now, let me just, before getting into individual wars or battles, if you will, I guess they are battles in the midst of given war. I don't know if people quite appreciate, and you might want to reflect on this, I don't think anything has changed history more than war.

I think we have to— I think we agree on that. I mean, that's basically what we start the introduction with. There's a, there's a massive school of historians, and I, you know, and it There's some validity to their argument, but they've really pushed the field of history into some areas that they shouldn't have gone in. The Annals School.

The what school? I'm sorry?

Annals, A-N-N-A-L-E-S. And some of the history these guys have written is absolutely brilliant. It does set a gigantic context for the great flows of history, and I always enjoy reading it. But to a great degree, they have decided that individual wars or individual battles or even that, you know, individual people have no great effect or have— in some cases they say have no effect.

Oh, well, that's just absurd. I'm sorry, I hate to call it that because I'm sure they're bright, but I, I've— this notion, I mean, you know, just to give something that people do know about, I, I don't believe that had there— without a Hitler, I don't think there would have been a Holocaust. Just to give an example of what one person can do.

Yeah, I mean, could another person just as evil have stepped up? And some of that is the historical time and the thing, because at the same time you have Hitler starting the war and massacring tens of millions of people. You have Stalin literally one country over, only Poland intervening, killing 25 million of his own people by starvation.

That's right.

Yes.

And less than a generation later, you have a guy in China now doing exactly that.

60 million.

Yes.

So, you know, there's something to say for the big scheme of history, but to say that an individual, for better or worse, has no effect.

No, no, okay, we won't even go there because it's absurd. All right, so let's talk about some of your battles. Okay. And you don't have to have an answer to this, but If you were to choose one to begin with to explain how a war or a battle that happened well before we were born has affected us, which of your 20 would you immediately choose?

I mean, I always go back to the first one, the Battle of Marathon. 10,000 Athenians against probably, as the fewest number is probably 30,000 Persians and could be up to double that. And they won. They won a tremendous victory. The Persians came back 10 years later and tried again, but the confidence that the Greeks got from the Battle of Marathon was decisive in them fighting off the Persians 10 years later when Xerxes arrived. If the Greeks had lost at Marathon, there would be no Western civilization. The only place that the ideas of democracy free and open markets, most of what we take for granted in Western civilization would have been snuffed out by a tyrannical Persian Empire 2,500 years ago. On the other, you know, and people, there is a number of historians who say, well, wait a minute, Socrates would have been born anyway, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the great playwrights would have all been born, you know, Greek playwrights would have all been born. I said, yeah, but they would not have accomplish much under a tyrannical despotic empire. You know, they needed the environment of a free and open Greek polis to reach their potential.

How did they win at Marathon?

It's actually one of the most amazing feats of all time. They charged 10,000, you know, this is what Victor Davis Hanson calls the beginning of the Western way of war, which historians love to fight about whether it exists or not. The Persians were probably moving, so some of their troops were on ship, and the Athenians couldn't let them get on ships, and they could descend on Greece at any point they wanted, so they had to attack. They were waiting for the Spartans to arrive, and the Spartans were marching hard to their rescue. They actually arrived early the next morning after the battle, but they didn't have the time or the luxury to wait, so 10,000 Athenians lined shield to shield, abreast, charged into what was probably 30,000 Persian infantry. A lot of debate on whether Persian cavalry was there, cavalry, and broke the Persian line. It was the beginning of a long series of victories of heavily armed, armored Greek soldiers against light Persian soldiers.

Were they similarly armored, the two sides?

No.

Persians— the Persians were a very warlike race, but most of their battles were against Scythian nomads or on the open plains of Anatolia and the Asian steppes. So they didn't have heavily armored infantry, and they never came up with a solution to create such infantry. Well, you know, the only— the closest they could come was hiring Greek mercenaries. So when the phalanx actually got through the arrow storm, they had a lot of archers, and smashed into the Persian front line.

They were—

it was wooden shields encased in iron with, you know, metal-encased soldiers hitting guys wearing nothing but their tunics and, uh, and wicker.

So I thought there was a trick here to their victory when you're outnumbered 3 to 1 and you don't exactly have artillery. So, okay, so why did Persia even invade Greece? Simply because it was there?

I guess, you know, we're never going to come to it. You know, we have the answer that Herodotus left us. Uh, the Greeks were already on the, what we would call the west coast of Turkey, Ionia, the Anatolian mainland. There was a series of Greek cities already there, uh, all, almost all of them colonies or former colonies or attached to Athens in some way. And Persia, the Persian Empire, is sweeping westward conquered all of those cities before they hit the Aegean. Those cities revolted, the Great Ionian Revolt. It took the Persians 5 years to crush it, but Athens sent a lot of help, small army, money, a lot of moral support. And Darius, the Persian emperor, supposedly had one of his men remind him every day, don't forget what the Athenians did to us.

Okay, hold on there. Alright, we're talking about the book Moment of Battle: The 20 Clashes That Changed the World, and they did change the world. That's the whole point. That's the reason for the whole History Hour idea. We'll go— we'll alternate modern, medieval, and ancient. I'm speaking to James Lacey. The book Moment of Battle is up at DennisPrager.com. Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here, and this is one of the periodic history hours that we have on the show, because the more you know about history, the more you know about the present. It is as simple as that. And there are some terrific historians writing these days. One of them is James Lacey, and he and his co-author have written Moment of Battle: The 20 Clashes That Changed the World. And he makes very good argument for these 20 specific battles He teaches at the Marine Corps War College. We're talking about the one that saved Western civilization, took place in 490 BC. That's Greece defeating, or the Athenians defeating, the Persians. All right, so let's move on in time here, uh, and you'll give me a, like, a, a one-paragraph synopsis, and then we'll stop at a few for greater detail. The next one you have is Alexander creates— it's Alexander the Great creates a new world, 311 BC. Guagamela, what's that?

Guagamela, in most of the books written prior to this generation, it was usually called Arabella for some reason. Well, I know the reason, but it was Napoleon— Napoleon— it was Alexander's greatest battle, greatest victory, and it finally crushed the Persian Empire. He may have been outnumbered as much as 10 to 1. Significantly outnumbered. Once again, the Persians did not come up with an answer to the phalanx of solidly cased heavy infantry coming at them. Alexander had added something new to the thing.

