Three years ago, I have inaugurated an irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, we branched out to American presidents and a German chancellor. Today’s subject is another German chancellor – Willy Brandt, the architect of Ostpolitik (West Germany’s détente). And which game could be more appropriate for him than Wir sind das Volk! (Richard Sivél/Peer Sylvester, Histogame)?

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The chancellors will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as chancellor, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)chancellors).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A chancellor can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the chancellor is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the chancellor increase German influence in the world and the security of Germans at home? Did the chancellor wield German power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of German power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the chancellor increase the liberty of Germans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the chancellor promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the chancellor facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Germans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the chancellor’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the chancellor have an idea of what Germany and Europe (the latter counting for more in times of German influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the chancellor’s policies steer Germany (and, if applicable, Europe) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the chancellor succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the chancellor manage the support from parliament, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the chancellor understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the chancellor respect the boundaries of the office?

Note: If you have read my UK prime minister or US president ratings, you will remember that I rated them on the global impacts of their vision as well. As the rating system is only really applicable to democratic leaders and no democratic German leader ever had the chance to conduct a truly global policy, I only assess their vision on national and European grounds.

Brandt’s Life

Willy Brandt was born on December 18, 1913, as Herbert Frahm. He adopted the name under which he would become famous in his Norwegian exile, after he had fled Germany to escape the Nazi persecution of socialists. Brandt returned to Germany after World War II – and also to German politics. He was elected a member of German parliament in 1949 and mayor of Berlin in 1957.

As mayor, Brandt was on the frontline of the Cold War. He weathered the Berlin Crisis of 1958 and the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, each time acting as a symbolic bulwark of liberty against Soviet encroachment. His party, the Social Democratic SPD, nominated him for the chancellorship in the elections of 1961 and 1965. While Brandt lost each time to the Christian Democratic incumbent (first Konrad Adenauer, then Ludwig Erhard), the SPD’s share of the vote increased each time he ran.

When the coalition between the Christian Democrats and the pro-business Liberals fell apart in 1966, Brandt’s Social Democrats finally entered the federal government as part of a “grand coalition” with the Christian Democrats. Brandt became vice chancellor and foreign minister. Three years later, after another strong Social Democratic showing at the election, Brandt formed a coalition with the Liberals and was elected chancellor – the first Social Democrat since the late days of the Weimar Republic.

The new alliance with the Liberals was based on two pillars: First, both parties sought domestic reform after two decades of socially conservative Christian Democratic chancellors which had been increasingly out of touch with their modernizing, sometimes rebellious, society. Brandt was particularly sensitive to these social currents and incorporated them into his administration’s agenda, labelled “Mehr Demokratie wagen” (Take a Chance on More Democracy).

Second, Brandt had a less misty-eyed look at the division of Germany and Germany’s post-war situation than many of his contemporaries. He accepted the division as an undeniable fact and the German territories incorporated into the Soviet Union and Poland after World War II as irretrievably lost. On this basis, he sought a new understanding with the Soviet Union and East Germany as well as Poland, Nazi Germany’s first victim in World War II. This new approach – (Neue) Ostpolitik ((New) Eastern Policy), as it was called – was to bring tangible benefits to the inhabitants of both German states and effect a long-term change, which would keep the door for German reunification open and help to re-admit Germany into the international community. Brandt accompanied the treaties he made with symbolic gestures – most spectacularly, his kneeling at the Memorial of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, widely understood to be a recognition of Germany’s guilt, symbolically taken on by a man who had not been personally guilty.

Brandt’s new foreign policy was controversial. The Christian Democratic opposition charged him with selling out the fatherland for his recognition of Germany’s post-war territorial losses. They motioned for a vote of no confidence, but failed to rally a parliamentary majority around their preferred candidate for chancellor, Rainer Barzel. Brandt called for snap elections which he turned into a plebiscite on him and his foreign policy. The electorate responded enthusiastically. Both Social Democrats and Liberals fared better than in 1969, and Brandt was returned as chancellor with an enlarged majority.

The 1972 was the high-water mark of Brandt’s chancellorship. Disagreement in the coalition about economic and fiscal policy after the end of the Bretton Woods system, during which Brandt seemed to be aloof even though two ministers of finance resigned (eventually, the ambitious Helmut Schmidt took the post), was exacerbated by the 1973 oil crisis. The increased energy costs further fueled inflation (which had been high before already), and the resulting demands for wage hikes threatened to send the country into a wage-price spiral (and, in the case of West Germany’s millions of public employees, directly affect public spending).

The coup de grace for Brandt’s chancellorship came from another direction, though. When Brandt’s aide Günter Guillaume was exposed as an East German spy, Brandt resigned on May 6, 1974. His cabinet ministers and the SPD parliamentary group did not lift a finger to stop him. Helmut Schmidt was elected chancellor, continuing the coalition with the Liberals.

Brandt remained chairman of the Social Democratic Party, in which he was still tremendously popular, until 1987. He was elected Chairman of the Socialist International in 1976 and revived this forum of the democratic socialist parties of the world.

Brandt’s foreign policy as chancellor would see itself crowned with success when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and Germany was reunited the year after. The intra-German détente had been instrumental in the East German leadership’s decision to quietly step down instead of cracking down on the protests as the Chinese Communists had done. Brandt was content to see it. He died on October 8, 1992, in the united Germany he had helped bring about, in the democratic Germany he had shaped.

The Rating

Foreign policy:

Brandt’s Ostpolitik was equally daring and successful. He threw out tenets of West Germany foreign policy like the iron rule of no direct talks with the East German government and the claim to the former eastern territories of Germany and instead established a new foreign policy world of German negotiations across Cold War borders. Brandt’s approach tangibly improved the life of Germans on both sides of the Wall through eased transit regulations while laying a foundation for further peaceful exchange – borders were declared inviolable (but not immutable!) – which kept the door for reunification open. At the same time, Brandt improved West Germany’s standing in the world, which helped with the country’s admittance to the United Nations in 1973 and netted Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. Finally, Brandt re-started the Franco-German Rapprochement which resulted in the enlargement of the European Community (1973) and paved the way for the founding of the European Union.

Domestic policy:

Brandt’s far-reaching domestic reform program was ambitious. Some of his more notable projects:

• The legal (and voting) age was lowered from 21 to 18, levelling the gap between civic rights and civic duties (the conscription age had already been 18)
• Divorce did not require assigning guilt to one spouse anymore
• Abortion was decriminalized (while technically still forbidden), a delicate compromise which persists until today
• Democracy was extended from the purely political to other spheres of life, most notably by strengthening institutionalized labor representatives in companies (Betriebsräte, work councils)

The reform agenda did not only increase civic liberties, it was also crucial for integrating most of the rebellious youth of 1968 into German society. The few that turned to revolutionary violence were successfully opposed by Brandt with the centralization of the police which was instrumental to the arrest of the first generation of the RAF terrorists. In some respects, Brandt’s measures to defend democracy against radicals went too far, though: His “Radicals Decree” mandated extensive background checks on all (prospective) public servants. While theoretically ideologically neutral, the decree targeted only leftists in practice and was in stark contrast to the many former Nazi officials who had continued their careers with nary a dent after 1945.

Economic policy:

Brandt’s economic record is mixed: On the one hand, his strengthening of labor representation in companies contributed to West Germany weathering the crisis of the mid- to late 1970s better than most other industrialized economies, and with fewer rifts in the social fabric. This mixed record is neatly exemplified by the cards representing the 1970s steel crisis on the one hand and the boom of the German car industry on the other – West Germany’s economy in the 1970s can go either way!

Despite this overall success, Brandt’s individual economic decisions were not always sound: He expanded public expenses when classical liberal, budding monetarist, and even Keynesian economics would have called for budget cuts to combat inflation. Germans were haunted by the specter of 1923. He meddled in collective bargaining, calling on the trade unions to forgo wage increases in an age of high inflation and high corporate profit increases (and, unsurprisingly, failed, further damaging his reputation in 1974).

Brandt’s economic policy is best captured in his decision to flexibilize the retirement age: While that improved the well-being of those able to retire earlier (and would help to keep unemployment in check in the economically anemic 1970s and 1980s), it put a cost on the working population and the taxpayers who had to shoulder higher expenses for pensions.

Brandt, however, offered a vision out of the economic woes: In his 1972 inauguration address, he favored improving the “quality of life” over growth or GDP numbers. This post-materialistic outlook was ahead of its time.

Vision:

Brandt envisioned a broadly democratic, unified Germany. His domestic reform agenda helped to bring the former closer to perfection; his foreign policy laid the groundwork for the latter. Neither would have been realistically imaginable to an observer in the 1960s.

Pragmatism:

Brandt enjoyed a complex relationship with his sources of power. As West Germany’s first real media chancellor, he enjoyed a veritable hype during his first term, before the press dropped him in the second. He was popular with the electorate and able to form a lasting government coalition (which endured for another eight years after his resignation), but could not hold on to the reins under pressure: He left challenges to his leadership from the SPD parliamentary party and his ministers unchecked, something which his challengers interpreted as weakness. When he needed allies during the Guillaume affair, he had none willing to fight for him.

Integrity:

Brandt earnestly attempted to improve life for all Germans on both sides of the Wall. His government engaged in fewer give-and-take with the traditional interest groups of West Germany (the farmers’ associations, the churches, the employers, and even the traditional trade union allies of the Social Democrats) than those of his predecessors. Still, the increased public spending of his government enabled many left-leaning liberals to carve out a niche for themselves at state-sponsored projects dear to their heart. Even though Brandt had been harshly attacked by his political opponents for having been in exile and was left in the lurch by his allies, he treated his political partners reliably and collegially, careful not to exceed the boundaries of his office. When they went low, he went high.

Summary

Brandt’s impact much exceeds his relatively short time in office. His domestic reforms let Germany catch up with the social changes, his new foreign policy was quietly extended even by the Christian Democrats after their return to power. His shortcomings, especially his casual handling of the office, precluded a longer Brandt chancellorship and thus his chance to fully shape an era. He thus places in the top group of ranked leaders, but slightly behind the leaders of the pack.

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
12. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Brandt? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

For short overview essays on all German chancellors from Bismarck on, see Sternburg, Wilhelm von: Die deutschen Kanzler. Von Bismarck bis Merkel [The German Chancellors. From Bismarck to Merkel], Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006 (in German).

