Ww1 was silly stupid and dumb. A bunch of aristocratic nobles signing mutual admiration treaties of self protection to keep the nobility in power. It all backfired terribly. If Germany had won,,,well there might have not been a WW2. However, who the heck wants a super strong Germany?! Roosevelt kissed the rear end of evil Stalin and allowed the evil commies to take over Eastern Europe.
The nobles had little to do with it.
Some of these countries weren’t run by their nobility at all, notably France and Italy.
In every country the aristocracy was being sidelined by the haut-bourgeoisie, rapidly getting much more powerful than the fellows with titles, and in many ways more warlike.
Indeed, the colonial expansion and competition part of it was a very bourgeois affair.
It was a weird, complex time.
I recommend “The Proud Tower”, Barbara Tuchman, to get a taste at least of what was going on.
Woodrow Wilson was the worst President, ever.
It seems to me that everyone went into WWI acting like it was still 1848, making the same kind of decisions and expecting the same sort of results. No one realized warfare was now on an industrial scale, and the genie was bribing hell if let out of the bottle.
Give the meat grinder which was “der Ostfront,” it’s hard to see what leverage Roosevelt could have exercised - even if he wanted to. And his enthusiasm for limiting Stalin was certainly suboptimal.Problem was, tho, that allowing Hitler to take the Soviet oilfields wasn’t much of an option, either - so helping the Soviets was the least worst thing to do.