Where did this take place?

Um, north Iraq, in the Kirkuk region.

What we would call northern Iraq today.

Yes.

Did the Greeks ever go as far as Persia?

Yes, they conquered all of Persia. Alexander, after this battle, marched across Persia, now Iran, finally ending his campaigns inside of northern India or Pakistan. His last battle was on the Indus River. After that, his troops said, that's it, we're not conquering anymore, let's go home.

Did he conquer the most in history, or was that Genghis Khan?

In terms of square miles, population, I think Genghis Khan has to— hold the record, and the Khan followers that came after him, marching all the way from the Pacific, Mongolia, China, into Central Europe, at least as far as the Hungarian Plain. I've always been one of those historians who said that's about as far as he could have gotten. The big thing has always been Genghis Khan. We got lucky that the Khan died and their armies returned, or they'd have just swept across Western Europe. Most people think of the Mongol Horde some massive force. It probably was less than 200,000 troops, and they were about to run out of places to feed their horses. The Hungarian Plains, the last place where you could feed that many horses in one spot. And they're about to run into countries where there's a castle every 10 yards, just about, with 12 knights in each castle fighting to the death. They would have run out of Mongols before they got halfway across Germany. Um, but you know, it's one of the great what-ifs of history, don't we?

Right.

All right, so that's Alexander. Next one you have Zama in 202 BC. What's that?

Zama was, uh, the final battle of the Second Punic War. The, uh, you know, Creces first—

tell us what the Punic Wars were.

Okay, yeah, the wars that decided the who was going to be the great power of the Roman, uh, of the Mediterranean between Rome and Carthage. They fought 3 wars, most— first 2 bloody, long, hard fights. The second of those wars was the biggest, probably the biggest, longest, most hard-fought, and that's where you have the famous Hannibal, who actually marched up and down the Italian— good portion of the Italian peninsula for 16 years until Rome finally found a general who can match him. But that was Scipio, and Scipio was probably a lowly-ranking officer of the Roman army at 3 of Hannibal's greatest victories and Roman defeats, so he learned a lot at the foot of the master there. And then he went to Spain. Uh, took Spain from the Carthaginians, put it into the Roman camp with all the troops they could recruit.

What was the ethnicity of the Carthaginians? That's, that's Tunisia, right?

It is Tunisia. Um, Carthaginians typically did not fight themselves. I mean, there was typical Carthaginian officers, Carthaginian leadership, but their armies were mostly mercenary armies. I would say by the time Hannibal left Italy to return to North Africa to fight the Battle of Zama, A good— virtually none of his army was Carthaginian. As a matter of fact, it was notable in Livy and Polybius, the two Roman historians.

So who was trying to take over who? Carthage Rome or Rome Carthage?

Um, that's a good question. This is the two great powers of the ancient world running into each other. One might say it was inevitable. Um, you know, only one could survive. Uh, Rome was probably the more expansionary power. It took Sicily away from from Carthage in the First Punic War. Carthage then started expanding its empire in Spain. Hannibal, his father was a great Carthaginian general. The story goes that he took— Hamilcar, Hannibal's father, took his three sons and made them swear at an altar to always be mortal enemies of Rome. So—

When you defeated— when one defeated the other, Did they take prisoners or just kill everybody, or was it slavery or death? Was that what it was?

Um, yeah, it's a much more brutal age.

Yes.

It wasn't always brutal. After the Battle of Zama, Scipio probably had killed 20,000, captured 20,000. Now, a certain portion of that was probably slaves, but he was very lenient on Carthage. You know, they forced him to give a lot of money, but that was basically it. Now, in the Third Punic War, a generation later, when Carthage was beginning to recoup its power, when the Romans finally broke through the gates, they killed every male above the age of 13 and 14, sold all the women and children into slavery, razed the walls, wrecked every building, and then planted salt in the ground so nothing could ever grow there. And that's why we have the term today, a Carthaginian peace. When you went to war against Rome, you were making a serious bet about your future.

They were particularly brutal.

You know, it was a brutal age and they didn't have the laws or the ethics. You know, it's hard to apply our ethical stances to them. But the Romans were brutal even for the period. I mean, the end of a Roman battlefield would horrify even their enemies. The Romans would go around eviscerating the bodies and throwing intestines around. They did this. Trying to understand the Romans on their own terms, I think, is about as difficult for us as if we tried to understand aliens landed on the planet tomorrow. They were different. I mean, the Romans is one of the few societies that were able to look at their enemy as prey. They didn't see them as human beings. They did. When you read about Roman battles and the viciousness and how Rome kept coming at them no matter how, even if they're defeated, they kept coming and For a civilized society, it's absolutely incredible how vicious and bloodthirsty the Romans are on numerous occasions.

Well, these are some of the insights you get from Moment of Battle. We're talking about the 20 great battles that changed the world on this History Hour on the Dennis Prager Show, which I periodically broadcast because if you know history, you know the present. You don't know history, you can't understand the president. Moment of Battle by James Lacey and Williamson Murray. James Lacey, my guest. Book up at DennisPrager.com. Dennis Prager here, this History Hour. Periodically we do this on some new book on history because it's so important to know what's happened in the world, and it's a great learning experience for me too. Moment of Battle: The 20 Clashes That Changed the World. James Lacey, one of the two authors, is on with me. He teaches at the Marine Corps War College. We were talking about the Romans and the way they did battle and how horrible it was. So if you were a male, you were just, uh, killed, and if you were a 13-year-old child or younger or a female, you were sent into slavery. I, I would assume that a lot of women committed suicide rather than be captured by the Romans. Do you have any idea if that's true?

Um, I don't know. I don't— I've, I've read a lot of Roman history and it's never come up as a topic.

Yeah, well, the reason I raise it is that this is what— are you familiar with the, with Masada? M-A-S-A-D-A?

Yes.

Because the Jews there, uh, held off the Romans for a certain period of time and then they all killed themselves rather than be captured by the Romans.

