Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: iowamark
The anonymous author assumes that the British and French would have won the war without the US, not a good assumption.

I agree, not a good assumption at all. After Verdun, the French army was teetering on the edge of mutiny. The British were not in much better shape after the bloodletting of the Somme. And Passchendaele literally dragged the Canadians down into the mud and blood.

Our entry was a bit late but from a psychological viewpoint it must have been a blow to German hopes on the Western Front. True, they were also approaching exhaustion, but they had kicked the Russians' butts and perhaps could have transferred armies to the west. All of that is not to diminish the sacrifice of the French and British, who had endured three years of horrible war. With American troops committed, the Germans may have sensed their advantage in knocking Russia out of the war was considerably blunted.

So, who knows? Armchair historians a century after the fact have a lot of leeway in pushing their viewpoints.

22 posted on 11/18/2017 6:50:58 AM PST by chimera
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies ]


To: chimera
The British were not in much better shape after the bloodletting of the Somme.

Agreed. America able to put at least two million fresh men in the field at that time. I spoke to older people as a child, in the early war years of WW2. They emphasised the absolute struggle to put food on the table. Health suffered. The music hall song reverberated.

'Over There, Over There. The Yanks are Coming"

America saved my native countries bacon. Heroic though those British people were.

46 posted on 11/18/2017 9:20:49 AM PST by Peter Libra
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies ]

To: chimera

Why do you consider the possibility of Germany winning the war to be a bad thing? Perhaps it could have turned out worse than the hundred millions plus murdered in our timeline, but it is hard to see how the world could have done worse than what did happen.


75 posted on 11/18/2017 5:02:24 PM PST by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies ]

To: chimera

In the Spring of 1918, the Germans were exhausted, but the French/English were even worse-off.

The German Spring Offensive was well on its way to Paris when they were stopped only by the Americans at Belleau Wood.


82 posted on 11/19/2017 4:16:26 AM PST by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson