Here's an alternative history question: What if we had stayed out of World War I?

The course of the war was thus:

The Germans fought on two fronts, in the west against the French and British, in the east against the Russians. (There were some other fronts involving Austria, Italy, Turkey, and Japan, but those were the main ones.)

Their initial offensive in the west failed to achieve victory, and the German and allied troops bogged down into several years of trench-warfare stalemate. Eventually both sides developed either new tactics or new technology, or both, to break the stalemate.

In the meantime, the Germans were more successful on the eastern front, and after the Russian Revolution they made a very favorable peace with Lenin. This freed the German troops that had been fighting on the eastern front to come to the west, where the Germans hoped to gain a similarly favorable peace with one last offensive.

However, in the interim the U.S. had joined the war, and an infusion of fresh American troops enabled the French and British to defeat the final German offensive. A coup deposed the Kaiser and imposed a provisional government, which eventually became the Weimar Republic. The new government sought peace with the allies, and harsh peace terms were imposed at Versailles in 1918. President Wilson strove for gentler peace terms but to no avail.

Partly as a result of this humiliation and partly because of the Great Depression, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party gained power in 1933.

There was no really compelling reason why the U.S. should have intervened in World War I. There were diplomatic incidents and allegations of German attacks on neutral shipping, but these could have been resolved short of war; there was no clear-cut Pearl Harbor or 9/11 incident, and Germany did not declare war on the U.S. on this occasion as Hitler did in 1941. That the U.S. might have stayed out of the war is quite conceivable. What if we had?

Would the German offensive of 1918 have been successful? How successful, if so? Would they have been able to impose a peace on France as harsh as the terms of the Versailles treaty were on Germany? If so, would a French equivalent of Hitler have arisen?

In Germany itself, without the Versailles treaty, would the Great Depression alone have been enough to lift Hitler to power? (I doubt it. The margin was close as it was. The Nazis never did have a majority in the Reichstag until after Hitler became Fuhrer and imposed a one-party state; they had to form a coalition with a few smaller parties.) Could World War II, or at least the European portion of it, have been prevented if the U.S. had not intervened in World War I?

we didn't belong in ww1, thats my opinion to start with.


When the armistice hit as paris was starving etc. ( in the franco prussia war 1871) the Prussians became the germans so to speak, it was a different time.

If the Germans had done same in 1918, I would think there was enough left of the old ways of warfare in Europe that they would have lopped off some territory and pulled out.
The very harsh treaty of Versailles would not have happened and that would have changed the complexion of what occurred there after.

I would have to think on this some more, but for now, the old Kaiser and German/Prussian court etc. would not have been seen as the failed apparatus as it come to be known.

Would Hitler have gained ground despite the victory?
There would not have been the need for national socialism hence the rise of it, may never have happened.

__________________
Obama-e fungis nati homines....

So the Americans are to blame for WWII and Hitler?

I have heard this particular one before: it is part of the radical anti-Americanism that transforms everything, without exception, into a manifestation of either overt or passive American evil.

A far-left parlor game for trendy anti-Americans: "Let's work out a situation where we can blame those terrible Americans for absolutely everything, but remember - we must be careful to make sure that we never acknowlegde any positive contribution. Does everyone know the rules? This will be fun! After all, they are so dreadful, I'm sure we can pin the blame for all of the world's events on them. Now what if...."

Shameless - but not surprising.

__________________
"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1

I just KNEW somebody was going to come along and yank my chain with that angle.

Ahem. I do not believe that President Wilson, whatever his faults and virtues, was omniscient or even prophetic. As such, I am certain he could not foresee the rise of Adolf Hitler, and that being the case I'm equally certain he didn't do it on purpose with that in mind. Also, given that he tried unsuccessfully to soften the terms of the Versailles treaty, clearly the main blame must fall on others.

I still think it's an interesting question, and if there's a lesson in it it's that we should not be too quick to butt into foreign conflicts.

Shame upon shame. It really is too good - a turkey waiting to be hit.

I'll BET you knew someone was waiting to yank your chain....

If you don't want to be called on dressed-up junk like this, don't post it.

__________________
"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1

It's not "dressed-up junk," it's a very serious bit of speculation about alternate history.

Can you deny that U.S. participation in WWI meant an allied victory, that it would have been at best (from the French and British perspective) or worst (from the German perspective) a draw without us? Can you deny that the French and British victory, and the way it was handled by the winners, led to the rise of Hitler?

If this is the case, on top of the fact that it wasn't our fight, that Royalist Germany wasn't the icon of evil that Nazi Germany was, and that nobody on either side came and forced us into it, it seems obvious that we should not have gotten into the war. In hindsight, of course.

Do you agree or disagree? If you disagree, why?

Can you deny that if Britain had not joined the war in 1914 that France would have been forced to surrender, and there would have been a repeat of 1870 with a treaty in Paris some time in early 1915?

So let us blame Britain!

And can you deny that if Rasputin had not become the obsession of Nicholas and Alexandra and if Nicholas had not insisted on acting as head of staff instead of staying in Pretrograd to rule as Czar, while Alxenadra fired all of the effective and capable ministers, that Germany may well have been pushed to a stalemate on the eastern front?

So let us blame the Russians!

Let's spread the blame around! But of course, that would take the focus away from the real point, wouldn't it?

That Americans are to blame.

