Trade or not, we had no business being in that war. It wasn’t our fight. But Woodrow (KKK) Wilson actively wanted America in for the greater glory of Woodrow Wilson and his effort to remake the world in his own image.
“Trade or not, we had no business being in that war. It wasn’t our fight. But Woodrow (KKK) Wilson actively wanted America in for the greater glory ...”
Repeating an inaccurate series of words does not cause them to become more accurate.
Neither President Wilson nor US government officials were misleading, secretive, nor surreptitious.
The United States had no choice. Britain’s Royal Navy commanded the sealanes; they stopped all vessels sailing to Germany, which was thus blockaded. America could not have forced the British to re-open trade: the US Navy was in no position to take on the Royal Navy. (it never was. For a long space of time after the US declared war, Americans were denigrated as a gaggle of lightweight, unseasoned amateurs.)
Early in the war, it may indeed have been better to remain neutral, but as time ground on, circumstances changed, causing neutrality to become a less tenable stance. The central dispute between the German government and that of the United States was over unrestricted submarine warfare.
Until early 1917, the German government itself was divided on the question. As Germany’s situation deteriorated, there were increased calls to use its technical resources more fully. Admirals of the Kaiserliche Marine estimated they could induce Britain to get out of the conflict by sinking a sufficient number of ships per month; inevitably, they killed American nationals aboard British merchantmen, and attacked some US-flag vessels directly.
The American government’s position was that such depredations against a neutral nation were not acceptable, as “laws of war” and international custom were then understood. Ample cause to declare war, which the US Congress did after President Wilson presented the facts to them.
There had been other provocations committed by Germany as part of its war effort: sabotage at the munitions depot on Black Tom Island near New York City was spectacular. And there was the “Zimmermann telegram” aimed at Mexico, to induce that nation to make war on the United States in return for US territory. Both easily characterized as acts of war.
What we modern citizens think was wrong or right these days does not matter. These concerns were of vital importance to the people making the decisions at the time. Critics today can give vent to all the opprobrium they wish, but the facts, and the interpretation laid on them by decisionmakers at the time, remain unchanged.
Had the United States declined to enter the war, or declined to trade with Britain (and France, Italy, Russia, and Japan) out of a sense of “fairness,” there was every chance that the Central Powers would have been victorious; Imperial Germany would have ruled Europe, from the Pyrenees to the eastern march of Poland. Possibly farther east.
Forum members must ask themselves this question: would they prefer to live in a world dominated by the German Empire?