The Road Less Traveled
The Secret Battle to End the Great War, 1916-1917
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- $229.00
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
This revealing historical examination looks at the pivotal few months in the middle of the First World War, when all sides—Germany, Britain, and America—believed the war could have been concluded and changed the course of history. Two years into the most terrible conflict the world had ever known, the warring powers faced a crisis. There were no good military options. Money, men, and supplies were running short on all sides. The German chancellor secretly sought President Woodrow Wilson's mediation to end the war, just as British ministers and France's president also concluded that the time was right. The Road Less Traveled describes how tantalizingly close these far-sighted statesmen came to ending the war, saving millions of lives, and avoiding the total war that dimmed hopes for a better world. Theirs was a secret battle that is only now becoming fully understood, a story of civic courage, awful responsibility, and how some leaders rose to the occasion while others shrank from it or chased other ambitions. "Peace is on the floor waiting to be picked up!" pleaded the German ambassador to the United States. This book explains both the strategies and fumbles of people facing a great crossroads of history. The Road Less Traveled reveals one of the last great mysteries of the Great War: that it simply never should have lasted so long or cost so much.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian and former diplomat Zelikow (coauthor, To Build a Better World) meticulously chronicles the five-month period from late 1916 to early 1917, when Britain, Germany, and the U.S. tried to negotiate an end to WWI. Focusing on the period immediately preceding the collapse of the Russian monarchy and America's entry into the war, Zelikow examines the shuttle diplomacy and secret cables sent between British prime minister H.H. Asquith, German chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson, and their top diplomats. Zelikow highlights David Lloyd George's rise to the British premiership in December 1916 and public calls for a fight to "the finish" as one of the major hindrances to an agreement, as well as Germany's "catastrophic" decision in early 1917 to push for unrestricted U-boat warfare, which in turn caused Wilson to cut diplomatic ties with the German empire. In Zelikow's view, Wilson's action was a betrayal of his "peace without victory" mantra, and ultimately forced the U.S. to go to war. Deeply researched and scathingly critical of the war's foremost political figures, this history offers an intriguing look at what might have been.
