Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Paul Poast, "Wheat at War: Allied Economic Cooperation in the Great War" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Paul Poast, "Wheat at War: Allied Economic Cooperation in the Great War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Date: March 3, 2026
Host: Joby Turner
Guests: Rosella Cappella Zielinski (Boston University), Paul Poast (University of Chicago)

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the central themes of "Wheat at War," a new scholarly book by Rosella Cappella Zielinski and Paul Poast. The conversation delves into the overlooked but crucial role of logistics and, specifically, wheat supply during World War I, highlighting how Allied economic cooperation—not tactics alone—shaped the course of the war. The discussion brings out the origins, significance, and legacy of the Wheat Executive, an inter-Allied body for coordinating wheat procurement and shipping, and what this historical case reveals about international cooperation, economic warfare, and lasting institutional innovation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Motivation and Background of the Book

[02:26]

• The authors share a mutual fascination for the "unappreciated" logistical backbone of warfare: “What we really got to appreciate about each other was the appreciation of the, quote, unquote, unappreciated. And that unappreciated is exactly what you mentioned, this back end of war, all of the coordination that comes prior to that tip of spear..." — Rosella Capella Zielinski
• Their academic backgrounds—Cappella Zelinsky on war finance, Poast on alliances—inspired an integrated approach to how wars are paid for, supplied, and logistically supported.

2. Discovery of the Wheat Story and Jean Monnet's Role

[04:22]

• The project sprang from archival research into World War I finance, where Jean Monnet, later a father of the European Union, played a key role in Allied food coordination:
  • “Jean Monet...this nugget of international cooperation comes from wheat during World War I and coordination. And we were like, wait, what wheat? We do not know this story.” — Rosella Capella Zielinski
  • The authors uncovered that Monnet’s innovations in wheat coordination later inspired European integration post-WWII.

3. The Wheat Crisis and Allied Response

[08:54]

• Participants outline the acute wheat shortages faced by Britain and France:

  • Britain imported 4 out of every 5 slices of bread; trench warfare destroyed local crops, and Russian wheat was cut off by the Central Powers.
  • This led to domestic shortages and political pressure, captured in Allied propaganda:
    • “Food will win the war. Wheat is needed by allies. Waste nothing.” — Rosella Capella Zielinski

• The crisis was compounded by German unrestricted submarine warfare and a North American wheat crop disease called stem rust, which drastically reduced available supply (see [12:22], [15:37]):

  • “At the same time that you had German unrestricted submarine warfare...you have less wheat even available to send to Europe because of this epidemic.” — Paul Poast

4. Creation and Function of the Wheat Executive

[19:34–25:00]

• The Wheat Executive (est. November 1916) represented the apex of Allied economic cooperation:

  • It consolidated authority for purchasing and shipping wheat across Allied nations, making efficiency-driven decisions regardless of national interest.

  • Members were tasked to think not as national representatives but as “Allied officials.”

  • The Wheat Executive also managed all associated shipping decisions through its Freight Committee, preventing inefficiencies like empty ships passing one another.

  • It expanded to manage other grains and coordinate supply for neutral and smaller countries.

    “You are not to think of your stuff as a British official or a French official or an Italian official. You were to think of yourself as an Allied official, and you were to make decisions based on what's best for the Allies.” — Paul Poast [19:34]

  • Effectiveness: It stabilized market prices and became a model for other commodity executives (sugar, rubber).

  • The Wheat Executive's institutional innovation led directly to the creation of the Allied Maritime Transport Council, which coordinated shipping at an even larger scale—a system complete with its own flag, highlighting its quasi-sovereign function.

5. Role of the United States and the Limits of Cooperation

[28:44–33:59]

• When the U.S. joined the war, it initially approached resource allocation with a “mine, mine, mine” mentality, showing reluctance to cede sovereignty.

  • U.S. entry forced both adaptation and limitation of Allied cooperation due to American insistence on autonomy and control over its own supplies, revealing both potential and boundaries of multilateral economic governance.

• Postwar, the U.S. further withdrew, preferring a return to open markets and declining ongoing economic coordination, even as it advocated for the (ultimately failed) League of Nations.

  • “You really do see this play out on the economic side. You see how the US is like, hey, you all cooperate, but we're not going to really give up too much sovereignty on this…” — Paul Poast [33:59]
  • “It's ironic that the USA scuttles this, but then is pushing for the League of Nations...” — Joby Turner [33:13]

6. Legacies and Historical Significance

[38:03–40:11]

• The Wheat Executive left a clear institutional legacy:
  • Its model of problem-solving and international authority informed later efforts at global governance, including WWII institutions (Bretton Woods, United Nations).
  • After the war, European powers wanted to retain economic cooperation; the U.S. did not, leading to the failure of projects like the Supreme Economic Council.
  • These failures and later reflections directly shaped how Allied powers approached multilateral coordination in WWII (immediately calling on Jean Monnet, for example).
    • “[WWII leaders] immediately call him [Jean Monnet]…let's start with the Wheat Executive. We don't want the multi-year process that leads us to that point. Let's start here.” — Rosella Capella Zielinski [38:03]

7. Method, Structure, and Historiographical Reflection

[41:02–46:56]

• The authors explicitly chose to write a narrative-driven, single-case study history book, rather than a more abstract, variable-driven IR monograph:
  • “Most political science books don't do one case...we are so lucky to have to write the book that we wanted to write. And it's a coup…” — Rosella Capella Zielinski [41:02]
  • They credit their analytical framework (outlined in Chapter 2) for helping target relevant archival material—using IR theory for discipline, but not for formulaic structure.
  • Deep gratitude is expressed to archivists, especially during COVID access limitations.

