Since I have no life, I belong to two book clubs. One met last night and the other meets this afternoon. Last night’s gathering discussed The Daughters of Yalta while my other group today will be discussing Lenin on the Train. The first book explored the final conference between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill held at the end of the war in Europe. Since the Nazi’s were virtually defeated at this time, the focus of this momentous meeting was to discuss the post war European world … whether a United Nations was feasible, what would be the fate of Poland and other East European countries, and whether Russia would join the war against Japan.

The literary focus was on the role three daughters (of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Averill Harriman who was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow) played at the conference. Each accompanied their fathers at the conference for various and different reasons but all played important roles. Anna Churchill, for example, worked hard to keep her dad alive through the grueling conference. This well written work, however, managed to shed considerable light on this momentous moment in history.

The second book focused on the decade leading up to the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. That November, the Provisional Government established after the fall of the Czar was in turn thrown out by a minority of hard-left Communists. Again, this moment in history was approached from a slightly oblique angle … the cynical decision of the German high command to help Vladimir Lenin get from his exile in Switzerland back to Russia. The Germans hoped he would, as in fact happened, topple the first post-Czarist government and get Russia out of the conflict.

I suspect even they were surprised when this wild scheme worked. After all, the German brain-trust also tried to foment an uprising in Ireland (the 1916 Easter uprising which ended quickly and tragically) and an uprising in India (which went nowhere). But their Lenin crackpot scheme, against all odds, worked and altered himan history. At the time. they thought, if this cock-a-mamie scheme worked, they could easily dispatch of Lenin and his crowd after victory in the West. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I also watched an older movie over the weekend called Darkest Hour. This excellent flic focused on the darkest days in Britain when Churchill replaced Chamberlain as PM and the Nazis invaded the low Countries and France in early 1940. It involved an agonizing debate over whether England would sue for peace with Hitler. Remember, the situation of the Brits as France crumbled. They had no major allies at the moment and (in just a matter of days), their forces would be huddled around the port of Dunkirk waiting to be annihilated or captured. Without an army and what seemed like an inadequate air force, there odds of survival appeared impossible despite having the best navy in the world. There was a huge sentiment in Parliament to recognize reality and settle for the best terms possible. George VI was on the verge of seeking exile in Canada and U.S. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy (father of JFK) was an aggresive proponent of appeasement. Though he wavered, Winston Churchill held firm and gave his famous ‘We Shell Never Surrender’ speech to parliament. It seemed like national suicide at the time.

All this got me thinking about how fragile history is, how much depends on idiosyncratic events that might have gone another way. At Yalta, for example, FDR was dying. It was never admitted, of course, but all who observed him could plainly see this was the fact. Worse, his closest aide (Harry Hopkins) was also dying. Hopkins had been joined at the hip to FDR, enjoying such a close relationship that he lived in the White House for a number of years.

One cannot say for sure, but perhaps the course of events at Yalta and beyond might have been different had America been led by someone not in such severely compromised health. In those critical moments, FDR pushed away Hopkins, Churchill, and his Soviet Ambassador Harriman in the vain belief he could establish a special relationship with Stalin. All these advisors had a more realistic view of ths Soviet leader, but had little opportunity to alter FDR’s opinion or approach. He had to know this man’s history, a sociopath and sadist who killed off millions including virtually all of his close comrades in fits of paranioa and in the lust for total power. Would a healthy man have committed such an obvious blunder?

Or consider the German High Command during WWI. As the conflict seemed never ending they became desperate. America was about to enter the war. They needed Russia to leave the field of battle. But the Lenin card was such a long shot. Why expend resources on this guy along with the political capital that came with initiating a scheme to get him (and a number of his associates) across Germany and through Sweden and Finland to St. Petersburg. His party, the Bolsheviks, were thought by many as a bunch of kooks with no chance to assume power. The Mensheviks were the overwhelming majority among the socialist left. Unfortunately, this dominant wing of the left felt a moral obligation to respect the promises they had made to their allies. They supported continuing a fultile war that bled Russia dry. Lenin brought with him a fierce focus and an unbending and obsessive will. By the Fall of of 1917, he has seized power.

