Should the US have stayed out of WWI?

[Skill and Chance]

This question comes up a lot and is usually predicated on a faulty premise: that the American entry into the war tipped the balance and turned a likely victory for the Central Powers into a victory for the Entente. But this is not true. An Allied victory at some point was all-but guaranteed from the moment that the initial German offensive on the Western Front failed in 1914, as many members of the German General Staff realised at once. The central dynamic of the First World War (and the reason why it was so appallingly bloody) was that the Central Powers were not strong enough to win the war, but were strong enough to prevent the Allied Powers from forcing a defeat barring total collapse - which, of course, is eventually what happened. By 1917 Germany was essentially under the control of an emergency wartime military dictatorship as it usual power structures had collapsed under strain, and this government was struggling to feed its population, adequately supply its troops or replace causalities. Meanwhile its two principal allies were both palpably falling to pieces. The Ludendorff Offensive was a final desperate roll of the dice - an idiotic gamble under the circumstances - and had clearly failed before American troops reached the trenches. What American involvement did was bring the war to a sudden, rapid conclusion. This was an extremely significant thing to have happened (and there is an argument that this was not entirely positive, for all the lives saved at the time, given that the strange, abrupt nature of the collapse of the German armed forces perhaps made the propagation of the Stab In The Back Myth easier) but it did not settle the outcome of the war, which was already obvious enough.

That's a good point, and I could certainly see the Entente winning even without US intervention after a few more years of grinding fight (although I maybe wouldn't share your degree of certainty about it? It's true that time was in a sense on their side, but France's lines could have cracked in those next few years, and if they did and Germany occupied all of France 1871-style they'd be able to end things on very favorable terms). But even then, I'm going to fall on the side of "it's better to end mindless slaughter sooner rather than later". The stab in the back narrative was important in the rise of German revanchism, but there's no guarantee that some other form of revanchism couldn't have taken hold anyway, and regardless of whether it did, the political future of a truly broken Germany would have been plenty dire (especially given the likely even more punitive version of the Versailles treaty they'd get). And of course making France and Britain even more exhausted from years of fighting might lead him to say "screw it" and just let Hitler (or whatever Hitler equivalent ends up in power) take Poland.

Really, the ideal would have been for the US to get into the war from the start or at least in 1915-16, leading to a quick and decisive defeat of the Central Powers and peace on relatively less punitive terms because the Entente aren't yet embittered by years of fighting.

I think WWI from 1917 onward would be too close to call if the US never joined at all.  Maybe it's like 55/45 in favor of the Central Powers because I like their chances of taking Paris in 1918 after the Eastern Front winds down and, like you suggested, perhaps outright conquering France in 1919 after that breakthrough.  Germany was also generally the first to develop and deploy novel weapons in WWI, so for example I also like their odds of eventually developing something that can strike London from territory they control.

However, if it continues as a siege for multiple years, you would expect Germany to run out of food and fuel first if the Entente could hold the line long enough.  That's the way that still win without the US, but it would be absolutely brutal and could drag on into the early 1920's.

[RINO Tom]

Oh God, this f**king thread again.

No, supporting the Entente was a moral as well as a strategic imperative, and their victory was the preferrable outcome for Europe by any reasonably assessable criteria. People who think a Central Powers victory wouldn't have led to equal or worse disasters in the following decades are ignorant buffoons.

Yeah, this is a scalding hot historical revisionism take, IMO.  People act like we jumped in eagerly, we were repeatedly insulted and targeted by Germany as the war escalated into a more serious and taxing conflict on the world.  By the time we entered, we were totally justified in doing so, and there’s a reason that’s a near consensus among historians most knowledgeable on the subject.  It’s especially odd seeing modern liberals advocate for not fighting the Central Powers … the whole “WWI was pointless” narrative has been bastardized so badly.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Oh God, this f**king thread again.

No, supporting the Entente was a moral as well as a strategic imperative, and their victory was the preferrable outcome for Europe by any reasonably assessable criteria. People who think a Central Powers victory wouldn't have led to equal or worse disasters in the following decades are ignorant buffoons.