8. Final Thoughts and Contemporary Relevance

[47:16–50:37]

• The authors caution against simplistic analogies but see enduring lessons:
  • Wheat remains geopolitically crucial, as recent events in Ukraine and the global food market underline.
  • The historical experience illustrates both the potential and the limits for states to cede sovereignty for the common good—salient for challenges like climate change and pandemics today.
    • “There are a lot of global challenges today that honestly, to solve them, are going to require global cooperation...this case gives you a clear lesson on both the possibilities for that, but also the limitations to it.” — Paul Poast [47:16]
  • Domestically, Americans are reminded not to take wheat self-sufficiency for granted.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics.” — Joby Turner [01:46] (framing the episode’s theme)
• “I've never taken wheat for granted again.” — Rosella Capella Zielinski [16:04]
• “It was officially formed in November 1916...bestowed or delegated by the British, the French and the Italians to make all shipping and wheat purchasing decisions on behalf of the Allied Powers.” — Paul Poast [19:34]
• “Once the Americans joined the war...scarcer and scarcer tonnage...[but] the Allied Maritime Transport Council just doesn't have that same extreme levels of authority given to it because the Americans are now on board and they have a little bit of this mine, mine, mine attitude...” — Rosella Capella Zielinski [28:44]
• “I have no doubt that you, like me, are anxious for us to avoid at all costs the mistakes that were made in the last war...” — French Prime Minister to British Prime Minister, 1939, quoted by Rosella Capella Zielinski [38:03]
• “When do you become more than the sum of your parts?...these legacies are a very clear direct line...back to these immediate post war legacies...” — Rosella Capella Zielinski [38:03]
• “We did our best to try to put you in the moment of somebody in 1916 and to try not to make it so dry as sometimes military histories can be.” — Rosella Capella Zielinski [49:56]

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Key Timestamps

• 02:26 – Authors discuss motivations and initial inspiration
• 04:22 – Discovery of Jean Monnet’s role and wheat story
• 08:54 – Background of the wheat problem and Allied tension over supply
• 12:22 – Social and propaganda dimension of the wheat crisis
• 15:19 – Wheat crisis compounded by stem rust and submarine warfare
• 19:34 – Creation, function, and impact of the Wheat Executive
• 25:00 – Expansion: Handling substitutes, neutral countries, and shipping
• 28:44 – U.S. entry, changing dynamics, and the Maritime Transport Council
• 33:13 – Postwar legacy, U.S.-Europe divergence, and the League of Nations
• 38:03 – Lessons for WWII and the institutional legacy
• 41:02–46:56 – Reflections on writing, structure, and historical method
• 47:16 – Final thoughts: Modern relevance and enduring lessons

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Conclusion

Wheat at War exemplifies the crucial, often invisible fabric that holds coalitions and societies together during total war. This episode unfurls the story of how controlling one basic commodity required unprecedented international coordination—and left a profound legacy for the 20th century and beyond.

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Recommendation:
Listeners interested in World War I, logistics, international institutions, or modern global governance will find this episode and book particularly illuminating.
Book Availability: Widely available (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle).

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Transcript

[Joby Turner]

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[Paul Post]

Welcome to the New Books Network

[Joby Turner]

welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Joby Turner. My guests today are Rosella Capella Zelensky and Paul Post, who are here to discuss their new book, Weed at Allied Cooperation in the Great War, published by Oxford University Press. Rosella Capella Zelensky is an associate professor of Political science at Boston University, specializing in the political economy of security, finance, and resource mobilization for conflict. Her previous book, how States Pay for Wars, published by Cornell in 2016, won the 2017American Political Science Association's Robert L. Jervis and Paul W. Schroeder Best Book Award in International History and Politics. Paul Post is an Associate professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he focuses on international relations, alliances, and international organizations. He's the co author or author of several books including the Economics of War, Organizing Democracy and Arguing about Alliances, the Art of Agreement and Military Pact Negotiations, published by Cornell in 2019, which earned co winner recognition for the 2020 LePGold Book Prize. Welcome Rosella and Paul, thank you for being here.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Thanks for having us.

[Paul Post]

Absolutely. Thank you for having us.

[Joby Turner]

You're welcome. You know, we often hear in a military relations or international relations context that amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics. But then when you ask someone, well, give me an example, people have a hard time doing that. It's kind of just sort of this thing that we say that sounds really neat, but we don't have an example. And I think the best thing about Weed at War is this is a great example of showing exactly what that means. No kidding. How to supply chains? How do logistics impact war and international relations? So along that line of thinking, I'd like to start off by talking about the background and motivation of the book. So what inspired you all to write Weed at War? And how did you become interested in the logistics of food supply and international cooperation during the Great War?

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Okay, so I'll start. Paul and I have known each other for a long time and what we really got to appreciate about each other was the appreciation of the, quote, unquote, unappreciated. And that unappreciated is exactly what you mentioned, this back end of war, all of the coordination that comes prior to that tip of spear, frontline things that many folks talk about, right? So when we think about discussion, questions around warfare today, we have military technology being at the forefront and diffusion of the said technology. We are talking about military effectiveness. And I think what Paul and I have always been interested is what's taken for granted, how we pay for these things, how we move soldiers, equipment, how we also keep the domestic economy running while all of this is happening at the same time. Because there's very real trade offs and. And so wheat at war, I think, for the both of us, hits all of those big line pieces. So that's the big thing that kind of drew us to working together and to this project. And then it became layers of an onion when you got into thinking about the great war we stumble upon. And I'll let Paul go further, some really juicy quotes by Jean Monet, right, father of the European Union, talking about this nugget for him, that this nugget of international cooperation comes from wheat during World War I and coordination. And we were like, wait, what wheat? We do not know this story. And there are, I will mention throughout today, some historians who have covered pieces of this as well, because obviously historians are at the forefront of many, many of these things. And so it was just figuring out what this nugget is and all the layers that come with that. And I'll let Paul add to that.

