Na revista TIme no número especial "Person of the Century" (que felizmente elegeu Einstein e nao um qualquer Estatista conhecido pelas guerras em que participou de longe) lêm-se várias coisas interessantes sobre a Grande Guerra, aqui disponho pedaços dispersos (e alguns comentários próprios) por uma ordem que torna a leitura mais compreensível e recorrendo também a frases de Churchill.
Churchill gives the picture of the summer of 1914: "The world on the verge the catastrophe was very brilliant. Nations and Empires crowned with princes and potentates rose majestically on every side, lapped in the accumulated treasures of the long peace. All were fitted and fastened - it seemed securely - into an immense cantilever. The two mighty European systems faced each other glittering and clanking in their panapoly, but with a tranquil gaze... But there was a strange temper in the air...Almost one might think the world wished to suffer..."
Writing in 1930, Churchill was to pay the Kaiser a compliment wich was also a somber comment on the 20th century. "Time has brought him a surprising and paradoxical revenge upon his conquerors...The greater part of Europe...would regard the Hohenzollern restoration...as a comparatively opeful event...This is not because his own personal light burns the brighter...but because of the increasing darkness around.
The victorious democracies in driving out hereditary sovereigns supposed they were moving on the path of progress. They in fact gone further and fared worse."
O fim das monarquias e o inicio das repúblicas comunistas, fascistas, e o nazismo como a redençao alema.
Na secçao de "carta dos leitores" lê-se (Cornelis H. van Rhijn, Enschede, Netherlands):
"The most influential person was George Clemenceau. At the Versailles peace conference after World War I his hatred for the Germans led him to overrule the Americans and turn Germans into victims" This brought the massive inflation wich led to the rise of national socialism, Hitler and World War II."
Noutra parte.
"In 1905, Japan, with the full approval of Teddy Roosevelt [este já tinha combatido contra a coroa Espanhola pela libertaçao de Cuba, anexando as Filipinas pelo caminho, diga-se que na altura todas a potências e Impérios estabeleciam amplamente a sua presença e influência em tudo o que podiam] and progressive men everywhere, humbled Russia.
No one noticed that this broke a chain of victories by Christians over non-Christians nations, stretching back to Lepanto in 1571. No one foresaw that the real effects of Russia´s defeats would be:
1) to tip the scale in the struggle between Japanese democrats and militarists in favour of the latter [ainda assim, o Império Japonês tinha instituiçoes semi-democratas e a sua presença na Manchúria era uma factor estratégico contra Estaline].
2) to break the confidence in Russia´s rulers and lead to the revolution in 1905 - the dress rehearsal for 1917"
Claro que a queda do Czar se deveu também à entrada de Wilson e a sua insistência numa Rússia (na vertigem do colapso financeiro e humano) em prosseguir na Guerra. Ao mesmo tempo impediu os esforços do Imperador Austríaco num compromisso aceitável - como tinha acontecido em todas as civilizadas guerras do século 18 e 19 - para todas as partes (até com a França pós Napoleao!).
Como se diz algures, depois..."The Germans sent Lenin back to Russia ("like a plague bacillus", said Churchill) to help the Revolution along. On Nov. 7 Lenin walked on the platform of the Supreme Soviet, after removing his wig, and said. "We will now proceed to construct the proletarian socialist society""
Sobre o socialismo e guerra:
"After Loyd George became Prime Minister, he called Churchill back to head The Munitions Ministry in 1917. There Churchill presided over the amazingly sucessful production machinery that Lloyd George himself had set up. This all-out industrial mobilization (including nationalized factories) was to have consequences which neither Churchill nor Lloyd George foresaw. In all countries the prodigies of wartime achievement by national governments left a deep impression in which socialism and the welfare state later flourished.
In 1933, New Dealers, justified themselves, not with the tenets of orthodox socialism but with the slogan "Let´s fight the depression as we fought the war".
Churchill as mobilizer of the two great national defense efforts unwittingly contributed more than all the Fabians to the triumph of the socialist state"
Mais à frente se diz: "In a sense Europe never recovered from World War I". Na realidade o que Napoleao tinha começado, a Grande Guerra acabou. E a Europa, atomizada no seu retalho e equilibrio de Naçoes, e que dominava culturalmente e económicamente o mundo até 1914, desapareceu.
Na Reason, num artigo sobre Teddy Roosevelt lê-se também uma importante citaçao de Churchill.
No less than Winston Churchill suggested as much in 1936:
"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn’t entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all of these ‘isms’ wouldn’t today be sweeping the continent and breaking down parliamentary government, and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American and other lives."
PS. Mesmo na segunda, uns poucos especulam sobre caminhos alternativos: "Hitler, asserted Buchanan in his controversial book, A Republic, Not an Empire, "was driven by a traditional German policy of Drang nach Osten, the drive to the East," and "had not wanted war with the West." It was only Britain's misbegotten military assurances in the East that sealed the alternate fate of the West. "Had Britain and France not given the war guarantee to Poland," Buchanan argued, "there might have been no Dunkirk, no blitz, no Vichy, no destruction of the Jewish population of Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, France or even Italy."
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