A concise biography of Willy Brandt is Marshall, Barbara: Willy Brandt. A Political Biography, Macmillan, London 1997.

For the context of Germany’s tumultuous history, see Herbert, Ulrich: A History of Twentieth-Century Germany, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2019.

Two years ago, I have inaugurated a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, we branched out to American presidents and a German chancellor. Today’s subject is another US president – John F. Kennedy, an almost mythological figure despite – or because? – his short tenure. And which game could be more appropriate for him than 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis (Asger Harding Granerud/Daniel Skjold Pedersen, Jolly Roger Games)?

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The presidents will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as president, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)presidents).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A president can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the president is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the president increase US influence in the world and the security of Americans at home? Did the president wield US power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of US power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the president increase the liberty of Americans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the president promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the president facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Americans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the president’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the president have an idea of what the United States and the world (the latter counting for more in times of US influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the president’s policies steer the United States (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the president succeed in seeing his policy through from inception to completion? How well did the president manage the support from Congress, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the president understand the office as a means to benefit himself, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the president respect the boundaries of the office?

Kennedy’s Early Life

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917. Both his paternal and maternal ancestors had played important roles in business and politics within the community of Boston’s Catholic Irish Americans – and his grandfather John Fitzgerald and father Joseph Kennedy (Sr.) envisioned that the next generation could break out of this religious/ethnic niche onto the national stage. Their hopes, however, did not rest on “Jack,” as the family called him, but on his older brother Joseph (Jr.). While Joseph (Jr.) seemed to succeed at everything he touched, Jack developed a rebellious streak at school and suffered from frail health (particularly back and intestinal problems) from a young age on.

Jack enjoyed the opportunities his privileged background offered to him: He enrolled at Harvard University and travelled through Europe. His contacts there – his father was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ambassador to the United Kingdom – provided him with a wealth of information on the brewing crisis in Europe, which coalesced into his senior thesis attacking British appeasement policy (finished in 1940, when World War II had already begun). One year later, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor.

Jack, still unsure about his own path in life, had entered the United States Naval Reserve just weeks before the attack. He now zealously took up his service in the hopes that his military prowess would support Joseph (Jr.)’s later political career. While his physical state would have still prevented him from a frontline role, his father pulled some strings to have him assigned to the command of a patrol torpedo (PT) boat, one of the few parts of the Navy enjoying success against the Japanese early in the war.

From April 1943 on, Jack commanded PT-109 in the South Pacific. In August of that year, his boat collided with a Japanese destroyer and was cut in half. Jack and his crew swam to an island several miles away from the wreckage, with Jack towing one of the injured sailors by the strip of a life vest he held between his teeth. They swam out to find help in the following days, until they encountered a native with a canoe whom they entrusted with a message to bring to the American forces nearby. The stranded were rescued after seven days on the island, and the story immediately garnered lots of press attention. Jack became a war hero.

As Jack had injured his back again during the collision, he spent most of the rest of the war receiving medical treatment and was decommissioned in March 1945 already – half a year after Joseph Jr. had died flying an experimental plane in the European theater of operations. Jack was now the heir to the Kennedy ambitions.

The Congressman

After a brief stint in journalism, Jack Kennedy ran for Congress in 1946 and was elected to the House of Representatives in a working-class, Catholic Boston district. Despite these local advantages, his election made some waves – after all, Kennedy’s Democrats had received a shellacking elsewhere, owing to the unpopularity of sitting president Harry S. Truman. While Kennedy was aware that his influence in the House was limited, he used his position to travel the world and get more foreign policy experience, and – helped by his large staff, paid for with his father’s financial assistance – ingratiate himself with the local voters. The House was only to be the first step for him.

In 1952, Kennedy ran against the incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge to represent Massachusetts in the Senate. While Lodge could rely on his experience and the momentum (the Republicans would win the presidential election of 1952 both nationally and in Massachusetts), Kennedy ran the more dynamic campaign. It was a family affair: His mother and sisters organized events focusing on women voters, his younger brother Robert managed the campaign, and his father bankrolled everything. Kennedy won a close race, and, at age 34, he was a United States Senator.

Once more, the Senate was only supposed to be a stepping-stone. Not least importantly for a man who wanted to become president, Kennedy got married during his time in the Senate – to the glamourous Jacqueline Bouvier (Kennedy). Jack Kennedy did not introduce any remarkable legislation during his time in the Senate (and spent a good deal of time in treatment for his worsening back, taking ever more medication, and even receiving last rites at one point). He did, however, gain some national stature and made sure the voters looked upon him favorably. When the Democrats selected their presidential ticket in 1956, Kennedy ran for Vice President, but was narrowly defeated on the third ballot by Estes Kefauver. This setback might have been to Kennedy’s advantage: Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson and Kefauver went down in the worst electoral showing for a Democratic ticket in decades. The unscathed Kennedy won his own Senate reelection with the biggest landslide in Massachusetts history two years later.

The stage was set for his presidential campaign. Once more, Robert managed the campaign and Joseph Sr. funded it. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson was Kennedy’s toughest opponent for the Democratic nomination, yet the Texan’s appeal outside of the South was limited. Kennedy clinched the nomination and made Johnson his running mate. They faced off against sitting Vice President Richard Nixon and Kennedy’s old rival Henry Cabot Lodge on the Republican ticket. In one of the closest races of American history (the two tickets were separated by a mere 113,000 votes nationwide), Kennedy’s charm (and funds) prevailed. At age 43, John F. Kennedy was the youngest person ever to be elected President of the United States.

Early Presidential Setbacks

Kennedy dedicated himself chiefly foreign policy – by inclination, but also because the bipartisan coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans in Congress blocked his legislative initiatives for housing, health, and tax reforms. He had inherited several crises from his presidential predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower. Closest to home was the Cuban revolution, during which Fidel Castro had not only deposed the US-aligned dictator Fulgencio Batista, but also nationalized the assets of US enterprises. The Eisenhower administration had started planning the overthrow of Castro by an invasion of Cuban exiles, which were to be supported by CIA and US forces if necessary. Kennedy distanced himself from the planning process, but approved the operation anyway. The results of the landing in Cuba’s Bay of Pigs were disastrous. Not only did the invasion fail, it also damaged the goodwill which the nations of Latin America held toward the new president, and made Castro actively seek Soviet support to maintain his rule.

A few months after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy first met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. Kennedy took a rhetorical beating (and Khrushchev threatened action over the divided city of Berlin). Yet while Khrushchev was concerned over the ongoing exodus from East German via Berlin, he did not want to risk war, and so he authorized the building of the Berlin Wall instead (to the relief of Kennedy). Kennedy signaled the willingness of the United States to secure the rights of the West Berliners, and thus strengthened American ties with its European allies. All the while, Kennedy worked on a military build-up to reduce US dependence on its nuclear arsenal – in his words, to give him a “wider choice than humiliation or all-out war,” the beginning of what would be called the “Flexible Response” doctrine.

The military buildup was helped along by economic recovery. Unemployment receded and growth picked up while inflation was low. Then some of the large steel firms hiked their prices right after the unions had agreed to a very modest, non-inflationary pay raise. Kennedy met the challenge head on, having the FTC investigate the price fixing, the IRS launch a tax probe, and the Department of Defense announce that it would only buy from companies which had not raised prices. The firms quickly rescinded the price hike.

Civil Rights and Cuban Missiles

Civil rights were the dominant domestic issue of the day. While Kennedy insisted that Black Americans were given more opportunities and visibility in public service, he was not willing to spend political capital to advance their cause outside of the federal government. On a day-to-day basis, he was mostly concerned with the problems racial discrimination presented to his foreign policy (for example, in reaching out in the new post-colonial nations of Africa) – both the discrimination itself and the protests against it, which in Kennedy’s eyes created disharmony.

Kennedy’s attention was soon to be grabbed by foreign policy anyway: Khrushchev, emboldened by Kennedy’s weak showing in Vienna, had found a willing partner in Castro to establish a strategic balance by stationing nuclear weapons on Cuba (in Khrushchev’s own colorful imagery, “planting a hedgehog in Uncle Sam’s underpants”). That would have left the United States vulnerable to Soviet medium-range missiles. When a U-2 spy plane took pictures of the missile site, the most dangerous two weeks of the Cold War began. Kennedy almost continually met with closest advisers to explore possible responses. Initially, most of them favored an unannounced airstrike on the missile sites (possibly followed by a full-scale invasion) before the missiles were ready. Kennedy thought such a course of action would not only taint the reputation of the United States (as Pearl Harbor had done for Japan), but also entail a high risk of escalating into full-scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Instead, he opted for a “quarantine” – ships entering or leaving Cuban waters would be stopped and searched by the US Navy. In the meantime, he and Khrushchev exchanged letters and public announcements. Tensions ran high when US ships forced Soviet nuclear-armed submarines to surface with depth charges and when an American plane was shot down over Cuba on October 27, 1962 (“Black Saturday”). Sobered by these near-brushes with nuclear war, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed that the missiles would be removed from Cuba (in exchange for the secret removal of the older American missiles in Turkey, which Kennedy had wanted to remove anyway).

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy pursued a policy of détente with the Soviet Union. He established a direct communications connection between the White House and the Kremlin, and in summer 1963, concluded the first nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviets.

In the meantime, the Civil Rights situation became ever more urgent. Universities now turned into flashpoints of the struggle for equal rights – federal marshals and troops had to protect James Meredith’s right to enroll at the University of Mississippi as the first black student there ever; Alabama governor George Wallace personally barred the door of the enrolment office to black would-be students at the University of Alabama. The clashed between federal and state forces, Civil Rights protesters, and segregationists escalated – state police used dogs and fire hoses on peaceful Civil Rights protesters, and segregationists bombed black churches and killed protesters. Kennedy could not evade the issue any longer. Strengthened by his successful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he threw the weight of the presidency behind the Civil Rights movement (while still urging them not to act too radically): He announced a legislative program which would provide equal access to public schools as well as the ballot box.

As his Civil Rights package went into Congress, Kennedy had to deal with another foreign policy issue: The United States had taken an ever greater role in Southeast Asia as the former colonial power France withdrew from the region. By the early 1960s, the United States propped up the deeply unpopular Southern Vietnamese regime of Ngo Dinh Diem against the challenges of Communist North Vietnam to reunify the country on their terms. An ever-growing force of American “military advisers” flowed into the country – during Kennedy’s tenure alone, their number expanded from 1,000 to 17,000. As Diem grew both more authoritarian and less effective, Kennedy authorized American tacit support for a military coup against him.