Yeah, this is a scalding hot historical revisionism take, IMO.  People act like we jumped in eagerly, we were repeatedly insulted and targeted by Germany as the war escalated into a more serious and taxing conflict on the world.  By the time we entered, we were totally justified in doing so, and there’s a reason that’s a near consensus among historians most knowledgeable on the subject.  It’s especially odd seeing modern liberals advocate for not fighting the Central Powers … the whole “WWI was pointless” narrative has been bastardized so badly.

THIS

It really feels like the knee-jerk isolationist backlash against Dubya-era geopolitical adventurism has terminally poisoned the minds of an entire generation of people. Of course, you see that even more worryingly in so many people's reactions to the war in Ukraine. The very idea that the US has any responsibility to use its enormous geopolitical power in any way in defense (even when it's unambiguously defense!) of democracies is now controversial apparently.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The Allied powers of the the UK, France, and eventually the US were famously equivalent in being bad as the German Empire, the Austrian monarchy, and the Young Turkifed Ottomans.

(The Russian Empire on the Allied side is the exception that proves the rule—I seem to recall some Events that took them out of the war, right around the time when the US was getting in…).

[All Along The Watchtower]

Oh God, this f**king thread again.

No, supporting the Entente was a moral as well as a strategic imperative, and their victory was the preferrable outcome for Europe by any reasonably assessable criteria. People who think a Central Powers victory wouldn't have led to equal or worse disasters in the following decades are ignorant buffoons.

Yeah, this is a scalding hot historical revisionism take, IMO.  People act like we jumped in eagerly, we were repeatedly insulted and targeted by Germany as the war escalated into a more serious and taxing conflict on the world.  By the time we entered, we were totally justified in doing so, and there’s a reason that’s a near consensus among historians most knowledgeable on the subject.  It’s especially odd seeing modern liberals advocate for not fighting the Central Powers … the whole “WWI was pointless” narrative has been bastardized so badly.

THIS

It really feels like the knee-jerk isolationist backlash against Dubya-era geopolitical adventurism has terminally poisoned the minds of an entire generation of people. Of course, you see that even more worryingly in so many people's reactions to the war in Ukraine. The very idea that the US has any responsibility to use its enormous geopolitical power in any way in defense (even when it's unambiguously defense!) of democracies is now controversial apparently.

IMO it’s also a consequence of a lot of the Left embracing a kind of cold-blooded, simplistic  “realism” where the power of sovereign states is what’s important and regime type (democracy vs dictatorship, and everything in-between) being irrelevant.

Combine that with the myopic Cold War-alignment  “anti-imperialism” in which the bourgeois capitalist-imperialist US and its allies are the Main Character/Enemy of everything good and pure in the world, along with the long history of leftists turning a blind eye at best to the crimes of Communist and other “anti-Western” regimes, and well, you have a recipe for some truly sh-t takes on geopolitics.

[Badger]

Oh God, this f**king thread again.

No, supporting the Entente was a moral as well as a strategic imperative, and their victory was the preferrable outcome for Europe by any reasonably assessable criteria. People who think a Central Powers victory wouldn't have led to equal or worse disasters in the following decades are ignorant buffoons.

This.

[The Mikado]

As much as Woodrow Wilson has incredible faults in other respects (including and especially the Paris Peace Conference), Wilson's approach of "Keep the USA out of the war until it's literally impossible for the USA to not be in it" was basically right.

The USA was right to not join the war in 1914 or 1915 or 1916 and the USA was also in its rights TO join the war in 1917 when Germany reintroduced unrestricted submarine warfare and invited Mexico to attack it.

Not only in its rights, but I don't see how Wilson COULD have kept the USA out of the war after the Zimmerman Telegraph was publicized. The American people wanted German blood.

I do think that preserving US neutrality as long as possible was the right approach and if the USA hadn't been directly provoked by Germany, staying out was the right course, but, frankly, Germany needed to gamble on reintroducing unrestricted submarine warfare. There was zero chance it'd win without it.

[Buffalo Mayor Young Kim]

For everyone talking about the Zimmerman telegram what gets ignored is it was a contingency.
They were asking Mexico to attack the US IF the US declared war on Germany.

[RINO Tom]

For everyone talking about the Zimmerman telegram what gets ignored is it was a contingency.
They were asking Mexico to attack the US IF the US declared war on Germany.

Right, but the reason they sent it in the first place is because they’d done so many things to provoke us already.  Lol.