This, in, in the history, when you read in the ancient history, this seems like a particularly Jewish thing to do. Um, no slight intended on by any means. I mean, the greatest Jewish historian we have of that period, Josephus, uh, was a, was a commander fighting the Romans, and he got, his force got trapped, and they all committed suicide too, except Josephus. I think maybe one other that were supposed to kill each other. I forget the exact thing. This would happen often, but you know, Masada is one of those battles that isn't understood today. It had a different meaning during the Roman era. The Romans planted an entire legion, you know, they only had 30 of those on average, to put an entire legion in the middle of nowhere to kill 150 people. Masada is looked at today as one of these great heroic stands, sort of like our that, you know, the Alamo. At the time, it told the rest of the, rest of the ancient world that if you offended Rome, they would take, do what, you know, send whatever troops were necessary and take whatever time, over a year getting up there, to kill you. This was a public announcement from the Roman Empire to the rest of the world. If you offend us, if you rebel, there is nothing we won't do to, to kill you. And that's how the rest of the world recognize it. That's why there was so few revolts against Rome up until the very, you know, the very end.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. All right, let's go on with it to the next battle. Right, in the year 9, the Teutoburger Wald. Wald is a forest. So what is the Teutoburger Wald?

Um, this is the battle that stopped Rome. Um, the 3 legions wiped out in the middle of the German forest. Rome had fought to pacify Germany, and it was beginning the process of assimilating it into the Roman Empire when a great rebellion broke out, caught the Romans totally by surprise. 3 of their 30 legions were annihilated almost to a man.

By Germanic tribes?

By Germanic tribes. Now, Rome came back and punished the Germans. It's famous for, in schoolboy history, Augustus walked around for weeks unshaven, without getting his hair cut, periodically yelling, "Varsus, varsus," the Roman commander, "Give me back my legions." Made quite an impact. It was the first great Roman army lost in a long time. Carrhae with Crassus against the Parthians was the last one prior to that, and that was 2 or more generations earlier. Rome looked at Germany and said, you know what, there's no serious agriculture there, there's no industry, there's no great trade routes, we're just gonna stop here on the Rhine River and on the Danube and that's it. Periodically Rome would send troops in to punish the Germans, but it created, because Rome stopped on the Rhine and the Danube, the Teuton-Latin divide that still separates Europe. The Germanic nations on one side and the Latin Romance nations— Spain, France.

What about Roman Britain? So that means that they did go west of the Rhine?

Well, that's in the northwest.

That's—

okay, so that doesn't count because it's not on the continent?

Yeah.

Okay, that's fine, that's fine. I just wanted to understand.

Oh, not west of the Rhine, I'm sorry, east of the Rhine. They marched, you know, France is west of the Rhine. Did I say—

yes, no, no, no, I understand. I'm just saying there was one country that was Romanized, as far as I know, that was Britain. So, but that's the north and it's not on the continent. So this is the division of the continent, Teuton and Roman. Gotcha. All right, we're going to continue. It's a tremendous lesson in history. I'm just trying to soak in every name and every date here. Moment of Battle: The 20 Clashes That Changed the World. The History Hour, Dennis Prager with James Lacey, author of Moment of Battle.

1000 BC, King David. 621 BC, rise of Greek.

44 BC, Julius Caesar named.

30 AD, Jesus is crucified. 1492, Christopher Columbus. 1533, England's Henry VIII 1776, America declares its independence.

1789, the French Revolution.

1865, Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.

1903, the Wright Brothers fly the first airplane. 1905, Albert Einstein publishes the theory of relativity.

1929, the New York Stock Market crashes. 1939, Germany invades Poland.

1945, the United States drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. 1969, the Apollo 11 lands on the moon.

1981, IBM introduces the personal computer. 1982, the Berlin Wall comes down. 2001, Islamic terrorists attack the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon. In Washington, D.C. Hello everybody, Dennis Prager here, and this is a History Hour. Periodically I bring to you some great new work of history because there's no more important subject in understanding the world. And this one is about a subject that I have been mesmerized by my entire life. I consider the answer, however, to be analogous to why did God invent the mosquito. I have, I have a series of questions that I know that there probably isn't an answer to. So if anybody wrote a book, why mosquitoes are beneficial, I would be fascinated. Likewise, why did World War I occur? That, uh, there are 25,000 books and articles on that subject. There are probably 10 on why did World War II occur, because everybody knows why World War II occurred, so it's not an issue. World War I, though, which created World War II, which created Nazism, which created communism, which created fascism— everything horrible that you could imagine more or less derives from World War I. So I have been enthralled by it. There is a new book by Christopher Clark, who is a professor of modern European history at Cambridge. Of course in the UK, has written The Sleepwalkers. What a great title, by the way. They sleepwalked right into a world conflagration. How Europe Went to War in 1914, Christopher Clark, and it is published by Harper. It is of course up at DennisPrager.com. Professor Clark, welcome to The Dennis Prager Show.

Hello Dennis, I'm delighted to join you.

Thank you. I, I just want to say that I had mentioned to you, uh, right before going on air what I have said on air a number of times. Britain produces a disproportionate number of great historians, and I have them on the show, and everyone, though this will mean nothing to you, hits a home run. I thought I would deliberately use a perfectly irrelevant American metaphor.

I have a rough idea what a home run is.

Yeah, that's it. Like, I have a rough idea what something in cricket is. Very rough, I might add. I have no idea what they're doing there. That, I must say, is up there with the origins of World War I. To me, cricket and the origins of World War I are analogously complex. Now you, sir, you have courage, because to write on this subject takes a certain amount of what we say here, chutzpah. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think it takes some chutzpah. I have to admit that. I think it has to be the most— the crisis that produced this war in 1914, I think, is possibly the most complex political event of modern times. It may even be the most complex political event of all times. It is just extremely difficult to unravel. So yes, you need a dose of chutzpah to even to even begin doing this.

So what prompted you? Did you feel that essentially all the major works prior to yours had failed in some way? No, no, I mean that very sincerely. I, I guess all of us who write books must think that at some point.