While Kennedy still explored options for Vietnam (ranging from sending more troops to pulling them out entirely) and his Civil Rights legislation was far from complete, his presidential tenure ended abruptly: On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated while on a trip to shore up political support in Dallas. The circumstances of the assassination remain contested. He was only 46 years old.

The Rating

Foreign policy:

Kennedy’s tenure began with the Bay of Pigs disaster and ended with the crisis in Vietnam out of which America’s greatest military defeat would develop. There were, however, no US combat forces in Vietnam when Kennedy was in office, and we can only speculate if he might have failed as abjectly in resolving the issue as his successors. In between these bookends, Kennedy’s foreign policy was successful – he made the American toolbox to deal with security crises more flexible, strengthened the relationship with the European allies and reached out to the newly decolonized nations of Africa, resolved the single greatest challenge of the Cold War (the Cuban Missile Crisis) both peacefully and advantageously for the United States, and initiated the détente with the Soviet Union which would permanently lessen the risk of nuclear war.

Domestic policy:

Kennedy was a latecomer to the dominant domestic policy issue of the day. While he supported Civil Rights verbally and in the federal government, he saw it otherwise as a distraction which would drain political capital from more important tasks like foreign policy. Only when the situation in the South had made a massive federal intervention inevitable did Kennedy rise to the occasion. He was unable to pass Civil Rights legislation before his death.

Economic policy:

As with Civil Rights, Kennedy was no successful legislator in matters of economic policy. The cross-party conservative coalition in Congress defeated his early initiatives. Yet the American economy was fundamentally sound and did not need major legislation. When presented with the biggest economic challenge – the steel price hike – Kennedy met it firmly, and the specter of inflation fueled by corporate greed was defeated.

Vision:

Kennedy came to the presidency by personal ambition rather than ideological conviction, and his approach to the office was decidedly tentative. He held varying positions on the same topic over time – from Vietnam to Cuba – and shifted his priorities ad hoc (for example with Civil Rights). In his short tenure, he did not develop any policy hallmark – yet it is conceivable that détente with the Soviet Union might have become just that.

Pragmatism:

Here Kennedy’s performance is ambiguous. On the one hand, Kennedy’s skill as a legislator were minimal. He never got a good grasp on Congress (despite his own fourteen years of experience there) and was unable to secure any major legislation. On the other hand, Kennedy’s winning personality ensured popular support for himself (even when his policies failed, for example the Bay of Pigs invasion). He thrived in the modern politics-media environment to whose establishment he contributed – as the winner of the first televised presidential debate as well as the inaugurator of the free-flowing, question-and-answer presidential press conference.

Integrity:

During the 1960 presidential election campaign, many of Kennedy’s political opponents alleged that he would be beholden to his Catholic and Irish-American brethren, or even a puppet of the Pope. None of this turned out to be true. Nonetheless, Kennedy regarded politics a little too much as a family business – naming his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver head of the Peace Corps and his brother Robert Attorney General (a practice which has since been made unlawful). 

Overall:

In the words of Kennedy’s biographer Robert Dallek, his life was “unfinished.” So was his presidency. Public opinion, of course, is not bound by the confines of historical scholarship, and in this sphere, Kennedy lives large as the promise of a youthful, vigorous, optimistic America, not yet tainted by the disaster of the Vietnam War, or the Watergate Scandal. Historical scholarship, however, is left to assess Kennedy’s short, and sometimes contradictory time in office. Here Kennedy shows himself to be a president whose flashes of brilliant leadership (most notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis) are not the norm, but the exception in an overall solid presidency.

All leader ratings so far:

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
12. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Kennedy? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

Dallek, Robert: An Unfinished Life. John F. Kennedy 1917—1963, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, MA 2003.

As always when it comes to American presidents of the 20^th century, see the respective chapter in Leuchtenburg, William E.: The American President. From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, pp. 386-424.

For a quick introduction to the Cuban Missile Crisis, see Hershberg, James G.: The Cuban Missile Crisis, in Westad, Odd Arne/Leffler, Melvyn (eds.): The Cambridge History of the Cold War. Volume 2. Crises and Détente, Cambridge 2010, pp. 65—87.

A detailed treatment of the crisis can be found in Fursenko, Aleksandr/Naftali, Timothy: „One Hell of a Gamble“: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958—1964, John Murray, London 1997.

Last year, I have inaugurated a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, we branched out to an American president and a German chancellor. Today’s subject is another US president – Harry S. Truman, the first Cold Warrior in the White House. And which game could be more appropriate for him than Twilight Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games)?

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The presidents will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as president, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)presidents).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A president can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the president is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the president increase US influence in the world and the security of Americans at home? Did the president wield US power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of US power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the president increase the liberty of Americans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the president promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the president facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Americans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the president’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the president have an idea of what the United States and the world (the latter counting for more in times of US influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the president’s policies steer the United States (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the president succeed in seeing his policy through from inception to completion? How well did the president manage the support from Congress, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the president understand the office as a means to benefit himself, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the president respect the boundaries of the office?

Truman’s Life

Harry S. Truman was born on May 8, 1884 as the son of Missouri farmers. He took a few classes at a local business school, but remains the only US president of the 20^th and 21^st century to not have attended college. After a few years of odd jobs, he returned to help on his parents’ farm. As he had political ambitions, he joined the National Guard in 1905 and volunteered for service during World War I.

Back from the war, Truman opened a haberdashery (which went bankrupt in 1921) and was elected county judge (in 1922). His political career was tied to Tom Pendergast’s political machine. Over the course of the following years, he struggled both economically and politically. His fortunes only improved when he was named Missouri’s director for the Federal Re-Employment program (which got him in touch with important people from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs) in 1933 and was elected senator in 1934.

Truman’s first term in the Senate was unremarkable and he only barely won re-election in 1940. The following year, his career took off when he headed a special committee to investigate inefficiencies in US war production – a crucial task with war ravaging both Europe and the Pacific, which the United States would enter later that year. Truman’s reputation for honesty and efficiency recommended him to president Roosevelt who was looking for a running mate in the 1944 presidential elections. As the favorites of the two wings of the Democratic party – Henry Wallace for the liberals, James F. Byrnes for the conservatives – were anathema to the respective other wing, Roosevelt chose Truman as a non-offending alternative – the “second Missouri compromise”. Roosevelt barely met with Truman either on the campaign trail or after their successful election and kept him in the dark about his political initiatives, particularly regarding foreign policy. When Roosevelt died barely three months after the start of his term, Truman entered the presidency woefully unprepared.

His first task was the victorious conclusion of World War II. Germany surrendered only weeks after Truman’s inauguration. When soon after the first nuclear bombs were successfully tested, the United States dropped them on Japan in order to “shock” the country into surrender – a policy which Truman endorsed, but did not specifically authorize (the bomb was treated like any other weapon at the disposal of the commanders in the theater).

In the meantime, Truman grew more distant to America’s erstwhile Soviet allies. He had wanted the Soviets to join the United Nations and the war against Japan, but once they had done both, Truman took a hard line against what he perceived as Soviet expansionism. The first test of strength was Soviet refusal to leave Iran – in violation of the agreement among the Allies after their invasion of Iran in 1941, which specified that they would leave the country six months after the cessation of hostilities. Truman’s   tough stance won the day by spring 1946 – but in a pattern typical for his presidency, he did not receive the credit for it among the American public.

At home, Truman was faced with the transformation of the economy back to peace time. Increased unemployment and inflation dashed the hopes for a beautiful, carefree post-war life for many Americans. Truman’s heavy-handed handling of a railroad strike – he proposed a law that would draft strikers into the army – intimidated the strikers into submission. Yet while it antagonized labor (and questioned Truman’s commitment to constitutional practices), it did not win him support among business or the middle class. Truman’s Democrats were shellacked the 1946 midterm elections.

The electoral defeat freed Truman from his obsession to walk a middle course and please everybody. Instead, he proposed the policies that he thought were right. Domestically, that encompassed a series of ambitious bills to preserve and expand civil and economic rights which he called the “Fair Deal.” Most of them were squarely defeated by a cross-aisle conservative majority in Congress, but Truman’s activity put Congress on the defensive and no further New Deal legislation was rolled back.

Truman’s greatest achievements belong to the realm of foreign policy. Faced with the challenge of possible Soviet inroads into the Eastern Mediterranean (from where the United Kingdom was about to withdraw), Truman countered with the promise of aid to any free nation which resisted subjugation – the Truman Doctrine. He backed this unprecedented American commitment to internationalism up with the European Recovery Program – or, as it was more popularly called, the Marshall Plan. (Truman was wise enough not to attach his own name to it, as his unpopularity in Congress would likely have resulted in a defeat of the proposal.) The ERP did not only help Europe in its recovery from the destruction of World War II, but also provided a welcome stimulus for the American economy on whose goods the money was spent, and it was a major PR success for the United States in the nascent Cold War with the Soviet Union. When the Soviets played hardball in 1948 and blockaded West Berlin, a western-controlled island within the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, Truman found a measured response in supplying West Berlin from the air – steering clear of both abandoning West Berlin and risking war.

Truman’s relationship with both wings of the Democratic Party had been uneasy through his tenure – the liberals disliked him for his handling of labor disputes and his tough stance on real and perceived Communists. As the Cold War developed, a second “Red Scare” swept the country. Truman, who personally did not believe that a large number of Communist spies had infiltrated federal institutions, nonetheless lent this conspiracy theory credence with the vain attempt to ward off more radical legislation on the matter by examining the loyalty of all federal employees – with “reasonable doubts” sufficient to be fired. Even though the past of five million federal employees was scrutinized, not a single Communist spy was found.

On the other hand, the conservatives, particularly those from the Democrats’ southern bastions, warily regarded his Civil Rights stance. Truman created a committee to make proposals for Civil Rights whose recommendations he endorsed. Yet only when the Southern Democrats abandoned him in the election year 1948 (and supported the segregationist Strom Thurmond instead) did he stick out his head and decreed the desegregation of the armed forces and the federal civil service.

Truman took to the campaign trail and vigorously attacked the Republicans for not supporting his domestic reform agenda. Against the predictions of the pollsters, Truman defeated his Republican opponent Thomas E. Dewey soundly, with Thurmond coming in a distant third (and defeated in most southern states as well). Truman’s inauguration in 1949 was the first to which Black Americans were invited as guests.

