Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2020 “Going Over the Top” – The Impact of World War I on Three Leaders of World War II Nick Sage Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses Part of the European History Commons, Military History Commons, Political History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Sage, Nick, "“Going Over the Top” – The Impact of World War I on Three Leaders of World War II" (2020). CMC Senior Theses. 2434. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/2434 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Going Over the Top” – The Impact of World War I on Three Leaders of World War II SUBMITTED TO Professor Jonathan Petropoulos By Nicholas Sage For Honors Senior Thesis in History Fall 2019-Spring 2020 Submitted May 11, 2020 Sage ii Sage iii For Captain Dancy Sage iv Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the generous support of Joseph Z. and Ruth N. Stasneck for the students of Claremont McKenna College. Without the two grants I received through the Stasneck Fellowship for Archival Research, I never would have found the primary sources that form the foundation of this thesis. I also would like to thank the archivists of the Churchill Archives Center, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, the National World War I Memorial Museum, and the Kansas City Public Library. Their enthusiastic assistance made my first experience conducting archival research a pleasant one. I owe a debt of gratitude to the Cheek family for opening their home in Cambridge, UK, to me for two weeks in the summer of 2019 as I conducted archival research and for remaining some of my family’s dearest friends for decades. I can say with confidence that my days in Cambridge were among the most memorable and introspective of my life. To all the history faculty who devoted their time to me and my peers, I could never articulate how much you taught me not only about our field, but about myself. This includes both the incredible history teachers I had the privilege of learning from in high school and the distinguished professors of CMC’s History Department. I especially want to thank Professor Wendy Lower. Although I began writing this thesis in the late summer of 2019, it was not until I took your class on the Great War the following autumn that I discovered the purpose of this project. No one, however, devoted more of their time to cultivating my historical acumen than Professor Jonathan Petropoulos. Nearly five years ago as a senior in high school touring CMC, I met Professor Petropoulos for the first time and spoke with him about the school for the better part of an hour. I did not realize at the time that I would eventually take three of his classes and that he would serve as the advisor and reader of this project which represents the zenith of my undergraduate academic career. Professor, I owe so much of the last four years to you, and I look forward to what I am sure will be a long friendship ahead. Lery, Tobin, and Gabe, you will always represent the other three corners of my tetrarchy, and I am so grateful that you refused to let this project devour me over the past year. I also need to reaffirm my adoration for my “life coach,” Melia Wong, and my favorite Army lieutenant, Lindsay Burton, for their guidance and encouragement over the past four years. I also want to thank Lauren Broidy for her devotion not only as a friend but also as an editor of this project. Most importantly, I would like to thank my family for their steadfast love throughout my life. My parents, John and Shelly, drilled the importance of education into me from a young age and made many sacrifices to help me get where I am today. To my brothers, Jackson and Matthew, thank you for your patience with me over the last two decades. I find it comforting to know that no matter what happens, I always have two siblings (and friends) I can rely on in life. I am also indebted to my delightful grandparents who fostered my love for storytelling and history as I grew up. Especially given the trying circumstances of a global pandemic, I have never been more appreciative of my family. Sage v “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” – Harry S. Truman Sage vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface…………………………………………………………………………..viii Introduction: Worlds At War……………………………………………………..1 Part One: The Aristocrat………………………………………………………...10 Chapter 1: “The Glittering Trot”………………………………………………12 Chapter 2: No “Gentleman’s Game”…………………………………………...21 Chapter 3: The Second Thirty Years’ War…………………………………….47 Part Two: The Artist……………………………………………………………..67 Chapter 4: Down and Out in Vienna and Munich…………………………….69 Chapter 5: The Corporal’s Kampf……………………………………………...75 Chapter 6: Seeing the World Through “Glowing Coals”……………………..90 Part 3: The Farmer…………………………………………………………….111 Chapter 7: “Stirred in Heart and Soul”………………………………………113 Chapter 8: “The Strain, the Mud, the Misery”……………………………….120 Chapter 9: The Captain Who Would Be King………………………………..145 Conclusion: The Echoes of 1918………………………………………………170 Appendix: Figures and Photos…………………………………………………181 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………192 Sage vii Abstract This thesis explores the impact that service in the First World War had on three global leaders of the Second World War: Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and Harry Truman. Through analysis of original documents from the Churchill Archive Center, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, and the archives of the National World War I Museum, this project contends that the years 1914-1918 became a common point of reference and reflection for these three leaders—especially in their private musings and public rhetoric during World War II. Additionally, primary evidence reveals that the personal narratives of wartime service that these three veterans crafted simultaneously shaped and reflected their countries’ national narratives of the conflict. Churchill played into and popularized the notion of the Great War bringing an end to the “glory” of the nineteenth century. Hitler doctored his reflections of the war in Mein Kampf to convey the Imperial German High Command’s “Stab-in-the-Back” myth accusing Jews and Marxists for German defeat in November 1918. In his written reflections, Truman noted that most Americans failed to remember their nation’s brief participation in the First World War—a sentiment that aligned with the idea of the conflict as America’s “Forgotten War.” Additionally, all three spoke of the two World Wars as a single, contiguous conflict. Examining these three people during the Great War thus reveals the role of shared experience in generational theory as well as the intersection between individual and collective memory. Sage viii Preface As my horse and I neared what I knew must be the road, enemy shells began exploding after their whining and shrieking descent too close for comfort. There were many of them and they seemed to be concentrated only about half the length of a football field upon a spot to my right front. Then I heard the clatter of a horse’s hooves coming wildly toward me and I knew that he was right at the edge of the road. I pulled my horse behind a tree trunk. Looking around it, as the running horse came abreast of me, I saw a sight that will remain etched upon my mind, together with many others, as long as I live. By the instant but quickly recurring flashes of exploding shells, I saw that the running horse had been hard hit, bleeding badly and was seeking safety from an unseen enemy in the only way he knew, flight. The sight was sickening as was the thought that so many innocent animals will pay the penalty for the hatred, greed, and violence of human beings who among all living creatures should know better how to live peacefully. Captain Keith W. Dancy Battery A, 129th Field Artillery Regiment Vosges Mountains, France, August 19181 Captain Keith Dancy was 25 years old when, by the flashes of artillery fire, he witnessed a bleeding horse gallop on a road outside of the French town of Kruth on the Western Front. The Great War plucked the young Missourian from a calm and hopeful life in the American Heartland and flung him into the mud and blood of the Vosges Mountains and the Meuse- Argonne. Few of Captain Dancy’s men had ever left their home state of Missouri prior to the war; only a couple had seen the ocean before boarding their troop-transport ship in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But six months after saying farewell to his family and his tranquil life, the Captain stood in terror and disgust of that bloodstained horse—a living embodiment of the Red Horseman of War from the Book of Revelations—running itself to death in the Vosges. Indeed, the Great War wrought destruction and despair on an apocalyptic scale. By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918, 20 million people—both soldiers and civilians—lay dead and another 21 million bore grievous physical wounds.2 The cataclysm of 1914-1918 also 1 Scrapbook record of Battery A, 129th Field Artillery, AEF, 1919, SC90, Box 1, Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri. 2 Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2013), xxi. Sage ix soiled the innocence of a generation.