WI USA stays out of World War I?

Churchill once said:

"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government - and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives."

IMO I think he is right - had the US not entered WW I - then there would have been no WW II no Communism no National Socialism, no clod war ect

Use the search function, we've discussed this several times, including in the last 6 weeks I think.

wiking said:

Use the search function, we've discussed this several times, including in the last 6 weeks I think.

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That said, I don't recall anyone ever suggesting an amicable peace was imminent in 1916/1917...

Churchill was a great man in some respects, but this is almost certainly wishful thinking. Neither the French nor the British (in the First World War) displayed any especial tendency to surrender even when things looked far bleaker than they would have done if the United States hadn't entered the war. France would have surrendered when it coud fight no more, just as Germany did IOTL, simply because the stakes were too high for anything else; to give an unforced surrender would be to implicitly admit that all the millions of soldiers who died for the nation died for nothing and it was all a senseless waste, and no national leadership of any major power in the First World War was willing to make that admission unless their hand was forced, as the Central Powers' hands were eventually forced, only after much more bloodshed, IOTL.

And given that France, Belgium and almost all of Eastern Europe would all be occupied by the Kaiserreich (which wouldn't be a pleasant experience at all) in the aftermath of the First World War and (in Eastern Europe's case) indefinitely, that Serbia and Romania would be humiliated and looking for revenge, and that the UK would be unlikely to react well to its colonial empire slowly breaking free from a bankrupted and militarily discredited UK, the idea that there would be no political extremism in Europe in a CP victory scenario is very doubtful. It's also worth noting that the treaties that the Kaiserreich inflicted/planned to inflict on its defeated opponents were harsh enough to make OTL's Treaty of Versailles look like a slap on the wrist, so France, unless it was just made a German puppet state indefinitely, would stand a reasonable chance of getting an extremist government (on either side of the political spectrum) and one could make similar statements for Belgium and Russia. Of course, it's not certain that political extremism would erupt in all these places, but any of them would have the potential for it and I'd expect it in at least some of them.

Also: this scenario has been discussed many times before. I don't mean to be condescending, but I recommend you use the search function, which does work.

Perfidious Albion said:

And given that France, Belgium and almost all of Eastern Europe would all be occupied by the Kaiserreich (which wouldn't be a pleasant experience at all) in the aftermath of the First World War and (in Eastern Europe's case)
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It's also worth noting that the treaties that the Kaiserreich inflicted/planned to inflict on its defeated opponents were harsh enough to make OTL's Treaty of Versailles look like a slap on the wrist, so France, unless it was just made a German puppet state indefinitely...

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Any sources worth looking at? I have a Fritz Fischer book on my bookshelf, but I understood it had been discredited somewhat.

We have been over this question several times. That being said...

1. Without an American entry into the war, the Allies may not have lasted beyond 1917, because there were on the verge of total bankruptcy. It was American loans provided after the declaration of war that prevented this from happening. Fiscal matters are always underrated in AH.com, but this was absolutely crucial.

2. Let's assume #1 doesn't happen. In 1918, the French and British probably would have been able to halt the German Spring Offensive without American help, but they would have lacked the offensive power to mount the Hundred Days Offensive. The result would have been the war dragging on into 1919.

BooNZ said:

Any sources worth looking at? I have a Fritz Fischer book on my bookshelf, but I understood it had been discredited somewhat.

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OTL Brest-Litovsk is the most obvious example. It did make OTL Versailles look like a slap on the wrist. Seriously, compared to the Kaiserreich the Entente powers were incredibly magnanimous. That's not to say that they were magnanimous on any absolute scale, but relative to Imperial Germany they certainly were.

Fritz Fischer has been discredited in that he took a source that showed what reactionary, fiercely nationalist German officers were thinking during the war (i.e. plenty of expansionist ambitions) and assumed that it must have been the motivation before the war for why to enter the war in the first place. That doesn't mean that those expansionist ambitions didn't exist, and by late WW1 the German Army was essentially in government and those reactionary, fiercely nationalist officers had a major voice. And judging by how harsh Brest-Litovsk was IOTL (this is the most important piece of evidence), voices calling for such radical and impractical proposals certainly weren't ignored.

