The Locomotive of War

A <i>Times Literary Supplement </i>Book of the Year for 2017¿War, comrades,¿ declared Trotsky, ¿is a great locomotive of history.¿ He was thought to be acknowledging the opportunity the First World War had offered the Bolsheviks to seize power in Russia in 1917. Twentieth-century warfare, based on new technologies and mass armies, certainly saw the locomotive power of war geared up to an unprecedented level. Peter Clarke explores the crucial ways in which war can be seen as a prime mover of history in the twentieth century through the eyes of five major figures. In Britain two wartime prime ministers ¿ first David Lloyd George, later Winston Churchill ¿ found their careers made and unmade by the unprecedented challenges they faced. In the United States, two presidents elected in peacetime ¿ Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt ¿ likewise found that war drastically changed their agenda. And it was through the experience of war that the economic ideas of John Maynard Keynes were shaped