Did President Wilson help murder Nicholas II?

[griffh]

There is of course a great deal more to the reform in education and research during those years, but just as an indication of the same rapid rise in prosperity that was occurring in America during the war, Ludmerer states that in 1891, while 18 million dollars went into theological training in America, medical training could barely raise $500,000.  By 1921, theological funding had almost bottomed out, while funding for medical training and research had soured to 20 million dollars.

T. Bentley Mott, in his book, “Twenty Years Military Attaché,” describes Europe’s view of the American military in 1900.  When Mott received his first assignment to the American Embassy in Paris he says, “In the year 1900, to be young and to be attached to an Embassy in Paris was comparable to a chime of bells that kept ringing out harmonious peals of mingling satisfactions.  [I am not sure what Mott meant by that description but I am grateful he was never arrested]   Mott continues, “America had disappointed almost all of Europe by winning a miserable little war…Our army was still considered a joke …The Spanish American war had shown all of us who had been in it that our army still stood just where the winding up of the Civil War period had left it.  We were fully thirty years behind the times, while Europe was devoting great portions of her energy and her brain-power to getting ready for the next conflict.”  Mott, who remained loyal to West Point all of his life, nevertheless describes his military training as antiquated and states that the only practical experience upon graduation that the cadet got was being assigned to some military fort in the West where one occasionally was employed shooting Indians.

All of the above factors came into play in a truly tragic way when America attempted to mobilize an army in the summer of 1917.  And by the way I was over optimistic about when American troops actually started fighting; it was in October 1917.  So they only fought in the war for 13 months, not 16 as I had stated.  To give an idea of the blood bath that war created, America lost more men in those 13 months than it did in all the years of the Vietnam War.  And of course the toll on the male population of Europe was totally devastating.  It wiped out an entire generation of young men, predominately from the privileged classes but also a great number of artists, writers, musicians, and poets.  The losses sustained to Europe are still incomprehensible.  And this does not take into account the toll WWI took on the nurses.  It is not a well known fact that many nurses sustained complete mental collapses and some even went insane from witnessing the ghastly disfigurement produced by the modern war machinery, including the appearance of men who had been exposed to Germany’s mustard gas, which in some extreme cases literally melted the flesh off of them.   

[griffh]

Leuchtenburg reveals the hopeless state of America in the summer of 1917 and its rapid recovery, except for its war production:
 
“In the first year of the war inexperienced officials badly bungled the job of administrating the economy, and important areas of production never did get straightened out.  Production of heavy guns got into high gear only after the war ended.  American plants produced almost no tanks.  American aviators flew British and French planes, and most of the artillery pieces American soldiers fired in Europe were supplied by the French.  Most serious was the failure of shipbuilding…The first vessel from the largest government shipyard (at Hogs Island, near Philadelphia) was not delivered until the war was over; the total production from all yards was negligible.  [just a word to say the Leuchtenburg is not taking about the private sector].  Only by buying and seizing German and Dutch ships and American ships built in private yards did the Shipping Board meet the desperate need for merchantmen and transports.”

By early 1918, as railroad transportation was close to breaking down and soldiers at camp lacked adequate clothing and shelter, the country approached a national crisis.  Stung by congressional criticism, Wilson summoned Bernard Baruch, a Wall Street speculator, to head the War Industries Board, which exercised sweeping authority over priorities and allocations.  The board had dictatorial powers; it could determine what materials manufactures could use and what they could not use.  It issued the most minute regulations: elevator operators were told how many stops they could make, and traveling salesmen were limited to two trunks…The war marked the first large-scale government control of the American economy.  Under a form of war socialism not unlike that which had been found necessary by European governments, federal agencies directed every major sector of the economy…On April 27, 1917, Ambassador Page warned Wilson that Britain did not have enough food to feed the civilian population of the British Isles for more than six to eight weeks.  Under the adroit leadership of Herbert Hoover the entire nation was alerted to the need to conserve food…Restaurants served shark steaks and whale meat, and bakers devised coarse breads to save wheat…Hoover entered the grain market to purchase and distribute wheat, and he pegged hot prices so high that farmers doubled production.  He bought the entire Cuban and American sugar crops and ordered grocers to limit each individual to two pounds a month…An army of businessmen came to Washington to work...side by side with…a new class of public administrators…This wartime experience created both a class of businessmen…who favored the wartime practice of government-business co-operation, and a group of administrators who rejected the Victorian competitive ideal for the goal of a planned economy.”