I'm still musing on the impact on American society, ie "how you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree". Weren't a fair number of European ideas, from food to philosophy to Marxism to war brides, brought over in the aftermath? What if that never happened?
Most posters tend to concentrate on the military/political angle, any one interested in the social one?

PandaRosa said:

I'm still musing on the impact on American society, ie "how you gonna keep them down on the farm, after they've seen Paree". Weren't a fair number of European ideas, from food to philosophy to Marxism to war brides, brought over in the aftermath? What if that never happened?
Most posters tend to concentrate on the military/political angle, any one interested in the social one?

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For one thing Wilson wouldn't use the war as an excuse to wipe out the Socialists in the US via the Espionage Act. We wouldn't get the major economic expansion that resulted in the 1917-18 period, nor the extra money from loan payments from our Allies, nor the loans to Germany to prop them up after the war. We also avoid the over farming that led to the Dustbowl too, especially if Russia doesn't go Bolshevik and cut off food exports to Europe that required the US to make up the difference post war. German doesn't get beaten down culturally in the US either, so German remains the most popular second language and culturally German-Americans remain a major political and social force. There will be no prohibition without WW1, so less crime, especially organized crime. The US was already on the path toward adopting a German-style health insurance program before the war, but anti-German sentiments killed that idea, along with the post-war swing back to Republican administrations, which prevented the Democratic backed healthcare reform. So we probably get universal healthcare without US participation in WW1 and we are unlikely to get the Republican administrations of the 1920s that helped result in the Great Depression.

The US probably has a large recession in the early 1930s, but we don't have a Great Depression on the level that we know it.

I won't comment on the rest, wiking, but be careful about the comment about German-Americans. American public opinion in many places was sufficiently pro-Entente that they were already being persecuted fairly severely years before the United States formally entered the war. Anti-German sentiments will be weaker without the war but they certainly won't disappear, and nor will repression of German-Americans.

Perfidious Albion said:

I won't comment on the rest, wiking, but be careful about the comment about German-Americans. American public opinion in many places was sufficiently pro-Entente that they were already being persecuted fairly severely years before the United States formally entered the war. Anti-German sentiments will be weaker without the war but they certainly won't disappear, and nor will repression of German-Americans.

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Can you provide some sourcing on that? I hadn't really heard much of that prior to Germany's resumption of USW, the Lusitania not withstanding. Of course there was some ill-will in the US over Germany's behavior in Belgium and over the first round of USW, but I hadn't read about much overt hostility to German-Americans and their culture in the US prior to the Creel Commission and the resumption of USW in 1917.

Perfidious Albion said:

OTL Brest-Litovsk is the most obvious example. It did make OTL Versailles look like a slap on the wrist.

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OTOH it didn't make St Germain, Trianon or Sevres look like slaps on the wrist.

Basically weren't all the WW1 peace treaties pretty much of a muchness? Afaik they all followed the same pattern, of stripping off the areas populated by ethnic minorities. So Russia lost more at BL than Germany at Versailles because more of it was inhabited by minorities, while Austria, Hungary and Turkey in turn lost more than Russia had, because they had more "minority" areas still.

From what I can gather, a defeated France would have lost Longwy-Briey, possibly Belfort and/or other small border areas, and probably a colony or three. Germany might also have wanted naval bases in French territory, which might or might not have involved annexation. No doubt the French would have been unhappy, but is that really so much worse than Versailles?

Anaxagoras said:

2. Let's assume #1 doesn't happen. In 1918, the French and British probably would have been able to halt the German Spring Offensive without American help, but they would have lacked the offensive power to mount the Hundred Days Offensive. The result would have been the war dragging on into 1919.

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Without the Americans, the Germans wouldn't have mounted the Spring Offensive, it was a last, desperate bid to beat the Entente before the US swamped the front-line.

Mikestone8 said:

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From what I can gather, a defeated France would have lost Longwy-Briey, possibly Belfort and/or other small border areas, and probably a colony or three. Germany might also have wanted naval bases in French territory, which might or might not have involved annexation. No doubt the French would have been unhappy, but is that really so much worse than Versailles?

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That would be consistent with my understanding. Any territorial aspirations in the West would also have been moderated by the Royal Navy and the return of German colonies (or not).

