100 Mistakes That Changed History (33 page)

68

TASTY MISTAKE

A Failed Recipe
1930

O
ne day in 1930, the innkeeper of the Toll House Inn wanted to make something different as a dessert. Her name was Ruth Wakefield, which I mention because we should all be grateful to her. She was making a type of butter cookie that had been around since the colonial times. To make these cookies different, she decided to add a chocolate flavor to them. Normally, a baker would accomplish this by adding cocoa powder. The problem was Mrs. Wakefield was out of cocoa powder. So she decided to substitute what she had on hand. The innkeeper and baker cut up a Nestle’s chocolate bar and dropped the pieces into her dough. After all, the temperature at which cookies bake is hot enough to melt chocolate, or so she thought. She later admitted that she assumed the chocolate would melt into the cookies, giving them a nice, even chocolate flavor. The innkeeper had expected to pull out chocolate cookies, but to her surprise the pieces of chocolate remained intact. Though they were a bit melted, rather than chocolate cookies, she had butter cookies with pieces of chocolate in them. She called them her Toll House crunch cookies, but they are known today as chocolate chip cookies. Her reward from Nestle, whose sales skyrocketed after they put her recipe on their packaging, was a lifetime supply of chocolate. Here is one mistake that definitely changed the world for the better. Yumm.

69

FAILURE TO ACT

The Schwarze Kapelle
1938

T
his mistake was probably the greatest missed opportunity in the twentieth century. It occurred in August 1938 and involved the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain. Those who have read any history of World War II have already heard about how appeasement instead of strength eventually led to the shooting part of World War II, when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia later that year. What is less well-known is the tremendous opportunity Chamberlain had laid at his door and passed up. Though in making this blunder he had help from many others, including Winston Churchill.

It was in August 1938 that a well-respected noble and land-owner, Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, arrived in England. He represented a secret organization in Germany known as the Schwarze Kapelle, the Black Orchestra. This organization included a number of important and prominent German leaders, notably General Ludwig Beck, who had run the general staff since 1935 and supervised the resurgence of the German army. Beck had resigned because he feared, correctly, that Hitler was going to lead Germany into a disastrous war. This conspiracy also included Admiral Canaris, the head of the Abwehr and other powerful individuals. The purpose of the Schwarze Kapelle was to eliminate Hitler and restore democracy to Germany. There was every reason to think that the coup, for it was a coup, would work. Many of the German generals felt unready for war and were concerned about the highly aggressive stand Adolf Hitler was taking on almost every foreign question. The group also included important business leaders.

The plan was to capture Hitler, so as not to make him a martyr and start a civil war. Once they had him in custody they would put him on trial for crimes against the German people. There were several other important Nazi leaders to be imprisoned as well, including Hermann Goering, recently made a field marshal; Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS; and Reinhard Heydrich, who controlled the SD, the security service of the SS. There was a strong expectation that the generals would rally behind their removal. All the conspirators needed was a strong sign of outside support. This would expose the error of Hitler’s opportunism. It would also show the undecided that Germany itself was being placed in an unnecessarily risky position by Hitler and that understanding would provide the impetus to guarantee the revolt’s success. All they needed was a strong stand by Britain and World War II would be averted. In Beck’s words, “If you can bring me positive proof that the British will make war if [Hitler] invades Czechoslovakia, I will put an end to the Nazi regime!”

Kleist-Schmenzin arrived and was hustled past customs by six MI6 agents. All that was needed was a public statement by the British government that if Hitler went through with his plans to occupy Czechoslovakia, they would declare war; then he could act. The plans for this invasion were complete, troops were being placed, and orders distributed to the German commanders. We now see that this visit was quite literally the last opportunity to stop the plunge of Europe into war. It must not have been that clear then.

The first meeting Kleist-Schmenzin had was with a Lord Lloyd, an influential member of the ruling party. It is likely this was a sort of initial screening that the Schwarze Kapelle passed. A meeting occurred the next day between Kleist-Schmenzin and Robert Vansittart, an important adviser to the government on foreign affairs. Vansittart was more concerned about what would happen to things like Germany’s borders after the coup, rather than in assisting with the coup itself. But the next day, Kleist-Schmenzin met with the first lord of the navy, Winston Churchill. He again recounted the plans of the conspirators to a silent Churchill. The future wartime prime minister stayed noncommittal until the German was about to leave, and then he said only that he would be interested in working with them only after they brought down Hitler. This was the position that the Chamberlain government chose to take. They would do nothing until the coup was already a success.

In fact, quite the opposite occurred. A few weeks later, on September 13, Neville Chamberlain sent Hitler a note asking for a meeting. Hitler was enthused that he was being given the recognition from the British and that they had come to him. They met in Munich on September 30, and rather than confront Hitler, Chamberlain made every effort to appease him. They signed an agreement to guarantee “peace for our time,” which most certainly didn’t occur. What it did allow was the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Nazis, with no resistance from Britain or France. The Schwarze Kapelle was helpless. With Hitler having been triumphant in a bloodless takeover and the Allies showing they had no stomach for challenging the Nazis, the conspiracy was unable to act.

A few harsh words about the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and there might not have been a World War II and nearly a hundred million lives would have been saved. Rather than supporting the Schwarze Kapelle, the British government chose appeasement. The world was never the same again.

70

DEALING WITH THE DEVIL

Green Light
1939

I
n August 1939 Joseph Stalin made a mistake, one that deeply affected not only the Soviet Union but also the rest of the world. The mistake was that on August 23, 1939, the dictator of the communist empire signed a secret protocol with Adolf Hitler. The document was a clear blueprint for a political alliance between Russia and Germany. It included economic exchanges, cultural exchanges, and even military cooperation. Effectively, this agreement laid the basis for the two nations to divide eastern Europe between them. One provision stated that should Germany invade Poland, Stalin would order the now-infamous “stab in the back.” Russia promised to also invade the already prostrate nation from the east and occupy a large part of it.

