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

[NRx]

No... Zero was not the worst President in US history. That distinction belongs to Woodrow Wilson. No one else is even close.

[nickcarraway]

It had terrible results for the U.S.

[Jolla]

What If the United States Had Stayed out of the Great War?

In Europe Germany would be in the driver seat - oh, wait - never mind.

[Cicero]

I’d say that the two worst were Woodrow Wilson and FDR. I agree with you about Wilson, but FDR did terrible damage too, with the Great Depression and socialist government. There were major problems with the Second World War, too. Read Evelyn Waugh’s “Sword of Honour” trilogy.

[sparklite2]

tl;dr

If we’d stayed out of the war until one side won, maybe WWII would have been the US-Japan conflict.

[DiogenesLamp]

No... Zero was not the worst President in US history. That distinction belongs to Woodrow Wilson. No one else is even close.

Abraham Lincoln. He not only triggered the growth of the Federal Behemoth, he forever altered the relationship between the States and the Federal Government.

Oh, and he killed directly and indirectly nearly 3 million people, as well as impoverished regions for multiple generations.

[vooch]

include Lincoln the tyrant in your list also

[DiogenesLamp]

I’d say that the two worst were Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

After Abraham Lincoln, I would have said the worst President in History was Lyndon Johnson, but over the years I realize the thing he did that most damaged the nation, is what any moderately clever politician of that era would have done if painted into that corner by his political opponents.

[DiogenesLamp]

If we’d stayed out of the war until one side won, maybe WWII would have been the US-Japan conflict.

If we had stayed out of WWI, it is likely WWII would never have happened.

[iowamark]

If the Allies, led by France and Britain, had not won a total victory, there would have been no punitive peace like that completed at Versailles, no stab-in-the-back allegations by resentful Germans, and thus no rise, much less triumph, of Hitler and the Nazis. The next world war, with its 50 million deaths, would probably not have occurred.

With Lenin and Stalin ruling the USSR and the Prussians ruling the rest of Europe, there is no reason to think that the rest of the 20th Century would be any less violent. Germany and the USSR still would have inevitably gone to war. Modern weaponry, including nuclear weapons and ICBM's still would have been developed.

[Antoninus]

Maybe, maybe not.

The Resplendent Dawn of a Serene Future

[DuncanWaring]

Didn’t do Europe any favors either; they STILL haven’t recovered from that war.

[gunnyg]

Good one!

Wilson also made another remarkable speech a bit later in life that changed my opinion of him considerably! No easy task.

As even POTUS.45 Trump, I suspect, now realizes the man in the arena may very well be not able to live up to his desired intentions—but it’s the system not the man!

Blogged it several years ago...some of my postings are still out there in cyberspace since 1997...even though most of the sites, forums, bull boards,messageboards, and later “blogs” eventually went belyup.

(The Wayback Machine can sometimes resurrect them, I find.

Gunny G AMERICAN (NOT AINO)
*****

[nickcarraway]

And never will.

[Antoninus]

If we’d stayed out of the war until one side won, maybe WWII would have been the US-Japan conflict.

Unlikely. The militarists in Japan put too much credence in our inability to fight a two-front war. I think they had few illusions about what a head-to-head struggle with the US would have meant.

But there might have been an Anglo-Japanese War...

[DoodleDawg]

bfl

[iowamark]

The Lodge Reservations to the League of Nations:

http://spiritualpilgrim.net/07_Special-Documents/Historical-Documents/1919_Lodge%27s-reservations-concerning-the-Versailles-Treaty.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodge_Reservations

[KarlInOhio]

How many of our current problems were caused by the end at the British and the French sliced up the Ottoman Empire after the war? Imagine a world without Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Syria as they are currently configured because Germany beat France.

[BenLurkin]

What If the United States Had Stayed out of the Great War?

I sure wish we had.

[sparklite2]

Japan desperately needed resources, and there were only two places to get them: Siberia and the South Pacific. The Imperial Japanese Army favored going after Siberia but were forced to abandon that strategy after the disastrous 1939 Battle of Khalkhin Gol.

The Imperial Japanese Navy got its way, but it had to deal the fact that the South Pacific had already been colonized. Hence the simultaneous attacks on Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Malaya: The Japanese didn’t want the Americans or the British to resist the Japanese scramble for rubber and oil.

This turned out to be suicidal and a complete misreading of how the Americans would react to Pearl Harbor, but it was about 90 years in the making.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2014/07/07/what_prompted_japan_s_aggression_before_and_during_world_war_ii.html