The Madness of Saint Woodrow: Or, What If the United States Had Stayed out of the Great War?

Library of Law and Liberty ^ | 10-04-2017 | Walter A. McDougall

[Dr. Ursus]

Very interesting and educational-Thanks

[Defiant]

That is correct. Lenin may have had a plan to go back, but the Germans cooperated and could have prevented it. They made a deal with him that he would work to get the Russians out of the war, and he did. Lenin was the indispensible man for the communist revolution; without him, no Soviet Union for 73 years.

[schurmann]

“...Despite German denials, German historical research shows that the First World War was not started by the Brits, the French or even the Russians...”

Many thanks to BroJoeK for fleshing this out. And succinctly: a good start. More detail may help other forum members shed their erroneous preconceptions.

Despite all of it, the causes of the conflict aren’t clear. On the last page of his single-volume history of the First World War, the late John Keegan wrote that the causes remain a mystery.

I recall the commencement of Great War Centennial commemorations, over three years back. Someone aired a quote from Sir Basil H Liddel-Hart, J F C Fuller, or another postwar British historian. Paraphrased and approximated, it ran thus:

“The history of the war recorded many confusing or contradictory things. Bu there is one thing it will not record: that Belgium invaded Germany.”

Pare away all the rhetoric and argument. Then ask yourselves this question: do you want to live in a world ruled by Winston Churchill, or a world ruled by Adolf Hitler?

[iowamark]

It is unclear who would have won the war without US involvement. Some say that Germany was so exhausted that they still would have been defeated.

[BroJoeK]

iowamark: "Some say that Germany was so exhausted that they still would have been defeated."

Agreed, but so were France & Britain, equally exhausted.
One imagines heavy-weight prize fighters in a ring after 14 rounds, both staggering, flailing away hoping to land one last punch that really counts.
The mind's eye sees one fighter raring back, winding up, unsteady, aiming, swinging... POW!
He lands the punch, his opponent goes down but then he too collapses unconscious on top, fight called, who won?

The US played a minor, but we think critical role in stopping the last German offensive in 1918.
Without us, the Western Front may have cracked, letting Germans reach Paris & victory.
But there's more...

Everybody knows Germans transported & supported Lenin's Bolsheviks rise to power in Russia.
What we don't know is how much support Kerensky & other anti-Bolsheviks received from Britain & other Allies.
How much was the Russian civil war fueled by aid from the West?
So let's say it was a lot, and this aid made possible by US support for Britain & France.
One result was, even after Brest-Litovsk, Germans kept nearly a million troops in Eastern Europe, troops which could have been transported to the Western Front for a final push to victory.

Finally, German minimum terms for peace in 1918 were: stop in place, meaning whatever the lines of battle were, that's the war-ending peace settlement.
Indeed, that's what the German High-Command thought President Wilson's "Peace without victory" proposal amounted to, and they were willing to take it.
But absent the US, Germany's position was much stronger and they may well have dictated some of their own conditions to the Allies.

Bottom line: I think absent the US intervention, WWI victor & vanquished change places and the rise of militant National Socialism moves from Germany to France &/or Britain.

You disagree?

[schurmann]

“...I think absent the US intervention, WWI victor & vanquished change places and the rise of militant National Socialism moves from Germany to France &/or Britain. ...”

Quite possible.

Arthur Koestler (Hungarian (?), became communist after the war, later became anti-communist, wrote about it) stated that prevailing opinion at the end of WWI anticipated Germany turning Communist). If I recall correctly. What the other major powers would have done then is imponderable.

The tendency in WWI historical analysis is to consider land combat only, and the European fronts (West predominantly, a few nods to the East) in isolation.

Flies in the face of labeling the dismal business a world war: the total strategic picture cannot be separated out into sub-components like that without great loss of meaning. Other theaters cannot be dismissed so easily, and the maritime situation was a major factor.

Imperial Russia was put in severe peril when German warships were chased into Constantinople harbor in August 1914, but the impact took time to materialize.

All Russian trade through the Dardanelles and thus the Black sea was cut off (the major route), and the Allies were prevented from supplying weapons and munitions to the Czarist forces.