Truman’s second term was less eventful than his first – and less successful.

When North Korean forces crossed the 38^th parallel to unite Korea by force (with Stalin’s approval), Truman faced another Cold War crisis. Truman attached an importance to it that went far beyond Korea – if such a blatant breach of the peace was not checked, it would spell doom for the rules-based peace order embodied in the United Nations. Thus, he sent in US forces to stop the Northern invasion and attained UN approval for the operation. US troops under General Douglas MacArthur blunted the offensive of the North Koreans and landed in their rear – thus throwing the entire invasion force back in disarray. As the coalition forces approached the 38^th parallel, Truman disregarded Chinese warnings and authorized a crossing into North Korea. The ensuing Chinese entry into the war now caught the coalition forces off guard and forced them into an ignominious retreat. MacArthur then pressured Truman to extend the war to China – and the use of nuclear bombs. Truman refused, and as MacArthur kept defying presidential authority, relieved him of his command. For the remainder of Truman’s tenure, the Korean War would be a bloody stalemate.

Domestically, Truman did not fare better. His attempt to prevent a full-on Red Scare by the loyalty check program turned out to have failed entirely – instead Representative Joseph McCarthy levelled (unfounded) charges of Communist sympathies and activities at government officials, academics, left-leaning politicians, labor activists, and entertainers (especially in the film industry). The climate of fear which infringed on free speech also damaged the United States’ standing abroad.

Finally, another strike – this time in the steel industry – aroused the president’s anger. He seized the steel mills from their private owners to deal with the strike. This was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in April 1952. By the time of the Court’s decision, the deeply unpopular Truman had already announced that he would not seek re-election. The Democratic Party instead chose the governor of Illinois, Adlai Stevenson, as their nominee. Stevenson lost in a landslide against the Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower, the general credited with winning World War II in Europe.

Harry S. Truman lived a relatively modest post-presidential life, devoting much of his time to writing his memoirs. He died on December 26, 1972.

The Rating

Foreign policy: Truman shifted from cooperation to confrontation with the Soviet Union with remarkable skill. He found adequate responses to most foreign policy crises – from the first test of strength in Iran over the Greek/Turkish crisis which prompted the Truman Doctrine to the Berlin Blockade and the North Korean invasion of the South. His rare misstep was the foolhardy decision to push further in Korea which drew the Chinese into the war.

Structurally, Truman’s influence is even more profound: Almost the entire modern US security architecture was founded by him – the US Air Force, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and NATO.

Domestic policy: Truman’s domestic record is mixed. While he was the first 20^th century president to stick his head out for the equal treatment of Black Americans, he only turned to action after the Southern Democrats had abandoned him already. His anti-Communist loyalty checks infringed on the individual liberties of federal employees and did not achieve their goal of pre-empting more radical measures by the anti-Communist conspiracy theorists like Joseph McCarthy (and rather emboldened them). Finally, Truman’s invasive meddling in the economy – both his law to draft strikers and his seizing of the steel mills – show an instinctive preference for a security-based war presidency over individual economic freedoms.

Economic policy: Truman faced the challenge to transform the US economy back to peace time – for which conservatives/business and liberals/labor had starkly different ideas. Truman initially attempted a middle course, but turned more liberal after his electoral victory in 1948. His Fair Deal legislation (most notably the near-doubling of the minimum wage, the expansion of Social Security to another 10 million Americans, the rural electrification programs, and the building of homes for low-income Americans) contributed to the broad prosperity of the post-war decades.

In the end, it was Truman’s foreign policy that was most influential for the economic development of the US: The Marshall Plan had shown how a further internationalization of American businesses could be profitable for them. Truman’s turn toward the security state after the outset of the Korean War led to a quadrupling of defense spending which would never again fall to the level of the inter-war years. This perpetual state of war-readiness and the resulting military-industrial complex of the United States play a crucial role for the structure of the US economy until today.

Vision: Nobody regarded Truman as a visionary when he entered the presidency. Yet his policies captured not only the present but also the future: The Truman Doctrine, a sharp break with the American isolationist tradition, was employed for the remainder of the Cold War. Every other Cold War presidential doctrine rested on it (and usually interpreted it for a particular region). Its basic tenet – to aid free nations against attempts to subjugate them – informs US policy until today (say, in Ukraine). In practice, the Truman Doctrine resulted in the “containment” of the Soviet Union and global Communism – another basic principle of US foreign policy for the next 40 years.

Truman’s predecessor Franklin D. Roosevelt, much more a visionary in the public perception, had relied on his own personality to see through all the great breaks with political tradition. Truman, on the other hand, built the institutionalized security state which is until today the foundation of the US presidency. Despite the pivot to “security” as the new main goal of American government activity, Truman maintained the primacy of politics over the military and defeated the specter of Bonapartism when he fired MacArthur over his insubordination.

Pragmatism: Truman’s early attempts to chart a middle path often antagonized both sides – and sometimes led to contradictions (as when he publicly endorsed both Henry Wallace’s and James F. Byrnes’s foreign policy statements which differed markedly on the matter if the Soviet Union was an ally or an opponent of the United States).

Truman was at best middling at winning public support for his initiatives. While he won the 1948 election, his Congressional allies fared badly both in 1946 and 1950, and Truman had low approval ratings through most of his tenure (excepting the honeymoon period in 1945 and his time of foreign policy glory in 1947), sometimes as low as 23%.

Despite these troubles with both Congress and the wider public, Truman could see some of his key policy initiatives through Congress despite their impulses towards isolationism and a limited role of government.

Integrity: Truman honestly strove for the interests of the whole nation. Yet he tested the limits of the Constitution with his reaction to strikes and when he did not seek Congressional approval for the war in Korea. His appointments were often based on loyalty rather than merit (and turned out lackluster in these cases more often than not). While Truman never used the presidency to enrich himself personally, his reputation for being extraordinarily honest is rather an artifact of being compared favorably to his morally flexible successors Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon in the 1960s and 1970s.

Overall: Despite Truman’s unassuming personality and his low popularity during his tenure, he laid the foundations for American foreign policy for decades. His many moments of foreign policy brilliance are interspersed with a mixed record at home and many individual mistakes in running the office. He was an above-average, but not great president.

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
12. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Truman? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

For a short and accessible biography, see Dallek, Robert: Harry S. Truman, St. Martin’s Press, New York City, NY 2008.

As always when it comes to American presidents of the 20^th century, see the respective chapter in Leuchtenburg, William E.: The American President. From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, pp. 243—326.

Last year, I have inaugurated a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game each). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, I’m branching out! After our first US president earlier this year, we now do a German chancellor – Ludwig Erhard, nicknamed “The Father of the Economic Miracle”. After a quick introduction to the rating system and an overview of Erhard’s life, we go straight into the rating. The accompanying game will be Wir sind das Volk! (Richard Sivél/Peer Sylvester, Histogame).

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The chancellors will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as chancellor, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)chancellors).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A chancellor can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the chancellor is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the chancellor increase German influence in the world and the security of Germans at home? Did the chancellor wield German power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of German power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the chancellor increase the liberty of Germans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the chancellor promote domestic security and shape the framework for fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the chancellor facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Germans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the chancellor’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the chancellor have an idea of what Germany and Europe (the latter counting for more in times of German influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the chancellor’s policies steer Germany (and, if applicable, Europe) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the chancellor succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the chancellor manage the support from parliament, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the chancellor understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the chancellor respect the boundaries of the office?

Note: If you have read my UK prime minister or US president ratings, you will remember that I rated them on the global impacts of their vision as well. As the rating system is only really applicable to democratic leaders and no democratic German leader ever had the chance to conduct a truly global policy, I only assess their vision on national and European grounds.

Erhard’s Life

Ludwig Erhard was born on February 4, 1897. His parents owned a clothing store in Fürth, a city in the south of Germany. Erhard was initially destined to follow them in the business, but came back from World War I badly wounded and unable to stand for an extended period of time (as we would have had to as a store owner). He thus turned to academia and studied business. After graduating, he managed his parents’ store for a short time before it went bankrupt in 1928. Erhard then succeeded in following his academic aspirations and worked at various institutes and universities. Erhard was no supporter of the Nazi regime which took power in 1933, but conducted advisory research for them. In 1942, he failed in a bid to head his university’s institute for economics (losing to a member of the Nazi party) and was soon after forced out of the institute. He then set up his own one-man think tank, writing on how to re-build Germany’s economy after the war.

These studies – and Erhard’s relative distance from the Nazi regime – recommended him to the post-war authorities. After quick stints on the local and regional level, he was appointed Head of the Special Office for Money and Credit (and soon after Director of Economics) of the Anglo-American occupation zone in Germany. When he was informed by the Allied authorities of their decision to introduce a new currency (the Deutsche Mark) in the three western occupation zones, Erhard went ahead and also announced the lifting of price-fixing and production controls for most goods.

Economically speaking, the monetary reform and abolition of state control over the economy were not an immediate success. Prices shot up (while wages were still fixed) and unemployed quadrupled to 12%, thus, unrest (leading to a general strike) spread in West Germany. However, the abolition of price-fixing all but abolished the previously ubiquitous black markets. Erhard’s reputation thus was stellar, and the newly formed big-tent center-right party CDU (Christlich-Demokratische Union, Christian Democratic Union) invited Erhard to join forces with them. Erhard, who personally was more of a classical liberal than a conservative, joined with the intent of committing a large party to his ideas of free markets, and successfully ran for parliament on the CDU ticket in West Germany’s first national elections in 1949. Erhard then became Minister for the Economy in the new administration, a post he would hold for the next fourteen years.

Early in Erhard’s tenure, economic success blossomed: The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 re-committed the American economy to war production – and West Germany seized the opportunity to produce the civilian goods not made in America anymore. The West German economy boomed. Unemployment fell. Wages rose. Exports grew manifold. And Erhard, who steadfastly (but not always successfully) defended his liberal economic principles against any attempts to introduce more state intervention, became the lucky charm of the German “economic miracle”.

