Woodrow Wilson, the Peace Conference & Spanish Flu (+Gandhi)

[NigelS]

Catching up on some BBC Sounds listening over the break, I found an edition of the American Radiolab (Series 7 - Dispatches from 1918.) raised some interesting issues for me. 

Although, apparently, now impossible to verify one way or the other, the programme speculates that President Woodrow Wilson's illness at the Paris Peace Conference may have been down to the Spanish Flu, giving that on his return to the conference table, considerably weakened and still recovering from whatever the illness actually was, his views about how Germany should treated post war  (ie not as harshly as wanted by the French) were not pursued as aggressively and as energetically by him as they had been prior to it.  Further speculation suggested that had Wilson been able to carry on with his proposals in the same manner as he is said to have done before his illness, the outcome for Germany may not have been as economically damaging as it was and, of course, possibly not allowing the subsequent  rise of Hitler and the 3rd Reich, and WWII...

In a similar way the programme also suggests that Gandhi, who had also suffered from a severe illness for months at the time the Spanish Flu was devastating India, again, might have been down to this (alternatively food poisoning or dysentery...) which is said to have caused him some deep soul searching on his personal philosophy & policies including his Great War encouragement of getting his fellow countrymen to fight for the British  and his subsequent thoughts on British rule.

As well as discussing the use of 'Vacuum tubes' (thermionic valves) at this time for voice/music radio broadcasting, the programme then goes on to discuss what subsequently happened to the Spanish Flu virus. My understanding of  this - apparently behind the times - had been that the virus had died out, with attempts to track it down by exhuming the bodies of those that had died from locations where they had been preserved by permafrost having failed.  This, apparently, is not the case with DNA having been successfully extracted from victims buried in the Alaskan permafrost  with subsequent genetic investigations  establishing that current flu viruses are related to, and developed/mutated/evolved from the original 1918 version after being passed back and forwards between animals (pigs seem to be favoured), birds and humans many times over the last hundred years+. (Although not by any means proven, the original 1918 virus - not in any way connected with Covid - is believed to have originated  in  birds before transmission to humans) 

Personally, I  do not have sufficient expertise or knowledge to agree or disagree with the truth of most of the issues discussed/speculated upon in this programme, but,  in the absence of other evidence,  have to remain open minded.

The programme is only available for a very limited time on BBC Sounds (possibly only till 3/4 January '23) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000t57f but remains available on the programme's website https://radiolab.org/episodes/dispatches-1918

NigelS

Edited 2 January , 2023 by NigelS

[stevenbecker]

Mate,

I also like the interaction between the so called Allies on the Turkey/Ottoman Empire curve up during the peace Confrence

In that the US, Italy, Greece, Armenia, Kurds, British and France, all wanted there part of the pie, some more or less, while others didn't care, but didn't want to see another power get a bigger share

In the end they all grabbed what they wanted from the feeble old man, until Ataturk said what the F---?

Crazy times post war for sure

S.B