[Paul Post]

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, just to kind of build on what Rosella was saying about the unappreciated parts of things. I mean, in one way, you could think about this book as a combination of the two books of ours that you mentioned in the introduction. You know, Rosella's book, How States Pay for War. It's like you're so much on the, you know, battlefield tactics and this coalition and that coalition and this war. And but there's like. But this all has to be paid for. It all has to be financed. And Rosella's book is a very careful exploration of that. If you look at my book, 2019 book, arguing about alliances, in that case, the foil for that is the idea that a lot of the literature talks about capability, aggregation, alliances come together to bring together capabilities to fight. And it's like, well, but how does that actually happen? You know, how does that go about. And it turns out if you start looking at the negotiations for alliances. You start to see that this is. This is how this happens. So in a way, you can think about this book as kind of being a combination of those two things, Thinking about the economic side of it from a detail, but also thinking about it from the perspective of an alliance and then focusing on a particular issue, Wheat. That then leads to what Rosella was just talking about. How did we come across wheat? And this is a little bit to go a little bit into the autobiography of this. So Rosella and I first met each other. Rosella was finishing up her PhD at Penn. I had just started as an assistant profess at Rutgers. We had a mutual friend, Neil Narang, who was a postdoc at Penn. And he was like, rosella, Paul, you two need to talk to each other. Because he knew both of our respective research interests and knew that we would hit it off and start generating ideas. And that's exactly what happened. And so we started talking about different things regarding the economics of warfare and especially the economics of coalitional warfare that we could explore that maybe had been underexplored. And one of the first areas we were looking at was war finance. And in particular, when allies finance other allies, specifically through debt, sovereign debt. And Roselle and I have actually written a chapter on that that was published in a book, what Do We Know About War? But as we were exploring that, we started diving into World War I, because in many ways, and Rosella had seen this from her earlier research, in many ways, World War I was kind of the first time that that had really happened at a large scale, where you had one sovereign lending to another sovereign in order to finance their wars. So that's why we were exploring that case. Well, in the process of exploring it, this is where the serendipity comes in and the onions, as Rosello's referring to start to get peeled, is we started looking at, well, what are they spending this money on? And then what we saw was that the European countries, when they would receive money from the United States, they would have to share with US Officials what they were spending money on. And. And we started to see discussions about Jean Monet being part of this. And what was interesting was right away, as someone who had done some research on the European Union, and, of course, who knows, colleagues who are the Jean Monet chairs to study. I was like, wait, who? Wait, what's going on here? And he started diving into this, and he realized that Jean Monet, this was kind of his first foray into really into governance. Prior to that, he was a Member of his family business, the cognac business. He was brought in to the French government to kind of help with a lot of these logistics issues precisely because of his business background. And I remember we came across these great quotes by him of saying the experience he had during the Great War and specifically with trying to address the wheat issues that the Allies had, was what eventually gave him the ideas for later on developing the European Coal and Steel Community, which became the European Union. And so this just, like, became super fascinating to us. So we just started going down this track and then in the process realized that there was a lot to say about these efforts to try to solve the wheat crisis, if you will, that the Allies were facing.

[Joby Turner]

So along those lines, kind of digging deep here at the broad level, at the kernel of the book, is this whole thing about the wheat executive, right? The eventual, eventual thing that they get to. Can you guys talk about the sort of the history of how the wheat executive comes about, sort of the stages and then ultimately what it. What it was.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Sure. Let me back it up for a second to think about what it means to supply war with partners on this scale. Right. So we have various European belligerents. We're going to talk specifically right now about France and Britain who need to purchase things from the United States and from the north and South America, very, very far away. When you are doing that under wartime conditions, you have only X amount of goods that can be purchased and you have multiple countries needing to purchase it. And so what we started to see is this tension over pricing. X amount of goods, high demand, multiple countries not working together to purchase these goods. And one place this comes into play is wheat. So we have. If anyone's interested, I won't go too far. Nicholas Lambert, historian, writes a lot about wheat. In the Gallipoli campaign, wheat from Europe was basically got from Russia, purchased from Russia going through the Black Sea. Germans very wise on this, cut off that wheat passage through the Turkish Dardanelles. Again, Nicholas Lambert's work most ruthlessly touches upon this. Wheat is also produced within France and eventually Italy. But we'll get to Italy in a second. And so when you have your closest export partners cut off, you have now, through trench warfare, totally destroyed your local wheat fields. We have a problem of hungry people. We also have Britain, an importer at the time, importing four of every five slices. This is the quote they like to use of bread. Okay, so now we have a hungry population. All your local sources are diminished. We need to go abroad now. For us, this is a funny tension because if you're France and you're Britain and you're vying for this amount of wheat, do you work together or. And keep your prices low and coordinate, or do you just say, you know what? I got my people. We need to feed them. And British does the same. And so we trace this tension that starts with not working together to working together. And the not working together tension is a real problem in two aspects. Wheat, fundamental food. And I'll extrapolate more on that. And shipping, which is the fun part of this story, too, in that they need to ship everything from the Americas across the Atlantic in very not safe conditions, I. E. Campaigns. Right. Shipping attacks from the Germans. And so this is a tension we face in this arc of cooperation that evolves. That is so important. And I'll let Paul go on, but because we all love a good quote. When I was researching just how much food and wheat was important, food posters around Europe all have this going on. One of them in the United States, will you help the women of France question mark, save wheat? Another one, food will win the war. Wheat is needed by allies. Waste nothing. So we are just seeing this ramping up of this wheat need as a central part of sustaining a population and winning the war. So that's the long arc. And Paul, do you want to fill in some of the. I can keep going on the wheat executive.

