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On 30 July 1916, German saboteurs blew up a Jersey City munitions depot, scarring the Statue of Liberty and stopping a clock a mile away. Washington dismissed it as a regrettable accident. It took the United States another year to call it what it was.
On 6 April 1917, the US declared war on Germany. Wilson had been re-elected five months earlier on a promise of neutrality. He won. Then he changed his mind. The 20th century was shaped in that gap.
Edward Stettinius dropped out of school at sixteen, ground his way through a decade of failed ventures, and eventually ran the Diamond Match Company. Then the Allies hired J.P. Morgan to buy for the First World War, and Morgan hired him.
On 18 January 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. On 18 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference opened in the same city. Between those two dates lived the full arc of German power — born in a defeated enemy's palace, ended in the same city by men determined to make sure it never happened again.