There was a very good argument to be made that it was to Russia’s advantage. Their army had been crippled by purges and the failures of a botched invasion of Finland. But by signing this pact with Germany, Joseph Stalin also guaranteed the start of World War II. One of the Nazis’ greatest fears was a two-front war. This had proved disastrous for Germany only a few decades before in World War I. This pact guaranteed that would not happen again. Ironically, they were right, and when Hitler chose to disregard the agreement two years later, it began a series of events that resulted in the total defeat of the Third Reich. The pact removed the last real check on German aggression. Britain and France maintained a continuing attitude of appeasement. America’s stand was one of adamant neutrality that even a concerned Franklin Roosevelt could not change. With Russia neutralized, there simply was no one else strong enough to stop the Nazis.

Stalin had many reasons to think this protocol was a good idea. One was that it left his own occupation of Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic states, and the eastern part of Russia’s old nemesis, Poland, unchallenged. Another appeal was that it played to Stalin’s need to create a buffer zone that reached about 200 kilometers from the actual Russian border. Perhaps most important, Adolf Hitler had been working hard on the Western democracies to join with him in a crusade against the communists. Stalin had a real fear Hitler might succeed. It had been barely twenty years since most of the Western nations and Japan had sent military units into Russia to support the White Russian, anti-Bolshevik armies. Finally, it appears from the now-available records that Stalin actually believed that any war between Germany and Russia could be avoided. This was, in retrospect, wishful thinking, but that belief not only caused him to sign the protocol but also led to orders that crippled the Russian army when the Wehrmacht invaded two years later. So desperately did Stalin hold on to the belief that Hitler would obey the terms of this pact that German troops passed trains of raw materials from Russia still delivering resources as agreed, hours after Operation Barbarossa had begun in 1941. Leopold Unger, a Polish-Belgian author and historian, is unquestionably correct in calling the 1939 protocol the “most cynical operation of the World War II, and the founding document of the post-war Soviet empire in Europe.” This agreement also effectively ended discussions on another pact, the Tripartite Pact between Britain, France, and Russia, which was also designed to ensure peace and hold Hitler at bay. So, effectively, Stalin decided to believe Adolf Hitler and Germany—which had attacked Russia in World War I—instead of trusting his allies from that same war.

In the lens of history, there are fewer more obvious, world-changing mistakes than Joseph Stalin cutting a deal with the devil. Perhaps the only greater mistake Stalin made was believing that the agreement was anything but Realpolitik: something cynically done by Hitler only for passing expediency. So while the Nazi- Soviet pact of 1939 gave Russia the illusion of security, in reality it gave the Nazis a green light to attack Poland and then France. It was a major factor in the start of World War II. Believing the assurances of peace with Russia, which Hitler betrayed the first chance he got, was more than just a mistake. It sold out not only Poland and western Europe but, in the end, was even more costly to Russia itself. Almost exactly two years after signing the nonaggression and cooperation pact, Hitler attacked Russia. Stalin was so dismayed that he had a virtual breakdown and was ineffective for the crucial first days of the invasion. The result of his mistake was the loss of millions of Russian lives, half the Russian population suffering from Nazi occupation, and the destruction of much of the manufacturing base of the Soviet Union. It was a terrible price for a short-term agreement. Rarely has anyone’s judgment proven so wrong.

71

HALFWAY RIGHT

Totally Wrong
1939

T
he Maginot Line was built by France in reaction to the slaughter of more than 1 million French soldiers in World War I. Before that war, the French military doctrine had been unchanged from when Napoleon I was emperor. If you wanted to win a battle, you attacked. Courage would overcome any enemy and guarantee victory. Admittedly, the doctrine had not worked so well even for Napoleon at the Battle of Nations or Waterloo, but France stuck with it. Then came World War I and the trenches. Attacking through barbed wire against modern artillery and machine guns proved fatal and useless. But it took the French generals almost two years and a mutiny to understand this.

The result of the French people’s revulsion to the horrific losses in World War I was to go to the other extreme. The leaders of postwar France decided that if total offense was a disaster, total defense must be the answer. France, since Vauban and Louis XIV, had been the leader in building fortresses, so fortresses it would be. The result was the construction of the Maginot Line at the cost of more than 3 billion francs. That amount today, were it an equivalent portion of the U.S. annual budget, would be more than $3,000,000,000: That’s
$3 trillion
. But the problem was not cost. The mistake that the French made was that the French built only half of the line.

The Maginot Line was not a single line of forts. It was rather a continuous series of defensive positions. The line included everything from small machine gun bunkers, some remote-controlled using periscopes, to massive artillery cupolas that would have been impressive on a battleship. In places, the defenses ran more than ten miles in depth. The forts were well stocked with everything from artillery shells to vintage wines and were ready to hold off any German attack for weeks without resupply. The Maginot Line was originally planned to run the entire length of the northern border of France. Half that border was with Germany. The other half ran along the border with Belgium. The first half, the portion that ran along the German border, was completed in the 1930s.

When construction of the Maginot Line reached the 150-mile border between France and Belgium, the government of Belgium objected. They refused to accept anything on the border because it inferred they would be abandoned by the French in the event of a German attack. But they also refused to allow the French to help them build anything along their border because it might serve as a provocation to the Germans. Belgium threatened that if the French built anything at all, they would ally themselves with Germany.