[Paul Post]

Oh, no, absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm glad that you brought in the wheat posters, because we mentioned those right at the beginning of the book. Right in the introduction, we mentioned about the wheat posters. And for a lot of reasons, part of it is what Roselle is saying. Part of it is we also, from the standpoint of the reader, I think most readers. And I've seen this from my experience of just talking to people about the book. I'll bring it up. And I've even had a few people go, oh, yeah, I have one of those posters in my office. So people immediately go, oh, yes. It's like either Bond posters. Those are really popular. I have one of those Bond posters in my office. So it's either the Liberty Loans, the Victory loans, too, or it's the wheat posters. And so I think moment that you bring that up, people immediately go, oh, yeah, that. That was a really big deal, but it's not necessarily recognized why and how it was a big deal and how it was addressed. It's like, yes, they seen these posters. Oh, okay. We have to encourage farmers here in the United States to be able to produce wheat. Maybe encourage people to ration wheat. So it can be shipped to help people over in Europe. But how exactly is that addressed? And why is it a shortage and why is it that the Europeans themselves can't fix it, at least at first? And those are kind of the motivating things that really drive the processes that we're exploring is both why does this become a crisis? And it's really an issue from the beginning of the war. But as Rosella said, it was an issue that at first the European powers were like, well, we can address this ourselves. Maybe we'll just share information with each other and let one another how we're addressing this. But there wasn't a felt need to try to fix the problem jointly. But as the war continued on and those kind of problems that Rosella was talking about, especially, I mean, for me, there were two interesting things. One of them was, as Roselle mentioned, the unrestricted submarine warfare and that kind of doing the damage to shipping. But the other thing, this was something that an experience writing the book I didn't think I would have is I spent time reading agricultural journals. And the reason why was to learn about stem rust. I didn't know what stem rust was, but stem rust was. There was a epidemic of stem rust in North America in 1916. And what stem rust is, is it's basically a crop disease that renders wheat uneducible. And what happened was, at the same time that you had German unrestricted submarine warfare that is attacking and sinking the ships that are bringing wheat over to Europe, you have less wheat even available to send to Europe because of this epidemic. And so it was kind of the combination of those crises that came together that really made the situation acute and led the Europeans to have to turn to, if you will, desperate measures.

[Joby Turner]

I don't know if I've ever, when that came up in the book, I don't know if I've ever seen that anywhere that those two things are put together. I'm sure somewhere it is. I'm sure someone wrote an article in the last hundred years about it, but I had never seen that. I had never seen that. And it's very interesting how that just all kind of filtered out. That was a very good. I thought that was a very good, very good research there.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Well, and let me just add to that. I think as an American writing this book, wheat come from a wheat exporting country. And what it's really been fascinating is thinking how much we take it for granted. Right. And we were writing this and, you know, everything is gluten free and we're trying to get out feed on top of it. So it's just this thing we take for granted to have this capacity. And I've never taken wheat for granted again.

[Joby Turner]

Never.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

This book. Yeah. And I think too, and I want to add to what Paul said in thinking through just how important wheat was in this context. And I'm going to get ahead of our host, Joby for a second.

[Joby Turner]

You're not getting ahead of me at all. Just keep talking. This is wonderful.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

The Germans, they're putting these two things together and that's really what gets them on their campaign. I will quote the German chief of staff in 1916 saying, while the achievements in our battle against merchant tonnage have been encouraging thus far, the exceptionally poor world harvest of grain, including feed grain, this year provides us with a unique opportunity which nobody could reasonably decline to seize. Both North America and Canada will probably cease to export grain to England by February 1915. Then that country will have to draw its grain supplies for the more distant Argentina. But since Argentina will only be able to deliver the limited quantities owing to its poor harvest, England will have to turn to India and predominantly to Australia. And I won't keep reading, but it goes on. And then he ends with, from a military point of view, it would be irresistible, responsible not to make use of the submarine weapon now. So the Germans are like, oh, let's starve these folks, right? And obviously, right now, depressingly, we see food as a weapon. This is nothing new. But to the degree to which shipping and wheat are so tied, this moment of the stem rust, this moment of crop failures that we're not talking about here but also happen in Argentina as well, all of these things combined that push the Germans forward into this unrestricted submarine warfare because they think there'll be capitulation.

[Joby Turner]

I think the understanding of the sophistication of the supply chains by everybody that's involved in the conflict is very fascinating to me. And from my own perspective, like Haig, as he tries to go in 1917, he's going to break out. A lot of his argument from the British side is, I'm going to get to submarine pence. We're going to break out on the northern end here and do that. And of course they can't because it's so muddy and it's western trench war warfare and it's not going to work. But at first I thought he was cynical, and even in my own book I thought he was cynical. And now I think after hearing you guys, I think he truly believed it. We are going to starve. If I don't get to the submarine pens, I'll let you guys continue from there.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

No, and I know we're right, right. And I think we don't go as deep in this book, but we also throw out touch upon bread riots. Right? Italy has bread riots, as Italy is. Is starting to work with the Allies on this. So it is just something that is. So it's fundamental to human nature. We all need to eat. Your domestic population needs to be satiated, right? Your horses, your feed grain, all of that needs to be satiated as well as of course, the feeding of soldiers. So I think that's what's enjoyable. Maybe that's not the best word to use, but was really this fascinating mode of discovery for us as authors was just this seemingly taken for granted, fundamental thing which then of course is directly tied to shipping and to Allied, broader Allied logistics and then having to make those hard choices with shipping and the improvements that comes through the wheat executive to shipping. But I think you asked explicitly what is the wheat executive? And I don't want to lose that thread because that to us is this apex of the book. Paul, do you want to do I can.

