PASADENA, Calif. _ One hundred years ago America became embroiled in a war it didn't want. World War I _ the so-called "Great War" _ thrust the bucolic nation onto a world wide stage. How that happened is the subject of a three-part "American Experience," premiering next Monday on PBS.
While the nation itself wasn't marching off to war, Americans were, says Stephen Ives, producer of the series, "The Great War."
"Nurses were flooding into France. Ambulance drivers were heading over there. Men were volunteering for the French Foreign Legion. Young American aviators, many of them well-heeled, from the nation's elite colleges, were flying volunteer sorties for a thing called the 'Lafayette Escadrille,' which was the thing that sort of created that dashing image of the aviator that we know from World War I," he says.
Woodrow Wilson was the president, agonizing over whether to join the fight or not, says A. Scott Berg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Wilson.
"This is the most educated president we've ever had. He's the most religious president we've ever had. He was the most idealistic president we ever had," says Berg.
"He fought like hell to keep us out of this war for three years. And there were all sorts of pressures and ultimately this philosophical belief of his, this fundamental belief, brought us into the war ... He was a man of intense integrity. A lot of people disagreed with him a century ago. A lot of people disagree with him today. But I've never heard anybody challenge his integrity and with that his very good intentions ... Make no mistake, he changed and created the world we live in to this very day."
Ives adds, "What's so fascinating about World War I is that there's a really strong desire to remain neutral on the part of the country, and it is picked up by Wilson," he says.
"He articulates it with his usual, extraordinary eloquence, and there's this absolute struggle to keep separate from what anyone can see, which is this catastrophic experience going on in Europe.
"And yet there are these threats. There's these feelings of German espionage and sabotage which are treated kind of hysterically in the press. The Lusitania had sunk. And you can begin to feel these steps marching that way. Wilson wins re-election in 1916, campaigning on the slogan he 'kept us out of war.' And then, only a few months later, he takes America into war. And within weeks, the country is full-throatedly behind the war effort with an intense surge of patriotism."
Wilson felt if we didn't join the Allies, we would not play a decisive role in the terms of the peace. And he dreamed of the League of Nations in which countries would unite to settle international disputes.
"He had a vision for what the post war world should look like," says Ives. "And he felt that it was worth American blood to try and achieve that."
The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the war with Germany, was partially responsible for the rise if Nazism, says Edward Gutierrez, a military historian and author of "Doughboys on the Great War: How American Soldiers Viewed their Military Service."
"I think that Niccolo Machiavelli argues that you can do two things when you defeat an enemy. You can either obliterate them like the Romans did to the Carthaginians, or you can make them your friend. Because, if you do the middle ground, which is what happens in the Treaty of Versailles, they are going to come back. And they are going to be very angry. And I think that's truly what happens in 1919," says Gutierrez.
"One important point to remember, too, is that the allies do NOT lift the blockade of the Germans until Germany signs the peace treaty. So from the armistice, 11 November 1918, all the way to June, women and children in Germany are still starving until the Germans put pen to paper and sign the Treaty of Versailles," adds Gutierrez.
Berg disagrees. "Wilson spent every day of six months _ and this is hard to imagine that the president of the United States left the country for six months _ to negotiate this treaty. And he spent every day of that trying to temper Britain and France, which really just wanted to obliterate Germany .
"And Wilson kept saying, 'If you do that, we will fight this same war again in 25 years.' And you can pull out your calendars and almost mark it to the day," he says.
"So there are a lot of compromises there that Wilson was not happy with, but he did it all, in order to get this League of Nations . . So that was it. So I am not one of those who thinks that the treaty necessarily caused World War II, and there is certainly a lot of talk that the reparations that were imposed upon Germany so punished them, that they had to go to World War II.
"I don't believe that. First of all, they could have afforded the reparations bill they were handed. And, second, they never really paid it. They paid about 20 cents on the dollar. So there were lots of other things at work there within the German society."
ACTOR'S TRIBUTE TO THE METS
Hank Azaria plays a has-been major league baseball announcer who finds himself on the skids and calling plays for a minor league team in IFC's new comedy, "Brockmire," premiering Wednesday.
In real life Azaria's a dyed-in-the-wool Mets fan. "I grew up a Mets fan for my sins. I still am a tremendous Mets fan," he says.
"This character _ his jacket is based on a jacket that Lindsey Nelson, one of the famed Mets announcers, wore all through my childhood. And in its own weird, alcoholic soaked, soporific, dark, gritty, sad way, this is a love letter to baseball," he says.
"Mets are OK these days, but mostly what you do is you watch it on TV, you record it, and you fast forward through the bad parts, which is usually most of the game," he says.
"They're like, 'Oh, they're doing all right.' I'll watch for five minutes, 'Oh, they're back to going in the tank again.' I'm back to fast forwarding it so I don't have to deal with the emotional pain of actually watching it in real time."
'SAUL' CHARACTER TWICE PLAYED
Actor Bob Odenkirk, who plays Saul on AMC's "Better Call Saul," is in a unique position. He's playing a guy he's already played before � only younger. His character was introduced on "Breaking Bad." But "Better Call Saul" (which returns next Monday) takes place BEFORE "Breaking Bad."
So Odenkirk plays Saul before he was Saul. "I'm not very smart, and that helps me a lot," he says. "A brain injury is a great thing to an actor. I wasn't just dropped on my head as a child. I was thrown on my head.
"It is the job to be present in the moment and not think about where you go, where you end up, not do some version of what's to come, but rather just experience the moment that these guys (the writers) have put us in, and feel the presence of that moment, and make the choices of that moment as organically and honestly as you can. Listen, it's been the great joy of learning about acting and going into dramatic acting from where I came from _ sketch writing and sketch performing _ is to just exist in the moment, and to go to a different place. And it's been a delight to do that."
THREE-NIGHT SPECIAL HONORS JACK NICKLAUS
Jack Nicklaus will be the subject of a three-night series called simply "Jack" on the Golf Channel starting Sunday. And while people know of his golfing triumphs, few know about his travails. "I think we all have tough times in our lives," he tells me.
"I think probably maybe the toughest is when we _ about 12 years ago, we lost a grandchild to drowning. That was not a very good time.
"I think that we've had other times in life that _ I don't think _ in relation to the game of golf, did I have any tough times? Sure. I lost a lot of tournaments. I actually lost _ finished second more times than I finished first. But, you know, that's all a learning experience. You learn from losing. One hundred forty four guys start the tournament, and one wins, and somebody's going to finish second. If you finish second, you've actually played pretty well. You've given yourself a chance to win.
"But those are not life changing situations. It's a game. Golf's a game. I think you treat it as a game. You have fun with it. I've had setbacks in business. I've had setbacks in golf. We've had health setbacks. We've all had that, but I've been a pretty fortunate guy. Nothing that has been anything more serious, obviously, than losing my grandchild."
