BOOK REVIEW: ‘Sons of Freedom’ by Geoffrey Wawro

OPINION:

SONS OF FREEDOM: THE FORGOTTEN AMERICAN SOLDIERS WHO DEFEATED GERMANY IN WORLD WAR I

By Geoffrey Wawro

Basic Books $35, 597 pages

As the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I approaches, a loud “huzzah” is due Geoffrey Wawro — one of the few historians bold enough to declare that American intervention was decisive in the conflict.

Most authors — especially the British and the French — slide around that reality. And, unfortunately, many American writers shy away from claiming victory for the United States.

Why the reticence? Mr. Wawro, a professor at the University of North Texas, states his case emphatically: “Crediting the Americans with victory would have diminished the achievements of the Allied Militaries as well as the doleful culture of remembrance that evolved after the war to honor the massive casualties: forty-one million killed and wounded.”

Practical politics played a role. President Woodrow Wilson’s post-war plans were “already making trouble with its empire-threatening Fourteen Points .” If Americans were credited with the victory, “they’d have to be conceded the right to shape the peace. And so the great charade began.”

To be sure, American casualties did not approach those of the British and French. Only 40 percent of the 2 million “dough boys” — as America’s soldiers were known — saw battle. Nonetheless, 117,000 of them died.

Germany appeared on the verge of victory in 1918. Large segments of the battle-weary French army mutinied in 1917. On the heels of the Bolshevik revolution, Russia made a separate peace, freeing hundreds of thousands of German troops to shift to the western front. And British manpower was rapidly eroding, as was support for the war.

The Allies lacked the strength to drive the Germans back across the Rhine. The war could have ended with the Germans in possession of Alsace-Lorraine and much of northern France and Belguim. “The global balance of power would have tipped heavily in Berlin’s favor,” Mr. Wawro writes.

President Woodrow Wilson, who declared America as “too proud to fight,” had won re-election in 1916 pledging to “keep us out of war,” a vow endorsed by public opinion.

The Daily Mail of New York spoke for many Americans when it suggested that the British Empire, already possessing a quarter of the Earth’s population and land mass, “could settle the matter by divvying up its own surplus territory.”

Theodore Roosevelt, who preceded Wilson as president, had a strong dissenting voice, raging at “the professional pacifists, poltroons, and college sissies.” He called Wilson “the infernal skunk in the White House.” And American money was at stake: Banks had advanced the Allies $12 billion, which they could lose if Germany won.

Another factor was American arms makers. Remington, for instance, earned $1.8 million “pure profit” on every shipment of 100 hundred million cartridges and $2 million on shrapnel fuses, “which the plant made for a nickel each and sold for a quarter.” One cartridge order alone from the French netted a $20 million profit.

In the end, German bungling ended Wilson’s anti-war stand: the sinking of the American passage liner Lusitania and the offer of a large chunk of the American West to Mexico should it enter the war on Berlin’s side.

So a reluctant Wilson was “all but forced” into war, as Mr. Wawro puts it. And the United States set about building an army from scratch.

The draft excluded men in “essential industries”; thus the surviving manpower pool was shallow. Twenty-five percent of draftees were illiterate. The average American white had seven years of schooling, five years for immigrants, fewer than three years for blacks. One-quarter were rejected for physical disabilities. And 20 percent to 25 percent were foreign-born.

But an army was assembled under the leadership of Gen. John Pershing and shipped for France. Allied commanders fought to have them integrated into existing units. Pershing refused: His men would fight as Americans.

And fight they did. The crucial battles, which Mr. Wawro describes in expert detail, were those of Saint-Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne, which cut German lines of supply and retreat. Some 3 million German troops were trapped and surrendered. A British historian called Pershing’s offensive in Lorraine “the matador’s thrust” that killed the German bull.

Thus ended the war. And Mr. Wawro amply documents his conclusion: “Had the Americans not entered the war and deployed 2 million troops to France, the Allies would almost have certainly lost.” Why didn’t the United States receive proper credit? American casualties were “just 1/55 of the total Allied loss.” As one American writer observed, “The war is over. The next duty of every patriot is to forget it.”

The nation’s attention quickly turned to the “Roaring Twenties,” followed by a stock market boom-and-bust, and the Great Depression. The 117,000 American dead were quickly forgotten.

And in one sense, the dead remain forgotten: The Meuse-Argonne Cemetery is the largest American cemetery in Europe and the second biggest in the world. Yet no American president has ever visited it.

• Joseph Goulden writes frequently on intelligence and military matters.