Well, it's, it's not so much that, because I mean, this, this is, it's an extraordinary debate. You know, the, the history of writing on the outbreak of the First World War is is unique in the history of historiography, in the history of historical writing. It's a 100-year-old debate. It started even before the World War began. I mean, people started accusing each other of starting a war or being about to start a war even before the first shots were fired. So this debate is older than the war itself, and it's about to enter its— to end, you know, its first century, and it shows no signs of drying up. But the problem with this debate is not that the works have been— I mean, I think there have been many wonderful works of history. It's engaged some of the best historical minds, this question, with good reason. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that it was still worth, despite all that burden of accumulated scholarship, it was still worth thinking again about this crisis, because it seemed to me that from the perspective of 2013, from the perspective of the 21st century, the crisis looks different from the way it did even 20 or 30 years ago, certainly very different from the way it looked when I was at school. We're in such a different world now. We're in a world much more like the world of 1914. Than we were before. If you think about the fact we're only just coming to terms with the end of the Cold War, we're now in a world which is no longer disciplined by the standoff between two hyperpowers, between two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States. Instead, we have a polycentric world with many threats, with many regional conflicts, with rising powers and empires that may feel they're in decline. I won't say which empire I'm thinking of, but there is such a thing as an empire that fears it may may be in decline. We have rising powers, just as one did in 1914. And we— and, and so in many ways, the world is complex and unpredictable now in a way that it was in 1914. And so the crisis, in a weird paradoxical way, the crisis of 1914 is closer to us now than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

The general assessment, the, the one I grew up with and probably you grew up with Was that— was the one that was stated at the— during and the end of the war prompted the Treaty of Versailles, and that is that Germany was largely at fault. Your take is, and it's a very powerful phrase, that this was a tragedy, World War I, rather than a crime. So you don't think that there is one primary criminal, is that correct?

That's absolutely right. I mean, I too, like you, I was brought up on exactly that story, that there was one bad apple state, there was one bad state that wanted to start a fight, and, uh, and this fight was forced on everybody else by the Germans, by Germany. Um, and I remember a teacher telling us, if you want, if you want to, if you do an exam question on the outbreak of the First World War, just remember the 5 German provocations. Just, just, just list the 5 bad things the Germans did: building a huge navy, um, challenging the French over Morocco, issuing, um, a letter of support to the Austrians, uh, after the assassinations Sarajevo, a sort of list of German provocations. And that was, in those days, that was how most, most school teachers and most historians explained the war. It was caused by one state. But even as a schoolboy, that didn't really make sense to me. I mean, one of the, one of the key problems in the, in the narrative of how this war broke out is the fact that the first state to mobilize its forces is not Germany but Russia. And that already sort of created a question mark at the back of my head, you know. How could one reconcile that fact with the idea of German sole culpability? And the more closely I looked at the crisis that brought this war about, at the whole background to the war, the more it seemed to me that all of the great powers, to differing degrees, but certainly Germany, France, Russia, Austria, and to a lesser extent Italy, they were all implicated in this process. This was a genuinely interactive breakdown. It was, if you like, a continental crisis. This was Europe committing suicide. It wasn't a story about how an otherwise peaceful scene was disturbed by the arrival of a psychopathic new power.

The role of Russia becomes very clear. Isn't— am I mistaken that Barbara Tuchman, the famous American historian, in The Guns of August does not date Russian mobilization correctly?

Well, that is true, but actually I'm a great admirer of Tuchman's book. I think it's a fantastic—

oh, that's good to know. That is so— I'm happy to hear that. No, I am happy to hear that because I have great admiration for her writing. She was not an academician, but she was a great historian. Go ahead.

She was a great historian, absolutely, for exactly— and she really knew how to write, which all historians should know how to write, and quite a few do. Let's just leave it at that. But the point is that, yeah, what Barbara Tuchman did was to, you know, evoke a world of which seemed— it was a kind of— her book is a kind of period drama. It's full of exotic uniforms. And beautiful scenery and elaborate dinners and Lord Salisbury riding to the House of Commons on a tricycle being pushed by his butler James and this kind of thing. And so she conjures up the image of a world which is bygone, a world of a bygone age, whereas what I was trying to do in my book was to bring out the modernity of this crisis. It's very raw and very modern.

Let me go back to Russia for a moment.

Oh yes, Russia. Yes, exactly. Okay, sorry.

No, no, that's quite all right. Well, let me just be exact here. I don't understand why Russia wasn't blamed more, given that it mobilized. And you write in your book that it was the, the primary, the country primarily responsible for a European arms race beginning in the first decade of the 20th century.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, I think the, the chief reason for this, for Russia's getting off any, any kind of charge is simply that they were on our side. We were fighting with them.

All right, we'll continue in a moment. Let me reintroduce Christopher Clark, teaches history at Cambridge University in the UK. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, a History Hour on the Dennis Prager Show. Hi everybody, Dennis Prager, and this is a History History Hour, periodically broadcast on my show because history explains much, if not everything, but more than any other single thing about how we are, how we have gotten where we are. Uh, no, uh, nothing is more important than World War I because it created the horrors of the 20th century, or at least led to them. The origins of World War I may be the most complex subject we have in history. New book on this is The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Christopher Clark is the author. He is a professor of modern European history at the University of Cambridge in the UK, and he does not blame any single country And the book is pretty compelling in that way. And I was certainly led to believe, and so many others were, that Germany was to be blamed. Russia is a big problem in— we were talking about Russia and its— it was— it mobilized troops before Germany did, leading to the war, and it had precipitated an arms race So why— so you say Russia was not given the blame it deserved because we fought alongside them in World War I, we being, uh, the— in the United States, for example?

Yeah, I mean, I think history is written by the winners.

Yes, no, no, that's fair. Yes, but, but, uh, what— so what prompted the United States to join a war where there were no villains?

Well, actually, the predominant view in the United States was exactly that. That's what the real question is. Why did the United States stay out of the war? And the reason was exactly the one you've given, that the predominant view in Washington was, well, there aren't really any villains in this war. This is a nasty European tribal war. They've been at this for centuries. It's their nasty secret diplomacy, their ancien régime politics. They're not true democracies. They're not like the United States. That's why they're having this awful war and we shouldn't pick sides. This is one of the— and of course that was a view with a lot to be said for it. The reasons for America's entry into the war, well, that's of course in itself a very complex issue and which I don't discuss in the book, but they have much more to do with the gradual drift of the White House towards a pro-Entente position, and of course led by President Woodrow Wilson, and also the provocation offered by the Germans in deciding to opt for unlimited submarine warfare, which inevitably caused a massive of damage to, to American shipping and also loss of American lives on the, on the high seas. And so America ended up going into war in the name of freedom of the seas on the side of the Entente.