My mind works like this.  I am less interested in the way those facts are organized, as helpful as they are in giving a more actuate historic picture of America as it entered the war; but I am very interested in the date April, 27, 1917. That stands out to me.  April 27, 1917 Britain did not have enough food to feed its civilian population for more than six to eight weeks.  That means when the bread riots broke out in St. Petersburg in late February/ early March, Britain was three months away from the starvation of its civilian population.  Nicholas II had to know as early as January, or certainly by February, that Britain was facing inevitable starvation.  Could that knowledge have made the bread riots in his own capital seem less threatening than what Britain was facing?  Have you ever heard a historian, in writing about the bread riots in St. Petersburg compare them with Britain’s pending starvation within those same months?  Doesn’t Britain pending starvation carry a bigger threat to the continuation of WWI than bread riots in St. Petersburg?  Russia was hungry but it was not starving; it would take the Communist Civil war to accomplish that.  All of the pat little explanations for the Russian Revolution, left over from the last century, seem stale and lifeless.  They just don’t make any sense any more.     

[griffh]

Just stay with me for another point.  Historians make such an enormous point about the lack of armaments in 1915 that finally caused the fall of the Russian Minister of War, General Vladimir Sukhomlinov and use such evidence to prove how unprepared and backward Russia was.  Remembering  Leuchtenburg’s description of America’s tragic muddle of mobilization in the summer of 1917 and comparing it with General Sukhomlinov’s brilliant administrative abilities mobilization of over three times the number of American troops without a flaw in an incredibly short time period of time makes one being to wonder.  America mobilization almost ended in a national catastrophe just trying to transport, clothe, house and feed one third that number of men the Russian War Ministry had mobilized with such precision, an accomplishment that the Allied governments in 1914 applauded Russia for. 

Well what about the production of armaments that has always served as evidence of how backward and unprepared Russia was.  All the Allies underestimated the amount of armaments that were going to be used in the war by 1915.  And yes, Russia was in crisis, but by December 1916 it had recovered its production and supplemented it with purchases from other countries. 

America never recovered its ability to produce armaments.  In spite of American war socialism, Leuchtenburg states that it never built a war ship in time for the war, it never built an airplane in time for the war, and it built a couple of tanks and supplies a few guns.  What I am trying to say is that the reasons traditionally put forth as causes for the Russian Revolution make absolutely no sense to me given the historic context of the challenges other nations were facing that were far more serious than Russia.  Intuitively I feel it was cruel impatience and heartless intrigue that caused the collapse of Russia. 

[griffh]

Gosh I was supposed to go to bed three hours ago.  But I just wanted to add a few more observations about Russia that I am pondering given the information I shared about America in 1917.  When I compare America mobilization and armament production with the Russian mobilization and armament production something very different starts to happen for me and the traditional views of the Russian war machine as incompetent and unprepared begins to unravel.  General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, Minister of War in 1914 mobilized over three times the number of men that America mobilized for war without plunging Russia into a national crisis. In fact the Russian Ministry of War, transported, fed, clothed, and housed their men with such skill and speed that the Allies applauded the Russian mobilization in 1914, a fact that is forgotten in the face of the armament crisis in 1915.  American mobilization, on the other hand, almost ended in a national crisis and could only be solved by imposition of a economic dictator. 

The Russian armament crisis in 1915, caused in part by Sukhomlinov’s bitter rivalry with the Grand Duke Nicholas as Commander-in-Chief, a position Sukhomlinov had craved for himself, combined with the reverses on the battlefront in Galicia, and the charges of German espionage that finally brought Sukhomlinov down, overshadowed the man’s brilliant administrative abilities that had made the mobilization of Russia troops so effective.  It is also generally forgotten that all the Allies underestimated the amount of armaments that were going to be used in the war by 1915 and were facing similar armament shortages, granted, not as critical as those in Russia, but severe non-the-less.  One of the reasons for this was that no war had ever been fought without horses before and all armament estimates had been predicated on the stamina of a horse.  A tired horse could not move armaments.  Armaments that could not be moved on to the battlefield could not be used.  Traditionally wars ended when horses starved.  If horses had been the only form of transportation everyone would have been home for Christmas in 1915, as the experts had predicted.  No one had calculated that the effect that trucks, tanks, cars, and airplanes would have on the increased use of armaments nor was it immediately apparent that these new inventions would create a war of attrition.  Some of those wartime vehicles were so hardy that if you ran out of petrol, you could still make them run on vodka, or even eau de cologne.   