MattII said:

Without the Americans, the Germans wouldn't have mounted the Spring Offensive, it was a last, desperate bid to beat the Entente before the US swamped the front-line.

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On the other hand, if the war is still ongoing, the Germans will still be starving from the blockade, even if the US stays out (assuming the loans don't cripple the British).

Just a Rube said:

On the other hand, if the war is still ongoing, the Germans will still be starving from the blockade, even if the US stays out (assuming the loans don't cripple the British).

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Not entirely true.

The blockade tightened up quite a bit after America entered the war, because the Northern Neutrals (the principal hole in it) got most of their imports from the US, who could now control these at source, and allow no surplus for re-export. Life in Germany would still have been uncomfortable, but not as bad as OTL.

wiking said:

Can you provide some sourcing on that? I hadn't really heard much of that prior to Germany's resumption of USW, the Lusitania not withstanding. Of course there was some ill-will in the US over Germany's behavior in Belgium and over the first round of USW, but I hadn't read about much overt hostility to German-Americans and their culture in the US prior to the Creel Commission and the resumption of USW in 1917.

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Wikipedia, admittedly, but with citations at points. See here, here and here.

People like Theodore Roosevelt were already denouncing 'hyphenated Americans' before the war even started. German-Americans felt under sufficient threat that there was a backlash against their persecution in favour of German identity, with people celebrating Wilhelm II's birthday and pointing out Germany's rightness in the war.

One can presumably attribute much of this to the oft-exaggerated stories of the Rape of Belgium (horrible though it was, it wasn't quite as bad as the Entente powers were saying in wartime) which the British were feeding to the American press.

Mikestone8 said:

OTOH it didn't make St Germain, Trianon or Sevres look like slaps on the wrist.

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A fair point, but Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire already had the precedent whereby the Entente powers in particular (in the former's case) and almost the whole of Europe (in the latter's case) were already widely disposed towards thinking that their collapse was inevitable (the fairness of this assessment of theirs can certainly be disputed but the reality that they had it cannot). Brest-Litovsk was the dismemberment of one of the strongest great powers in the world: the removal of its most valuable parts and the loss of titanic amounts of its natural resources, population and industry. Entente treatment of Germany (which would be analogous to France or Russia or the UK in terms of being regarded as a stable, first-class great power) was incredibly lenient in comparison, hence my point.

Mikestone8 said:

Basically weren't all the WW1 peace treaties pretty much of a muchness? Afaik they all followed the same pattern, of stripping off the areas populated by ethnic minorities. So Russia lost more at BL than Germany at Versailles because more of it was inhabited by minorities, while Austria, Hungary and Turkey in turn lost more than Russia had, because they had more "minority" areas still.

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Liberation was a useful excuse, yes, but I don't think it was the primary motivation, due to looking at other examples. It's a less chronologically close example to CP WW1 victory than the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but Alsace-Lorraine in the Treaty of Frankfurt wasn't a case of ethnic minorities, it was opportunistic nationalist expansionism for the sake of placating German nationalists in spite of the people being there (German nationalist claims to the contrary) preferring to be French than German. And Prague, though further away still, was similar in regard to extreme annexations and dismemberment of the empires of first-class great powers (strictly in this case, a sphere of influence rather than an empire).

My contention is that the Kaiserreich displayed a tendency for sweeping annexations and dismemberment of the empires of first-class great powers beyond what the British, French and Americans did. (The qualifier 'first-class' sounds weaselly but I think that the international attitude of in particular Christian powers to the Ottoman Empire in particular was sufficiently different from attitudes to other great powers that the distinction is worth drawing.)

Mikestone8 said:

From what I can gather, a defeated France would have lost Longwy-Briey, possibly Belfort and/or other small border areas, and probably a colony or three. Germany might also have wanted naval bases in French territory, which might or might not have involved annexation. No doubt the French would have been unhappy, but is that really so much worse than Versailles?

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Source? Is this the Septemberprogamm, issued very early in the war at a time when hatred hadn't build up to such a great extent and no-one realised how devastating it was going to be and how much money would be needed to repair damage and pay the cost of the war?

