Did the US make the correct decision to enter the First World War?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

a Germany that was victorious in 1914 (before the turks enter the fray) might not have been a bad thing per se. Of course we'll never know.

[Razgovory]

How does Germany get a "reduced Royal Navy"?  They had no means of touching Great Britain.  Even if the Germans force France to capitulate they couldn't impose their will on Britain.

This is all from Raz saying an Entente or Alliance victory made no difference. So as I said at the time if they won and imposed their terms this is what I think would happen and it would have led to tension with the US at least as much as Japan's part in the Entente victory.

I don't think the Germans could have won but I think a Germany victory wouldn't have been in the US's interests.

I said it wasn't going to make a difference for the US.  To extend Naval power you need bases, and they didn't have that.  The US was building up it's naval power prior to WWI.

[Ideologue]

I wish Neil were here; I recall discussing German naval buildup with him once post-1900 and there were some physical constraints on that due to geography, that might have been overcome if they occupied the Low Countries.

That said, building a bigger navy than the U.S. would've been impossible unless we just didn't try.  More powerful, maybe, if they'd embraced CVs more wholeheartedly than they could be expected to, but the Japanese did just that and it didn't work out for them.

[Sheilbh]

I said it wasn't going to make a difference for the US.  To extend Naval power you need bases, and they didn't have that.  The US was building up it's naval power prior to WWI.

And if they won and imposed their conditions they'd have a chunk of Belgium, treaty ports along the North Sea coast and a big chunk of British South Africa - basically the same sort of bases Britain had needed to maintain the Indian Empire.

At least those were the goals by the end, on both sides they grew as the war went on.

[grumbler]

I said it wasn't going to make a difference for the US.  To extend Naval power you need bases, and they didn't have that.  The US was building up it's naval power prior to WWI.

And if they won and imposed their conditions they'd have a chunk of Belgium, treaty ports along the North Sea coast and a big chunk of British South Africa - basically the same sort of bases Britain had needed to maintain the Indian Empire.

At least those were the goals by the end, on both sides they grew as the war went on.

I'm kinda curious where you are getting all of this.  Germany never planned to take a chunk of Belgium, nor any of British South Africa.  The Germans told Wilson when he issued his peace challenge in December 1916:

...restitution of the part of upper Alsace occupied by the French..gaining of a frontier that would protect Germany and Poland economically and strategically against Russia..restitution of German colonies...restitution of those parts of France occupied by Germany under reservation of strategical and economic changes of the frontier and financial compensations...restoration of Belgium under special guaranty for the safety of Germany which would have to be decided on by negotiations with Belgium..economic compensation for territories exchanged and for German business concerns and private persons who suffered by the war..abandonment of all economic agreements and measure which would form an obstacle to normal commerece and intercourse after the conclusion of peace..the freedom of the seas...

according to Peace Moves and U-Boat Warfare, K.E.Birnbaum, Stockholm,1958

Fischer made wilder claims, but they weren't based on anything the German government had said, just on a monograph written by a junior clerk who had been asked to find out what the German industrialists wanted out of the war.  that monograph was never policy.

[Sheilbh]

Most of its from memory in Richard Evans book on the rise of the Nazis - which I rummaged for to confirm but can't find - I remember it being what the military wanted. As I say I think all sides wanted a significantly more punitive peace as the war went on.

Although I would query what 'freedom of the seas' for example might mean in the context of Wilhelmine Germany.

[Razgovory]

I said it wasn't going to make a difference for the US.  To extend Naval power you need bases, and they didn't have that.  The US was building up it's naval power prior to WWI.

And if they won and imposed their conditions they'd have a chunk of Belgium, treaty ports along the North Sea coast and a big chunk of British South Africa - basically the same sort of bases Britain had needed to maintain the Indian Empire.

At least those were the goals by the end, on both sides they grew as the war went on.

They would need bases in the Americas to bother the US.  Which power in Europe manages to tyrannize the peoples of Africa or India is not our concern. Hell, weakened Britain and France might sells some of their possessions to the US and Germany would have it's resources stretched just keeping all of its plates spinning in Europe.  To put it quite frankly, the more dead Euros there are, the better off the US is.  European imperialism might even end earlier.

[Sheilbh]

I doubt it.

Look the Royal Navy generally speaking allowed the US to not need to do a great deal in the Atlantic. An arms race for the Atlantic, or a new naval power would change that - hence the increase in American ship-building prior to entering the war. Apply the same view you have of Japan in the Pacific to Germany in the Atlantic - they don't need to be bothering the US for there to be problems.

They don't need to bother you, you don't need to care about Africa or India (my point was that they would have African bases) and it wouldn't necessarily lead to conflict. But a change like that would make a difference to the US and, in my view, it would be far more consequential than Japan.

[dps]

I doubt it.

Look the Royal Navy generally speaking allowed the US to not need to do a great deal in the Atlantic. An arms race for the Atlantic, or a new naval power would change that - hence the increase in American ship-building prior to entering the war. Apply the same view you have of Japan in the Pacific to Germany in the Atlantic - they don't need to be bothering the US for there to be problems.

