Should the US have entered WW1

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gtyellowjacket

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Rather than threadjack the Israeli Hamas thread, I thought I would start this thread in case anyone was interested in discussing it.

I'll try to copy the posts for everyone.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Rather than threadjack the Israeli Hamas thread, I thought I would start this thread in case anyone was interested in discussing it.

I'll try to copy the posts for everyone.
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If I understand what you're saying, all you have to do is hit quote on their posts and then come over to this thread you started and hit insert quotes.
 
p5mmr9 said:
Historically speaking you are largely incorrect - the USA tried to remain somewhat isolated from anything happening outside N/C/S America up to WWI. The events of both World Wars largely proved that to not only be impossible but against our own interests as a nation.
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gtyellowjacket said:
World war II, probably should take that lesson, especially in Asia, but I'm not so sure we should take that lesson in world war 1. If we'd stayed out of it, there's a fair chance there wouldn't be a world war II.
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tonman said:
No we left Germany in shambles and did nothing to help afterwards.
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gtyellowjacket said:
Germany wasn't in shambles. I might be wrong but I don't think a single shell landed on German soil during WW1. I am confident it was between zero and very few.

But I thought he meant non-interventionism in the sense that we aren't putting troops on the ground. No one knows for sure, but I think if we stayed out of WW1, we and the world would have been better off.
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farce said:
Germany was in economic shambles after WW1 and the crushing reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles made matters worse. The hardship of the reparations along with the territorial concession required (remember Lebensraum?) led to the rise of Nazis
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Germany had to pay those reparations because they went all in on the Michael offensive because the US was gearing up to come into the war. It didn't work and Germany needed to sue for peace. There's a pretty fair chance that Germany could have just sat in their trenches in France and Belgium and negotiated a peace that didn't include those reparations had the US not entered the war.

Germany was in economic shambles but that was the naval blockade which would have ended with the end of the war. Once trade starts going again and the the men are doing productive work instead of sitting around getting shot at, Germany can get their food and raw materials and start pushing out manufactured goods. I'd much rather be living in Berlin than Brussels post WWI.
 
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I think the question at the beginning of this thread seems different than what you were discussing in the other thread.

If the issue is "should the US have entered the war" (i.e. did it have real justification for doing so) I think you could argue that either way. IMO the case for whether we had compelling foreign policy reasons for entering the war is weaker for WWI than WWII, but that doesn't mean it was the wrong decision.

If the issue is "was the US entering WWI a mistake because that ultimately led to WWII" I'm not sure I can agree with that premise. Is the theory that if the US didn't enter the war the Allied Powers wouldn't have won and/or would not have been able to negotiate such favorable terms for them (and such punitive terms for the Central Powers)? What do you think would have happened instead, then?
 
rodoheel said:
I think the question at the beginning of this thread seems different than what you were discussing in the other thread.

If the issue is "should the US have entered the war" (i.e. did it have real justification for doing so) I think you could argue that either way. IMO the case for whether we had compelling foreign policy reasons for entering the war is weaker for WWI than WWII, but that doesn't mean it was the wrong decision.

If the issue is "was the US entering WWI a mistake because that ultimately led to WWII" I'm not sure I can agree with that premise. Is the theory that if the US didn't enter the war the Allied Powers wouldn't have won and/or would not have been able to negotiate such favorable terms for them (and such punitive terms for the Central Powers)? What do you think would have happened instead, then?
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Yeah. I think you're right.

I guess it started with a claim that the US was isolationist but we learned a lesson in world war I and world war II about how isolationism actually hurts us. I think that lesson applies more to world war II and not world war. I. Help me with the title and I'll change it.
 
uncgriff said:
Remember the Lusitania!
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High schools do a poor job of talking about the causes of WW1. The Lusitania was sunk over 2 years before we entered the war. It wasn't the proximate cause like the USS Maine, but I never knew that until well after high school.

The sinking of the Lusitania and the US reaction did lead to Germany calling off unrestricted submarine warfare. When Germany restarted unrestricted submarine warfare plus the Zimmerman telegram was revealed, the US decided to get in... And it was a complete coincidence that US bankers were afraid France would lose and not be able to pay her loans.
 
WWII was more likely to happen precisely because no battles were fought on German soil.

