As the question says - we’ve debated World War 2 to heck and gone on this board :D, but what about the first stab at a world war? Was the American contribution to WWI as important as our intervention in WW2? Or would the war have ended much the same if we’d stayed home?
Well, a lot of American’s would not have died for nothing. Other than that…it’s hard to say I think. I believe that the war was poised on a knife edge at the point we entered the war, with both sides on the verge of collapse. Probably the Germans would still have been the first to collapse…but it’s possible that had the US not gotten involved they all would have fallen down.
I have no problem with that…I think the US should have stayed out of what was a purely European affair (ed) with the exception of perhaps using our navy more vigorously to protect our merchant fleet. And I think that had we stayed out of it, perhaps there wouldn’t have been yet another European blood bath a few decades down the pike from WWI.
-XT
It wouldn’t have been so “Great”. 
Seriously, I do wonder if we had stayed out of WWI, we wouldn’t have been involved in WWII (no Pearl Harbor). It could be argued that World War II was a continuation of the Great War. Anyway, Woodrow Wilson wouldn’t have been involved in the Paris peace conference.
It depends on whether or not the U.S. would have built up a navy that could be seen as a rival by the Japanese.
<slight hijack>
It’s my opinion that Americas entry into WW1 was the start of what could loosely be called the American Empire. WW2 accelerated the process.
I realise that the USA never set out to gain an empire but this is exactly what you’ve done, a country born out of revolution and seccesion from empire, ends up with one whether you like it or not.
I’ve often thought that Americas interests would be best served if it tossed aside the global hegomany and decided to fight only in its own defence of liberty.
In other words, be friends with all but allied to none
I’d peg it 20 years before with the Spanish-American War. We got the Philippines in that one.
Your statement seems simplistic and niave but I can’t help thinking you’re on to something.
So what would happen in the world if we pulled back now and became isolationist? Is it even possible with trade the way it is?
I was always under the impression that one of the reasons the Versaille Treaty was so flawed was that it was a rush job.
The Russian front had collapsed (one of the dominoes of the Russian Revolution) and something like a million veteran troops where on their way to the trenches.
This, combined with growing numbers of tanks and growing effectiveness meant that if the Allies hadn’t managed to get the Germans to sign the V-Treaty, another round of offensives would have sprung up.
I could, of course, be wrong.
All that being said, I’m not sure of what the American contribution was to the war effort, or if our manpower was really used to all that much effect. Hopefully someone with more knowledge of The War to End All Wars will stroll through here shortly…
England, France and Germany had all suffered huge losses, but the French Army was demoralized and mutinous, the British Army ineffective and had thrown away countless lives without progress.
I believe it could have ended on terms favorable to Germany. Whether they have been favorable enough to stem the rise of Adolf Hitler is anyone’s guess.
Simplistic, yes, naive, maybe.
Despite what I posted above, it is no longer possible for America to adopt an isolationist stance for a number of reasons.
Primarily trade but most importantly oil.
A sad fact of todays modern lifestyle is that we depend so much on oil that we tend to overlook the effect that this dependancy has world wide.
We in the west are the “haves” there are many countries who are the “have nots” and unfortunately this situation will not change, not during my life anyway
If the US had stayed out of WWI, then there would have been a million German soldiers released from the Eastern Front and able to go and fight the British and the French on the Western Front…
…Where they would be cut to pieces by Vickers and Hotchkiss Machine-Guns as soon as they climbed out of their trenches.
IMHO, WWI would have dragged on until 1920 or so with an impassable stalemate on the Western Front before both sides decided to simply call it a day and re-draw the international borders. The war in the Middle East would still end with an Allied Victory, though- that was pretty much a done deal by 1917 anyway.
Huge slaughters like you are describing were more of a feature of the early days of the war. In the latter days, the Germans were having great success with their storm troops and both sides were on to the idea of armored vehicles. The troops freed up from the Russian front might well have tipped things to a German victory.
The Germans had machine guns too. The way it ended was American Marines came in and took huge losses against those guns at Marne/Chateau-Thierry/Belleau Wood stopping the Germans 50 miles away from Paris. By the end of the summer, the Americans 900,000 strong and finally organized were too much for Germany they were mainly trying to negotiate good terms from that point until they had to surrender nearly unconditionally in Novermber.