As I said, Russia was in the midst of a very serious armament crisis in 1915, but Sukhomlinov’s replacement, General Polivanoff and later General Shouvaieff were able to recovered its production and supplemented it’s armaments with purchases from other countries, while America, in spite of its adaptation to war socialism, given the same amount of time as Russia, never recovered its ability to produce armaments; it never built a war ship in time for the war, it never built an airplane in time for the war, and it built a couple of tanks and supplies a few guns, but not enough for its soldiers to use.  So who was the unprepared, backward country in 1917?  Or are such notions as backward and unprepared totally absurd given the challenges facing all of the countries involved in the war? 

Again, the points that are made to discredit Russia as backward and unprepared during the war, absolutely makes no sense to me anymore given the historic context of the challenges other nations were facing that were just as serious and in some cases far more serious than the ones Russia was facing.  Intuitively I feel that there was nothing in the challenges that Russia faced during the war that could have caused the Revolution, except for the heartless impatience of an immature parliament combined with malicious revenge of a disenfranchised family, which combined to tear from Russia the one quality that could have sustained it to the end, loyalty.  Well so much for my minority point of view.  I have got to sing one round of “God Save the Tzar” and go to bed.  I shall post the men Wilson sent to Russia next.  By the by, there is a marvelous thread on Lenin started by Tania that Bev and Elizabeth are exploring from different standpoints and that I feel is relevant to this thread in some wonderfully inexplicable way.   

[AGRBear]

AGRBear quote found section IMPERIAL RUSSIAN HSITORY at thread titled WW I & Nicholas II's Leadership/ Truth & Fiction:

When looking for something else,  I ran across Fige's statements about Russia and if it was prepared for WWI.  He said on  p. 253:  "By 1914 Russia was spending more than Germany on her armed forces:  over one-third of all government expenditures.  It is not true, as historians later claimed, that the Russian army was unprepared for war.  In manpower and material it was at least the equal of the German army, and, thanks to the recent improvements of Russia's western railways, took only three days more than its enemy to complete its mobilization."

In this conversation,  I'd like to talk about what Nicholas II did right as a  leader before and during WWI which would break some of the myths that he was just a rediculous leader sitting on a hippo on some dusty table in a dark corner of a palace.
AGRBear

PS Orlando Figes's book is:  A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY, THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1891-1924.
 

[AGRBear]

By 1912,  the US people were not thinking about making prepartations for war.    We weren't having any difficulties with Canada to the north, or Mexico to the south, nor  with anyone in South American.  To our east and west were huge oceans....

In truth,  the US was still a new and growing nation which was just gaining gaining enough people to create a middle and west coast America.
Sure the East Coast had been around for awhile but the rest of the country had not.  The Lousiana Purchase had just been during Napoleon's time.  Lewis and Clark Adventure to the west coast  had occured but many had no idea the amount of land west of the Mississippi River....
The Gold Rush occured in 1849  which brought  a wave of people to San Fransciso....

All these new settlers hadn't the money to even go to a doctor let alone support medical schools....

Schools, when there were any, were just one rooms with teachers who were no older than 16 or 17 years old....

Rough and Ready men like Teddy Rosevelt was loved and understood by the "wild west".   One of my great uncles was part of round-ups of wild mustangs for Teddy  who had taken up a ranch in the mid-west.

Yes, the US was not prepared for war but no one wanted nor plan to go to war in 1912, 1913, 1914....

AGRBear

[Alixz]

Here is some of what I was looking for in Aronson's Crowns in Conflict

"Whether all their 'brothers and sons' were fighting to preserve the monarchical system was debatable, but more enlightened monarchists were coming to the realization that the days of even semi-autocracy were numbered.  President Wilson's peace aims, ringingly announced on the entry of the United States into the war, strengthened this realisation.  Eyes gleaming with idealistic fervour, Wilson claimed that Americans were fighting 'for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberites of small nations..."

[griffh]

AGRBear thanks for that wonderful quote from Orlando Figes's book is:  A PEOPLE'S TRAGEDY, THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 1891-1924.  And thanks Alixz for the Aronson quote for Crowns in Conflict.  They are really encouraging.  It was totally unfair of me to compare 1917 America with 1914 Russia or anyother European country for that matter.  But I did it to emphasis how organized Russia was.  All of those arguements that we have heard all these years are so 20th century.  I am just finishing off the last two men in the Wilson group that went to Russia.  I can't wait to combine that information with that new book on the intervention. 