My statement that the Germans would have treated France much more harshly than Versailles is derived from the OTL behaviour of the German Empire and its predecessor-state at Brest-Litovsk, Frankfurt and Prague, in addition to the Septemberprogramm, the power of the German Army's officers in decision-making and the simple observation that both hatred and the spending of money built up over time.

Perfidious Albion said:

Wikipedia, admittedly, but with citations at points. See here,

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The APL was formed in 1917 by A. M. Briggs, a wealthy Chicago advertising executive. Believing the United States Department of Justice to be severely understaffed in the field of counterintelligence in the new wartime environment, Briggs proposed to agency officials the establishment of a new volunteer auxiliary, with participants to be neither paid nor to benefit from expense accounts.[1] Briggs was given authority to proceed with his plan by the Department of Justice on March 22, 1917, and the American Protective League (APL) was born.[1]

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Founded after USW resumed and America was about to join the war in early April. So it was pretty much predated the Creel Commission by a month or so. Not what I was talking about; what I'm was talking about was suppression from 1914-1916 before the US started on the war path.

Perfidious Albion said:

here

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All of the WW1 section details things that happened after Germany resumed USW and issued the Zimmerman Telegram. It was in the context of wartime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-Americans#World_War_I_anti-German_sentiment

During World War I (1917–18), German Americans were often accused of being too sympathetic to Imperial Germany. Former president Theodore Roosevelt denounced "hyphenated Americanism", insisting that dual loyalties were impossible in wartime.

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Perfidious Albion said:

here.

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German Americans in early 1917 still called for neutrality but proclaimed that if a war came they would be loyal to the United States. By this point they had been excluded almost entirely from national discourse on the subject.[40] Once war started they were harassed in so many ways that historian Carl Wittke noted in 1936, it was "one of the most difficult and humiliating experiences suffered by an ethnic group in American history."[41]

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So all of this stuff happened after the US was on the warpath with Germany over the resumption of USW and the Zimmerman Telegram. Again this all misses the point that German-Americans were not a target in the US until after USW and the Zimmerman Note and then the start of the war; if the Germans did not resume USW and issue the Zimmerman Note German-Americans wouldn't have any serious issue; pro-Entente Americans would still hate them, but that largely wouldn't change things, as Irish-Americans and for a while Jewish-Americans were anti-Entente due to British and Russian abuses respectively of their relatives.

Without the war nothing really happens other than interpersonal issues with pro-Entente Americans; it should be noted though that President Wilson was becoming seriously anti-Entente after they rebuffed his negotiating attempts in late 1916, while the Germans joined in. He intended to challenge the blockade and issue warnings about further loans to the Entente, but Germany preempted this by starting USW and began the process of pushing the US into war. Without that Wilson cuts ties with the Entente and challenges them instead, which puts German Americans firmly within the mainstream of the president's views and the pro-Ententers outside the mainstream. Its interesting to note that right before the Germans restarted USW the pro-Entente members of the president's cabinet and in his advisors like Col. House, were turning against the Entente and toward firm neutrality like German-Americans preached.

Perfidious Albion said:

Source? Is this the Septemberprogamm, issued very early in the war at a time when hatred hadn't build up to such a great extent and no-one realised how devastating it was going to be and how much money would be needed to repair damage and pay the cost of the war?

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It was never issued, it was just the opinions of some wealthy industrialists that petitioned the government about German war aims; it also was rejected by the German government:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm

The "September plan" was drafted by Kurt Riezler, a staffer in the office of the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, based on the input of Germany's industrial, military, and economic leadership.[3][4] However, since Germany did not win the war in the west, it was never put into effect. As historian Raffael Scheck concluded, "The government, finally, never committed itself to anything. It had ordered the September Programme as an informal hearing in order to learn about the opinion of the economic and military elites."[5]

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Perfidious Albion said:

My statement that the Germans would have treated France much more harshly than Versailles is derived from the OTL behaviour of the German Empire and its predecessor-state at Brest-Litovsk, Frankfurt and Prague, in addition to the Septemberprogramm, the power of the German Army's officers in decision-making and the simple observation that both hatred and the spending of money built up over time.

