100 Mistakes that Changed History

by Bill Fawcett

  The men of the Seventh Cavalry certainly paid a high price for George Armstrong Custer’s mistakes. It was the most one-sided defeat in American history. The victory also reinforced the white opinion that Indians were violent savages. After the defeat at Little Big Horn, the U.S. Army reinforced and increased their efforts all through the Dakotas. Within a few years, the only Native Americans not starving on reservations were the few hundred that remained exiled in Canada.

  The final mistake that doomed the Sioux and other tribes was a betrayal. The Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse was perhaps their most respected leader. A competing chief told General Crook, who commanded the U.S. cavalry in the territory, that Crazy Horse planned to kill him during a parley. On the basis of this statement, Crook issued an arrest warrant for the Oglala chief. Ironically, after successfully leading warriors in many battles, Crazy Horse may have become convinced that war was not the best route for his people. In early September, the chief had refused to join a small band of warriors led by Chief Red Cloud, and then later that month, he convinced Chief Spotted Tail and hundreds of his warriors to return peacefully to the reservation. When asked by Colonel Luther Bradley to come to Camp Robinson on a promise that no harm would befall him, Crazy Horse agreed. It was a mistake.

  Thousands of Lakotas were already gathered at Camp Robinson when Crazy Horse arrived. Many of them were families he had personally led there that May. He entered the camp with Indian agent Jesse Lee accompanying him. Lee pleaded that the chief be allowed to speak his piece. His request was refused. Chief Crazy Horse was too influential and this made him a threat. Bradley ordered his immediate arrest. Being arrested virtually guaranteed that the chief would be killed or shipped off to die at a desolate prison in the Florida Keys.

  At first Crazy Horse went willingly with the officer of the day. When they entered the building and he realized he was being taken in the camp jail, the old warrior pulled a knife and ran back out. One Lakota warrior who had fought with Crazy Horse earlier was now working for the army. His name was Little Big Man, though his story is very different from the Dustin Hoffman movie by that name. As Crazy Horse ran out the door, Little Big Man grabbed his arm. Crazy Horse stabbed the Indian scout and ran a few steps farther.

  Armed only with a knife, Crazy Horse found himself surrounded by soldiers. Dozens ran toward the fleeing chief, and one officer yelled, “Kill him, kill him.” Crazy Horse was bayoneted and died that evening. With his death went the best hope for a peaceful resolution of the problems in the Indian Territories. It was the final act that guaranteed the near destruction of the Cheyenne and Sioux cultures.

  Custer’s mistakes in command led to a massacre that reinforced public opinion that the tribes were savages whose violent way of life needed to be exterminated. The results were increased efforts and massacres of women and children, such as the revenge taken by the Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee. With the death of Crazy Horse, the loss was guaranteed. It is a terrible irony that the Sioux and Cheyenne paid such a terrible price for their one-sided victory. George Armstrong Custer may have made the mistakes, but both his troopers and the Native Americans felt the repercussions.

  58

  ONE WRONG TURN

  How to Start a War

  1914

  Rarely has one driver making a wrong turn affected history more than in Sarajevo in 1914. It all really started in about 1859 as Germany struggled to become a nation. The result of that unification was that the traditional balance of power in Europe was disrupted. By 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War, there was no balance and no one doing any balancing. Rather, the balance was replaced by interweaving alliances, often based on treaties that contained several secret clauses.

  By 1914, racial and political tensions were high all over Europe. This was particularly true in the Austro-Hungarian empire. This Hapsburg empire had a number of problems. Most of the trouble was because it was made up of several nations and even more ethnic groups. Many of those racial groups distrusted or hated one another even more than they did any of Austria’s external enemies. The Austrians lorded over the rest, the Germanic Austrians even more so, while the Serbs hated the Slavs, the Slavic groups all resented everyone else, and less numerous minorities were all exploited and persecuted. Adding to the problems of Austria was Emperor Franz Joseph. He had been on the throne for fifty years and was totally out of touch with both his subjects and the times. Complicating this volatile mix was the fact that dozens of different ethnic groups inside Austria were being supported by nations such as Russia and Germany. So the situation in the Austrian empire was unstable at best and getting worse.

  Instability bred chaos and extremism. In parts of the empire, such as Serbia, dozens of radical groups existed, all capable of violent terrorism. Some wanted national freedom, some were ready to kill in the name of democracy; anarchists bombed everyone else in the hope of eliminating all governments. Many groups simply hated and feared all of the other ethnic minorities and religions who were their neighbors. Christians and Muslims continued centuries of antipathy. Almost every group strove to make sure their minority took control of their local area once the inevitable happened and the Hapsburg empire collapsed.

  It was in the middle of this volatile and unstable situation that it was decided that the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, should visit Sarajevo. Now this may sound like a mistake, then again it may not have been. Sarajevo was probably one of the most dangerous centers of radicalism in the empire. The archduke was a moderate and publicly stated that as emperor he would allow the Slavic states to form their own internal governments. This was anathema to the internal police forces of the empire, who spent most of their time putting down plots by those same Slavs. Or perhaps Ferdinand simply wanted to reassure those friendly to his empire, in one of its most hostile provinces, that he cared. So the son of the emperor made a state visit to Serbia. This is the same Serbia that has spent the last few decades dealing with civil war and ethnic cleansing. It might also be added that in the opinion of most governments, the emperor’s son was not the sharpest point on the crown, at best.