Hey thanks again....and just as an aside to I read that thread about saving Nicholas II and it really is interesting.  I am gradually formating my plans.     

[Bev]

Grfh, your understanding of The United States from 1900 to 1918 is completely and utterly wrong.  This isn't a matter of conflicting opinions, it's that your facts are not correct.

I believe that what you're doing is applying today's standard of "debtor nation" to America as a "debtor nation" in 1900 - 18.  Yes, the U.S. was a debtor nation in that period, but the debt was being used to finance expansion and industry.  America wasn't borrowing money to prop up an unstable government or maintain a military or navy, it was using investment funds to grow the industrial base with a healthy return on investment.  FPI and FDI was at an all time high because the economy was robust, not exhausted.  In 1914, America had the highest per capita percentage of any nation of the world - $5,000. per head of household, compared with $1500. per head of household in Russia.  In 1903 our agricultural sales reached $3Bil per year and continued to maintain that level and surpass it until 1918.  In 1914, we were the third largest exporter of steel, behind Great Britain and Germany.  In 1914, we were one of the world's largest exporters of raw material, by 1918, we were the largest exporter of finished goods.  Life expectancy from adulthood was 72 yrs.
We had built the Panama Canal, Pres. T.R. had brokered the peace in the Russo-Sino war and had the second largest navy in the world.  

In one post you claim that the United States was the world's leader in armaments, and yet in this last post, you claim that the U.S. did almost nothing to advance the military cause of the allies.  Of course, neither claim is correct.  The U.S. was the third largest exporter of armaments, and from the first deployment of 85,000 troops in March of 1918, by September of 1918 they had trained, equipped and transported over 1,200,000 men to an overseas theater of war.  Did the United States build battle ships during this period?  They didn't have to, they didn't need them.  What they did need were destroyers, and 35 new destroyers had been deployed by 1917, with 380 new submarine chasers and armed merchant ships already stationed overseas.  U.S. troops were not going without food and shelter, they were going without army food and shelter, simply because the influx of draftees were swelling ranks faster than they could be supplied and transported.  No draftees went without food and shelter at any time, because of the high public commitment to the war effort.  Local communities were sheltering and feeding draftees which were overflowing army training facilities.  The railway system wasn't broken down, it was overused - railway companies could not keep up with industrial and goverment demands.  The claim that the U.S. mobilization was almost a disaster and ended with an "economic dictator" borders on the ridiculous.  In fact, Barush as head of the wartime commission, rarely, if ever used any kind of legislative action, to push government contracts ahead of private industry contracts. He cajoled and at a last attempt threatened public humiliation which was generally enough to re-organize production schedules in the government's favour.

As to food production, Hoover wasn't recommending "meatless Mondays" because Americans didn't have food, he was recommending it to feed the Belgians and French caught between the allies and the central powers.  (In fact, in the history of the United States, there has never been a famine.)  This was accomplished without rationing, and by a government guarantee of payment per bushel.  In fact, by 1918, the United States was the world's largest manufacturer of finished foodstuffs  This is not because of the precipitous drop in European food production as much as it was the labour cost ratio of crops planted by U.S. farmers.  Because of our early mechanization of farming, one farmer in the United States could plant and harvest a hundred acres (and did) where in other countries the labour ratio was at least  two men per ten acres and in Russia was often one man per acre harvest of wheat.

In medicine, by 1886, Bellevue Hospital School for Nurse's training had been established.  In 1901 the Army Corps of Nurses had regularly been training nurses as had The American Red Cross.  Compared to today's standards, all medical practice at the turn of the century was primitive, but the fact that Americans had the longest rate of longevity in the world, would belie the claim that Americans were suffering from poor health.  

I don't understand why there must be an adversarial comparison to Russia.  I also don't understand how you can claim in one post that Americans were in the position to dictate the fate of the Romanovs and in the next post claim that the United States was a third world primitive backward nation, incapable of contributing to the allied cause.

[grandduchessella]

All very interesting indeed. I am amazed at the level of knowledge of American history displayed in the thread--despite the varying viewpoints and points of disagreement. It's making me want to run and get my old textbooks down! Concentrating on European History when I got my degree, I'm realizing that my American history needs some brushing up on. 