But there had been so many times when Lenin might have been stopped. The German’s might have scrapped this hairbrained scheme (or so many thought at the time). Lenin could have been stopped at the Russian border, when he was halted and almost refused entrance until permission to allow him in was secured from the Provisional Government (P.G.). Kerensky, the leader of the P.G., finally granted him permission to enter thinking him a marginal actor and no real threat. After realizing that was an error of judgment, Kerensky might have come to his senses and gotten Russia out of the war, an act that might have saved his government which started out with condiserable popular support.

Instead, he launched another ill-fated advance which resulted in another slaughter of Russian troops which, in turn, incited mutiny among the soldiers and insurrection in the streets. It all might have been so different. Perhaps the world would have been spared some seven decades of Communist threats. Kerensky ultimately escaped to the United States and continued to attack the Bolsheviks as he regretted the choices he had made.

Or what if FDR had been well enough to think clearly at this point. Why did he ignore his closest advisors to pursue a ‘relationship’ with a paranoid dictator who had never honored a commitment in his life. Hopkins, Harriman, and surely Churchill never had illusions about what would happen to Poland and other Eastern European countries at the end of the war. But, with FDR’s acceptance of Stalin’s assurances, they left Yalta with vague language and illusory promises including free elections in Poland that were doomed from ths start. All they had to look at was Stalin’s recent behaviors such as when he signalled the Polish underground movement in Warsaw to rise up while suggesting that nearby Soviet Troops would help them. Then he ordered his forces to halt on the outskirts of the city as some 200,000 Polish freedom fighters were slaughtered by Nazi troops. Stalin wanted any and all possible resistance to Communist control eliminated. That is what the police would call ‘a clue.’

But let us think back to other moments when history hung in the balance. Churchill being appointed PM at this critical moment was not a sure thing. The King did not want him. Prime Miinister Chamberlain, who was on his way out, preferred Lord Halifax as his successor … a strong supporter of negotiating a peace with Hitler. Halifax turned down the office, most likely on the assumption that Churchill would fail miserably and he (Halifax) could ride in to save the day with less damage to his own reputation.

That turned out to be a massive miscalculation. At the time, though, it was a sensible decision. After all, who could anticipate the RAF could hold out against the Luftwaffe, or that Hitler was dumb enough to start a two-front war before securing his western flank, or that Hitler would declare war on U.S. after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when he didn’t have to. By all odds, Chrchill’s reign as PM shuld have been short and forgettable. Few gave England any chance of holding out against what looked like an invincible force at the time.

Or let’s go back to the period after Roosevelt was elected. While giving a speech in Miami in February of 1933, some 17 days before his inauguration, a crazed gunman (Guiseppe Zangara) started shooting at the President-elect. The wife of a local physician grabbed the would-be assassin’s arm as he began shooting. As a result, the Mayor of Chicago who was greeting FDR at the moment was hit by one of the bullets and died days layer.

But think of this, candidates picked their running mates only on political grounds at the time. No thought was given to the suitability of the man to lead the country. John Nance Garner would have succeeded to the Presidency. He was a southerner by temperment, a die hard racist, a fiscally conservative politician utterly incapable of leading the nation during the depths of the depression. This would have been a disaster of unknown, but not unexpected, proportions.

Or let’s look at Hitler in his early days. Theoretically, he could have been shot for treason, or at least sentenced to a long prison term, after his treasonous act of leading the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. This insurrection was put down rather easily but only after a number of deaths. But Hitler was treated leniently by the courts, only spending about 2 years of a soft incarceration during which he was permitted to receive visitors and wrote his manifesto … Mein Kampf. Would the Nazi’s have risen to power had he been treated more harshly? More importantly, is there a lesson to be learned for how Trump has been treated after the january 6 insurrection on the American Capitol? Or what about the apocryphal story about a seminal moment in WWI. A British soldier purportedly had a clear shot at Hitler and chose not to take it for reasons no one knows. Would 50 million plus lives have been sapred if he had? Not likely but one never knows.

One could go on with the ‘what-ifs’ of history. I mean, really, what if James Comer hadn’t made the bone-head move of releasing the news that the FBI was looking into Hillary’s emails just days before the 2016 Presdiential election. Would we have been spared the agony of a Trump admnistration if he had waited a week? Oh, what might have been!

When you don’t have a real life, these are the things you think about as you avoid doing anything actually productive. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll go out and get a real life.

But don’t count on it!