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WHAT CAUSED A CENTURY OF WAR?
By Edward Cuddihy - News Book Reviewer
Buffalo News, NY
Oct 15 2006
Nonfiction
At the dawn of the 20th century, the West enjoyed an economic and
social prosperity unequaled in 1,600 or 1,700 years. The industrial
revolution had fueled an economic powerhouse; empirical nationalism
had led to worldwide European domination. Western religions had long
ago learned to live in relative harmony, and the peoples of the West
had carved out their own megastates, often along ethnic lines. The
people of the European peninsula appeared on the verge of unimagined
greatness.
What followed was a century of barbaric bloodletting which began
as localized fratricide and mushroomed into an orgy of worldwide
indiscriminate killing. This debacle reached a pinnacle of madness
just before the midpoint of the century and then continued to bubble
on in a series of lethal aftershocks nearly to the century's close,
leaving the West fragmented, economically emaciated and decidedly on
the descent.
This is the way best-selling author and historian Niall Ferguson
sees the 20th century as he attempts in his latest book to answer
the question: Why did such a thing happen?
Keep in mind that Ferguson is Tory to his roots, and despite ties to
Harvard and Stanford universities, he views the world from the banks
of the Thames. So to him, the capital and center of the West is London.
This massive work is the latest in Ferguson's string of six volumes,
and perhaps represents his most ambitious work to date. And he's still
in his mid-40s. In this volume, he attempts the task of analyzing
the events of the past 100 years in the context of the struggle to
dominate the West, and thus, the world.
As he did in earlier volumes, especially in "The Pity of War," and
"The Cash Nexus," Ferguson takes pleasure in debunking the rock-solid
premises of modern historians. And this debunking, often controversial
and sometimes politically incorrect, is backed by mountains of research
and copious statistics.
You can't argue with his facts, though you might have misgivings about
some of his interpretations, because, as you know, facts seldom if
ever speak for themselves.
A sampling of his premises:
~U The Holocaust, as horrific and inexcusable as it was, was one of
a series of racial wars perpetrated throughout the world. He cites
as being racially motivated Stalin's purges, Mao's civil war, the
Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks and the Japanese mass
murder of its mainland neighbors.
~U Hitler's decision to attack the Soviets was an attack on "Jewish
Bolshevism," a threat to the Third Reich.
~U He questions whether Adolf Schicklgruber, known to the world
as Hitler, or Iosif Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, was the
greater threat to humankind. On an objective scale of atrocities,
he awards a clear advantage to Stalin, describing Hitler as a "kind
of apprentice." Yet, it is Stalin who is seen smiling like a cat
with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in 1940s newsreels,
while Hitler stood for all that is evil.
~U Ferguson continues to develop his theme from his earlier "The Pity
of War" that the British entry into World War I was a mistake of the
greatest magnitude. This was not a war of good versus evil. It was
a natural fallout of the disintegration of the Habsburg, Romanov,
Hohenzollern and Ottoman empires.
~U Appeasement didn't lead to war. World War II began in 1937
with Japan's invasion of China. War, he claims, led to attempts
at appeasement.
Some other Ferguson observations, accompanied by massive bodies of
fact, are that Russian, British and U.S. atrocities were on a par with
Germany's and Japan's, especially in the indiscriminate fire bombings
of civilian cities. Yet, the ultimate bomb, as atrocious as it might
appear 60 years later, was no more than the natural development of the
science of industrialized warfare, and in fact might be seen as "poetic
justice," an achievement of Jewish scientists, refugees from the Nazis.
And if you think JFK stared down Nikita Khrushchev over Cuba, Ferguson
would disagree, claiming that both men swerved at the last moment in
an international game of chicken. Most of these concepts have surfaced
before. The value of this work is in its clear presentation of an
overwhelming body of facts to back up each assertion. This volume
contains vivid details of atrocities that will be thought-provoking
and sad reminders of man's treatment of his fellow man. But don't
look for battles or war heroes. Ferguson treats with the national
psychology and big-picture strategy of the war of the century, not
the invasions or triumphs of one military machine over another.
In fact, if you aren't familiar with the military history of the
world wars and the ensuing Cold War, Ferguson will leave you lost.
This is a major work. It might tail off in the last quarter of the
century, hinting that the task Ferguson set up for himself was near
impossible - to analyze in great detail the bloodiest century in the
history of mankind. And the Cold War, a mere 50 pages in this 800-page
work, will likely be revisited in another Ferguson book.
This body of modern history, now well over 4,000 pages from the pen
of the prolific Niall Ferguson, just continues to grow in volume and
in depth.
Edward Cuddihy is a former News managing editor.