[Robert_Hall]

GDElla, I am afraid those old textbooks are out-of-date. History has indeed been re-written from a far more objective point of view. I am in the same boat-  always looking for the opening up of history instead of the politically correct version we were fed from childhood to college degrees. The great talent to be tought is RESEARCH, find other sources !
 WWI is especially complicated as it crosses so many topics that affected the history and development of civilazation for the rest of the century. I am always finding new viewpoints about that time and the events that occured.
 How many times did I change my opinion on Wilson ? Guess that depends on how many teachers influenced me!   And none of my own opinions are carved in stone, to be sure.

[griffh]

Bev free to take on William E. Leuchtenburg, Samuel P. Hays, and Dexter Perkins, in fact take on the entire brain-trust of the Chiicago History of American Civilization group because it is they who I quoted.  The fact that America was a debtor nation in 1914 is a fact that they established and I quoted.  Didn't you see the quotation marks?  I agree with Daniel J. Boorstin statement that, "...Mr. Leuchtenburg has placed the era in the full context of American history.  He is neither defensive or moralistic...he reconstructs the story and spirit of the age from it documents..."  Obliviously you don't. 

America's meatless Mondays and its sugar rations and all the rest were ways that Hoover was able to immediately supply food for England as the British civilian population when Page informed Wilson in late April 1918 that England's civilian population facing starvation in 6 to 8 weeks.  I never said anything about America going hungry. 

I am sorry and I am dissappointed that you have gotten everything in such a muddle.  But thank you for helping me feel far more confident about my sources and good luck with trying to prove that the USA was not a debtor nation in 1914. 

   

     

[griffh]

And Oh Bev just one more thing.  George F. Kennan's book, Soviet American Relations, 1917-1920, Russia Leaves the War, was not written in the 1940's as you keep claiming.  It was written in 1956 after he retired as a specialist on Russian Affairs for the American Foriegn Service.  He wrote the book during the time he became a Member and Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study In Princeton.  So, as you keep saying, that at the end of his life he was privy to secret docuements that had not been available to him before and that he therefore changed his opinions at the end of his life.  Well Bev, this book was written at the end of his life and he had full access to newly declassived docuements from The Foriegn Affairs Section of the National Archives, The Hoover Library of War and Peace; while his other sources for his book came from The Institute for Advanced Study, the Libraries of the University of Chicago, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and the Historical Society of Wisconsin. 

[Tania]

Oh my goodness, sanity reigns. I was thinking for a moment in time I had gone down the hole of that white rabbit with his ever ticking time piece, and that twidle dee and twidle dum were going to be my escorts...Thank you Granduchessella, and thank you very much Griffh for your wise and concise sharings on historical issues across the globe of the 1920's, before and later, etc. I certainly changed my thoughts about Wilson after your sharing Griffh. Thank goodness you were so kind to share all information possible. It's always nice to read sound research that's written effectively, for lasting measure. I'm more than sure students of history are very appreciative of all you have bothered to relay so that they will be able to excell in their reports where and when needed ! Thank you again.

Tatiana+

[Bev]

I wasn't referring to Kennan's book -  I was referring to his white papers, especially the "Mr. X" paper published in the Foreign Policy Journal, his "long telegram" and his policy and position papers written in the forties when he headed the State Dept's "Think Tank" which he developed for the Truman administration.  Gffh, his book, SAR, was not written at the end of his life - he recently died a few years ago at age 101.  He was a great, kind man, of whom I had the honour of being introduced.  Not only was he a great man, but he had the ability to adapt and change his position as his understanding grew.  At the age of @ 97 while bound to a wheelchair with crippling arthritis, he was able to speak when called upon at a dinner, extemporaneously, about Clinton's Kosovo policy which at the time he saw as disastrous.  He retired from the Foreign service, not because of age, but because he was declared persona non grata by the Soviet Union, for making critical remarks comparing life in the Soviet Union in the 60s with life in the Soviet Union post WW II - he made the very candid remark that living conditions were actually worse than they were in the late 40s. 

I didn't say that Kennan was "privy to secret documents at the end of his life."  I said that as more information came to light, he revised his opinions.  He was especially dismayed at how his policy of containment was mis-used by the defense/ military complex to justify an
arms race, that he thought was counter-intuitive to Soviet/U.S. relations.  His position, of which I wholeheartedly agree, was that the
arms race did more to prop up the Soviet regime and keep it in power long after it would have naturally rotted and fallen. 

I admire Kennan very much.