The story is much more complicated in the Baltics, but the bottom line is that German troups helped Latvia to repel the Red Army, tried to seize power in Latvia and Estonia, largely on behalf of the Batlic Germans, but were defeated, which later led to Baltic Germans losing their land holdings in those countries, in exchange for a modest compensation.

From a different angle, if I were a military historian, I think I could come up with a credible (”one that better-known figures have promoted”) theory justifying the march on Berlin in 1918. I would claim that the Prussian state, from its inception as a kingdom in the 18th century, had been prone to military expansion; draw a continuous line from Frederick the Great to Bismarck to Wilhelm II to Hitler; and explain how, as early as in the Seven-Year War, Russia intended to annex Eastern Prussia, a plan that only came to fruition in 1945, when Prussia’s historical core was dismembered, and Brandenburg fell under Soviet control. To back this far-fetched continuity, I would stretch the line backward to Teutonic knights using the principality of Prussia as the outpost for expansion in the East Baltics. That would still be a rather dubious theory, of course.

It seems exceptionally goofy.

I didn’t get into the “two visions” bit very much. That was a big target. As you say, it was simply a question of which alliance dominated Europe. The old “autocracy v. democracy” nonsense that Entente governments started putting out and that Wilson promoted is not very credible as a description of the “visions” of the two sides. The “visions” were antithetical only in the sense that each side wanted to win, which tended to conflict with the other side’s desire to win, but they were otherwise not really very starkly opposed ideologically. (This would be where I normally point out that Germany created multiple quisling, er, young democratic national governments liberated from the cruel yoke yadda yadda yadda, but that would be piling on.)

Hanson ignores the fact that Germany was provoked into attacking France by Russia’s mobilization, which threatened to (and eventually did) leave Germany fighting both in the West and the East. Hanson should also be able to recall how the French post-war plundering of the German lands to the West of the Rhine (and, in general, French intransigence and vindictiveness) both proved that the Entente had no moral edge over the enemy whatever, and implanted despair, resentment and a thirst for revenge into many Germans.

WWI was, as Robert Graves’s title hasit, Goodbye To All That, namely European civilization. It would have been better, all things considered, if the U.S. had stayed out, and Germany had won on points.

Bavaria the 49th state? I don’t think so.

Of course, Daniel, we know you make these quotes up. Even Marty Peretz is a figment of your Byzantine mind.