The German populace felt like the German leaders had sold them out and they in fact hadn't been militarily defeated (specifically because the fighting never impacted German home soil). This led to public resentment . It's not that the term of the peace were too harsh (they were extremely harsh), it was that they were so hash that only a country that had it's ass well and truly kicked should have had to accept them. Your average German never saw any evidence that they had their asses kicked and so they resented the peace terms.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
High schools do a poor job of talking about the causes of WW1. The Lusitania was sunk over 2 years before we entered the war. It wasn't the proximate cause like the USS Maine, but I never knew that until well after high school.

The sinking of the Lusitania and the US reaction did lead to Germany calling off unrestricted submarine warfare. When Germany restarted unrestricted submarine warfare plus the Zimmerman telegram was revealed, the US decided to get in... And it was a complete coincidence that US bankers were afraid France would lose and not be able to pay her loans.
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The Lusitania absolutely got the majority of Americans off the fence and emotionally siding against Germany. Yes it was 2 years before the entry into the war but provided a moment of clarity as to which side we were on.
 
uncgriff said:
The Lusitania absolutely got the majority of Americans off the fence and emotionally siding against Germany. Yes it was 2 years before the entry into the war but provided a moment of clarity as to which side we were on.
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There were no opinion polls but there was no real clarity on whose side we were on up until we entered the war. America was pretty divided on whose side we should support. Germany sunk a British ship with Americans on it but Britain was using their navy to keep us from doing business with the central powers despite our neutral stance. That upset a lot of Americans .

While divided on which side to support most Americans wanted to stay out of Europe's bloodbath. Wilson won reelection on keeping us out of the war.

After America entered the war, the population turned strongly anti-German.
 
Yellow jaqueta
Dude the future is your friend. Wilson like your boy Trump was a White Nationalist and premiered "Birth of a Nation" at the friggin White House? KKK ok? Wilson is probably before Trump the most stupidly racist president we've had.
ETA I assume you have not listened to Rachel Maddows recent Ultra 1 nor Ultra 2 pod casts? The racist shit from them apparently is genetics since you don't seem to even be cognoscente of your obtuseness?
 
In 2010, I was working at a place were the guy immediately above me was a real trivia buff. On Monday morning, October 4, 2010, before a meeting started, I posed, what to this day is my greatest trivia question, to him. I asked, "What long-awaiting monumental event in world history happened yesterday?" He just looked blankly at me and appeared to believe it was some sort of trick question. He gave up and I then said, "Germany made the final payment on its WW1 reparations obligation." I then expanded the answer to say that while Germany had long since paid the last of its actual reparations, repayment of the interest on those reparations had, at the insistent of the US after WW2, delayed until Germany was reunited and then would be paid on a ten year schedule. And that ten year schedule had expired on Sunday, October 3, 2010. He got a huge kick out of being stumped not only on a trivia question, but on one that he legitimately believed was important.
 
Well selfishly if we didn't, then likely none of us would ever have been born. Because then all history would be different
 
05C40 said:
In 2010, I was working at a place were the guy immediately above me was a real trivia buff. On Monday morning, October 4, 2010, before a meeting started, I posed, what to this day is my greatest trivia question, to him. I asked, "What long-awaiting monumental event in world history happened yesterday?" He just looked blankly at me and appeared to believe it was some sort of trick question. He gave up and I then said, "Germany made the final payment on its WW1 reparations obligation." I then expanded the answer to say that while Germany had long since paid the last of its actual reparations, repayment of the interest on those reparations had, at the insistent of the US after WW2, delayed until Germany was reunited and then would be paid on a ten year schedule. And that ten year schedule had expired on Sunday, October 3, 2010. He got a huge kick out of being stumped not only on a trivia question, but on one that he legitimately believed was important.
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That's good. In a similar vein, the UK paid off its last WW1 loan on Mar 9, 2015.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
That's good. In a similar vein, the UK paid off its last WW1 loan on Mar 9, 2015.
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This kind of illustrates my point. The UK was the leader of the world in 1914. They could have stayed out of WW1. They got in and lost their leadership position and were still paying off loans a century later.
 
The craziest thing about WWI to me is that in a lot of people’s minds it was in a different era due to it being the first real mechanized war, but it was only 50 years after the Civil War. It was as close to the Civil War as the end of the Vietnam War is to today.
 
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