  In any case, Ferdinand was advised not to go to Serbia, but insisted. So at the end of June 1914, the heir to the Hapsburg throne went to Sarajevo. Knowing that this was going to be a problem, the empire’s secret police went on overtime in all of Serbia and arrested many suspected terrorists. But there were so many that they were unable to get the majority of them. They left virtually untouched one group: the Slavic nationalist fanatics known as the Black Hand.

  The route that the caravan of open cars carrying the Austrian archduke would take from the train station to city hall was known. In fact, it was announced so that people would be able to line up and cheer, or at least see their future emperor. Young Black Hand terrorists were spaced along that route. Each terrorist was armed with whatever they could obtain, from grenades to pistols and even a few bombs.

  At the beginning of the marked route the first few waiting Black Hand had no chance to attack as the cars sped past before they were ready. Then one, a typesetter named Cabrinovic, threw a grenade. It bounced off the car carrying the archduke. When the grenade did explode, the blast injured those riding in the auto behind Ferdinand’s. Some were hurt seriously enough to be hospitalized. After this incident, the auto caravan sped up again and rushed to the city hall. There the archduke reaffirmed his faith in Serbia’s markedly dubious friendship with the empire and his appreciation of those who served his father’s empire there.

  The Austrian military commander for Serbia, General Potiorek, urged the heir to get out of the city as quickly as possible. Instead Ferdinand insisted that he first go visit those who had been injured by the grenade meant for him. A two-car caravan was formed, with the mayor of Sarajevo’s vehicle leading the way to the hospital. And here is the mistake. The first car took a wrong turn. It went the wrong way at a fork in the road. As a result of their wrong turn, the open-topped auto carrying the archduke and his wife slowed to a near stop. It m
ay have even pulled partway into an alley to turn around and get back onto the correct route.

  By sheer coincidence one of the would-be assassins, Gavrilo Princip, who had failed to get a shot earlier, happened to be standing where they stopped. He had been standing in the wrong place. Princip still had his loaded pistol. When he found himself standing just a few feet from the royal couple, he quickly fired two shots. One hit Ferdinand near his heart and the other struck Duchess Sophia in the stomach. While the terrorist was quickly subdued, the damage was done. Both royals died soon after.

  Within days, the Austrian army was invading Serbia. This meant that Russia, committed to support their fellow Slavic nation, declared war on Austria. So Austria turned to Germany with the expectation that Russia would back off rather than face the two of them. Russia did not back off, but instead invoked its treaty with France, who also declared war on Germany. So Germany, who already had armies on the French border ready to act, attacked into northern France. They attacked across neutral Belgium in an attempt to outflank the French army. Britain had a mutual defense treaty with Belgium and so declared war on Germany when that small nation was overrun. World War I had begun.

  The mayor’s driver took a wrong turn, and as a result, two weeks later, all of Europe was at war. World War I might have been inevitable anyway. But given more time and different circumstances, it may have started months or even years later. Without the fuse being lit in Sarajevo, there might have been a chance for peace. But because of that wrong turn, World War I broke out, and over the next five years, millions died.

  59

  TOO SUCCESSFUL A DEVIOUS PLAN

  The Enemy of My Enemy

  1917

  This mistake is one of a lack of foresight. In April 1917 a truck, sealed almost airtight, entered Germany from Bern, Switzerland. In that truck were nineteen Russians. All nineteen had been considered too dangerous to allow to travel through, or even enter, virtually any nation in Europe. Only adamantly neutral Switzerland would tolerate them. Now they were going home. One of the nineteen men in that truck was Vladimir Lenin. The Russian revolutionary had fled the czar’s secret police and eventually ended up in Switzerland. From there he coordinated the actions of his outlawed and small, but fanatical, Bolshevik Party.

  The start of World War I had made any communications with Russia difficult. It was a most frustrating time for a revolutionary being cut off and far from the action. Finally, Lenin approached the ambassador to Switzerland from one of the nations where he had been one of the most wanted enemies of the state, Germany. The kaiser’s government did not like revolutionaries. But Germany was three years at war, and losing. One of the nations allied against Germany was controlled by the same Russian government Lenin wished to overthrow. His promise of leading a revolution and then taking Russia out of the war was enough to interest the hard-pressed Germans. They agreed to return him to his native country. It is unlikely that anyone in the German army actually expected Lenin and the Bolsheviks to really seize power. There were barely 50,000 Bolsheviks spread across dozens of cities among the tens of millions of people living in Russia. But obviously anything that distracted the new Menshevik or Kerensky government, who had kept Russia in the war after the czar abdicated, would benefit Germany.

