It Could Have Been the German Century
by Francis Fukuyama
My nominee for man of the century is considerably less well known than Time's choice, Albert Einstein, even though his actions arguably left a much greater imprint on the century. He is Alexander von Kluck, the hapless general commanding the German First Army as it swung around the French right while dashing toward Paris in September 1914. The French line miraculously held, and von Kluck lost the first battle of the Marne. The German drive was stalemated, and the two sides then settled down for four horrible years of trench warfare in a conflict that came to be known as World War I.
It is worthwhile thinking through what might have happened had the Germans won in early September. They most likely would have swept on to Paris by the end of the month, forcing a capitulation by the French government (as happened in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and again in May 1940). A quick German victory would have left unimpaired the cultural self-confidence of 19th-century European civilization. The 8.5 million casualties of World War I would not have spawned a radical revolutionary movement in Russia called Bolshevism. With no German humiliation there would have been no occasion for rabble-rousing on the part of an unemployed painter named Adolf Hitler, and therefore no National Socialism.
No World War II
As they say of Ginsu knives, there's more: no Russian Revolution and Nazism means there would have been no World War II, no Holocaust, no Cold War and no Chinese or Vietnamese revolutions. Decolonization and the emergence of the Third World might have taken place much later absent the exhaustion of hte British Empire after two world wars and the rise of radical revolutionary movement in Eurasia. And the U.S., which came of age as a great power due to the world wars, may have remained the isolationist paradise fondly remembered by Patrick Buchanan.
A quick German victory over France would not necessarily have made the 20th century more peaceful. The U.S. might still have allied with Briatin and Russia to expel the Germans from France as they did in June 1944. On the other hand, it is perfectly plausible to imagine the German Empire, supreme on the continent but lacking Hitler's maniacal ambition, settling in for a protracted struggle with the British Empire over colonies. The monumental revolutions and wars of the first half of our century might have been replaced by a century of relative peace and economic progress in what would have been the German, rather than the American, Century.
This kind of counterfactual history quickly becomes so speculative as to be meaningless. I have spun out htis alternative scenario for the 20th century simply to make a point about historical contingency: The great events that shape our time often spring from very small causes that one could esaily imagine having happened differently, like the battle lost by von Kluck.
According to Alexis de Tocqueville, democratic peoples dislike the idea that single individuals or relatively small events can shape large ones, wanting rather to believe in the power of large, impersonal historical forces. But history frquently plunges off in oblique and oftne disastrous directions as a result of actions by individuals who are often not great but, like von Kluck, mediocre.
If history can indeed be altered in such big ways by little events, what does this tell us about the possibility of historical progress? De Tocqueville asserted in the 19th century that democracy and the idea of human equality had been steadioly gaining ground over the previous seven centuries, and that American democracy would eventually become a model for the entire world. As the 20th century closes, de Tocqueville would seem to be right on target. While there were, according to Freedom House, only a handful of true democracies in 1900, today some 40% of the world's population live in polities that can reasonably be labeled democratic. Is this, like von Kluck's defeat, just an accident of time and place? Will this democratic moment pass in the next century or next millennium, as the result of an unexpected defeat in an obscrube battle yet to come?
The answer, in my view, is no. Even the terrible detour taken by world history in the wake of von Kluck's defeat accelerated the pace of the democratic advances that occurrred later in the century. World War I brought about the collapse of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires. While tremendously destabilizing, this laid the ground for national self-determination, which we today regard as a key democratic right. The war and its aftermath brought to power working class parties in Britain, France and other countries, laying the basis for expanded political participation and the modern welfare state. Military competition brought about innumerable technological innovations, from aircraft and radar to computers, integrated circuits and the Internet. All of these advances improved living standards and increased possiblities for communication, education and association, all of which are critical to modern democracy.
A German century may have been peaceful and prosperous, but in the social sphere it also would have been stratified, corporatist and ultimately based on racial and ethnic hierarchy -- a world made safe for South Africa. While there doubtless would have been gradual advances in human liberty and equality, the explosive upheavals of the actual 20th century greatly accelerated the pace of change. The Holocaust put paid to concepts like social Darwinism and eugenics that were widely held by respectable people in the West up through the 1930's. In the U.S., the service of African-Americans and the entry of women into the industrial work force in World War II laid the groundwork for advances by both groups in later decades.
Advancing Democracy
None of this is meant, of course, to justify the terrible events of the century now passing. But it does demonstrate the truth of de Tocqueville's assertion that even the actions of democracy's enemies seem in the long run to advance the cause of democracy. It also supports Immanuel Kant's view that man's "asocial sociability" -- his propensity for war and violence -- is the crucible of human progress.
So it turns out that the main consequence of the long chain of events occasioned by Gen. von Kluck's defeat, important as those events were for the millions of individuals affected by them, was to affect mostly the timing of the march toward democracy and free markets and not the final objective. This would seem to be evidence for what Hegel called the "cunning of History," or what others would label the hand of God in human affairs.
Mr. Fukuyama is a professor of public policy at George Mason University and author, most recently, of "The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of the Social Order" (Free Press, 1999).
