What They Learned From the Last War
When the First World War broke out, Joseph Stalin was as far from the corridors of power as it was possible to be. Exiled in Siberia, this penniless middle-aged Marxist with a flair for bank heists and political assassinations was a failure and he knew it. Likewise, in Germany, another nondescript and undistinguished misanthrope was scraping a living together as an artist. Adolf Hitler greeted the eruption of war with ecstasy, exploiting the chaos to transfer his allegiance from Austria-Hungary to Germany and marching off to the front. In Italy, an enigmatic socialist editor also used the outbreak of war to switch identities. After initially fulminating against the fighting, Benito Mussolini quickly flipped, emerging as an impassioned cheerleader for Italian intervention. When Italy joined the fray, Mussolini was enlisted and witnessed first-hand the catastrophic conflict that he had helped embroil his country in.
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