But what about Germany's actions in Belgium, for example? Didn't Germany make a bad name for itself, or is that propaganda?

No, it did make a bad name for itself. The Germans behaved very badly in Belgium. They, they killed approximately, according to an excellent assessment of these atrocities by the historians Kramer and Horne of the University of Dublin, they made They killed about 6,000 citizens in a series of atrocious crimes. Of course, the Russians also committed crimes in East Prussia and Eastern Germany when they broke in, when they invaded Eastern Germany in 1914. The Austrians also committed atrocities in Serbia. That early phase of the war—

And the Serbians had committed atrocities in Albania.

Well, indeed, that's true as well. And so this is— it was— the war had that sort of nastiness, especially in the, in the first phase. But that's not the reason why, um, the war broke out. That's of course a consequence of the war's breaking out, not a cause. And it wasn't the reason why Britain entered the war, although it was the reason why the British public were told Britain ought to enter.

Okay, so this is exactly what I want to do with you for the— because, I mean, I wish we had many hours. We have an hour, so I'm going to go So, uh, country by country of the major protagonists, tell me what they did and why they went into the war. All right, let's begin with Britain.

Well, Britain in a sense comes last because Britain is the last of the great powers to join this, this awful conflagration. Um, why do they join it? Well, um, by the time they decide to join us on the 3rd of August, um, The war is already underway, so it's a question of what you do with the war that's already happening. And when that prospect faced the British government, the reasoning that was made by Edward Grey, Sir Edward Grey, the then Foreign Secretary, the Foreign Minister effectively, Minister of Foreign Affairs, his reasoning was, if we stand aside and the Entente, and the French and the Russians win, That will be a very lonely world for us, right? The French will no longer be our friends. India will be exposed to possible Russian invasion through Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the areas that are now known as Pakistan. And we'll be very exposed on our imperial periphery. We'll probably lose our empire. It will be a nasty future for us. If, on the other hand, the Germans and the Austrians win, well, the Germans will effectively secure a kind of hegemony, a sort of dominance on the continent. That won't be much fun for us either. So the, the argument was we must join a— take a side, and the side we should take is that of the Entente.

The Entente is Russia, France, and—

Russia and France, right?

And the Entente was actually the name given to the relationship between Britain and France, but they decided to side with France and Russia for complicated reasons, one, one of which was that they thought by joining with France and Russia they could prevent, prevent Russia from threatening the British Empire on its most vulnerable periphery.

Did they give more moral reasons, or, or that wasn't necessary in those days?

Moral reasons?

Yes.

Well, you always need a moral reason to, to enter into war, and, um, the moral reason they gave was, was that they had an obligation to France, an obligation to help France, because France was Britain's friend. That was the meaning of the—

All right, why was France in the war?

France was in the war because France had committed and made a commitment to Russia, which starts to sort of harden up from 1912 onwards, in which they had said, if you feel the need to attack Austria-Hungary because of a sort of Balkan quarrel between Serbia and Austria, then we will stand by you. We will honor our obligations as allies. Uh, we will— in other words, the French had allowed themselves to be sucked into a Balkan quarrel involving Russia, which seemed completely irrelevant to France. Exactly. And until 1912, the French had repeatedly warned the Russians, don't count on us if you get involved in the Balkans. That all changed engages in 1912 partly because the French are worried that if they don't, um, support Russia in the Balkans, there will never be in the future a conflict in which Russia and France will fight together. They will— at some future point, they will have to face the Germans on their own. That was the French fear, and they didn't trust the British to come to their aid. So in order to counter their uncertainty about British support, because the, the messages—

and because they— and because they were even then afraid of Germany?

The French were afraid of Germany. I mean, they'd been— the French relationship with Germany was poisoned by the War of 1870. Ever since the formation of the German Empire, the French had refused to come to any kind of terms with Germany because Germany had taken from them these two provinces.

I'm laughing only because I want— now my listeners better understand perhaps why we both feel This is the most complex subject in history, literally in history, but it is beyond riveting and unbelievably important. What the lessons are, I would like to ask the professor as well. The book is The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, Christopher Clark, up at DennisPrager.com. We resume momentarily. Dennis Prager here. A History Hour periodically broadcasts some major new work of history. This one is The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. Professor Christopher Clark teaches modern European history at Cambridge University in the UK, and we're going country by country to try to make this as simple, not simplistic, as possible. It's a very difficult endeavor to simplify the roots of World War I, but we spoke about France, we spoke about, uh, we spoke about Britain, and now we're speaking about France. So let me review here so I can understand. So France is Russia's ally because if France does not ally itself with Russia, it exposes itself to Germany. Germany.

Exactly.

And it fears Germany because of prior experience and because of the increasing growth and strength of Germany.

Absolutely. I mean, the background to all this is Germany's titanic economic growth. I mean, the German economy is growing at a staggering rate, and Germany is, is pulling past almost everybody else. It's now the second largest industrial producer after the United States. It's, um, you know, which itself has pulled ahead, leaving Britain into, in third place. So according to all the contemporary, conventional contemporary indices of growth and industrial power, Germany is really experiencing a titanic age of expansion. And people are— they're frightened by that. Just as today when people look at China, they see this dizzying economic growth of China, they find that unsettling. Exactly— it was exactly like that in the years before 1914.

Okay. Now, Russia— which is, uh, well, let me ask you this: why would you not say that Russia was the villain?

Well, um, for several reasons. The first is that, um, I don't really think that the, the First World War wasn't caused by the action of any single power. Um, so I mean, the Russians— if we pin it all on Russian mobilization and say it's because the Russians mobilized on the first, that the First World War came about, well, then you'd have to ask, well, why did they mobilize? They mobilized because the Austrians intended to carry out a punitive military strike against Serbia. So then you have to ask, well, why did the Austrians plan to do that? Well, that's because, you know, two assassinations had occurred in Sarajevo of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. These had been carried out by a terror squad which was sort of steered from Belgrade, but not necessarily by the Serbian government as such, but had, you know, powerful backers within the Serbian state structure. Is that a good enough reason? So the point is, as soon as you identify one particular actions.

Right.

There are other actions.

Yeah, but the Russians—

why not blame these other people?

