If President Wilson had resisted the pressure to bring the U.S. into World War I - what would the

[Douglas Carpenter]

world be like today? That was after all his campaign promise during the Presidential election of 1916. Would the world be a better place today if America had not entered the war to end all wars?

[The Magistrate]

1. Obviously, Sir, Any Comment Is Speculative

I do think it is possible a peace of exhaustion between the two sides could have come about in 1917, absent the stiffening given by the prospect of U.S. power. This may well have avoided the Bolshevik revolution, as the principle fuel for this was the resolve of the Kerensky government to continue at war.

A peace of exhaustion, however, would likely have altered the map of Europe considerably. German would probably have been left in possession of much of Belgium and possibly even portions of northern France. It is hard to imagine this not leading to considerable revanchist sentiment. It is just as hard to imagine naval and colonial rivalries between an augmented Germany and England would not have led to periodic crisis. While the Bolshevik revolution might well have been avoided, the ethnic rebellions in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic States and Finland, likely would have occurred still. Fighting in the Caucasus, riven by ethnic and religious hatred and driven by desire for oil ( the region was the Saudi Arabia of the day ), I expect would have continued regardless. Here Ottoman Turkey regarded Germany with as much hostility as it regarded England, and any Russian government would at least have tried to fight for the Baku fields, and for Czarist claims in Persia. In the Orient, Japanese predations on China would certainly have continued, and China was already by 1917 breaking up into the fragmentation of the War Lord period. A German presence remaining in the Pacific would likely have been hostile to Japan, as Japan had taken German possessions there by 1917, and would have been unlikely to return them. But it would also have been hostile to England and France, which both had considerable interests there.

One thing to remember is that, for all the protestations of Freedom of the Seas and Making the World Safe For Democracy, Wilson went to war to protect the U.S. investment in the Allied powers: England and France owed the United States by early 1917 tremendous amounts for armaments delivered on credit, and these would certainly have been defaulted on were Germany victorious, and likely to have been defaulted on in the event of a peace of exhaustion.

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. I wonder if the rise of Nazism and World War II (at least as we knew it) would have been avoided

if any settlement that ended World War I had been a bit more on German terms which I think one could reasonably speculate would have been likely had the U.S. not entered the war?

[The Magistrate]

4. Some Of It, Sir

I expect you would still have had fascism, or something pretty close in Italy, and in eastern Europe. Fascism, in the context of its time of origin, was a modernizing tendency, and the places afflicted with it were poorly developed industrially and backward socially, with, in Italy, tremendous damage taken in the course of the war as well, compounded of both great casualties and obvious mismanagement. By 1917 the leading combatants all had suffered great harm. That is what makes the prospects of a peace of exhaustion setting in in 1917 a realistic speculation. The French army was in a state of mutiny from June of 1917; the English army was being bled white that same summer; Germany was cracking up politically and on its last legs in terms of food and raw materials as well as manpower; Austria-Hungary was ruined; Ottoman Turkey was stripped of virtually all its land empire already. The levels of casualties, and degree of disillusionment, afflicting all the societies involved in the war, were already sufficient to inflict great damage and strain to political and social and economic norms.

To the degree that Nazi-ism was a reaction to Bolshevism, or perhaps more precisely that much of its real popular appeal and respectability owed to its being seen as a counter to Bolshevism, a failure of the Bolshevik Revolution to manifest would largely preclude Nazi-ism developing. But totalitarianism, on nationalist lines, presenting itself as a restorative and modernizing force able to unite the whole people of a state, I expect would certainly have still arisen, and might well even have come to dominate in both Russia and Germany, as well as France. Again, it is hard to see such trends not coming to blows in a new generation.

[roamer65]

3. One of the first jobs of the Federal Reserve was war financing.

The British and French would not have lasted very long without our funding. We floated them a $500M loan at 5 pct in late 1915, then the Federal Reserve handled much of the sale of Liberty bonds which provided further funding.

Highly unlikely for us to stay out of it, as the bankers needed their "investment" defended. All money would have been lost with a German victory.

[Agnosticsherbet]

5. The U.S., at best, just hurried the conclusion of the war.

It would have ended pretty much as it did, though maybe lasted another year.

Wilson backed the League of Nations, which failed. But without the work to create the League of Nations the eventual creation of the UN would probably not have happened.

The harsh sanctions put on Germany would have likely been harsher, and WWII would have happened anyway.

The domination by the right wing isolationist would have been much stronger between the WWI and WWII.

The US railroad system wold never have developed as it did. Lack of standardization and cooperation led to the U.S. government to nationalize the railroads for WWI. Without the USRA it wold have continued as a backwards, underpowered system that would not serve the expanding industrilaization.

Wilson woked hand in hand with the Unions in WWI and led to their acceptance. The Unions push to raise wags and get good working conditions created the middle class the made the U.S of A after WWII into an econmic powerhouse.