The Germans convinced the Ottoman Empire to enter the war on the side of the Central Powers. The entire Middle East became embroiled, consuming yet more Allied resources, diverting attention of senior leadership, and diluting efforts elsewhere. The aftermath was not handled well, setting the stage for yet more problems down the road.

Concerning the war at sea, many words have been written about how the British blockade was starving Germany, but it’s rarely recognized that German submarine warfare was putting British participation at severe risk, even before unrestricted submarine warfare (the chief German move that precipitated US intervention) was declared.

When William S Sims, the first senior US naval liaison officer to arrive in Britain after the United States declared war, was briefed by British Admiralty leaders, he was astounded: merchant vessel losses to the U-boats had become so severe that British stocks of munitions, materiel, and simple food supplies were low and going lower.

Despite many ideas and theories, no one really knew how to defeat the U-boats; the methods that ultimately worked were as yet untried or unthought-of, and the weaponry to execute those methods hadn’t yet been built in any quantity.

Sims was told flatly that Germany would win unless the trend of losses was reversed.

All those tasks were accomplished, resources were found, weaponry manufactured, and the sailors of the Royal Navy and US Navy prevailed. But we have the luxury of looking at the situation from a comfy perch 100 years later; it’s wrong to assume Allied victory was inevitable just because it did happen.

[BroJoeK]

Seems the crux of this argument are the following two paragraphs:

[Niall Ferguson's] "...own contribution was a 52-page speculation entitled, 'The Kaiser’s European Union: What if Great Britain Had Stood Aside in August 1914?'
It cogently argued that if Britain had not gone to war or else limited itself to a naval war of defense—options seriously considered by the cabinet of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith in 1914—the result would have been a German victory, but one that the still-mighty British Empire could have lived with.
A German-dominated Mitteleuropa under the Kaiser’s constitutional monarchy would not, Ferguson speculated, have differed so much from the European Union of today.
And the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany would not have existed at all.

"Let that serve as a model for our own (much briefer) inquiry into Woodrow Wilson’s decision to lead the United States into the First World War.
For President Wilson not only considered, but really made, 'alternative choices' for two-and-a-half years before changing his mind and with it the whole course of American, European, and world history in the 'short 20th century.' "

But the centuries-long weight of British balance-of-power foreign policy made effective neutrality in 1914 all but impossible.
Three key points:

1. For centuries Brits played balance-of-power in Europe, allying itself with others against whichever was the most dominant.
   Brits considered it their duty, as a matter of survival, prestige & prosperity, to prevent any single power from ruling all Europe.
   Before 1815 France was dominant, especially under Napoleon.
   But since the Franco-Prussian War (1870-'71) Germany came more & more to be seen as the European power to be opposed.

2. Britain, France & Germany together had jointly signed a treaty guaranteeing Belgium's independence & safety.
   For the Brits to have ignored that treaty in 1914 would be similar to the US today ignoring, say, a Russian invasion of our NATO allies.
   Today that could mean the end of NATO and the now 70+ year old pax Americana.
   Would we give up such a valuable alliance without a fight?

3. Finally, nobody in 1914 foresaw the length or death & destruction the First World War would yield.
   So what seems at least debatable in our own hind-sight, seemed much clearer at the time.
   Brits felt they had to defend Belgium, period.

As for US entry into the war, by 1917 Americans had already loaned, in today's relative values, hundreds of billions of dollars to Britain & France.
By war's end the total would be several trillion dollars today and default would mean the Great Depression in 1919 instead of 1929.
Further, like the Brits, Americans were outraged by reports on German behavior in Belgium, German bombings of civilians in cities like London and, above all, by German U-boat attacks on US shipping.
And not least important: Americans felt we owed a debt to the French, "Lafayette, we are here!" they said on arrival in France.

Finally, we should remember that of all the Great Powers in both world wars, no country benefitted more for less cost in blood & treasure than did the United States.
Those wars made the US the one indispensable nation for world peace, prosperity & justice.
So as you set about rewriting history to make your alternative scenarios seem more attractive, ask yourself: who do you propose to take our place as the Earth's last, best hope?*

*For those who don't like Lincoln, will Reagan serve?

[iowamark]

Concord Bridge was, indeed, the “shot heard round the world.” The American Revolution changed everything, although it was not obvious at the time.