So, but the Russian support for the Serbs, and I have to talk to you about that because it's riveting, the chapters on the Serbs, but the Russian support for the Serbs sounds to me less political than romantic.

There was a romantic dimension to Russian support for the Serbs. The Russians, the sort of Russian national heart had always skipped a bit, or had always beat particularly beaten particularly hard for the Serbian cause. You know, if you think of the fact that at the end of the great novel by Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, one of the key protagonists, he disappears off the scene. Where is he going? He's going off to fight as a volunteer in Serbia against the Ottoman Empire. So, you know, this Serbian— there is a traditional relationship between Russian national feeling and the Serbian cause, the cause of Serbian freedom. Freedom. There's no doubt about that. But nevertheless, I think that the decisions the Russians made in 1914 were cool-headed decisions founded on their understanding of national interest.

And that national interest was—

well, it was about two things. One was to, to hold the Austrian Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Balkans in check as much as possible by backing a powerful— by backing an increasingly powerful and hostile state, Serbia, right on the borders of Austria-Hungary. And the But the larger objective that that was intended to serve was strategic control in the longer term of the Turkish Straits, of the Dardanelles, the waterway which links the Black Sea to the eastern Mediterranean. The Russians desperately wanted to get free access to this waterway so they could project naval power out into the eastern Mediterranean and at the same time secure their export routes for grain and other products which— on which their export income on which their economy desperately depended.

Well folks, as you see, the more you know about this subject, the more you realize not only the complexity, but the— it is in a sense they're all villains, or, or if, as you put it in your title, Sleepwalkers, which we will explain in a moment. I want to talk about the Serbs and the Austrians and the Germans Oh, it's, uh, it's riveting reading. The Worst Thing That Happened: World War I, The Sleepwalkers, Christopher Clarke. Hello everybody and welcome to The Dennis Prager Show. Periodically I broadcast a history hour because I think history is the most important subject. Wisdom is the most important thing you can have in your brain, but in terms of information, history is the most important. Because if you don't know what happened, how can you possibly understand why we're here? It pains me terribly that people don't know more history. And the other thing is, it's the most interesting subject. I mean, it's stories. What could be more interesting interesting. This is what people did when they were alive. So we have a— periodically we have a history hour. The book that I feature is always a recently published book on history. This one is titled— it's just published— The Yanks Are Coming: A Military History of the United States in World War I. I'm I might just note for my author's sake, and I will introduce him of course momentarily, I am somewhat obsessed with World War I because that is what ruined the world for the next 100 years. If it weren't for World War I, there wouldn't have been a World War II, there wouldn't have been Nazism, there wouldn't have been communism, there wouldn't have been a Holocaust, there wouldn't have been the genocides that took place under communist rule. The world would have been completely different. World War I was the catastrophe that set everything in motion. So I am transfixed by it. Also, it's the most complex. It's very easy to understand how World War II started. People are still not in full agreement with how World War I did. So this is a very important and fascinating subject. The author is H.W. Crocker III. And he is a best-selling author. He's written quite a number of books such as Robert E. Lee on Leadership and Triumph. Let's see, Triumph is another one of his books. Don't Shred on Me: The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War. The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire, which will be a pre-university course as it happens, the British Empire. So I respect this man's work. So I'll call you HW if that's okay with you.

It's fine by me.

And welcome to the show. And let me— let's set the— let's set the historical agenda first for my listeners. And that is, what would you explain in a nutshell how it is that the United States ever got into World War I?

Well, actually, it mystifies a great many people how we got involved. And if there was ever any president who did not want to get involved in a war like this, it was Woodrow Wilson, who was then President of the United States. Woodrow Wilson came into office saying, "I know nothing about foreign policy. It would be an irony of history if I had to deal with foreign affairs." He appointed as his first Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, who was a near pacifist and who was appointed not because he had any foreign policy experience or expertise, but because he was a political appointment, Woodrow Wilson needed a place to stick him. He stuck him there, a place he thought would not be of any great importance in the nation.

Right, right.

His first choice for Secretary of War, as it was called then, was a Quaker who declined, saying, "As a Quaker, I don't think I could actually serve you as Secretary of War." His eventual Secretary of War, the one who that came with us into the war, was a near pacifist. A sector of the Navy was a near pacifist. Woodrow Wilson even claimed in 1916, that's 2 years into the war, in a speech he gave, he said that he had no idea what this war was all about. And from the outset, when war erupts in 1914, Woodrow Wilson rushes out and claims repeatedly, "We are neutral. We are neutral. We are neutral." And like Barack Obama, who is his fellow in this regard, that they are the only two presidents who were ever professors. Woodrow Wilson loved to lecture the world, but his platform for lecturing the world, his platform of moral superiority, was entirely dependent on our staying out of the war. That we were the calm, cool, collected one that had not fallen prey to this madness. And he stayed loyal to that even through every provocation, even through the sinking of the Lusitania, which was a British ship that had American passengers on board, sunk by a German submarine. But what finally made it so much that even Woodrow Wilson could not stay out of the war was in early 1917, the Germans decide to lift all restrictions on their submarine warfare, which means that American shipping, which had already been targeted occasionally, was now an overt target of German submarines. Moreover, there was the famous Zimmermann Telegram. The Zimmermann Telegram is a telegram telling the Mexican government that if it comes to blows between the German Empire, the Second Reich, and the United States, we invite you to become our allies and invade the southwestern United States and try to regain those parts that you had lost in the Mexican War. This is too much even for Woodrow Wilson, a man who was famously too proud to fight, to swallow. And in April of 1917, he asks Congress for a declaration of war.

Now, on the first one, the shipping, were American ships sunk?

