[BroJoeK]

That’s exactly what US leaders like General Pershing said at the time.
They correctly predicted that otherwise Germany would just continue the war in 20 years.
Pershing recommended the Allies do in 1918 what they did do in 1945.
But Pershing was a Republican, from the Unconditional Surrender school of US Grant, while President Wilson was a Southern Democrat from the “peace without victory” school.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[Fiji Hill]

Continuing the war in lieu of the Armistice might not have been such a hot idea.

• Germany may have been in turmoil in November, 1918, but as the Allied armies approached their homeland, the Germans may have risen to the occasion and resisted with a will--perhaps under a reactionary government led by someone like Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz, a coalition government that included radicals such as Karl Liebknecht, or even a Bolshevik regime.

• The Allies would have had to advance through rugged terrain such as the Hürtgen Forest, which they would only fully occupy after five months of heavy fighting in WWII.

• Winter was also coming on, and bad weather would have hindered Allied efforts

• The US had lost over 100,000 men by the time of the Armistice--twice the number that we would lose in Vietnam and in less than a year. Given the American public's historic distaste for protracted foreign wars, would the public have continued to support the war effort?

• Had the Allies prevailed and forced an unconditional surrender, would the American public support a lengthy and expensive occupation of the country and a nation-building program that would be necessary to preclude a power vacuum in Central Europe?

• The Germans could also have cut a deal with the Bolsheviks, as they would do time and again over the next several decades, which could have greatly complicated matters for the allies.

  Some questions to ponder.