Erhard’s corresponding popularity made him a natural contender for the succession of West Germany’s first chancellor Konrad Adenauer. When Adenauer finally resigned in 1963 (aged 87), the CDU and its allies in government elected Erhard as the new chancellor. Erhard, never a politician’s politician, refrained from domestic initiatives. His foreign policy was based on the attempt to align West Germany closer with the United States and Great Britain at the expense of the cordial Franco-German relationship his predecessor had built. Erhard won a resounding electoral victory in 1965, but his relationship with his own party remained frail. When a mild recession hit West Germany and the budget was threatened by Erhard’s earlier commitment to payments to the United States and Britain to make up for the spending of their troops stationed in Germany (the “offset arrangement”), his government broke down (1966). Erhard was forced to resign. The new government which was based on the CDU and the long-time oppositional Social Democrats elected Kurt Georg Kiesinger as his successor. Erhard retired to a quiet life, but remained a member of parliament until his death on May 5, 1977.

The Rating

Foreign policy:

Erhard’s only field of ambition during his chancellorship – and also the area of his most obvious failure. His pivot away from France damaged the Franco-German relationship and European integration (which he, against his general economic principles, did not seek anyway). On the other hand, Erhard could not make good on his aim to improve German-American relationships – his professed dislike for France took any kind of lever out his hand, and his willingness to accede to American demands (like promising full payment in the offset arrangement) did not result in any favors in return from the United States (the key prize would have been if America had continued to seek a Multilateral Force with nuclear weapons – which would have resulted in Germany’s nuclear sharing).

Domestic policy:

Erhard did not start any domestic policy initiatives and ignored the growing societal pressures beyond his favorite topic of the economy. In the rare cases that such topics were forced onto him, Erhard, to his credit, deviated from the previous course of German policy which had been to largely ignore the Nazi crimes: When he found out that his Minister for Displaced Persons, Refugees, and War Victims had been an active Nazi party functionary, Erhard forced his resignation (in a striking difference to his predecessor Adenauer, who kept his Chief of Staff for ten years despite the man’s well-known involvement in drafting the Nazis’ laws prosecuting German Jews).

As German law knew a statute of limitation preventing criminal prosecution after twenty years, all Nazi crimes would have gone unpunished from 1965 on. Erhard was in the minority of government members who wanted to extend the period of prosecution. Parliament passed an extension with a mixed-party majority – Erhard, however, had nor been able to convince his own government colleagues and was not instrumental in securing this majority.

Economic policy:

Another policy field of Erhard inaction – this time, however, by design. Erhard’s liberal economic credo kept him from intervening in the economy. That was defensible in the narrow view – economic activity in the short term – but defective otherwise: Erhard knew (more than a year before the budgetary crisis of 1966) that the economic downswing lowered public revenue while his promises concerning the offset arrangement would raise expenses. Erhard thus brought the budgetary crisis, over which he’d fall, onto himself. In the longer term, Erhard’s torpedoing of European integration denied the German economy export markets and delayed the innovation stimulus of increased competition.

Vision:

Erhard’s overarching vision in life was to allow free individuals to pursue their ambitions in a market economy – but when he entered office, he felt the preconditions for that were already achieved (a debatable claim). Thus, his policy mostly consisted of staying the course. He did pitch a foreign policy plan to refuse the Soviet Union loans and then “buy” German reunification when the Soviet economy collapsed, but was met with (justified) bewilderment by both his domestic and foreign interlocutors. Domestically, his only contribution which went beyond the immediate needs was his idea of a “Formed-Up Society” in which both egoism and pluralism would be overcome – an idea that he brought up during the 1965 election campaign and did not return to afterward.

Pragmatism:

Likely Erhard’s weakest suit. While he did not attempt much, what he attempted usually fell flat because Erhard was unable to secure support for it (or because he wavered and dropped it in the face of resistance). He had lost his own party’s support for his foreign policy within his first year in office. Their support for his domestic activities (or, rather, the lack thereof) withered soon after. Particularly instructive is the aftermath of Erhard’s 1965 electoral victory: Erhard squandered this testament of his popularity with the voters within weeks. He had intended to downsize the cabinet (and thus to get rid of ministers appointed by his predecessor and unfriendly to him) but waited too long to begin that process. In the end, the parliamentary parties of the coalition partners CDU, its Bavarian sister party CSU, and the pro-business FDP prevailed in securing all the posts for ministers they wanted. Erhard was forced to accept a virtually unchanged cabinet. Only one year after his electoral victory, the remainder of his political capital was spent and he resigned.

Integrity:

Erhard came into office planning to abolish his predecessor’s “democracy of favors” which was based on securing the support of powerful interest groups like the churches, the farmers’ associations, the employers’ associations, or the trade unions by passing legislation and channeling government funding in their favor. While Erhard was not above combatting European economic integration (against his liberal credo of open markets and the benefits of competition) to protect the German farmers from their French competitors, he doled out distinctly fewer favors than his predecessor. He also confined himself to the limits the constitution spelled out and did not attempt to shape the state offices to his liking (as Adenauer had done when he tried to move from the chancellorship into the presidency – but, of course, turning the presidency into the more important office). Finally, Erhard’s more collegial government style confirmed that Germany had moved beyond authoritarianism.

Erhard is the rare case of a politician not defined by the highest office he attained: He took the decisive action of his life as Director of Economics for the Bizone. He is best remembered by the public as Minister for the Economy. Looking at his chancellorship, it’s easy to see why: During this short period in office, Erhard did not attempt much, and what he attempted usually failed. His successors were left to respond to pressures resulting from the changing civil society and to repair the damage done to Franco-German relations (only achieved around ten years later). Erhard positions himself on the lower rungs of the leaders rated.

Full ratings so far:

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
12. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

How would you rate Erhard? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

For short overview essays on all German chancellors from Bismarck on, see Sternburg, Wilhelm von: Die deutschen Kanzler. Von Bismarck bis Merkel [The German Chancellors. From Bismarck to Merkel], Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2006 (in German).

For a recent English-language biography (or, rather, a hagiography), see Mierzejewski, Alfred C.: Ludwig Erhard. A Biography, University of North Carolina press, Chapel Hill, NC 2005.

The standard, primary-source based, scholarly biography (which is a bit vitriolic, but generally sound in its judgment) is Hentschel, Volker: Ludwig Erhard. Ein Politikerleben [Ludwig Erhard. A Politician’s Life], Olzog, Munich 1996 (in German).

Last year, I have begun a new irregular series on my blog assessing the merits of UK prime ministers (illustrated through the lens of a single board game per prime minister). The rating system seemed robust enough to apply it to other countries/leaders (at least if they are more or less democratic). Thus, I’m branching out! Today, we’re doing our first US president. And we’re starting with none other than 20^th century heavyweight Franklin D. Roosevelt. The accompanying game will be Cataclysm (Scott Muldoon/William Terdoslavich, GMT Games).

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The presidents will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as president, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)presidents).

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A president can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the president is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the president increase US influence in the world and the security of Americans at home? Did the president wield US power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of US power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the president increase the liberty of Americans to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the president promote domestic security and shape the framework for equality before the law and fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the president facilitate the prosperity and economic security of Americans (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the president’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the president have an idea of what the United States and the world (the latter counting for more in times of US influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the president’s policies steer the United States (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the president succeed in seeing his policy through from inception to completion? How well did the president manage the support from Congress, society, the administration, the media (the latter counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the president understand the office as a means to benefit himself, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the president respect the boundaries of the office?

Roosevelt’s Life

Franklin D. Roosevelt – or FDR for short – (1882—1945) came from a wealthy New York family. He studied law and ventured into politics soon after graduating: At age 28, he was elected into the New York state senate. Like his famous (distant) cousin Theodore Roosevelt who’d been president until a few years before, Franklin was a progressive in favor of ambitious reforms. Unlike Theodore, he was a Democrat. When fellow Democrat Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, he appointed FDR Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Many of Roosevelt’s convictions – like the importance of a strong navy to control sea lanes and his commitment to an interventionist foreign policy – were shaped in that time. In 1920, FDR was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidates James M. Cox’s running mate. They lost in a blowout, but Roosevelt established himself as a national figure. Roosevelt fell ill soon after and became paralyzed from the waist down (traditionally, his illness has been identified as polio, but newer research suggests it might have been Guillain-Barré syndrome). Consequently, he retired from electoral politics for a few years.

Roosevelt returned to politics and was elected governor of New York in 1928. His energetic tenure recommended him as a presidential candidate four years later, when the country was suffering from the Great Depression. Roosevelt won the election against Republican incumbent Herbert Hoover in a landslide. He would be re-elected an unprecedented and never repeated three times, winning over 80% of electoral votes in every election.

Roosevelt immediately began a flurry of reforms – starkly different from Hoover’s aloof and seemingly indifferent reaction to the Depression. This “New Deal” included unemployed relief and federal work programs, the foundation of federal social security, and the regulation of the financial sector. Thus, Roosevelt restored trust in the American economy and government.

In his second term, Roosevelt’s reforms were opposed by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Roosevelt threatened to introduce legislation which would have increased the size of the Supreme Court. As Judge Owen Roberts left the conservative camp in the Court, the New Deal now had a reliable judicial majority and the “court-packing” bill failed in Congress.

Outside of the United States, storms were brewing. Germany, Italy, and Japan challenged the existing world order. Roosevelt recognized early that American isolationism was ill-equipped to deal with these challenges. He pushed for American rearmament and, once war had broken out in Europe, supported the United Kingdom, France, China, and later also the Soviet Union in their struggle against the Axis aggressors – especially by giving them war matériel which they were to return or pay for after the war (“Lend-Lease”).

The United States only joined the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 (and the subsequent declarations of war by Germany and Italy). Roosevelt mobilized the country on an unprecedented scale: Federal spending from 1941 to 1945 exceeded that from the founding of the United States to 1940. The demand for war materiel stimulated the economy. Thus, America overcame the Great Depression building the planes, ships, and trucks with which the Axis was defeated.

Roosevelt’s main allies, the communist Soviet Union and Britain with its large colonial empire were not always supportive of the president’s ideas for a post-war order based on national self-determination and a rules-based international community. Yet they went along, defeated the Axis powers together, and founded international institutions like the United Nations. Roosevelt, however, would not live to see it: He died on April 12, 1945, less than a month before Germany’s defeat.

The Rating

Foreign policy: Roosevelt’s impact on US foreign policy can barely be overstated. He overcame the traditional American isolationism and replaced it with the United Stated adopting a global role appropriate to its economic strength and ideological appeal as the beacon of democracy and capitalism.