[Paul Post]

Absolutely, yeah, no, absolutely. That's tees it up very well. So the. Yeah, the book and the way the book is structured is kind of through this arc, literally an arc of deepening international cooperation or further institutionalization of international cooperation. And what that specifically means is the European countries being willing and the Allied countries more broadly, especially once the US becomes involved, being willing to give up more and more direct authority, direct control, and even if you want to use the word, sovereignty over the decisions regarding wheat and shipping. And so at first in the war you have these institutions that are created actually very early in the war that are largely just talk shops. And this is a way for the powers to at least share information, but by and large retain control over the shipping that's coming into their countries, over their own ships and over the wheat and making decisions about wheat and various commodities. As the situation becomes more acute, and it becomes more acute for the reasons that we've been talking about, the disease, German unrestricted submarine warfare, these shortages starting to lead to domestic political issues as well as difficulties actually feeding soldiers. And that's actually a very important thing because another aspect of warfare, and it goes back to the beginning of your quote, like, you know, professionals think about logistics, but it also goes to the famous quote attributed to Napoleon, which is soldiers march on their stomachs. But is the idea that even if you have the Same number of people. Your wheat consumption goes up because soldiers eat more than a civilian because of what they're doing. And so it's. So these things all start to put immense pressure on the European Allies in particular. And of course, when we're saying that, we're referring to the British, the French, and the Italians in particular, putting pressure on them to fix this issue. And so what that eventually leads to is in the fall of 1916, it leads to these efforts to create what's called the Wheat Executive. And the Wheat Executive is this institution that is given by or bestowed or delegated by the British, the French and the Italians to make all shipping and wheat purchasing decisions on behalf of the Allied Powers. And so they're even charged with the creation of this institution. They're charged with being told you are not to think of your stuff as a British official or a French official or an Italian official. You were to think of yourself as an Allied official, and you were to make decisions based on what's best for the Allies, not what's best for Britain, not what's best for France. And as is discussed in. In the book and is shared later on by reflections of individuals who were involved with this, most notably, I think one of the individuals who writes a lot about the logistics of it is Arthur Salter, who is a British official who was part of this and eventually would play a very prominent role in a host of the economic institutions that were created by the Allies. But in his account of these institutions, and he publishes this in 1920, 21, right after the war, he talks about how previously there were empty ships that were heading in one direction and they would have been more efficient if they had been able to stop and load up and then maybe go a different way than back to the British port, they've been directed to the French port and so forth. So you have, like, empty ships passing each other, very inefficient. And so the Reid Executive was created to try to address this problem. And it was officially formed in November of 1960. Right away, you start to see where it's having an effect, both in terms of creating now these efficiencies, but also one of the things we note in the book, we actually noted early on, is you start to see where it has an effect on the prices. Because one of the notable things that was happening that represented the crisis was if you actually look at the prices that are being paid on, in particular, Chicago Board of Trade, because Chicago Board of Trade, of course, even to this day, is still primary commodity market in the world. But at that time, it was even more central. And a lot of the European powers themselves are directly buying wheat through the Chicago border trade. Well, if you look at the prices, you see they're going up and up and up and up and up. And then by the time you get to late 1916, they start to stabilize until the US enters the war. And then kind of everything changes at that point, which we can talk about. But you do see where the wheat executive starts to play this role. It becomes then a model for these other executives. So then they create the sugar executive. They created basically an executive. I think there was a rubber executive. There's like, executives for all these different commodities. But the wheat executive was the, quote, first test case in trying to address this because wheat was so vital.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

And so let me just add to that quickly on the comment that Paul left off on all these executives, Jamie Martin's book, the Meddlers, he's a historian at Harvard, traces all of these, so highly recommend that piece. And I think what's interesting about this wheat executive that gets created is just how efficient and effective it is. And that kind of blew my mind. Like, it ends up purchasing wheat and cereals, which I'll mention in a second for all open countries of Europe. This is no longer just the Brits, the English, the Italians and the Americans. This is for everybody. And so I had an invoice from 1970, September 1917. And on that invoice, it's producing North American wheat and flour. Purchasing. Apologies. Purchasing North American wheat and flour, Indian wheat, Japanese flour, Chinese flour, South African maize, meal maize chop, North American maize, North American corn flour, cornmeal, North American corn grits. Then it talks later about rye, rice, oats, beans, and all of these wheat substitutes. So this just successfully expands and its production and associated purchasing and associated commodities. And then it's purchasing not just for the countries we've mentioned, but it's purchasing these grain commodities from Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Iceland. So it is just this huge behemoth in which, again, the authority is taken away from states, right? They are making these decisions. They are placing the orders in these countries and critically, to expand. Where Paul left is shipping. So they, within the wheat executive is the freight committee. And the freight committee has authority over all associated ship wheat tonnage. So basically, it gets all of this information that gets reported, and it says, okay, we have XYZ tonnage for wheat, and it pools it all and then makes decisions on how it's used. And that then creates efficiencies so you don't have, you know, empty ships going, you know, passing each other in the night, as Paul alluded to. And then this is a really important thing. And then this gets morphed into the Allied Maritime Transport Council, which directly grows from the Wheat Executive. And it says it takes not just the model of the Wheat Executive, but all the associated individuals who are tasked, these bureaucrats who are not for their countries, these Allied bureaucrats, and then says, all right, you are now going to be part of the Allied Maritime Transport Council, which not to drop. Another historian, but Megan McCrae, Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World wars book, talks also about this with the Supreme Economic Council, Supreme War Council. But yeah, so this then becomes the prototype to the Allied Maritime Transport Council, which has its own flag. Which has its own flag. And I think that's just such a fascinating story of institutional success.

[Joby Turner]

And how lucky are the Allies that. I mean, in a way, you don't want to have a wheat crisis, right? Nobody wants to have not been able to grow wheat, but because they do that and it transfers into shipping, then when the Americans come in, which, by the way, is a complete total crisis because the Americans are literally going into ports and saying, we're stealing that ship and we're stealing. Well, not stealing. We're commandeering that.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Commandeering, yeah, yeah, we're coming.