  So Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was sneaked into Russia by the German army. He was even given some operating money. To the surprise and dismay of Germany, by November Lenin had succeeded. Alexander Kerensky, a middle-class moderate, had made a number of poor decisions, including keeping Russia in the unpopular war, allowing food costs to remain so high few soldiers or workers could afford to eat, and not redistributing land to the desperate peasants who had reluctantly supported him. When the Bolsheviks finally acted, only one small military unit, the Petrograd Women’s Battalion, actually fought to defend the unpopular Menshevik government.

  In the short term, the German army got what it wanted. Lenin kept his word and withdrew Russia from the alliance fighting Germany. The German government then demanded a high price for what they had already done. They wanted to be given Poland, the Baltic nations, and Ukraine. Lenin and Russia refused, and with those demands and refusal, any slight goodwill between the two nations was lost. Germany assisted Poland and the White armies to battle the Red Army for almost another decade.

  But by the time Russia had withdrawn from the war, it was too late to save the kaiser’s war effort. The German troops who hurried west arrived in time to die in the Verdun offensive. That offensive had been the last hope for Germany to defeat the Allies before the power of the United States could affect the war. The Germans were stopped at Verdun, and soon fresh and enthusiastic American soldiers had more than balanced out any German reinforcements from the Eastern Front.

  It was years until the Red Army actually controlled all of Russia. By the time it did, the enmity with Germany was mutual and intense. Stalin now led Russia, and communists were aggressively pursuing world domination. It is surprising that Russia was almost as self-defeating when it assisted in the secret training of the German army. But that is a mistake of its own.

  So while in the short term the German army got what they wanted by smuggling Lenin back into Russia, doing so may have been one of the worst judgment calls ever made in the twentieth century. The Bolsheviks were one of the smallest and most radical of all the many revolutionary movements in Russia. Without Lenin’s genius, the Bolsheviks would likely have remained a minor, extremist group of no importance. The much more moderate Mensheviks, or at least a less reasonable populist government, would instead have emerged.

  No Lenin, then no Stalin. The millions of Ukrainians and Kulaks Stalin killed to allow the collectivization of the farms and factories would have lived. In Germany, the strong Communist Party led to a political reaction that in 1933 put the Nazi Party in power. So if those German intelligence officials had not decided to send Lenin back to Russia, there might not have been the mass programs and starvation in Russia in the 1930s: no Nazis, no Holocaust, no World War II, no Cold War, no Mao Zedong, no Castro. Assisting Lenin and enabling the Bolshevik revolution that gave rise to communism just may be one of the worst, world-changing mistakes in this book.

  60

  THINKING SHORT TERM

  A Fine Crop of Dust

  1917

  Europe was hungry. World War I was raging, and many European farmers were now in the army. The nitrates that would have gone into fertilizer were being used to make munitions. So it was decided that the United States needed to grow more food. The way to do that was to plow formerly unused lands and plant wheat or corn on them. This came at a time when there was also a period of unusually high rainfall. That was fortunate in that it made a lot of marginal land productive. It was unfortunate because the extra rainfall didn’t last.

  The encouragement to plant came from the U.S. Food Administration (USFA), which was founded as part of the Food and Fuel Control Act passed August 10, 1917. The USFA was created to encourage more food production and to control the distribution of agricultural products. So the USFA turned to the most traditional way to encourage an activity. They offered a bonus payment for every acre on which corn was planted. The bonus was enough to make corn growing profitable even on marginal land. Even less fertile soil in normally dryer states was used to grow wheat. The guaranteed high prices from the USFA subsidized the plowing of new lands in such states as Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. The soil in those states was normally too dry for wheat, but thanks to a few seasons of unusually high rains, large crops of wheat were possible.

  When World War I ended so did the subsidies. A few of the new farms were able to get in several more good wheat crops, but many others were abandoned. Within a decade, there were only a few of the new farms left. They were replaced by ranchers raising cattle and horses, just like the farmers had replaced those ranchers when the land was first converted to crops. But there was a difference now. Before the land was farmed, the soil had been held together by the roots of sturdy, sl
ow-growing grass. But that grass had all been plowed under. So with that ground cover gone, the hooves of the animals chewed up the unprotected soil.

  Then in 1934, strong winds blew for weeks across the Southwest. Millions of acres of already pulverized soil turned to dust. Dust clouds, know as dusters or black blizzards, covered the skies. When they had ended, what little fertility the dry land once had was gone. So badly had the soil been ruined that any period of high winds created mini dust bowls up to as late as the 1950s.

  For a few years, American wheat was able to feed the doughboys and our allies. The cost of that wheat was millions of acres of grazing land lost. The lives of tens of thousands of farmers were ruined and the Great Depression was made even worse. The drama was so tragic and widespread that it was the theme of one of John Steinbeck’s greatest novels, The Grapes of Wrath.

  This pattern is recurring again today. In China the need for food led to the plowing of the lands adjoining their northern deserts. Today those deserts grow at a rate of 1,500 square miles per year and on some days the red dust clouds over Beijing are so thick that you cannot breathe without a mask. It appears this is one world-changing mistake we keep on making.