The World полностью

In Vienna, Karl offered a federal state for the different nationalities with independence for Poland. But the Monarchy disintegrated into new states (Czechoslovakia, a democratic republic; Yugoslavia, a monarchy under Peter Karad¯ord¯evic´) and older ones. Poland – arising out of Habsburg and Romanov lands – declared independence under Józef Piłsudski, an irrepressible patriot, a nobleman turned socialist who had escaped from Russian prisons, had served as a minister in a German client ‘kingdom’ and was now elected head of state, envisioning Poland as a multi-ethnic ‘home of nations’. Hungary and Austria turned against the Habsburgs.

On Armistice Day, 11 November, Karl relinquished his ‘participation in administration’ but lingered at Schönbrunn until the socialist leader Karl Renner came calling: ‘The taxi is waiting, Herr Habsburg.’ The ex-emperor left but insisted, ‘I didn’t abdicate …’ Hitler, still in hospital, learned the news of the Armistice from the chaplain: ‘Everything went black again and I stumbled my way back to my sickbed … Everything had been in vain.’

The meatgrinder of the war changed everyone, its scale propelling the Mass Age. 9.7 million soldiers had been killed; perhaps 10 million civilians.^* Returning men expected a say in the future. It changed the shape of families: afterwards women, even middle-class ones, worked and wanted to work. There were shortages of men, which handed power back to women. It was only now that full democracy – universal suffrage for men and increasingly women – was instituted in many places.^*

Like many others, Hitler asked himself, ‘Had everything happened only so that a band of criminals could get their hands on our fatherland? … My hatred grew.’ Only the Dolchstoss – ‘stab in the back’ by traitors and Jews – could explain the German collapse. At that moment, ‘I decided to become a politician.’

THE TIGER, THE GOAT AND JESUS CHRIST

Franklin Roosevelt, dispatched to Europe to inspect naval facilities, visited Paris and London, where he met Churchill – ‘one of the few men,’ recalled FDR, ‘who was rude to me’. Sailing back to the USA as Germany collapsed, Roosevelt fell ill with a fever, probably suffering from influenza A virus subtype H1N1 – the flu – the name itself deriving from an Italian outbreak in 1743 supposedly caused by the influentia of the stars. It was a new strain, first registered in an army camp at Fort Riley, Kansas, then spreading through the American troops to Europe where the illness of King Alfonso XIII earned it its name, Spanish Flu (though in Africa it was called Brazilian Flu, in Poland Bolshevik Flu). The transoceanic movements of soldiers helped it race across the world, its first wave mild, its second lethal, killing multitudes of young children and those in the 20–40 age group. Half a billion people caught it; thirty million died. In Moscow, it killed Lenin’s henchman Yakov Sverdlov; in Arabia, three of Abdulaziz’s sons and a favourite wife died; in Ethiopia, the young regent, Ras Tafari Makonnen – soon to be Haile Selassie – survived it.^*

On USS Leviathan, many died; Roosevelt was stretchered off the ship, and recovered.^* Examining his baggage, Eleanor discovered love letters from his lover Lucy Mercer. Deeply hurt she offered to divorce him, but Franklin’s new political adviser, a tiny hideous, obstreperous journalist, Louis Howe, warned him that he would never be president if he divorced, and his mother Sara threatened to cut him out of her will. FDR promised never to see Lucy again; but he didn’t keep the promise.

In January 1919, President Wilson sailed for Europe, determined to impose American morality – self-determinism expressed in his Fourteen Points – on Britain and France, both of them semi-bankrupted by war yet focused by habit, mission and ambition on empire. Roosevelt and Eleanor, rebuilding their marriage, which their son James described as ‘an armed truce until the day he died’, joined Wilson in Paris.

Lloyd George and Clemenceau, the Goat and the Tiger, agreed to Wilson’s principles – promising ‘the complete and final liberation of the peoples’ – and his proposal for a new international organization to avoid future wars, the League of Nations. But the two lascivious radicals proved enthusiastic empire builders. ‘Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points,’ laughed Tiger. ‘God only had ten!’ Wilson thought LG ‘slippery’ but preferred him to Clemenceau. ‘I did as well as might be expected,’ joked LG, ‘seated between Jesus [Wilson] and Napoleon [Clemenceau].’