Herman Arthur - 1917: Vladmir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, and the year that created the modern age

THIS BOOK HAS its distant origin in memories of listening to a conversation between Alexander Kerensky and my father in the shadow of Hoover Tower at Stanford University. Who could have imagined that it would take more than fifty years to see that conversation to its completion here in these pages?

My thanks go as always to the staff of Alderman Library at the University of Virginia, but also to the staffs of the Library of Congress; the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library in Staunton, Virginia; the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; and the Massachusetts State Historical Society.

My Hudson Institute colleagues Chris DeMuth and Scooter Libby, and Alex Pollock of R Street, listened while I described the parameters and themes of the book; their advice and counsel contributed greatly to the final result. My research assistant Idalia Friedson helped to organize and prepare the final version of the footnotes, as did Mark Ashby and Gabriel Davis. And thanks also go to the anonymous intern who tracked down the ever-important but ever-elusive Volume 42 of the Papers of Woodrow Wilson at George Washington University.

My gratitude also goes to my agents, Keith Urbahn and Matt Lattimer, of Javelin DC, who embraced the project from the beginning and enthusiastically cheered it on from start to finish. Conversations with my editor at HarperCollins, Eric Nelson, helped to give the book its final shape, and thanks go to him and to his assistant editor, Eric Meyers, for seeing the text through to completion.

Above all, my gratitude goes out to my wonderful wife, Beth, for her advice, support, and patience with a husband who found himself with two full-time jobsone as Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and the other as an author writing a book that devoured many weekends, evenings, and early mornings. This book is gratefully dedicated to her, because without her it could never have been written.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World

Gandhi and Churchill

To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World

Freedoms Forge

Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior

ARTHUR HERMAN, PHD , is the author of nine books, including the New York Times bestseller How the Scots Invented the Modern World , which has sold half a million copies worldwide; and Gandhi and Churchill , which was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. Among his six other books are To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World (HarperCollins, 2004), which was nominated for the United Kingdoms prestigious Mountbatten Maritime Award; Freedoms Forge , named by the Economist magazine as one of the Best Books of 2012; and Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior . He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. He writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal , the Wall Street Journal Asia , and the Nikkei Asian Review , and is a contributing editor for National Review .

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GERMANY

THEOBALD VON BETHMANN-HOLLWEG : chancellor, 190917

ERICH LUDENDORFF : quartermaster general

PAUL VON HINDENBURG : chief of the German General Staff

ARTHUR ZIMMERMANN : foreign secretary

JOHANN VON BERNSTORFF : ambassador to the United States

ERICH VON FALKENHAYN : general; former chief of the German General Staff (191416), then commander of German armies in Romania and Russia

BARON GISBERT VON ROMBERG : ambassador in Bern, Switzerland

MATTHIAS ERZBERGER : prominent member of Catholic Center Party in Reichstag; later Reich minister of finance, 191920

GREAT BRITAIN

DAVID LLOYD GEORGE : prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR : foreign minister and former leader of the Conservative Party

WINSTON CHURCHILL : former first lord of the admiralty; later named minister of munitions (July 1917)

ANDREW BONAR LAW : leader of the Conservative Party and prominent member of the War Cabinet as chancellor of the exchequer

DOUGLAS HAIG : general; commander, British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front

WILLIAM HALL : admiral; director, British Naval Intelligence

EDMUND ALLENBY : general; commander, British Third Army during the Battle of Arras (March 1917) and later named commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (May 1917)

CHAIM WEIZMANN : president, British Zionist Federation; later first president of the State of Israel

FRANCE

ARISTIDE BRIAND : prime minister (later succeeded by Georges Clemenceau, November 1917)

GEORGES CLEMENCEAU : leader of the Radical-Socialist Party in the Chamber of Deputies

JOSEPH JOFFRE : general; commander in chief of French armies on the Western Front, 191416 (replaced by Gen. Robert Nivelle, December 1916); later as field marshal served as French envoy to the United States, May 1917

ROBERT NIVELLE : general; commander in chief of French armies, December 1916April 1917 (succeeded by Gen. Philippe Ptain)

PHILIPPE PTAIN : general; chief of the General Staff, April 1917 to November 1918

FERDINAND FOCH : general; supreme Allied commander on the Western Front

MAURICE PALOLOGUE : ambassador to Russia

INESSA ARMAND : mistress of Lenin

RUSSIA

NICHOLAS II ( NIKOLAI ALEKSANDROVICH ROMANOV ): czar of all the Russias

ALEXANDRA ( ALEKSANDRA FYODOROVNA ): czarina and wife of Nicholas II

NICHOLAS ( NIKOLAI NIKOLAEVICH ROMANOV ): grand duke; commander in chief of the Russian armies

MICHAEL ( MIKHAIL ) ROMANOV : grand duke; brother of Czar Nicholas II

ALEXANDER KERENSKY : lawyer; member of the Duma, Social Revolutionary Party; later minister of war and prime minister, Provisional Government

ALEKSEI BRUSILOV : general; commander of the Southwest Front; later commander in chief, Provisional Government

GRIGORI RASPUTIN : monk and mystic; adviser to Czarina Alexandra

NIKOLAI POKROVSKY : minister of foreign affairs

NIKOLAI CHKHEIDZE : member of the Duma, Social Revolutionary Party; later president of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of Petrograd or Ispolkom

PAVEL MILIUKOV : member of the Duma, Constitutional Democratic Party (or Kadets); later foreign minister, Provisional Government

MIKHAIL RODZIANKO : state councillor and president of the Duma

A. A. BOGDANOV : early member of the Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Russia and rival of Lenin; expelled from the party in 1909

LENIN ( ORIGINALLY VLADIMIR ILYICH ULYANOV ): leader of the Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic Labour Party of Russia; later chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars

NADEZHDA KRUPSKAYA : wife of Lenin

LEON TROTSKY ( ORIGINALLY LEV DAVIDOVICH BRONSTEIN ): early member of the Mezhraiontsy faction; then peoples commissar for foreign affairs for the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and the Soviet Union; later founder and commander of the Red Army