Even before the United States entered the war, Roosevelt had succeeding in putting the country on a quasi-war footing, instituting selective service and supporting the beleaguered Allies first with the “cash & carry” option to purchase war matériel, then with the destroyers-for-bases deal, and finally with Lend-Lease).

During the war, he managed a coalition of unlikely allies and got them to agree with his outline for the rules-based post-war order in which we live until today.

Domestic policy: Roosevelt expanded American liberties with the early, symbolically valuable decision to end prohibition. More substantially, his appointments for judgeships as well as cabinet and administration posts reflected American diversity much better than before – Frances Perkins, his secretary of labor, the first woman to hold a cabinet post, may have been the most famous, but besides her, countless FDR appointees were women, from racial minorities, as well as Catholic and Jewish. Thus, Roosevelt ended the practical monopoly of WASP men on the levers of political power.

While the practical implementation of some New Deal policies excluded disadvantaged Americans (particularly Black southerners), the programs overall were the first large-scale social scheme in America not designed to exclude them and contributed to their equality.

However, Roosevelt’s controversial decision to incarcerate ethnic Japanese (most of which were American citizens) from the Pacific Coast states was an act of state violence based on racial prejudice and taints Roosevelt’s record for liberty and equality.

Economic policy: The strategy tips for the United States in the Cataclysm playbook state: “The United States can do everything. But in 1933, America is not doing anything.” That’s precisely the state in which Roosevelt found the United States. His deft management of competing interests quickly restored trust in the US government and economy, as when his early cuts in federal expenses increased support for the following spending on unemployment relief.

It is impossible to list all New Deal policies and their economic effects. Three examples might illustrate their breadth and depth:

• Roosevelt’s labor rights legislation allowed for the establishment of minimum wages, maximum working hours, and codified the right to collective bargaining. Combined with the expanded access to higher education from the G.I. Bill, these rights ushered in an unprecedented age of prosperity for the American working and middle classes from the 1940s on.
• The Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial and investment banking and thus limited the effect of stock market crashes on the “real economy”. Its repeal in the 1990s paved the way for the Great Recession beginning with the crash of 2007.
• The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) did not only provide unemployment relief and conduct infrastructure projects, it also had a massive positive environmental impact (for example, with the three billion trees that were planted by CCC workers).

Vision: Roosevelt built the modern presidency and shaped US and world politics for decades to come. He elevated and enlarged the office of the president, which, as a strong executive center, allowed the United States to become a global superpower. His vision of achieving liberty, equality, and opportunity with the help of an active government dominated in US politics until the 1970s, and his vision of the rules-based world order even longer (even though it has been under attack in recent years both domestically and internationally).

Pragmatism: As outlined above, Roosevelt undertook a massive transformation of American policy as well as of the role of US government. He succeeded in getting this transformation through Congress and the judiciary mostly by virtue of his immense electoral appeal: The public’s trust in Roosevelt was never more eloquently put forward than in his four landslide electoral victories. The “Roosevelt coalition” of urban working class, southerners, and racial/ethnic minorities proved almost unbeatable even after his death – from 1933 to 1969, Democrats held the presidential office for 28 of 36 years. Thanks to the Roosevelt coalition, they could always rely on Democratic strength in Congress. These endured even longer – the first time Republicans held both houses of Congress was after the “Republican Revolution” of 1994.

This combination of radical reform and enduring popular support in a democracy is remarkable. Cataclysm players need to keep their stability always at a high level if they want to emulate FDR!

Integrity: Roosevelt did not use his vast power for personal benefit, but for that of his country and the world. Still, his reach for power knew no bounds. He frequently tested the limits of his office, as in the “court-packing” attempt or in his battles with Congress. He never relinquished power voluntarily. Only death parted him from the presidency.

Overall: Roosevelt is not easy to rate. He is such a massively impactful president – by virtue of his long time in office, his re-shaping of the presidential role, his complete re-orientation of US foreign and economic policies – that in all the categories in which I have awarded him five stars he is likely still to stand out among future highly-rated contenders. The low points of his presidency – Japanese internment and his constant reach for more power – remind us that he was a flawed man, and that the flaws of a man with his power would shake a nation.

Summed up, he scores 25 out of 30 stars – a top contender.

Full ratings so far:

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
12. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

Maybe I should tackle a less stellar subject for the next leader rating…

How would you rate FDR? Let me know in the comments!

Further Reading

For a recent, politically-focused Roosevelt biography, see Daniels, Roger: Franklin D. Roosevelt (2 volumes), University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL 2016/2020.

William E. Leuchtenburg’s chapter on FDR in his treatment of the American presidents in the 20th century is almost a monography unto itself. See Leuchtenburg, William E.: The American President. From Teddy Roosevelt to Bill Clinton, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, pp. 143-242.

I’ve started a little irregular series called Prime Minister Ratings – assessing British prime ministers by a very general rating system and showcasing one board game in which the prime minister in question or the problems they faced feature. Our first contestant was Robert Walpole, the very first prime minister. Today, we move on to a 20^th century heavyweight: Winston Churchill, the man who led Britain through World War II… and was elected prime minister for a second time six years after the war. Our accompanying board game is Churchill (Mark Herman, GMT Games).

Before we dive into Churchill’s life and the assessment of his policies, here’s…

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The prime ministers will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as prime minister, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)PMs). And lastly, in the following, “Britain” serves as a shorthand for either Great Britain or United Kingdom of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland as applicable, “British” for the inhabitants of such.

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A prime minister can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the prime minister is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the prime minister increase British influence in the world and the security of the British at home? Did the prime minister wield British power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of British power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the prime minister increase the liberty of the British to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the prime minister promote domestic security and shape the framework for equality before the law and fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the prime minister facilitate the prosperity and economic security of the British (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the prime minister’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the prime minister have an idea of what Britain and the world (the latter counting for more in times of British influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the prime minister’s policies steer Britain (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the prime minister succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the prime minister manage the support from Parliament, the Civil Service, the media, society (the latter two counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the prime minister understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the prime minister respect the boundaries of the office?

Churchill’s Life

Winston Churchill (1874—1965) came from the English high aristocracy, but inherited a knack for populism from his father, a Tory politician. After formative years as an officer and war correspondent, Churchill turned himself to politics, being elected into Parliament in 1900 (as a Conservative) and joining the government (as a Liberal) in 1905. He held various government posts and was First Lord of the Admiralty when World War I broke out. Churchill resigned over the disastrous Gallipoli landings, but re-joined the government in 1917. While being regarded as a major political talent, Churchill seemed too fickle and unreliable for the highest of offices – for example due to his second change of party (back to the Conservatives) in 1924, after which he served as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Once out of office (in 1929), Churchill searched for new causes – and took up first opposition to Indian self-government and, from 1933, opposition to Nazi expansionism. Neither was a popular stance in the Conservative Party or the country as a whole. Churchill had much time for his second calling after politics – writing.

When Germany went to war with Britain in 1939, Churchill, the great Cassandra on Hitler’s aggression, was called back into government. Less than a year later, prime minister Neville Chamberlain resigned over the failure of the Norwegian operation, and on May 10, 1940, Churchill followed him as prime minister. On the same day, Germany invaded France. Churchill presided over a series of military disasters in his first weeks. In this difficult situation, he excelled at maintaining the fighting spirit of his government, Parliament, and the British people. Not only Hitler was surprised when Britain did not seek peace, but opted to fight alone against the Nazi war machine which controlled half of Europe. Churchill’s great speeches of the spring and summer 1940 – from “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat” over “We shall fight on the beaches” and “This was their finest hour” to “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few” chronicle his defiance.

Britain did not have to stand alone forever. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and Churchill disregarded his ardent anti-communism in cooperation with Stalin. Six months later, the United States entered the war on the allied side. Churchill was sure that this great alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States would emerge victorious. His task was now to drive forward the victory – and make sure that Britain, the least populous and productive of the three powers, was not relegated to second rank. For a long time, he succeeded. It was only after the D-Day landings in France in 1944 that Britain’s comparably small material contribution began to turn Britain into a junior partner. Churchill enjoyed great personal popularity for his role in the war, but in the parliamentary elections held two months after the German unconditional surrender, the British voters gave the Labour Party a majority.

Churchill was nominally the head of the opposition and made some memorable speeches warning of Soviet expansionism, but spent most of his time writing his war memoirs (like his other books, they turned into bestsellers). Labour enacted a series of ambitious domestic reforms (from the creation of the NHS to a housing program), but lost their majority in the 1951 elections – so Churchill returned to Downing Street No 10. By then, he was old and suffered from bad health, and domestic politics had never been too interesting to him. However, when Stalin died in 1953, Churchill hoped that a three-way summit between US president Eisenhower, the new leader in Moscow, and himself could resolve the nascent Cold War. His hope was in vain. He resigned in 1955 due to health reasons, but remained a member of parliament until a few weeks before his death in 1965.

The Rating

Foreign policy: Churchill’s focus of interest, and, as a wartime prime minister, the policy field in which the biggest challenges awaited him. He met them remarkably well. True, he did not increase British power and influence, but he staved off its likely demise by a negotiated peace with the Nazis, and held his own in league with the much larger powers of the United States and the Soviet Union for a long time. More importantly even, while it may have been these powers that eventually won the war, Churchill’s contribution in 1940 was to not lose it – and thus ensuring the liberty of hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Churchill’s wartime record is blemished by his less benevolent approach to the liberty of the peoples under British imperial rule which manifested itself in drawn-out colonial wars during his second premiership.

Domestic policy: Churchill’s main contribution was his unification of the country (and his own party, to begin with) to oppose Nazism – when isolationism, appeasement, and pacifism no matter the cost had been en vogue in the 1930s and still lingered early in the war. Also, the British government’s intrusion into the British people’s lives during the war was remarkably limited given the circumstances, and it can be argued that Churchill’s defense against Nazism was an enormous contribution to the British people’s life in liberty and democracy.

Economic policy: Tough to assess, as Churchill was never too interested in it and let his ministers run the show in these matters. The Labour members of his wartime government were able men, and letting them do their thing without hindrance is an achievement in itself (particularly for a leader as headstrong as Churchill). The British economy also was very efficiently mobilized for war production (and achieved a state of economic “total war” long before Germany’s). In Churchill’s second term, his major economic achievement was to accept and continue the sweeping economic and welfare reforms enacted by the Labour government from 1945 to 1951, even though they had been strongly opposed by the Conservatives when they had been in opposition. Churchill thus became a father of the post-war consensus.

