Unconditional victory, however, gave the victors a free pass to fantasize, fabricate, and defame. They could demand reimbursement from Germany for their own folly and use it to repay Wall Street. The only problem is, Berlin was not responsible for the war’s outbreak. London was”€”particularly England’s longtime Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey.

Remember, the spark started in the Balkans with Serbian fanatics assassinating the Habsburg Archduke who was heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The assassination had nothing whatever to do with England and little to do with Germany. The violence could have been localized south of Vienna without involving the great powers. At the time, it was assumed by Berlin and Vienna that regicide would not be supported by the Czar or by His Majesty’s Government in London. The outrage to Austria did not seem to matter, however. In the end, it was Russia’s pan-Slavism combined with Whitehall’s balance-of-power fixations which account for the Great War. If only Sir Edward Grey, the enormously influential Foreign Secretary, had taken a deep breath and another cup of tea, history may have taken a peaceful course.

All Sir Edward had to do in the summer of 1914 was inform the Czar’s ministers in Moscow and the French revanchists in Paris that they should relax, desist, and rethink the matter. Instead, the British Ambassador in Moscow, Sir George Buchanan, was urging Russian mobilization in response to Austria’s moves against Serbia. In those days, mobilization meant war. Without the Czar succumbing to England’s mischief-making in Moscow, there would have been no general European conflagration in August 1914.

Under article 231 of the Versailles Treaty, Germany and her allies were held solely responsible for the outbreak of the war. This was a preposterous idea fabricated by London and Paris. In effect, it amounted to yet another blunder. The war guilt clause led directly to the rise of fascism in Germany and hence to World War II. Germany lost again. This time Germany was blasted to kingdom come, and the European continent divided up between Moscow and Washington. The state of Prussia, by order of FDR, disappeared from the map forever. And yet, Germany rose from the ashes and somehow managed to pay off everybody, as a kind of bribe to stay alive. The re-installment of unjustified reparations to England and France relating to the previous war is an outstanding example of extortion. In this manner, Germany can be said to have paid for everything, to have financed both sides of both wars.

The Great War and its sequel, World War II, constitute a tremendous poker game, with men and material acting as the cards. Both sides felt obliged to go all in to win the pot. Who arranged this game? Who was responsible? It was not Germany. In my view, it was England. More precisely, it was a handful of unscrupulous and foolhardy politicians in Whitehall who found themselves in charge of an overextended British Empire during its declining years. The received wisdom notwithstanding, Winston Churchill is at the very top of this list. As First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of World War I, then as Prime Minister during most of World War II, Churchill was in the thick of it. In addition to Whitehall officialdom, there were other self-interested parties working diligently behind the scenes to contrive the outcome of events. You see the result. Unlike Nick Carraway, I am not a gentleman from Yale, and I do not reserve judgement. We are looking back at wreckage and disaster, all of it eminently avoidable.