The Treaty of Versailles was flawed because it was imposed upon the Germans while they were still holding French land. With that in mind, the treaty was extraordinarily punitive to a people that didn’t think that they had lost. This in turn caused so much resentment that the first chance they had to tell their enemies to go to hell they pounced on it.
Hitler could not have existed without the Treaty of Versailles. If the terms had been status quo antebellum he couldn’t have fostered the kind of resentment that he needed to gain power. He couldn’t have gained capital by flaunting his public repudiation of the terms. In doing so, he found that nobody would raise a finger to stop him, which led him into Czechoslovakia and Austria, and ultimately into Poland.
We created that monster, and we did it consciously and with full intention.
The German populace was never told the truth about status of the war either, then suddenly the Kaiser fled the country and they agreed to the Armistice.
I very much doubt Wilson was expecting the Versailles Treaty to lead to a German nationalist resurgence, let alone an aggressive dictatorship.
It’s possible that the American entry into WW1 gave the governments of France and Britain a much needed morale boost, enough to tough it out a little longer.
The German spring offensive in 1918 might have succeeded in pushing those governments to the negotiating table earlier had the Americans not been around. (Would everyone have accepted a return to the status quo? Hmmm… probably not. Too much blood had been spilled.)
However, the war was devastating to Germany, even a victorious one. I am going to guess that Germany in the 20’s would still have had some internal unrest from the Communist and Socialist movements. Germany would still have suffered from war debt, and loss of overseas markets. This, I think, would still have lead to some economic problems (as it did to most of the other combatants, even the “victors” like France and Great Britain). Change was in the wind. It would have taken a slightly different form in Germany than it historically did. I think the Kaiser would have had to cede some of his power to the Reichstagg, for example. No Hitler, but a different Germany in 1930.
The Russian Civil War might have gone a little differently, dunno. But Germany and the Soviet Union would have clashed in war eventually.
Japan attacked the US in 1941 for her own reasons, that had little to do with the outcome of war in Europe in 1918.
The Anglo-Japanese alliance ended in 1923. It might have ended earlier, if Germany was victorious and demanded it. (Not clear if Japan could have been forced to return the territories it took from Germany in the Pacific.) In any case, I think Japan was seeing itself marginalised in various ways by the other Great Powers, and this still would have lead to conflict.
The Phillippines and Guam were uncomfortably close to Japan, and any “adventures” in China would still have lead to friction with the USA, if not others. (The US wanted China to be open to US buisness interests.) The US always intended to build a navy powerful enough to deter Japan (and was one of the hidden messages behind the cruise of the Great White Fleet, to show that the US Navy could sail anywhere, anytime, if needed), and this would have been, as it historically was, seen as a threat by Japan. War may not have been inevitable, but it didnt start because Germany lost in WW1.
That had already happened.
Germany had already blew her resources in the 1918 offensives. The ‘freed from the Eastern front’ bonus was spent. France and Britain held.
The question is…would they have held if the U.S. was not in?
I think so. Germany was more closer to the edge than the Allies and would still have lost.
Another question is…would it have stopped WWII? Without the U.S., France and England may have been more ruthless in hurting Germany after the war. However, the problem was that England (somewhat) and France (most definitely)were in relative decline. Germany would still have some inherent strength and I still think they would have come back for a second shot.
So, yes, I do think the U.S should have stayed out of it. WWI was a European matter. WWII, on the other hand, we should have pitched in earlier.
This I agree with - there was a morale effect of the knowledge that US troops were coming, but the 1918 offensive has been overstated, in particular by Liddell Hart. The Germans overran their supplies - the classic problem of WW1. As they moved forward, the Allies were getting closer to their supply bases, and the German’s further from theirs. Even as German supplies moved up, they were forced to traverse land destroyed by over three years of trench warfare. The Spring Offensive was interesting, but I don’t think carried the danger of the Allies losing the war.
The Allied breakthroughs in 1918 did not win the war, they confirmed the war was won. WW1, like other modern wars (US Civil War, WW2) was won by attrition. The war had essentially been won on the Western Front in 1916 and 1917, bust as WW2 was won in the East as the Russians destroyed German capacity to fight.
Had the war continued, Germany was going to collapse. The naval blockade was causing massive deprivation at home. German soldiers in the Spring Offensive are reported as being stunned by the foods etc available to Allied soldiers, much as earlier on Allied soldiers were amazed at how much better the German trenches were…