Vision: Churchill’s great mission – the defeat of Nazi expansionism – was in itself not a long-term project. It ended with the Nazis’ unconditional surrender in 1945 – and so did Churchill’s premiership. He took to warning against Soviet expansionism and the hope to end it in a three-way summit between him, the American president, and the Soviet leader in his second term, but this proved futile.

Pragmatism: Churchill was one of only few government members who were committed to fighting on after the fall of France, but he carried his government, his party, and the country at large with him. His broadening of the government to include Labour and Liberal ministers ensured national unity as long as the war lasted. Once Germany was defeated, this unity was over – exactly how it had been designed to be in a competitive democracy. In terms of foreign policy, Churchill seized on the opportunity to cooperate with the Soviet Union and maintained this difficult partnership until the completion of its mission to defeat the Axis countries.

Integrity: As long as Churchill was a wartime prime minister, his conduct in office held up to high standards. Once Germany had surrendered and Churchill switched to election campaign mode, he was not quite as exemplary – alleging that Labour would want to install a “Gestapo” if elected, a smear as baseless as it was unworthy of a man who knew both Hitler and Attlee well enough to understand they stood at opposite ends of the political sphere. As a former prime minister, Churchill was given access to government files for his war memoirs – and used them to shape public opinion and gain another election victory.

Overall: Churchill had great qualities and marked defects. Fortunately for him, Britain, and the world, he was called into office in a time that demanded just what he could offer – and probably no one else who stood ready for the task at hand. With 25 out of 30 stars, he jumps to the top group of leaders.

Full ratings so far:

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
12. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

Further Reading

An excellent overview with portraits of all prime ministers is Leonard, Dick: A History of British Prime Ministers, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2014.

A good start on Churchill – and, despite the somewhat grandiose title, no hagiography – is Best, Geoffrey: Churchill. A Study in Greatness, Hambledon and London, London 2001.

Of course, Churchill’s own writings are of great interest to anyone reading on his times, especially his Nobel Prize for Literature-winning The Second World War, six volumes (also published as an abridged one-volume version), Cassell, London 1948—1953.

You can find Churchill’s 1940 speeches, among the finest examples of oratory in the history of mankind, on the website of the International Churchill Society.

300 years ago, Robert Walpole was made First Lord of the Treasury for the second time. Not a particularly impressive event – if Walpole had not retained that office for 21 years and turned himself into the leading British politician of his time. Thereafter, the office of First Lord of the Treasury customarily was given to the monarch’s representative to parliament – the Prime Minister, as the holder became known. As times changed, so did the office: Today, the prime minister is much more responsible to parliament than to the monarch. Yet the office, unofficial at first, has endured these 300 years and been held by dozens of very different men and women. And thus, this post about Walpole will kick off a new irregular series on the blog – Prime Minister Ratings! I’ll assess Walpole (and, in the future, other prime ministers (or even leaders from other places)) by a very general rating system – and I’ll introduce one board game in which the prime minister or the problems they faced feature – this time, Imperial Struggle (Ananda Gupta/Jason Matthews, GMT Games).

The Creation of an Office

First things first: Why did the prime ministry arise with Walpole? After all, before him, there had been strong advisers to the kings of Britain (and England before), but not at all times. There are personal and structural reasons for the change: Personally, Walpole was a politician of force and skill, and his long tenure enabled him to shape the British constitution according to his needs in office. Structurally, the British crown’s powers had been curtailed by the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688/89, so more power rested with parliament, where the monarch now needed a forceful representative. George I, the first Hanoverian king of Britain, was particularly in need of that, as he spoke little English (his native tongue was German) and was often away in his electorate of Hanover. These were the conditions that enabled Walpole to rise so high.

The Rating System

Some caveats ahead: The prime ministers will be rated by the knowledge of their time. If they or their contemporaries could not have known about the effects of something, I will not use my hindsight to mark it as a mistake of theirs. The assessment is focused on their conduct as prime minister, but includes their life after holding the office (in which they will still be regarded in the public eye as (ex-)PMs). And lastly, in the following, “Britain” serves as a shorthand for either Great Britain or United Kingdom of Great Britain and (Northern) Ireland as applicable, and “British” as shorthand for the inhabitants of such.

Now, to the system itself: There are three policy field categories (foreign, domestic, and economic policy) and three more general ones (vision, pragmatism, integrity). A prime minister can earn from one to five stars in each category (for a total sum of up to 30). In detail, the prime minister is assessed as follows:

Foreign policy: Did the prime minister increase British influence in the world and the security of the British at home? Did the prime minister wield British power responsibly and with positive results for the regions affected (the latter counting for a greater deal in times of British power being great)?

Domestic policy: Did the prime minister increase the liberty of the British to express themselves and to participate in the political process? Did the prime minister promote domestic security and shape the framework for equality before the law and fair justice dealing with offenses?

Economic policy: Did the prime minister facilitate the prosperity and economic security of the British (including in the mid- and long-term)? Was the prime minister’s economic policy based on mutual benefit of those involved or did it unduly burden one side?

Vision: Did the prime minister have an idea of what Britain and the world (the latter counting for more in times of British influence being great) should look like beyond the immediate future? Did the prime minister’s policies steer Britain (and, if applicable, the world) in this direction?

Pragmatism: Did the prime minister succeed in seeing their policy through from inception to completion? How well did the prime minister manage to gain support from Parliament, the Civil Service, the media, society (the latter two counting for more in more recent years)?

Integrity: Did the prime minister understand the office as a means to benefit themselves, special interest groups, the entire country, or another community? Did the prime minister respect the boundaries of the office?

Walpole’s Life

Robert Walpole (1676—1745) was the son of a Norfolk country squire. When he was only 24, his father died, and Walpole moved quickly to seize the vacant seat in the House of Commons for himself. He enjoyed a steady rise in the ranks of the Whigs, and got his first cabinet appointment as Secretary-at-War in 1708. He spent the next years in government, among the opposition, and even in a Whig faction opposing a Whig government until his appointment as First Lord of the Treasury in April 1721 (following the fall of the Sunderland/Stanhope government over the bursting of the South Sea Bubble).

His primacy in the government was contested in the beginning, but assured no later than 1730, when his last weighty rival (and erstwhile ally, as well as brother-in-law) Charles Townshend left the government. Walpole’s dominance over both Houses of Parliament grew, and he also made himself indispensable to two initially skeptical monarchs (George I, and after his death in 1727, George II). Characterizing himself as “no saint, no Spartan, no reformer”, Walpole aimed to bring “security, stability, and low taxation” by a policy committed to peace. When Walpole’s cabinet colleagues pushed the country into the War of Jenkins’ Ear against Spain (which initially went badly), his authority eroded. He lost his control over parliament and resigned in February 1742. Walpole was made Earl of Orford and died in 1745.

The Rating

Foreign policy: Walpole, a Whig, adopted the traditional Tory policy of peace with France. He stuck to it for almost the entirety of his tenure as prime minister. His “peace at any price” policy saved British lives and money, most notably when he kept the country neutral during the War of the Polish Succession (which ended in a draw anyway, with the candidate Britain preferred ending up on the throne, but French and Spanish territorial gains). At the end of his tenure, the policy of peaceful isolation could not hold anymore, and war with Spain (and then France) erupted against Walpole’s wishes.

Domestic policy: Walpole’s domestic agenda was limited – which was likely a success in itself in a country which had a recent history of religious strife, revolution, and regicide. He made small improvements for the situation of Protestant dissenters (that is, non-members of the Anglican Church). Most significantly, Britain was much more stable and unified at the end of his long rule than at the beginning, and could thus easily deal with the 1745 Jacobite uprising.

Economic policy: Prosperity was Walpole’s key promise. He restored economic stability after the South Sea Bubble. His policy of peace gave the country a respite from the immense expenses in the wars before and after his tenure. Thus, Walpole reduced overall taxation and cut back on the national debt, which would give Britain more financial flexibility in the future. Not everyone benefitted from Walpole’s economic policy, though: His shift from direct taxation (especially on land) to indirect taxation (especially on consumption) favored rich landowners (like himself) at the expense of the non-propertied classes.

Vision: Walpole declared peace to be his main means to attain “security, stability, and low taxation”. In that, he succeeded, and he did so for a remarkable long time without major adjustments. His vision and the policies he used to achieve it strengthened Britain in the long run.

Pragmatism: Walpole used a variety of means to attract backing for himself and his policies. He was a Whig (and would always rest on his strength among the Whigs), but cooperated with the Tories on several occasions from his early career on. His support for beleaguered men of influence after the South Sea Bubble won him their loyalty for a long time to come. Walpole did not only control the House of Commons, of which he was a member, but also the House of Lords – chiefly through his ecclesiastical appointments, whose beneficiaries would prove thankful to him. Even though the heir to the crown, the future George II, was not a friend of Walpole’s, he did not remove him from office upon his succession: Walpole had gained favor with George’s wife Caroline (unlike most other men of note, who courted George’s mistress, from whom the king would not accept policy suggestions). And when the new king attempted to install Sir Spencer Compton as his new chief minister, Walpole proved indispensable to Compton even in the most basic tasks. Compton’s candidacy floundered, and Walpole remained in charge – for a never-again reached 21 years in total.

Integrity: Walpole lived in an age different from ours. Back then, Members of Parliament and ministers did not receive a salary for their offices, and thus usually saw no problem in using their political career to enrich themselves. That drove Walpole both personally and in the ways he would gain political supporters: “All these men have their price”, he remarked about a group of Members of Parliament. As one of his recent biographers put it: Walpole “operated a species of private interest/public expenditure mini-welfare state for anyone able to elect a Member or persuade one to vote right” (Pearce, p. 383). Even in comparison to the men of his age, Walpole made tremendous use of practices which were based on personal rather than common welfare, and the leading writers of his time lambasted the “Robinocracy” (based on the nickname Robin for Robert) as hopelessly corrupt.

Overall: Walpole was a forceful politician whose control over parliament and (neither weak-willed nor too-trusting) monarchs was extraordinary. His policy of “security, stability, and low taxation” based on peace was mostly successful and held up for a very long time. With 24 out of 30 stars, his rating is what future leaders up here will be measured against.