__________________
"Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep; in his royalty of nature
Reigns that which would be fear'd: 'tis much he dares;
And, to that dauntless temper of his mind,
He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valour
To act in safety."

Macbeth 3:1

Fine with me. The point here is not "who's to blame," but "what if." And the overall point is that it would have been better if the Germans had won World War I.

That's fine, too. And of course, we can blame the Germans as well, and the Serbian nationalists who killed Archduke Ferdinand, and the crazy arms race that led up to the whole thing, and the system of alliances that turned a small local conflict into a huge Europe-wide disaster.

On the contrary, it wouldn't.

In fact, it might even give you a chance to actually understand the point, which so far obviously you have not.

The major effect of the entry of the US into WWI wasn't on the battlefield where the relatively small American force made little difference, but closing the New York bond market to German war bonds crippled the German war effort by denying them the funds required to continue the war.

What if the idiots didn't mobilize, and set such a short fuse on such a large destructive force, Europe may have escaped the war completely, and the 20th century would have been a Golden Age of Man, with all the effort and treasure wasted on war in the 20th century instead invested in the betterment of the human condition.

__________________
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

Well to be fair Britian escapes a lot of scrutiny. Their modus operndi since god, before the Spanish armada was to keep one force on the continent from becoming preeminent.
They financed coalitions, brokered deals, double dealt, sent troops and fought naval engagements etc. for 400 years in doing so, their self interest being, the nightmare of napoleon almost massing the capability to cross the channel or sea lion, since they did not have a large enough populace to fight one on one with any of the continental powers if they put troops ashore.
But heck that horse has been out of the bar as I said for almost half a century, so its hard to ascribe blame to them only.

__________________
Obama-e fungis nati homines....

I am sure we would have messed it up at some other point. I don't think the absence of war can prevent revolutions.

__________________
When WW2 had ended everyone joined the resistance.

That seems to go a little too far into the counter-factual.
If Germany had won WWI, it certainly seems likely that the war we call WWII would not have taken place, but that hardly means it would have been "better." It's entirely possible that a different "second world war" would have followed the first and been more horrific than the war we remember.
World War 2 was bad, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't have been worse, and it seems a trifle naive to presume that, if only German had won, WWI would have truly been "the war to end all wars."

__________________
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society. -Theodore Roosevelt

Possible, sure, but I don't think it was likely. It took a particularly nasty set of conditions to bring the Nazis to power in Germany, and even then nobody was anxious to fight another war. The British, French and Russians avoided it as long as they could. Everyone seemed ready to believe Hitler's protestations of peaceful intent, which seems particularly stupid nowadays, but I take it as wishful thinking with the memory of the last big war still fairly fresh in many people's minds.

I guess there are a couple of ways it might have come off. If the Germans had won big enough to impose harsh conditions on France similar to the ones they suffered themselves in actual history, the French might have been anxious for revenge; then again, France had a well-established democratic tradition by that time and had already been there/done that in the early 19th century anyway -- plus, France was simply not as powerful as Germany. Not as potentially dangerous a warmonger. The other way would be if Trotsky had beaten Stalin for control of the Soviet Union after Lenin's death. Stalin was a grade-A bastard, but not a warmonger; Trotsky, though, might have been one.

And of course, none of this would have prevented the Pacific war.

So no, it's not totally certain -- but it seems to me that it's the way to bet. Certainly the sequence of events that did lead to World War II was unfortunate, and stemmed directly from Germany's defeat in World War I.

Basically OK so far.




Not OK: Germany had declared unrestricted submarine
warfare, and there was nothing "alleged" about it.

Germany was also plotting to involve Mexico in war
with the US, with Mexico to obtain cession of US
territory in the event of victory. There was nothing
"alleged" about that either.

So Germany's behavior and intentions toward the US
were hostile, and meant that American lives were sure
to be lost even if the US stayed out.




I have never run across a detailed analysis of this issue.

My take is that it was a close enough call even with the
US in the war to suggest that absent the US Germany
could have defeated France and forced the UK to evacuate
the continent in a 1918 version of Dunkirk.




Yes, and it would have been able to impose even
harsher terms, as it did in 1940.

However, it is likely the UK would have kept on
fighting indefinitely, so the war would not have
been over.




No, because France and the entire continent would
have been powerless against the German hegemon.




I see from your subsequent posts that the comments
above are meant imply the absurd premise that aggressors
should be allowed to win because if they lose then they
might start an even worse war later!

The truth is that Germany was forced into insufficient
submission, not that it was forced into too much.

Now, it would not be fair for you to have a monopoly
on alternate histories, would it?

So how about this for an alternate history:

Suppose the WW1 Allies had pressed their advantage all-out
and forced Germany to submit to indefinite military occupation
just as the WW2 allies later did? And suppose that occupation
had remained in place for 40+ years just as the post-WW2
occupation did?

No Hitlers then!

__________________
From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord, deliver us.

Sorry, but you should not be allowed to evade
the all-important issue of war guilt.

There is no doubt Germany could have prevented
Austria-Hungary from invading Sebia, there is no
doubt Germany knew war with Russia and France
would result, and there is no doubt Germany invaded
a country, Belgium, whose neutrality it had guarenteed.

Germany's guilt was more than that of all the other
nations combined.

A German victory would have left an aggressor nation
as hegemon of the European continent in a much
stronger position than WW2 Germany ever enjoyed.

I do not see the world as ever being safe with a beast
like that at large.

__________________
From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord, deliver us.