Should the US have entered WW1

[Zoo_View]

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.

The Rand Corporation (and others) have done studies on this topic.

One reason that the US (and its allies) were so able to completely remake Germany, Austria, Italy, and Japan post-WW2 was that our military completely kicked their asses - we dominated them. Not just their military asses, their civilian ones as well. The civilians KNEW they’d lost the war BIGLY.

Not so much Japan - we hadn’t kicked their ass in the Home Islands; but, we’d sufficiently kicked their ass across the Pacific and fire-bombed Tokyo and other cities and nuked two cities and the Red Army was entering the war, so the emperor surrendered - once the Emperor surrendered, Japan acquiesced to all - including the post-war rebuilding of Japan (MacArthur was a GREAT Emperor of Japan).

The Rand Corporation’s studies indicate that if you want to engage in “nation-change” or “nation-building,” you first have to completely kick the nation’s ass, including making its civilian population feel pain for a prolonged period.

Look at Iraq and Afghanistan - our military toppled those two governments QUICKLY….the civilians felt little-to-no pain. They fought back for years.

I doubt the U.S. can fight a WW2 type war again……as the US moved into Germany, if a village surrendered (“Hey, the Nazi fucks are over there”) it was spared…..if a village/town had SS or Wehrmacht troops fire at American or Allied forces, the Americans (especially the Americans) and allies withdrew and brought up artillery and shelled the village into oblivion……it was a clear message to each subsequent village/town/city - surrender or we will blow your asses away…..we have plenty of ammo. We’ll launch 1,000 bombs to save a single soldier. Don’t fuck with us.

The locals KNEW their asses had been kicked.

 

[Zoo_View]

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.

Was it a mechanized war?

WWI was mired in trenches and the muddy Fields of Flanders.

Americans in the Civil War and Russians, Turks, Brits, French, Sardinians, and others in the Crimean War demonstrated that the Napoleonic Charge was antiquated militarily; yet, British, French, and German (and American) generals and military “tacticians” thought charging into machine gun fire and locked-in artillery fire made sense.

 

[TarSpiel]

Remember the Lusitania!

Nerd.

 

[p5mmr9]

This is nearly impossible to forecast because the effects of the war, the following peace decade, the great depression, and the second world war. My view is that the USA should have entered sooner, which would have led to a more hasty resolution to the conflict, however what impact that may have had on the Hungarian and German empires is unknown. What type of defeat would they have experienced? It is conceivable the "Treaty of Versailles" would have been less vengeful and possibly less revanchist - but it's really impossible to know for certain.

However what CAN be theorised is that the war would have dragged on had the USA not entered...which would have been far more costly to Europe and (by extension) the rest of the world. I'm also not sure how you can theorise that without the USA entering WWI - there would be no WWII. You appear to be trying to link the rise of Naziism with the USA's entrance to WWI - which seems like a real stretch.

Wilson dithered a bit and it was costly for everyone involved. Roosevelt basically did the same but he was "rescued" by Japanese hubris. Prior to WWII - the USA had long thought itself "immune" to the comings and goings of European politics, but that was always a foolish viewpoint. We have been interconnected since the first colonies started shipping goods back and forth to Europe.

 

[Sandinista]

Yes.

 

[Sandinista]

wait, I misread the question. No.

 

[Sandinista]

Wait. Oh I see! Yes, of course!

 

[gtyellowjacket]

This is nearly impossible to forecast because the effects of the war, the following peace decade, the great depression, and the second world war. My view is that the USA should have entered sooner, which would have led to a more hasty resolution to the conflict, however what impact that may have had on the Hungarian and German empires is unknown. What type of defeat would they have experienced? It is conceivable the "Treaty of Versailles" would have been less vengeful and possibly less revanchist - but it's really impossible to know for certain.

However what CAN be theorised is that the war would have dragged on had the USA not entered...which would have been far more costly to Europe and (by extension) the rest of the world. I'm also not sure how you can theorise that without the USA entering WWI - there would be no WWII. You appear to be trying to link the rise of Naziism with the USA's entrance to WWI - which seems like a real stretch.

Wilson dithered a bit and it was costly for everyone involved. Roosevelt basically did the same but he was "rescued" by Japanese hubris. Prior to WWII - the USA had long thought itself "immune" to the comings and goings of European politics, but that was always a foolish viewpoint. We have been interconnected since the first colonies started shipping goods back and forth to Europe.

Nice post. I think the US not entering could have dragged the war on. I'm not sure it would have been worse for Europe. Usually a short war is better but Versailles was such a bad treaty, because the Central powers were in such a bad spot, that it set the stage for an even worse war. And at least some people were saying this at the time. And of course you are right that we can't know what would happen.

But the US could choose to be immune from Europe. We had been for a long time before WW1 while the Europeans were buying our stuff so they could run up the body count and it worked out pretty well (for us).

And I would link the rise pf Nazism to that Versailles treaty. Would it have as harsh without the US? Unknown but very possible bordering on probable. The French were having mutinies every other month towards the end. I'm not sure they really last for another 2 years when their commanders are throwing them into the meat grinder for a few yards.