Full ratings so far:

1. Abraham Lincoln 28/30
2. Franklin D. Roosevelt 25/30
3. Friedrich Ebert 25/30
4. Winston Churchill 25/30
5. Robert Walpole 24/30
6. Willy Brandt 23/30
7. Konrad Adenauer 22/30
8. Harry S. Truman 21/30
9. John F. Kennedy 17/30
10. Hermann Müller 17/30
11. Ludwig Erhard 12/30
12. Paul von Hindenburg 10/30

Further Reading

An excellent overview with portraits of all prime ministers is Leonard, Dick: A History of British Prime Ministers, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 2014.

The standard scholarly biography remains Plumb, John Harold: Sir Robert Walpole, 2 volumes, Cresset Press, London 1956/1960.

For a more recent biography, see Pearce, Edward: The Great Man. Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius, and Britain’s First Prime Minister, Pimlico, London 2007.

Two of the greatest commanders of antiquity died in 183 BCE, 2200 years ago. Their names are Hannibal Barca and Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus – but Hannibal and Scipio will do to refer to them.^[1] Their lives have many parallels – long absences from home, an adult life dominated by war in the first and politics in the second part, and finally the experience of being an individual too big to fit into one’s small community. We’ll look at their youth and their fortunes in the war when they were in Carthage’s favor in this article. A second part will cover the second part of the war when Rome struck back and Hannibal’s and Scipio’s years after the war that defined both their lives.
There are many board games which deal with the dramatic events of the second war been Rome and Carthage which I will discuss here. The most prominent one (and the one I will draw upon the most) is Mark Simonitch’s Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage (Valley Games). I took the pictures of the new edition Hannibal & Hamilcar (Mark Simonitch/Jaro Andruszkiewiecz, Phalanx Games).

Early Years

Hannibal was born in 247 BCE as the son of Hamilcar, Carthage’s most successful general of the First Punic War against Rome.^[2] Hamilcar was not good at moving on after the defeat in this war and let this influence his parenting: According to a popular story, he took the nine-year old Hannibal and Hannibal’s little brothers Hasdrubal and Mago to a temple and had them swear never to be friends of Rome. Then he left the city to expand Carthage’s imperial possessions in Spain, taking his eldest son with him. Nine years later, he died in battle against an Iberian tribe. His son-in-law Hasdrubal the Fair (married to Hannibal’s oldest sister and not to be confused with Hasdrubal, Hannibal’s brother) took command. Hamilcar and Hasdrubal the Fair gained possession of the largest part of southern and eastern Spain with all its riches in iron and silver. When Hasdrubal the Fair died in 221 BCE, Hannibal was the new supreme leader of the Carthaginian empire in Spain.
Scipio was eleven years younger than Hannibal. He came from one of the most distinguished Roman noble families and was brought up in the traditional style of Roman aristocracy and prepared for political and military duties. Therefore, he joined the military when he was 17 or 18 – just as war had broken out with Carthage.

Hannibal’s War

Hannibal’s successes in Spain had aroused Roman suspicion. Rome demanded Hannibal stop his advance at the river Ebro. Hannibal, however, disregarded this unilateral meddling in his affairs and proceeded to attack the city Saguntum just beyond the Ebro which sent an embassy to Rome for help. Despite their big words, the Romans left Saguntum in the lurch – a hint of the mixed opinions in the Roman senate. Nonetheless, they demanded that Hannibal leave Saguntum be. Hannibal was unimpressed.
He conquered Saguntum unmolestedly and then took his forces, including 37 war elephants, to Gaul and then further towards Italy. A Roman army – led by Scipio’s uncle Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio – marched to Gaul as well, but Hannibal avoided battle and let Gnaeus make his way to Spain in an attempt to catch Italy underdefended. Although it was already October, he proceeded to cross the snow-covered alps – the most famous, and, at the same time, most overrated of Hannibal’s deeds. Sure, it was a daring feat, but nowhere as ground-breaking as people would make it seem – of course Rome knew that armies could pass the Alps. And yes, it was more difficult since it was already fall, but that was Hannibal’s own fault for waiting in Gaul until the consular army had passed him. Most importantly, while elephants in the snow must be a grand sight to behold, the crossing took great losses on the men, when Hannibal could hardly afford losses for a campaign where he’d have trouble getting reinforcements from home or recruiting on site.

Nonetheless, the crossing of the alps was the beginning of Hannibal’s glory days. He defeated the Romans under Scipio’s father Publius Cornelius Scipio at the Ticinus (Scipio earned his first respect in this battle saving his surrounded father with a daring solitary charge at the assailants). He killed half of the Roman force in the battle at the Trebia with a skilled attack on both flanks. Finally, he ambushed a Roman force that had neglected its reconnaissance at Lake Trasimene, annihilating it and killing its general, consul Gaius Flaminius.

After these crushing defeats within the span of a year Rome changed for a defensive strategy implemented by Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, called Cunctator (“the delayer”). Fabius avoided direct engagement in favor of constant skirmishes to wear the invading force down while Rome built up her forces (the “Fabian strategy”). This went against all Roman traditions, and many proud Romans viewed it as downright un-Roman. After one year, the Senate gave Fabius the boot and opted for a more assertive strategy against Hannibal once more. The new consuls went straight for Hannibal with a superior force of 80,000 men against the Carthaginian’s 50,000. One young officer in this Roman army was Scipio. The two armies met at Cannae in southern Italy, and Hannibal did what he had always done – just on a bigger scale this time: The Carthaginian center gave way to lure the Roman infantry forward. At the same time, both the Carthaginian left and right won their engagements and outflanked the Romans. They managed to completely encircle the Roman army, and then it was nothing but a massacre. 70,000 Roman soldiers died. Scipio was one of the few survivors.

Now the way to Rome was open – but Hannibal did not march on the city, producing one of the big what-ifs of military history. His decision was as controversial then as it is now – Hannibal’s cavalry officer Maharbal fumed “You know how to win, Hannibal, but not how to use a victory!” when he heard of it. In the end, Hannibal may have made the right call – Rome would have been difficult to besiege, and with the momentum of his great victory, Hannibal could bring many cities in southern Italy to his side which had been discontented about their alliance with Rome. The issue remains in contention until today, and board games certainly are no exception: Hannibal – Rome vs. Carthage employs a siege system that indicates that Hannibal would not have had an easy time scaling the walls of Rome, whereas it’s pretty easy for an army to flip cities to your side when there is no enemy to contest it. Hannibal vs. Rome (Rome Package, Reiner Knizia, GMT Games), on the other side of the spectrum, ends when one side moves an army onto the enemy capital – even if there is an enemy army.
The catastrophe of Cannae brought the Fabian strategy back into fashion and Fabius himself back into command. And Hannibal despaired over the Roman resources of manpower. While the Romans couldn’t beat Hannibal, he couldn’t break them, either. And so he kept marching through Italy, trying to convince as many cities as possible to join him. There were never enough. The Romans contented themselves with not losing against his main army and keeping tabs on him. Increasingly, they waged the war as if Hannibal wasn’t even there – Fabius as the “shield of Rome” made sure Hannibal was in check without seeking battle, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the “sword of Rome” re-conquered cities elsewhere, most famously Syracuse on Sicily.

In Spain, the Carthaginians had been more successful. The Roman army under Scipio’s uncle (later reinforced by Scipio’s father) which had bypassed Hannibal in Gaul was defeated repeatedly in Spain. In 211, Carthaginian forces under Scipio’s brother Hasdrubal annihilated the Roman army in Spain. Both Scipio’s father and his uncle Gnaeus were slain. When the Roman Senate decided to send another army, they chose Scipio as the commander. The young Scipio – still only 25 – became the first Roman to hold a pro-consular command (that is, a command for someone who had been consul, the highest office of the Republic) without ever having been as much as a praetor (the second-highest office). Scipio’s talent – and the Senate’s wish to make this a war of revenge – trumped the venerated rules of the Republic.^[3]

The End?

Of course this is not the end! But we’ll go on with the tale of Hannibal and Scipio another time. Then we’ll also get to the reason for Scipio’s special nickname. Watch this space!

Games Referenced

Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage (Mark Simonitch, Valley Games)
Hannibal & Hamilcar (Mark Simonitch/Jaro Andruszkiewiecz, Phalanx Games)
Commands & Colors: Ancients (Richard Borg, GMT Games)
Hannibal vs. Rome (Rome Package, Reiner Knizia, GMT Games)

Further Reading

For an engaging account of not only Hannibal’s life, but also the larger Barcid family history and their political and military machinations, see Hoyos, Dexter: Hannibal’s Dynasty. Power and Politics in the Western Mediterranean, 247—183 BC, Routledge, Abingdon-on-Thames 2003.
The best Scipio biography is still Scullard, H.H.: Scipio Africanus. Soldier and Politician, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1970.

Footnotes

1. Carthaginian males have a given name that is generally selected from only a handful of names. To avoid confusion between all the dozens of Hannos or Hasdrubals, they are given a nickname which may become hereditary – Hannibal’s nickname Barca (which means “the lightning”) came from his father Hamilcar Barca’s blitzkrieg exploits in the war against Rome, and it became some kind of family name for them.
Roman naming conventions changed over time. During Scipio’s life, the most famous system of the tria nomina (three names) rose to dominance. Male Roman aristocrats would usually have three names in this system. A praenomen (given name) was selected from a list of only about 20 names – in Scipio’s case, Publius. The family name (nomen gentile) Cornelius was legally the most important, since belonging to a Roman family gave the bearer full citizenship rights. Lastly, the often-hereditary nickname (cognomen) was more and more used as the main name referring to a person – which is why we call Scipio Scipio (and not Publius or Cornelius). He had inherited this nickname from a distant ancestor who must have held public office since scipio refers to the staff that would have been the symbol for office. What about Scipio’s last name Africanus? Well, that’s another nickname. This one, however, Scipio acquired for himself. We’ll get to that in due time.
2. You see how our perspective is Roman here – we call the wars between Rome and Carthage “Punic” wars after the Punic Carthaginians as Rome’s enemies. The Carthaginians might have called these wars the “Roman” wars (just like the Vietnamese call what is known in the western World as the “Vietnam War” the “American War”).
3. Rome never had a codified, written constitution, but there were conventions on how to conduct politics. One of these rules was that all offices had to be taken in the right sequence starting with the lowest. These rules were evolving. Granting Scipio the command started a massive trend to shape the rules to fit ambitious individuals.