They don't need to bother you, you don't need to care about Africa or India (my point was that they would have African bases) and it wouldn't necessarily lead to conflict. But a change like that would make a difference to the US and, in my view, it would be far more consequential than Japan.

Yeah, but the logic behind the Washington Naval Treaties would still apply.  A naval arms race in the 1920s might have hurt the US economy a bit, but it would have probably bankrupted a Germany that had been victorious in WWI, so it would have still made sense to come to an agreement to limit naval construction.  Granted, a victorious Germany might have been tougher to negotiate that with than a victorious Britian, but the principle would have still been there.

[Agelastus]

The Germans told Wilson when he issued his peace challenge in December 1916:

...restitution of the part of upper Alsace occupied by the French..gaining of a frontier that would protect Germany and Poland economically and strategically against Russia..restitution of German colonies...restitution of those parts of France occupied by Germany under reservation of strategical and economic changes of the frontier and financial compensations...restoration of Belgium under special guaranty for the safety of Germany which would have to be decided on by negotiations with Belgium..economic compensation for territories exchanged and for German business concerns and private persons who suffered by the war..abandonment of all economic agreements and measure which would form an obstacle to normal commerece and intercourse after the conclusion of peace..the freedom of the seas...

according to Peace Moves and U-Boat Warfare, K.E.Birnbaum, Stockholm,1958

Fischer made wilder claims, but they weren't based on anything the German government had said, just on a monograph written by a junior clerk who had been asked to find out what the German industrialists wanted out of the war.  that monograph was never policy.

Which sounds reasonable until you realise just exactly what the second, almost innocuous, line quoted above translated to in the peace of Brest-Litovsk.

I fail to see why you think a victorious Wilhelmine Germany would have been less severe in the west (or for that matter more honest concerning its western ambitions than its eastern ambitions when communicating with Wilson.) Particularly when you consider how vague, open ended and severe some of the terms quoted up there actually are - and when you consider that none of them contradict the Septemberprogramm (and some sound eerily like it - a "special guarantee" with Belgium, "reservation of strategical and economic changes of the frontier" etc.)

[Razgovory]

I doubt it.

Look the Royal Navy generally speaking allowed the US to not need to do a great deal in the Atlantic. An arms race for the Atlantic, or a new naval power would change that - hence the increase in American ship-building prior to entering the war. Apply the same view you have of Japan in the Pacific to Germany in the Atlantic - they don't need to be bothering the US for there to be problems.

They don't need to bother you, you don't need to care about Africa or India (my point was that they would have African bases) and it wouldn't necessarily lead to conflict. But a change like that would make a difference to the US and, in my view, it would be far more consequential than Japan.

What exactly do you expect the Germans to do in the Atlantic?  You do know the US had a very large navy prior to WWI, larger then Germany I believe.  The Pacific was consequential because it did lead to conflict.  The US navy viewed war with Japan as all but inevitable, and the bases near by to attack the US possession in the Pacific (as they did in 1941 and '42).  A German base in Dakar is not a staging point to threaten US anywhere.   As DPS points out, any arms race in the Atlantic is going to be won by the US, and isn't likely to hurt the US economically much anyway.

[Razgovory]

So is there some kind of narrative that the British saved the Atlantic from the Hun in the UK?

[grumbler]

Which sounds reasonable until you realise just exactly what the second, almost innocuous, line quoted above translated to in the peace of Brest-Litovsk.

The treaty with the giant ants wasn't signed as part of a general peace agreement, because the Allies (and Lloyd George in particular) wanted the war to go on.

I fail to see why you think a victorious Wilhelmine Germany would have been less severe in the west (or for that matter more honest concerning its western ambitions than its eastern ambitions when communicating with Wilson.) Particularly when you consider how vague, open ended and severe some of the terms quoted up there actually are - and when you consider that none of them contradict the Septemberprogramm (and some sound eerily like it - a "special guarantee" with Belgium, "reservation of strategical and economic changes of the frontier" etc.)

None of these refer to treaty ports, or British colonies, or French colonies in the Caribbean, or the other wild claims made in this thread.

I do think a victorious Wilhelmine Germany would have been less severe than a victorious Britain and France proved to be.  British and French war aims proved to be tragically short-sighted, though, and it'd be hard to argue that Kaiser Wilhelm was actually less stupid than Lloyd George, so maybe Germany would have botched the peace as badly as the Allies did.

[Sheilbh]

So is there some kind of narrative that the British saved the Atlantic from the Hun in the UK?

No. That's what literally no-one is saying.

I'm not going to say the same thing again and again so I'll use an analogy. If the US disappeared tomorrow and, say, Russia or Japan became the new dominant or competitive power in the Pacific that would matter and have consequences for Australia regardless of where it leads. It would make a difference and both of those powers would become a potential danger - regardless of what might happen. I mean if nothing else it would probably have a large impact on the nature of global trade.

To say the Germans posed no threat to US interests if they won is wrong. That doesn't mean they could win. That doesn't mean the US was necessarily right or wrong to enter the war and it certainly doesn't mean pickelhaubes were about to crawl out of the Rio Grande.

[grumbler]

To say the Germans posed no threat to US interests if they won is wrong. 

True, but also true of Britain, France, and Russia if (and when) they won.