By Edward Cuddihy - News Book Reviewer
Buffalo News, NY
Oct 15 2006
Nonfiction
At the dawn of the 20th century, the West enjoyed an economic and
social prosperity unequaled in 1,600 or 1,700 years. The industrial
revolution had fueled an economic powerhouse; empirical nationalism
had led to worldwide European domination. Western religions had long
ago learned to live in relative harmony, and the peoples of the West
had carved out their own megastates, often along ethnic lines. The
people of the European peninsula appeared on the verge of unimagined
greatness.
What followed was a century of barbaric bloodletting which began
as localized fratricide and mushroomed into an orgy of worldwide
indiscriminate killing. This debacle reached a pinnacle of madness
just before the midpoint of the century and then continued to bubble
on in a series of lethal aftershocks nearly to the century's close,
leaving the West fragmented, economically emaciated and decidedly on
the descent.
This is the way best-selling author and historian Niall Ferguson
sees the 20th century as he attempts in his latest book to answer
the question: Why did such a thing happen?
Keep in mind that Ferguson is Tory to his roots, and despite ties to
Harvard and Stanford universities, he views the world from the banks
of the Thames. So to him, the capital and center of the West is London.
This massive work is the latest in Ferguson's string of six volumes,
and perhaps represents his most ambitious work to date. And he's still
in his mid-40s. In this volume, he attempts the task of analyzing
the events of the past 100 years in the context of the struggle to
dominate the West, and thus, the world.
As he did in earlier volumes, especially in "The Pity of War," and
"The Cash Nexus," Ferguson takes pleasure in debunking the rock-solid
premises of modern historians. And this debunking, often controversial
and sometimes politically incorrect, is backed by mountains of research
and copious statistics.
You can't argue with his facts, though you might have misgivings about
some of his interpretations, because, as you know, facts seldom if
ever speak for themselves.
A sampling of his premises:
~U The Holocaust, as horrific and inexcusable as it was, was one of
a series of racial wars perpetrated throughout the world. He cites
as being racially motivated Stalin's purges, Mao's civil war, the
Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks and the Japanese mass
murder of its mainland neighbors.
~U Hitler's decision to attack the Soviets was an attack on "Jewish
Bolshevism," a threat to the Third Reich.
~U He questions whether Adolf Schicklgruber, known to the world
as Hitler, or Iosif Dzhugashvili, better known as Stalin, was the
greater threat to humankind. On an objective scale of atrocities,
he awards a clear advantage to Stalin, describing Hitler as a "kind
of apprentice." Yet, it is Stalin who is seen smiling like a cat
with Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in 1940s newsreels,
while Hitler stood for all that is evil.
~U Ferguson continues to develop his theme from his earlier "The Pity
of War" that the British entry into World War I was a mistake of the
greatest magnitude. This was not a war of good versus evil. It was
a natural fallout of the disintegration of the Habsburg, Romanov,
Hohenzollern and Ottoman empires.
~U Appeasement didn't lead to war. World War II began in 1937
with Japan's invasion of China. War, he claims, led to attempts
at appeasement.
Some other Ferguson observations, accompanied by massive bodies of
fact, are that Russian, British and U.S. atrocities were on a par with
Germany's and Japan's, especially in the indiscriminate fire bombings
of civilian cities. Yet, the ultimate bomb, as atrocious as it might
appear 60 years later, was no more than the natural development of the
science of industrialized warfare, and in fact might be seen as "poetic
justice," an achievement of Jewish scientists, refugees from the Nazis.
And if you think JFK stared down Nikita Khrushchev over Cuba, Ferguson
would disagree, claiming that both men swerved at the last moment in
an international game of chicken. Most of these concepts have surfaced
before. The value of this work is in its clear presentation of an
overwhelming body of facts to back up each assertion. This volume
contains vivid details of atrocities that will be thought-provoking
and sad reminders of man's treatment of his fellow man. But don't
look for battles or war heroes. Ferguson treats with the national
psychology and big-picture strategy of the war of the century, not
the invasions or triumphs of one military machine over another.
In fact, if you aren't familiar with the military history of the
world wars and the ensuing Cold War, Ferguson will leave you lost.
This is a major work. It might tail off in the last quarter of the
century, hinting that the task Ferguson set up for himself was near
impossible - to analyze in great detail the bloodiest century in the
history of mankind. And the Cold War, a mere 50 pages in this 800-page
work, will likely be revisited in another Ferguson book.
This body of modern history, now well over 4,000 pages from the pen
of the prolific Niall Ferguson, just continues to grow in volume and
in depth.
Edward Cuddihy is a former News managing editor.