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Brest-Litovsk was an extreme increase to pressure the Russians to exit the war; in late 1917 they offered only to take Lithuania and Poland, while exiting their other gains during the war if Russia left it. Russia refused, so Germany got extreme to pressure them into leaving the war by upping the ante; by that time the Russians had fallen apart and the Bolsheviks were running the negotiations, so Germany was interested in claiming that vast area to fight on into 1919 and beyond if necessary, as they needed those resources to counter the Americans. Brest-Litovsk was a panic move to buffer in the East against Communism and gain the necessary resources to fight on against really bad odds in the West; its not actually what Germany wanted, but rather what Germany had come to need; had the Russians bowed out in 1917 then they would lost minor territory comparatively, which would have been much more lenient than Versailles.

As to plans for France and Belgium by 1918, by that time Germany army leadership was insane and planning on WW2, which they referred to as the 2nd Punic War against Britain. They were proto-Nazis at that point and planning on extended periods of war with power blocks that presaged Hitler's views in his second book that was never published, which makes sense considering that Ludendorff was Hitler's mentor in Munich in the early 1920s.

By 1918 things were crazy all around; France wanted to break up Germany into parts and annex the Rheinland, but the US and Britain kept them back. German demands would have been no worse than this and even better, as they did not want to end the existence of France or Russia. Britain was interested in the balance of power, while Wilson was looking for a pro-Entente peace and minor punishment of Germany; as it was Wilson thought Versailles was too harsh and refused to sign it. The reality is that Germany was no more harsh than France and significantly less so in planning; luckily Britain and the US had other interests, but were no better in reference to A-H and the Ottoman Empire.

Edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Brest-Litovsk

At the start of the negotiations, the two sides were far apart.
The Germans demanded the "independence" of Poland and Lithuania, which they already occupied. The Russians demanded "peace without annexations or indemnities" — in other words, a settlement under which the revolutionary government would give up neither territory nor money.
After a week of negotiations, the Central Powers delegation withdrew from the conference on December 28 to consider the Bolshevik peace proposals. Over Christmas of 1917, the Central Powers released a declaration stating that they were in favor of the separate peace with all the Allies without indemnities and without annexations, provided the peace was immediate and all belligerents took part in the negotiations. But this did not supersede the demand for the "independence" of Poland and Lithuania.

Lenin was in favor of signing this agreement immediately. He thought that only an immediate peace would allow the young Bolshevik government to consolidate power in Russia. However, he was virtually alone in this opinion among the Bolsheviks on the Central Committee.[6]
For the second round of negotiations, Trotsky replaced Joffe as the head of the Soviet delegation.

While Lenin wanted to accept the German peace proposal immediately, a majority of the Bolshevik Central Committee disagreed.

Von Kuhlman and Hoffmann now proposed independence for the Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine, as in accordance with the Soviets' own national self-determination doctrine.[6] Indeed the Germans were already negotiating with a separatist government in Ukraine. On February 9, 1918, Germany recognized that government and signed a treaty with it.[6]
Frustrated with continued German demands for cessions of territory, Trotsky on February 10 announced a new policy. Russia unilaterally declared an end of hostilities against the Central Powers, and Russia withdrew from peace negotiations with the Central Powers - a position summed up as "no war — no peace".[6]
Other Bolshevik leaders denounced Trotsky for exceeding his instructions and exposing Soviet Russia to the threat of invasion. Trotsky subsequently defended his action on the grounds that the Bolshevik leaders had originally entered the peace talks in the hope of exposing their enemies' territorial ambitions and rousing the workers of central Europe to revolution in defense of Russia's new workers' state.

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Germany didn't want to annex the territories of Brest-Litovsk, they wanted to set them up as buffer states with friendly governments, exactly the same things that was done with A-H and the Ottoman Empire. Except in the case of the Ottomans the Allies tried to literally destroy her via their Greek proxies, while the colonized all of the non-Turkish territories, ostensibly to set up friendly governments dependent on Britain and France, just what Germany was setting up in the East.

wiking said:

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The denunciation of "hyphenated Americans" (which believed war desirable and wishfully anticipated war but did not happen while war was evidently imminent), the anti-German propaganda filling American newspapers with the Rape of Belgium and the treatment of German-Americans harsh enough to result in a pro-German backlash all happened before that. The APL was a bad example, for which I apologise, but it was only one example.