Wilhelm and Hindenburg now faced food shortages and political discontent as socialist and liberal parties demanded reforms. In January 1917, the kaiser unleashed his U-boats against civilian shipping in order to starve Britain, but their sinking of American ships and Berlin’s encouragement of Mexican aggression provoked America. In April, the US president Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war, parading American righteousness over European avarice. ‘We have no selfish ends,’ he declared. ‘We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind’ – though his morals were less evident at home. He did nothing to challenge the Jim Crow laws and intervened militarily across the Americas.*
A classical historian, president of Princeton University and a latecomer to politics, Wilson, son of a South Carolinian theologian, won the presidency in 1912 because Teddy Roosevelt, estranged from his successor William Taft, had founded a third party that split the Republican vote. But he appreciated the glamour of the Roosevelt name and appointed Franklin, just elected a New York State senator and obsessed with ships, to Teddy’s old position, assistant navy secretary. As America mustered its army, Franklin Roosevelt assiduously enlarged the navy fourfold.* There was another reason for Franklin’s dedication: the former governess of his children, Lucy Mercer, now worked with him – and they fell in love. ‘Franklin deserved a good time,’ said Alice Roosevelt after she spotted the couple. ‘He was married to Eleanor.’
‘Isn’t she lovely?’ said Franklin. Alice cruelly tormented Eleanor, hinting that Franklin had a mistress.
The Americans arrived in Europe just in time. France was wavering, mutinies spreading through its army; Russia was disintegrating as Lenin prepared to seize power. On 2 November 1917, Balfour, now British foreign secretary, sent a letter to Lord Rothschild promising a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine while offering the assurance that ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the rights of existing non-Jewish communities’, namely Palestinian Arabs. The letter, which was approved by President Wilson and repeated in a similar French declaration, was designed to appeal to the Jewish communities in America and Russia. Hussein and the Hashemites had been promised much of the Arab world. Neither promise would have been made in any other circumstances than the bleeding stalemate, now exacerbated by a collapsing Russia.
As Lawrence raided along the Ottoman railway, a British army advanced on Jerusalem. Lloyd George encouraged the capture of the Holy City as a ‘Christmas present’ for the British people, which they duly received when its mayor, waving a blanket as a white flag, farcically tried to surrender thrice to surprised Tommies before the capitulation was finally accepted. Colonel Lawrence and British officers respectfully walked into the city.
On 8 November, in Petrograd, Lenin, disguised in a wig, was turned away from his own headquarters at the Smolny Institute by his own Red Guards. But, finally convincing them it was indeed him, he took command of Bolshevik forces and launched a coup.
Since his arrival in April, he had harassed the premier, Alexander Kerensky, a diminutive but dynamic socialist lawyer, with a shrewd programme of ‘Land, Bread, Peace’. In July, Kerensky, who fancied himself a Napoleonic warlord, launched offensives against the Germans, but their failure played into the disintegration of the state, a vacuum Lenin determined to fill. Kerensky hunted Lenin, who went underground. Marshalling his radical henchmen, Trotsky and Stalin, Lenin orchestrated the taking of the Winter Palace.* It was barely defended, but the Bolsheviks who finally stormed it raided the tsar’s wine cellars and got so drunk that the fire brigade were called to smash the bottles, only to get drunk themselves. The Bolsheviks secured Moscow too, but the rest of the empire was grabbed by the Germans and Ottomans. Meanwhile Poles, Georgians, Finns, Ukrainians, Armenians and many other peoples declared independence.
Faced with unbearable decisions by unstoppable German advances, Lenin negotiated a peace with Germany that ceded much of Ukraine, the Baltics and the Caucasus, thrilling the kaiser. ‘The Baltic lands are indivisible and I’ll be their ruler. I’ve conquered them,’ Willy bloviated as he assigned kingdoms (Catholic Lithuania for a Habsburg, Finland for a Hessian prince), though he called the Bolsheviks ‘Jewboys’, denouncing this ‘Jewish International for the sake of which the Christians are expected to beat each other to death’.* Hindenburg had replaced the kaiser as the national symbol, issuing a statement for his seventieth birthday: ‘Muscles tensed, nerves steeled, eyes front!’ When Hindenburg gave a respectful order to Wilhelm, the kaiser replied, ‘I don’t need your parental advice’ – but he obeyed.
