It is highly discomfiting to be told, just after recovering from the exhausting celebrations of the Fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago, that one has celebrated a minor event, a mere bagatelle, a wonderful story for journalists maybe, and of course very effective on television, but not a truly world-shaking event of historical significance. That, or rather a series of four events, had taken place ten years earlier, thirty years ago, in 1979.
But that is what the Scottish-born Niall Ferguson has done. He is the eminent historian, now a Harvard professor, the author of a book about WWI – The Pity of War – one of several important books, including the recent The Ascent of Money – in which he argued that if in 1914 Britain had stood aside, even for a matter of weeks, the Germans would have beaten the French and continental Europe would have been transformed into something not wholly unlike the European Union we know today. Of course this cannot be proved or disproved, but it is mentioned here only to indicate the way Ferguson’s radical thinking can upset a lot of people.
In 1979, he told us in Newsweek of November 9, four events of truly world-shaking importance took place:
1. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the first of many subsequent acts of self-destruction. (And now the Americans are fighting the sons of the men they once armed to fight the Soviets.)
2. The British elected Margaret Thatcher. She promptly began reviving free-market economics, one year ahead of Ronald Reagan, re-introducing a system that now seems to lie in ruins as a result of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
3. Deng Xiaoping visited the United States. There he saw for himself what the free market could achieve. He set China on a new economic course that may well result, as Goldman Sachs speculates, in China achieving the biggest GDP in the world by 2027.
4. The Iranians overthrew the Shah and proclaimed an Islamic Republic. Few people could imagine at the time that this event would trigger the creation of a complex and only partly visible network of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers around the world.
We had such a good time celebrating an entirely joyful event – the Fall of the Berlin Wall. And now we are told we should instead have pondered the four grim events that had taken place ten years earlier, each likely to occupy much more space in the history books of the future.
Niall Ferguson, you are a spoilsport.
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
Well he may be a spoilsport but he sure is smart. I interviewed him on the CBC earlier this year and I was like a groupie at a rock concert.
About 10 years ago I used his argument about letting Germany win in 1914 the way it won in 1870. I was attacked as a Nazi sumpathiser. Such is the anti-German feeling among the British middle class that they don’t know the dfference between a 1914 German and a 1939 German.
In the original version I ended the blog with the line “Go home:”. My son Tony objected and I yielded.
Was he right?
Margaret Thatcher was not such a bad choice at the time. I still believe free markets are a good thing, but recessions and that sort of thing are inevitable. Don’t blame Margaret THATCHER., I liked her. RK