Yes, oh yes. Not only were American ships sunk, but the Germans had committed an estimated 100 acts of sabotage on the American mainland, which gets very little play in the history books, and very few people know about it, but it's true. And in fact, Teddy Roosevelt, who throughout this period before we get involved in the war, Teddy Roosevelt is the great counterpoint to Woodrow Wilson. Teddy Roosevelt knows exactly why this war started. He, at the outset, says, "We do not need to be involved. I can see the realpolitik reasons why all these different countries are fighting." But what shifts Woodrow, or rather Teddy Roosevelt's opinion is A, the way the Germans occupy neutral Belgium. They invade neutral Belgium and they occupied in a very harsh way, lining up priests, women, children to be executed to subdue any sense, any thought that the Belgians might have of fighting back. And this is a bit too much for Theodore Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt also makes the point. He makes the point saying, "Look, the Germans have committed—" This is later in the war, this is like 1916, '17. "The Germans have slaughtered." more Americans than were killed at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. But unlike the British who fought armed men, the Germans are waging war on American businessmen going about their lawful business and women and children driving or traveling on these ships. And he thought it was outrageous that Woodrow Wilson stomached this. He thought it was outrageous that Woodrow Wilson refused to protest German atrocities in Belgium. He thought it was outrageous that Woodrow Wilson would go so far as to dictate that Americans in their private lives, from their pulpits, from their editorial boards, wherever, should be neutral in thought, word, and deed. And this was a dictated from the White House political correctness. We are so neutral, we can take no sides, even in our private personal opinions, was Wilson's thought. And Theodore Roosevelt thought this was absolutely outrageous. And personally, I think Theodore Roosevelt was right.

Oh, okay, that's a separate issue. Let me just ask from the German perspective, why would they so stupidly deliberately avoid the Americans so as not to provoke America to get into World War I?

Well, this is an interesting point because the Germans had certain things going for them. I mean, one is that they had— there are lots of Irish Americans, obviously, and the Irish Americans had no great desire to fight for the British Empire. Desire, and a lot of German Americans, of course, who had no great desire to fight against their old homeland. But the Germans were— and I should say, the book is not anti-German in any way, but the Germans were blundering in their diplomacy and had been ever since Kaiser Wilhelm had ascended the throne in Germany as leader of the Second Reich. He believed in this sort of belligerent, forceful diplomacy. And he upset many apple carts along the way, but part of that was that the Germans were utterly contemptuous of the United States. And they were contemptuous for at least these reasons. One, the experience of dealing with Woodrow Wilson. Woodrow Wilson had been a patsy. Two, the American military, the American Army was estimated being the size of Portugal's. It was a non-factor. And General Ludendorff, Erich Ludendorff, who was the second in command, second highest-ranking general in the German Army, and frankly, second in control of the Second Reich, said, and this is a quote he issued, "Look, I don't give a darn about the Americans. They can't get here in time. They can't do anything." The Germans rolled the dice and figured, look, if we practice unrestricted submarine warfare, we can cut Britain off from her her trade routes, from her lifelines, and we will strangle Britain and she will lose. Concomitant with this unrestricted submarine warfare was a massive land offensive where Ludendorff and the Germans thought they'd win the war, and almost did. When the Americans, after America declared war—

All right, all right, hold that thought because I want to remind everybody, The Yanks Are Coming: A Military History of the United States United States in World War I, H.W. Crocker. Back in a moment, A History Hour. Hi everybody, Dennis Prager here. We continue with A History Hour. Periodically I have an hour devoted to a recent wonderful book on history. I have been obsessed with the importance of World War I, and this is about America in World War The Yanks Are Coming. He writes terrifically and very accessibly. H.W. Crocker has written a number of bestsellers. This one is The Yanks Are Coming, a military history of the United States in World War I. We were discussing how it is that the U.S. got into the war to begin with. I mean, World War II is a lot easier, at least with regard to the Japanese. They, they attack Pearl Harbor, we declare war. That's the easiest and the most obvious obvious. Uh, World War II with the Germans is more complex, and World War I, obviously also with the Germans, was also complex. And I think, uh, I did a fine job of explaining it. And so, uh, unless there was a point that you wish to make, I'll just jump off from there with more questions.

Sure, fire away.

Okay, terrific. Okay, so we enter the war. What year is it we enter the war? 1917. The war has been on since 1914. What was the state of the war then? Who was winning, or was it as usual, nobody?

Well, nobody except that the Germans were making terrific gains in this regard. They were soon to knock Russia out of the war. They had already— the czar had already abdicated in Russia. So they were soon to be freed from having to fight on this Eastern Front, and they're going to turn all those German divisions towards the west. Now in the west, you had the famous Western Front, that line that divides Europe, cutting through Belgium and France down to the Swiss border. And that had been pretty much static, famously static, static with millions being slaughtered on both sides. But the French were no longer able to launch any offensives. They were sort of bled white. And the British were in somewhat better shape, but if we had not entered the war when we had, the British Admiralty greatly feared that the German submarine warfare was going to sink so much tonnage that Britain would have to capitulate, or Britain would no longer have its access to the seas and was entirely dependent on trade for many of its necessary supplies.

So, your take is, and I assume it's the normative historical take, that if the US had not entered World War I, Germany would have won?

Well, here, well, I think many Americans are misguided about this. I think if we had not entered the war, there would have been some sort of settlement that would have been equal to all parties. This is not true. We know this is not true for a couple reasons. Is, we can look at how the Germans treated other occupied territories. As I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, Belgium was treated abysmally. But also, the treaty that's eventually negotiated between the German Empire and Bolshevik Russia— Yeah, Brest-Litovsk. Right, is incredibly, is extremely—

Yeah, this is, forgive me, I just want to say for my listeners, anybody who listens to the argument, oh, how poorly the Germans were treated treated after, after World War I because of the Treaty of Versailles should know how the Germans treated the Russians when they left the war before World War I was over. They, they were far more draconian, uh, demands for land and money both from Russia than were made of Germany after World War I. Absolutely true.

There's something else I think is often swept under the rug here, which is that people think of the First World War as pointless slaughter. It's sort of the bad war compared to the Second World War, where the moral issues are better defined. I think that's not true. A lot of what was at stake in World War I was precisely what was at stake in World War II, both in geopolitical terms within Europe, the question was really the same. Should Germany be allowed to militarily subjugate the continent of Europe? I mean, it's Lebensraum to the east, it's smashing the French and the Belgians in the west. But also, there's something else, and that is that the Second Reich The Second Reich, of course, was not nearly as evil as the Third Reich, but a lot of the seeds that came to fruition in the Third Reich were already well planted in Germany, especially at its higher levels in the Second Reich. There's a great story about an American biologist and pacifist named Vernon Kellogg who was involved with Belgian war relief before we got involved in the war. In this position, he was allowed to have dinner with the German high command in Brussels. And many of these men, or all these men, were extremely well-educated. Many of them had been scientists in civilian life. And yet this biologist, evolutionist, Darwinist pacifist was appalled about the way that the German intelligentsia, including all these officers, had appropriated Darwinian on social Darwinism and applied it to global affairs where, you know, whatever the Belgians got, they deserved. Because they were weaker. Because they were weaker. And he came back, he actually wrote a book which had an introduction by Theodore Roosevelt saying, look, I am not in favor of war, but I am in favor of this war because this mentality is so noxious, it must be stopped.

