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John OConnor
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Joined: 01 August 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 16 October 2010 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | 1
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Couple of things -- Wilson's stroke might've had more to do with is change of mental status than the flu, and the larger scales of troops from the US arrived in the early fall of 1917.
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Vinny Valenti
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Joined: 17 April 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 16 October 2010 at 8:21pm | IP Logged | 2
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Paul Kimball wrote:
I would guess that many of us wouldn't exist and the world would be different in
more ways that we could possibly imagine |
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/Raises hand! My grandfather was an American Soldier fighting in Europe during WWII, where he met my Hungarian grandmother. So, I definitely would not have existed were it not for that war.
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Steven Myers
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Joined: 10 June 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 16 October 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | 3
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From what I understand, the British were getting very good at trench warfare and would have beaten the Germans anyway. Would the US have been confident enough to ever fight WWII if we'd have sat out the Great War?
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Kevin Brown
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Joined: 31 May 2005
Location: United States
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| Posted: 16 October 2010 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | 4
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Would the US have been confident enough to ever fight WWII if we'd have sat out the Great War? ************************************ At that point in history, Americans knew they could beat anyone at anytime anywhere.
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Jeremiah Avery
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Joined: 27 December 2008
Location: United States
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| Posted: 16 October 2010 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | 5
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Actually, at that point in history, our military was ranked below Poland's.
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Chris Durnell
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Joined: 26 February 2005
Location: United States
Posts: 1235
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| Posted: 17 October 2010 at 9:29am | IP Logged | 6
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QUOTE:
| with no WW2, the US economy would have been crushed by Europe and Asia by the 1960s. |
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I don't think that's right. The US would not have been as economically dominant without WWII, but it would not have been crushed. The war destroyed the financial resources of Europe and Japan, and with the devastation the US enjoyed a hegemony post-war that would not have been possible otherwise.
But without the war, Europe and Japan would not have been able to build completely new and up to date infrastructure and machine tools. Furthermore, they would not been open to American managerial and mass production techniques which were better than anyone else at the world at that time. They also would not have had an American military umbrella that allowed them to focus on civilian economic accomplishments instead of diverting money to unproductive areas. And of course, the US would likely never have the superpower commitments that drained away its own resources.
I don't see any problems for the US at all, certainly not be the 1960s.
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Chris Durnell
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| Posted: 17 October 2010 at 9:40am | IP Logged | 7
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QUOTE:
| From what I understand, the British were getting very good at trench warfare and would have beaten the Germans anyway. |
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I disagree. The British offensives even up to 1917 were some of the worse of the war. They were extremely bad all around. The British were experimenting with tanks and beginning to develop a combined arms doctrine, but it is unknown if they could have turned that into a decisive advantage.
Both Britain and France had been bled white by 1918. The French Army had even mutinied the year before. Morale was low, and neither nation had any manpower reserves. Of course, the Germans had suffered heavy casualties too, and had the added burden of Britain's economic blockade.
But the Germans had achieved considerable success in their spring offensives. If the Germans could have taken Paris, it is likely Britain and France would have concluded that they had lost the war and sought peace. If America was not in the war, and the Allies knew they would not have any fresh troops arriving in the future (nor the low numbers of American troops actually in France to stem the tide in the spring), there is a strong possibility the Allies' morale would have collapse, and the Germans could have taken Paris.
It is also possible to argue that the Allies could still have held on. There are too many unknowns at that point. Depending on one's assumptions, several things can be argued.
But the British were certainly not masters of trench warfare. The Germans were far superior with their storm trooper tactics. The British were beginning to develop the first steps towards what would later be called blitzkrieg, but it was very, very early. Tanks were still unreliable, slow, and lacked radios. They had little manpower left. I don't see the Allies driving the Germans back without the arrival of American troops and its subsequent benefits to Allied morale.
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Doug Campbell
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| Posted: 17 October 2010 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | 8
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One might also keep in mind that the decision wasn't really Wilson's to make in the first place. Clemenceau of France and Lloyd George of Britain were never consulted when the views Wilson expressed in his Fourteen Points were formulated, and they outweighed Wilson in Paris in 1919. It is difficult to imagine that the French especially ever would have settled for anything less than a punitive peace given what they had gone through since 1870, no matter what the state of Wilson's opinions might have been.
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Bill Catellier
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Joined: 19 September 2007
Location: United States
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| Posted: 17 October 2010 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | 9
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WW II still happens. Perhaps Germany isn't the focus, but Italy still a fascist state & Japan still a conquering empire. The lack of flu leads to a larger population ie fewer resources per person. When all said and done, hatred, envy, and jealousy are too prominent. Eventually it all boils over and war happens. Perhaps sides are chosen a little differently, perhaps the U.S. enters at a different time and for different reasons, but WW II comes.
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Steven Myers
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Joined: 10 June 2004
Location: United States
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| Posted: 17 October 2010 at 1:44pm | IP Logged | 10
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I would ass that America's financial success (as well as wartime success) is largely due to using available natural resources, so becoming a world power was inevitable unless we really ever had a successful civil war.
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Topic Closed)
