Thus ended the life of man who predicted sharp turns of history and gave advice to its leaders. He saved Paris and he saved Freud. He did not save Russia or preserve peace, but nobody could have done so in the twentieth century. World leaders liked his company but did not heed his advice. Insightful, persistent, and arrogant, a liberal at home and a conservative abroad, a cosmopolitan who wished that the rest of the world looked like America—Bullitt presents a respectful, though slightly satirical, portrait of an American intellectual.
His impact was of a particular kind that could be uneasily summarized by asking a few “what ifs.” If Wilson had not fallen ill in Paris in the spring of 1919 and if he had listened to Bullitt who had returned from Russia with a sensational offer from the Bolsheviks, the course of world history would have been different. The Soviet Union would probably not have existed. Perhaps Bolshevik Russia would have stretched from the Neva to the Urals, America would have been a member of the League of Nations, Hitler would have been a famous artist, and Bullitt a great president. Maybe there would have been no Second World War, no Stalinist Terror, no Holocaust.
But even if Wilson’s stroke had not happened, Bullitt had gotten his meeting with the president, and everyone had signed the treaty Lenin drafted with Bullitt, the Bolsheviks could have abandoned their commitments at any moment. The Russian Civil War would have resumed, and it is possible that, confined to European Russia, the Bolsheviks would have been even more radical. A revisionist faction would likely have developed among them, which would have demanded Siberia and the Crimea back, and then Poland or some part of the Balkans. In short, history would not have ended even if Wilson had listened to Bullitt.
If Roosevelt had trusted Bullitt in the mid- and late 1930s, the United States would not have waited for the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to be signed, Pearl Harbor to be bombed, or millions of victims to be killed before entering the Second World War. America would have acted in real time, arming France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Finland in order to maintain the balance of power in Europe. The war would not have happened, or it would have remained local. The Soviets would not have dominated Eastern Europe, and the Cold War would not have come to be. Without the rest of Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union would have collapsed under its own weight earlier. A united Europe would have developed according to Bullitt’s plan, and it might have come to resemble America. The twentieth century would have been different, and probably our world would have been a better place.
But history would not have ended even if Roosevelt had listened to Bullitt. Germany would not have been able to compete in an arms race with the United States—but would the American people have supported such a race in the absence of an attack? Stalin would not have concluded a pact with Hitler before the war—but what would have stopped them from making a separate peace during the war? A possible alliance of Germany, Japan, and Russia terrified Bullitt’s mentor, Edward House, back in 1917. The deep and well-founded fear of another pact between Stalin and Hitler motivated Roosevelt’s actions, including those that seemed wrong to Bullitt.
The world did not listen to Bullitt, but there were people who did. The ailing Sigmund Freud formulated some of his most bizarre ideas, and had more years of life, because of his friendship with Bullitt. The brilliant George Kennan followed Bullitt when he studied the basics of international diplomacy and the mysteries of Soviet politics. Supported by Bullitt, the unexpected chain of Soviet defectors revealed the sad truth about the Soviet Union to the distrustful world. Materialized by his disciples during the Cold War, Bullitt’s futuristic ideas and failed projects gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the subtle art of containing the Soviets. His intrepid French friend Jean Monnet followed Bullitt when he brought the European Union into existence. And his doomed Russian friend Mikhail Bulgakov commemorated Bullitt, merging him with Kant, Christ, and Satan in another bid to end history.