You need— I want to tell you a book you need to write. I'm very serious because, as I say, I've been somewhat obsessed with World War I, and that is Why World War I Was Necessary. Everybody knows, as you point out, why World War II was.

Yes, yeah, no, I just— that may be true, but it— I could tell you another little anecdote which helps illustrate the point. I've mentioned Erich Ludendorff, second in command in Germany, de facto the second most powerful man in the country. During the war. After the war, he is an early political supporter of, guess who? Adolf Hitler, because he already believed essentially what Adolf Hitler believed. They later had a falling out, as extremists often do, but it just goes to show that Adolf Hitler and his ideology was not so very foreign to that of many of the leaders of the Second Reich.

Wow. All right, so this— so let's establish here, there— I got to go back to the question I asked at the beginning. Had the US not entered World War I, what would have happened?

What would have happened was, I think, I believe Germany would have won. They would have crushed— Britain would have fallen out of the war temporarily. They would have crushed the, the continent. And then there would have been a gigantic naval war between the British Empire, which maintained a large navy, and the German navy, which had meant to be its rival. Whether they could have conquered Britain is very debatable, but they could easily have taken over Europe. And we— this is, I think, maybe also a neglected aspect. It's often thought, well, we came in too little too late to really do much. Au contraire, we have it from General Hindenburg that top German general that the war was lost when the American infantry invaded the Ardennes Forest during the Meuse-Argonne Campaign, or in the Argonne Forest in the Meuse-Argonne Campaign. It was the American infantry that turned the tide of the war. It was the American infantry that defeated the Second Reich. Wow.

The Yanks Are Coming: A Military History of the United States in World War I. W. Crocker is the author, and it's a very important subject. Terrific book up at DennisPrager.com. We return in a moment, a History Hour on The Dennis Prager Show. Hello, my friends, and welcome back. I'm Dennis Prager, and periodically I broadcast a History Hour No fixed time, just when the inspiration and the right book come along. The right book certainly came along. The Yanks Are Coming: A Military History of the United States in World War I. H.W. Crocker is the author. He's a best-selling author, and rightfully so, and he has his moral compass functioning, which to me is a very big deal. The book is up at DennisPrager.com. We've discussed how it is that the U.S. entered the war, that it is the general consensus, and certainly his, that the United States turned the tide of World War I. And how many, ultimately, how many Americans died in World War I?

Well, all these estimates are, um, are subject to debate, but it was— about 4 million Americans were activated for the war, and about 2 million served in France. Casualty ratio, I mean, you have to remember there was also the flu swept through, you know, the forces too, but probably 100,000, I think would be a fair—

Which is a huge, huge number given the American population at that time. It's a huge number in any event. Event. So, uh, first let me ask you, were they drafted?

Uh, yes, the American, uh, yes, yeah, the draft was instituted fairly early on.

Okay. Did— was there, as there was in between the wars later, was there a large, uh, we have no business going there movement in the U.S.?

There was a huge one before the war. Once we got in, no. A lot of the opposition to the war completely fell away. Because?

Because it was—

the Germans had painted themselves in this corner where it became very hard to defend them. There were those who actually said, during the sinking of the Lusitania, that, look, the Germans told us they're going to sink this ship. Ship, and we had no right putting American civilians at risk there. But for most Americans, certainly after 1917, after the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare, it just seemed this is intolerable. You can't wage war on American shipping, on American women and children, and you certainly can't invite our neighbor to the south, Mexico, to invade us. I mean, Woodrow Wilson had no choice but to declare war because war had de facto been declared on us by the Germans. And most, most all the American people at that point agreed with him.

Is there a book on the Zimmermann Telegram that Barbara Tuchman wrote, or am I— Yes. Okay, there is one. Yes. How did, how did that strike the American people?

Was that like a bombshell? Absolutely. It was, it was the smoking gun that, that started us off onto the race to enter World War I.

Right. Again, for, again, for my listeners to It's a telegram sent by the Germans to the Mexican government that if we end up with a war with the US, we will happily, if you join us, give you land back that you think you, uh, you should have. Is that right?

Yes, yes, absolutely.

How did the Mexicans react? I'm just curious.

They think, uh, give me a break, as they, they kind of ignored it.

Yeah, exactly. It was not seen as practical. Yeah, mañana. Yeah, mañana. We'll deal with it tomorrow, but right now I'd rather have dinner.

Okay, so— The amazing story was the last major military campaign by the United States had actually been in Mexico. I mean, John Pershing, General Pershing, who commanded the American Expeditionary Force to France, his last major engagement had been fighting Pancho Villa on the border. So, and that's what the Germans sort of viewed the American military as good for, was patrolling the border. It wasn't going to be this modern army that could compete compete with these massive armies of Europe. But in fact, it did. As I said, it went from the size of Portugal to 4 million men being activated, 2 million going to France.

And— Who or what is responsible for having America prepared in such numbers to fight?

Well, it's interesting because Woodrow Wilson had zero interest in military affairs.

All right, answer this question when we come back, because I don't want to— I don't I don't want to interrupt that answer. I am very curious. How did we go from fighting Pancho Villa to sending 4 million troops over and doing well in Europe? The Yanks Are Coming: A Military History of the United States in World War I. You understand that war, you understand the 20th century. The author is H.W. Crocker, and I love his moral compass. And he writes terrifically. It's a pretty good combination. Book is up at DennisPrager.com. This is a history hour on The Dennis Prager Show. When we return in a moment— Dennis Prager here. Thanks for listening to the Daily Dennis Prager Podcast. To hear the entire 3 hours of my radio show commercial-free every single day, become a member of PragerTopia. You'll also get access to 15 years' worth of archives, as well as the daily show prep. Subscribe at prageropia.com.