The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny

by William Strauss

World War I, which merely grazed the United States while decimating Europe, had several key markings of an Unraveling-era conflict for all participants. It began pointlessly, ended vindictively, and—notwithstanding all the carnage—settled nothing. For America, its principal consequence was to shape (among the transatlantic Lost Generation of war-ravaged soldiers) a new cadre of totalitarian leaders that U.S. forces would have to encounter again. Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hideki Tojo, and Francisco Franco were all between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one in August 1914—as were Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong. It was not mere happenstance that triggered World War II during an American Fourth Turning. The rise of fascism had much to do with the saeculum's grip on European history.