[Joby Turner]

Sorry. These ships that have been sitting here, we're literally taking everything we have and we're putting it together. But because that maritime thing exists, then you're not also robbing Peter to pay Paul with food. So just an amazing, amazing, amazing part of the book that I think you guys really get on.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Yes, no, and. And there's so much that gets left on the cutting room floor when you write a book, these journeys. But yes. So the Shipping board does exactly that. Once the Americans joined the war, they now need to get, you know, the. The American Expeditionary Force and all associated applied to Europe. That just sucks up all of this scarcer and scarcer tonnage. And what's really interesting and I. We can talk about this more if you want, is the Americans really are more of a mine, mine, mine kind of vibe to tonnage. And I think, you know, we hadn't thought about that counterfactual question, but it comes up later on when the Americans are officially in the war and they're like, okay, you're going to purchase for us from us X, Y, Z commodities. We're not just talking about wheat anymore. You need to get it all together because we're loaning you this money, which basically just pays for their own stuff. We're going to give you this money. But we need to be efficient in our usage. You need to coordinate. And the Europeans come in and are like, we've been doing this for a while now. What are you talking about? What do you mean we need to coordinate? This is in front of you. But the Americans are just getting read into all of these institutional machinery, so it takes them a little while to catch up to just how much has been built already. But this does to where Paul was talking about of authority. The Allied Maritime Transport Council just doesn't have that same extreme levels of authority given to it because the Americans are now on board and they have a little bit of this mine, mine, mine attitude in joining. So while it is still impressive as an institution, the level of sovereignty surrendered kind of goes down a little bit.

[Paul Post]

Yeah, absolutely. And this kind of builds on the kind of the second half of the arc as I was talking about that. It's like if, if the Wheat Executive is the peak, then you start to. Once this Allied or the, the Allied Maritime Trade Council becomes into existence and the Americans come aboard, then it starts to become like, okay, it's starting to come back down a little bit. The Europeans are still operating in this delegated fashion, but the Americans aren't so keen on to give up their sovereignty. And in fact, they're in a position where they don't need to give up their sovereignty, so they retain this control. But nevertheless, there's a lot about the Wheat Executive and about how the Europeans were previously operating that's attractive to even the U.S. officials. And so as a result, they say, hey, we can adopt this. We can make use of this for the purposes of ensuring supply during the war. Now what becomes interesting, and I'm sure is one of the next things we're going to pivot to is then what is that envision for what could maybe happen after the war? And that's where then finally you see the arc basically return back to where it was at the beginning of the war, which means not having these institutions anymore, even though there were attempts to try to do that in the immediate post war period.

[Joby Turner]

So along those lines, you know, go ahead, Roselle, I'll let you go and then I'll ask the question.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

No, I just think it's really interesting. I don't want to go too far afield, but I've not seen some good books on demobilization of demobilization war. It's one of those books I've Wanted to write, but like, who has the time? But the war ends, but these problems associated with shipping do not. And now we have reconstruction pressures on top of it. So there still needs to be purchasing from abroad, right? We still need to. The European allies, I shouldn't say we, but the European allies still need to work together to purchase from abroad. They don't have the infrastructure yet tonnage wise to do all of these things. So they are still coordinating after the war is ended. Right. So this process of demobilization from the allied institutional perspective has to take some time and it goes on for about a year or two after. So the Americans are like no Supreme Economic Council. We're kind of done, we've done our part, but you're welcome to keep buying from us. We're happy to sell you. And so the institution lives on aversions of it in the European space as we think about the needs of demobilization and reconstruction.

[Joby Turner]

So along those lines, and I'm going to admit my neophyteness with the League of Nations at the end of the war. So if this is too basic, you guys can just laugh at me. But I was thinking as I read your book, I think it's very ironic that it's Hoover, right? Hoover's the, the person who goes over, negotiates. The USA says, yeah, this is all nice. We're not going to do this. We're going to do pre war. We want open markets. We're not going to do any of this cooperation. So it's ironic that the USA scuttles this, but then is pushing for the League of Nations to literally go into countries and say, hey, we want all these other people to be free. These and this now ethnic group is going to have its thing. We're going to do all these great things. I think it's just ironic that there was something in place that was coordination that they don't want, but then they want this broader coordination that's probably an order of magnitude more difficult. I just thought that was ironic. Am I, am I wrong in that?

[Paul Post]

No, you're not wrong in that at all. And to me, I mean, I learned so much from writing this book and working on this book. But for me, I view as much as we is still relevant today, and Rosella hinted at that, like, oh my gosh, we can see the Ukraine war and the challenges that that has created for wheat and shipping. But this was the part of the book that gave me a bit more perspective on thinking about the broader arc of U.S. foreign policy, which is that at the end of the war. And of course, it's well known that, yes, the U.S. ultimately, the Senate did not want to ratify the League of Nations, despite Woodrow Wilson's desire to do so. But you really get a sense of the extent to which the American officials are just like, yeah, no thanks. Like, you know, we're here. I mean, just obviously this is captured by the very fact that when the US Entered the war on the side of the Allied powers, they did not want to be considered an ally. They, of course, wanted to be considered an associate power and an associate power. But it's like, what does that exactly mean? Well, for me, when reading through this, something that became evident was like, wow, you really do see this play out on the economic side. You see how the US Is like, hey, you all cooperate, but we're not going to really give up too much sovereignty on this. We're still going to maintain control. And then, as Rosella was saying, once you start to get into the post war, or to be clear, the armistice period, right? So this is the period where they're negotiating the Treaty of Versailles and they're trying to get the final peace settlement. During those, during that time, there's desire on the part of the Europeans to create this thing called the Supreme Economic Council that would complement the Supreme War Council, which of course would become the Supreme Council of the League of Nations. But the Americans are just kind of like, yeah, we're not so keen on this. And you talk about quotes that end up on the cutting room floor. There was a quote by Hoover where at one point in a meeting, he says, and he goes, you know,

