A review by timsa9cd0
1917: Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson, and the Year that Created the Modern Age by Arthur Herman

4.0

Here I learn of visionary (and racist and naive) Woodrow Wilson and the visionary (and ruthless) Lenin. Both were children of Hegel (not that I've ever read Hegel). Wilson steps into WW1 after hoping to wait for the exhausted and destroyed nations to come to him to broker a new world order, feeling that if he could remain neutral to the end that all parties would take his lead. But the U boats of Germany and much else forced his hand. And in the end he spent his last months in office out of his mind after suffering strokes that were kept secret and losing his other dream, the League of Nations, at the hands of Henry Cabot Lodge and William Borah. Lenin almost missed out on the revolution, getting back to Russia only after learning that the Czar had given up his crown. But he got there, thanks in part to the Germans' offer to give him a ride across Europe (they needed Russia out of the war and figured Lenin would add to the chaos that the revolution was creating) along with a few million dollars that they gave him and his Bolsheviks Even so, it was not clear that Lenin would prevail, with his Bolsheviks seemingly a distant 3rd in the ranks of revolutionary parties. But he, with the help of Trotsky and Stalin and others, grabbed the country – when there was no one else in control he promised enough to get the backing of enough soldiers to grab it. The history of these two, and the leaders of Germany, France, and Britain, and the long term effects of WW1 was fascinating.