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

we

[Paul Post]

don't really think too much of them, and I don't think they think too much of us. Right. You know, it's basically like fully acknowledging that. It's like, yeah, just like, we're not all getting along. We all fought together. We were truly allies, but weren't necessarily friends. Right. And I think this really becomes evident when looking at the economic side of things and especially desire of the Europeans to try to continue these institutions after the war and us saying, no, no thanks. And so what becomes interesting to me is you can see where, you know, the Americans are kind of content to go their own way. There's this desire by the Europeans to try to create these institutions after the war. The Americans are like, yeah, kind of, no, no thanks. We don't want to go that way. But what becomes interesting when you start to think about it is that the Americans take in many ways the opposite approach at the end of World War II. And you could even say, is that due to lessons learned by the things that Rosella and I are writing about that, okay, maybe, maybe if we had taken an effort to create these kind of institutions at the end of World War I, we could have avoided, say, beggar thy neighbor policies later on in the late 1920s and 1930s, maybe there could have been better economic coordination, better economic assistance that would have avoided the Great Depression and could have created a stable global economy that could have prevented World War II. And so in many ways it's not a stretch to be able to see the lessons from this experience informing then eventually the creation of the Bretton woods institutions after World War II. But it's precisely because at the end of World War I, it is very much like, thanks, but no thanks. We're just going to go about our business.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

And I think for me, this also gets into a question I've been perseverating on, on various projects for a decade, is when do you become more than the sum of your parts? Right? Either be it on the battlefield, tip of sphere coalition warfare to the broader alliance, but just under what conditions to become more or less than the sum of your parts. And I think this goes to where Paul is going with is all these legacies, right? And again, I recommend Jamie Martin's book, but all of these legacies. And I just want to unpack for one second what he said regarding World War II. So I have a quote from the French Prime Minister to the British prime minister in September 1939 where he says, I have no doubt that you, like me, are anxious for us to avoid at all costs the mistakes that were made in the last war when our two countries took three years to set up the inter allied machinery which ensured us our supplies in 1917 and 18 and helped to overcome our military difficulties in 1918 in particular by enabling American troops to be brought to France. And so then they were like, yeah, that didn't go well. We could have been more efficient sooner. What should we do? Oh, Jean Monet, he was there, let's call him up. And so they immediately call him and be like, can you help us start fresh? We want to start with the Wheat Executive. We don't want the multi year process that leads us to that point. Let's start here. And so these legacies are a very clear direct line that Paul is talking about. And we can see them being traced. And it goes back to this Wheat Executive. We almost wrote that book. We did not because there's too much to do too many things, you know, couldn't say it all. And, and again, there's some obviously great historians who've already covered this territory. But that is, I think, to bring us back to where we kind of started this discussion is that moment that onion, and we're getting like the layers of the onion is really just carried themselves through from the core back to these immediate post war legacies that are just fascinating to us, really fascinating.

[Joby Turner]

So as we kind of start getting to the end here, I'd like to end with two things. One, I really. There's a great debate between historians and international relations folks. We're going to get to that on structure of a book. And then I want to turn over to you guys at the end to kind of say, hey, your last thoughts or future research or where you think it applies today. I'm going to leave that to you. But the first part of this that I found fascinating is as a historian and not an IR folk like yourself, you guys really wrote a history book. This is not your typical ir. I've got my dependent variables, case studies, wheat prices, decisions boards, you know, in a more scientific or social science method. And I think it really lended itself well, where at the same time I could actually have seen you all writing, writing this in a more classic IR fashion. Can you talk about the, the structure and the detail of the book that way?

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

So this is a. It was a tortured process in.

[Joby Turner]

I love it. I love it.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

And for any of anyone who's written an academic book, right, you have reviewers who, you know, you have many, many subjective moments that other folks weigh in on the process. And we were in that tussle for a long time. But what I will say is Paul and I were so lucky we got to write the book we wanted to write. And this is what we want at the end. And we thank Oxford University Press and David McBride for supporting us in that decision. Because this is not a traditional political science book. Most political science books don't do one case, as we would call it, right? They don't trace one moment or moments, right. They go, you know, they do lots of things over time and space and they have these broad theories, abstracted theories that tell us about the world. And so we are so lucky to have to write the book that we wanted to write. And it's a coup. It's a cool to have a coup to have pulled that off the US

[Joby Turner]

do so well at just the primary source material and bringing it out and not making it boring and dry where you can't Figure it out, man. You almost. I'm sure you must have cut. As long as the book is, you probably cut that much out, but you just have it very nicely. Like, as a reader, I'm like, oh, they're giving me their breadcrumbs. I don't have to guess. I don't have to know some other math theory to figure this out. And so it's really just tightly done. So huge kudos to you all for that. That primary research is just really. You really kind of flow the story. It makes you want to read the next chapter. So well done on that piece.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Thank you. But I have to then say thank you to the archivists. This was partial Covid book. I could not go out to the Hoover archives. They were closed by the time. And so a lot of archivists sent us way more than their normal policies would have allowed for them to do. So we thank all of them, French archives, the Hoover archives, in particularly, for sending us documents for free.

[Paul Post]

Just to second that. I've used this as a teachable moment for my students because I've been telling students about this book. I've talked about the writing process, and, you know, I always make clear then that you should always make sure you reach out to librarians. But this one has really emphasized the importance of reaching out to archivists. Like, the lot of archivists are more than happy to help you and are excited, and especially when you're dealing with a topic that seems more obscure, they're like, oh, this is great. You know, and then they really want to get into it and help you find these documents. And so I just want to second what Rosella is saying about that. But, you know, also what I mean, what was great about working on this book was I learned a lot working on this book with Rosella, because Rosella is really, really good at finding the kind of things that you're talking about, like, you know, being able to dig through the documents and being able to find lots of great, like, insights and quotes and so forth. And, you know, that's something that I enjoy doing, and it's something that I do well. But, you know, working with Rosella is, like, at a whole other level in terms of being able to do it. And the. But the other thing is, I think where our training as IR scholars really come through is a little bit in what we talk about in the introduction in chapter two of the book. So, you know, if someone reads the book, they're going to see this. Chapter two has this kind of analytical Frame work. Right. And this was a little bit of, on the one hand, was a little bit to kind of throw, I don't want to say throw breadcrumbs to the IR scholars. I don't want to say that we have to have a theory, but it was genuine in that when you're dealing with a topic like World War I, there are so much. There's so much information that could be gleaned out and drawn from that, you can get lost in it. And I think any historian recognizes that. To me, one of the big divides, if there is a divide between historians and IR scholars, is that a lot of times, and, you know, part of this is a caricature, but I think there's some truth. A lot of times historians tend to believe. Tend to be implicit in the theories that they're using to guide what documents to look at. And IR scholars tend to be explicit, but almost explicit to the point of, as you said, like, here's my dependent variable, here's my independent variable, here's how these things go. And we thought that what we could do is by providing that analytical framework as we described in the book, it's really intended to kind of point towards what documents should we be looking at, what evidence should we be trying to make sense of versus other things that we could be looking at. Because again, you're dealing with mountains of documents. You're dealing with documents from all sorts of different countries and archives, which ones are relevant, which ones are. And having an analytical framework and making it explicit as we do in chapter two, really, I think, helps us in that regard. And that's something where I think our IR scholar training really comes through.

[Joby Turner]

Agreed. And it made it very easy for the reader. And as a historian, sometimes with IR stuff, you know, caricature, you're like, oh, no, here we go. I'm going to just. We're going to be lost in this for the whole book. But it really was nice because then as I read that, I was like, oh, I understand what they're trying to do. Here's their boundary on the thinking. And it sort of focused the book. So just, again, not to brag too much, but that, that part is really well done. And I, for my own writing, I'm actually going to use that, like, hey, I need to kind of provide some structure for the reader because it makes it very easy to understand what you're doing. And I did. There were no surprises, you know.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

And I will just then say, to return the kudos to the Michael author, that's Paul he's better like we have. We all bring what, you know, our comparative advantages. I get too deep in the weeds sometimes and Paul was like, no, no, no, let's not go. This can't just be. Unfortunately, I wish I was sometimes a historian that. And so we need to elevate and provide this framework. So thank you to Paul for being that person for this project.

[Joby Turner]

Well, I want to turn it over to both of you here and just to kind of have your final thoughts about the book. Any implications for today, although I know we're all reticent to do that. We're all reticent to put pull something from 100 and, you know, 10 years ago and now say, oh, it's relevant today. But I'd just like to hear your final thoughts on the book and if you think anything's relevant for now, that would be wonderful. Paul, if we could start with you, if that's okay.

[Paul Post]

Absolutely. So I think, you know, for me, some of the big things that jump out relevant for now are things we've already talked about today. I mean, first of all, the Importance of Wheat is sadly, I think, very relevant to people today because of the challenges that were that have been created by the war news Ukraine, the fact that a wheat deal is actually a big part of the early stages of the war. So I think that's one reason is just very much the actual topic of the book is still relevant today. But I think there's some broader reasons why this book resonates today. One of those is also just these legacies we talked about, if you really want to understand kind of the international institutions that are part of the global governance of the global economy today, whether you're talking about the imf, the World bank, the wto, their legacies can be traced back to these institutions from World War I. And so I think that's another reason why it's important to study those. But a third reason, and this is something that we talk about, especially in the concluding portions of the book, is there are a lot of global challenges today that honestly, to solve them, are going to require global cooperation, and specifically is going to require states to maybe be willing, just as the European powers were during World War I, to give up some sovereign control, and under what conditions are they going to do that, and should we expect countries to be willing to do that? And I think this case gives you a clear lesson on both the possibilities for that, but also the limitations to it.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Yeah, and I'll pick up where Paul left off. One of the many titles to this book was something to be akin to like fighting the problem solvers, weed at war, or something like that, because it is about problem solving and the nature of that and the experience, the variation and experiences of problem solving at these bigger global levels. And so when do you get the problem solvers and when are they imbued with the ability to solve the problem, importantly? And so I think that is an enduring thing that we will have to deal with. And I have to obviously, second wheat. And again, this comes from being an American and as I said earlier in a weed exporting country is, you know, we're losing some of those wheat exporting capacities and we don't want to take that, I don't want to take that for granted. And I think that is just so important to set foot, step back on our own domestic policy and thinking about the importance of the suite capacity that we have and to make sure we continue to invest in that and support that. And then I guess I'll just say, you know, for anyone who picks it up, thank you. It's nice to know someone reads it beyond our families who are forced to because they love us. And so there's that quid pro quo. And just. I hope you enjoy it. We did our best to try to put you in the moment of somebody in 1916 and to try not to make it so dry as sometimes military histories can be. And so we did our best. So we hope you enjoy it. And thank you for reading it if you decide to pick it up.

[Joby Turner]

And thank you both for being here today and for our audience. You know, the book's everywhere. It's at Amazon, it's at Barnes and Noble. I got mine on Kindle. Real easy. It is a great read. The language is very easy to understand, the arguments are direct, and it really makes you think. And if you're at all interested in World War I at all, I think this is a wonderful book. And especially on the logistics speaks. So when we hear amateurs, you know, study tactics, professional studies, logistics, this is what that book is, the personification of that. So for our audience, I really advise getting it. And thanks for listening today. Thank you for being here.

[Rosella Capella Zelensky]

Paul and Rosella, thank you for having us.

[Paul Post]

Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much.