Don't know if this has been done

WI the USA stays neutral in WW1? I mean really neutral, William Jennings Bryan neutral, meaning no arms sales to either side, no loans or bond sales for either side, no food aid to anyone. What is the effect on the course of the war?

Fun board to read by the way :)
 

ninebucks

Banned
The USA would be a much poorer nation today. America made some killer profits off of the back of the two world wars.
 

MrP

Banned
Welcome, Aegyptos. :)

Not really a plausible scenario, I fear. There's almost no way to stop US arms manufacturers from selling to the Entente. They can't sell to the Central Powers because of the blockade, and that means that the US can either cut itself off from trading with practically the rest of the planet and suffer a particularly horrible global economic recession, accompanied by a war that includes far more selective Entente use of HE (since most of it came from the USA), or make money off the Entente. There is the third option of selling to middlemen like Japan and Spain, but I don't think that's quite what you've got in mind. ;)

It'd do American shipping no good, either. OTL she went from producing 0.23 million metric tons in '13 to 2.6 MMT in '18. Without the U-boat campaign and increased US naval building to ship goods to Europe, expect Britain to stay ahead. Which impacts American fortunes post-war (whenever it'd end in a world where the Entente can't launch really heavy offensives).

So I've got to pour cold water on your suggestion. Sorry, but there's no realistic way to prevent the sort of trade you'd like to.
 
Truely neutral...

This can mean a lot of things. The Hague 1907 is the key to your POD. A NATION can't sell war materials, etc, but private individuals can sell almost whatever they want to.
The relevant treaties are right here: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/avalon.htm

So--the war sales were legal under the treaties. The government arranging for war loans or other sales to either side wasn't.

Some actions of both sides were in contravention of the rules of neutrality--the British restriction of the rights of American shipping was major, right from the start, as was German torpedoing of neutral merchant ships.

So--what could work as a POD would be to have a President that insists on the rules of neutrality being respected by both sides. That is what to play with, IMHO.
 

Larrikin

Banned
US economy

You are severly downplaying the resilience of the U.S. economy.

Welcome to the forum, Aegyptos.

Makes for an interesting result. The CP would almost certainly have won the war, and the US wouldn't have gotten the boost to it's economy that Entente spending gave it.

Germany would have developed into a massive economic block, by grabbing Belgium more of France, possibly scarfing up the Netherlands, all of Poland, and the customs union between it and the AHE would have come into being.

Depending on how early the Germans managed to finish it (my bet is autumn 1916) it would cast the Russian revolution in a different guise, with maybe the Mensheviks and Kadets actually managing to make a Westminster style system stick. GB wouldn't have been as broke, and I can't see any result that would have forced GB to give away the RN. Germany would have gotten back her African, Asian, and Pacific possesions, plus a few more, definitely the Belgian Congo, maybe bits of East Africa.

All this means is that the US doesn't get to end the war as the unchallenged largest economy, but still faces competition around the world from GB, and extra competition from Germany. Remember, in this situation the British merchant fleet doesn't take the pounding in 1917 from the U-boats that it did in OTL, and Germany gets it's merchant fleet back, including all those impounded by, and then grabbed by the USA at Versailles.
 
This can mean a lot of things. The Hague 1907 is the key to your POD.

...

So--what could work as a POD would be to have a President that insists on the rules of neutrality being respected by both sides. That is what to play with, IMHO.

Interesting! This would lead the US into the sort of difficulties that she had experienced historically with the UK, back to Napoleonic days, vis a vis the definition of neutral's rights and the UK's ever-expanding definition of what was contraband.

There is no legal reason why the US could not embargo trade with the warring parties just as she did back in the days before the War of 1812.

I realise that the US economy would suffer from a cut off of trade with the warring parties. The US was already in recession in 1913 so the arms trade was a shot in the arm. I don't think a trade embargo with the warring parties would be worse than the run of the mill recessions that the US experienced every ten years or so. I have no reason to think that it would.

Thanks for these great responses :)
 
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After reviewing a topic similar to this, I am curious as to how Germany would handle having as many colonies (more than in OTL). Specifically, how would they deal with the wars of independence---would they be like the French in OTL (Algeria and/or SE Asia), the Brits in OTL's Malaysia, the Belgians in OTL's 1960...or something else altogether.

IIRC, some of the more recent problems (in OTL that is:)) in central Africa, mainly the genocide in Rwanda, were tied to German ideologies from a century ago. That is why I wonder WI Imperial Germany won and gained some new colonies....
 
Welcome, Aegyptos. :)

Not really a plausible scenario, I fear. There's almost no way to stop US arms manufacturers from selling to the Entente. They can't sell to the Central Powers because of the blockade, and that means that the US can either cut itself off from trading with practically the rest of the planet and suffer a particularly horrible global economic recession, accompanied by a war that includes far more selective Entente use of HE (since most of it came from the USA), or make money off the Entente. There is the third option of selling to middlemen like Japan and Spain, but I don't think that's quite what you've got in mind. ;)

It'd do American shipping no good, either. OTL she went from producing 0.23 million metric tons in '13 to 2.6 MMT in '18. Without the U-boat campaign and increased US naval building to ship goods to Europe, expect Britain to stay ahead. Which impacts American fortunes post-war (whenever it'd end in a world where the Entente can't launch really heavy offensives).

So I've got to pour cold water on your suggestion. Sorry, but there's no realistic way to prevent the sort of trade you'd like to.

Well, the US can refuse to accept British credit and demand gold. This would change the entire pattern of Entente economic mobilisation, which used British credit to make artificially chep purchases in the US. This meant that it was cheaper to buy from the US than make in Europe.

It would only take a fairly limited downgrading of British credit in the US to reverse this, and the Entent would suddenly find it cheaper to manufacture a lot of things in Europe. This, combined with political diffiulties for US exporters, could shift Entente economic activity a great deal.
 
After reviewing a topic similar to this, I am curious as to how Germany would handle having as many colonies (more than in OTL). Specifically, how would they deal with the wars of independence---would they be like the French in OTL (Algeria and/or SE Asia), the Brits in OTL's Malaysia, the Belgians in OTL's 1960...or something else altogether.

IIRC, some of the more recent problems (in OTL that is:)) in central Africa, mainly the genocide in Rwanda, were tied to German ideologies from a century ago. That is why I wonder WI Imperial Germany won and gained some new colonies....

Suppose though, that the Germans don't lose all of their colonies. For example, several African countries (Togo included) have traditional monarchies. Now, granted, they were typically only significant to one or two ethnic groups, but suppose that, along the way, the Germans decide to develop Togoland farther, promote the monarchy there, and contemplate including the place as a German state? Might that be interesting, if it could possibly be done.

Also, the fate of Southwest Africa would be interesting to watch, as it was really Germany's only settler colony.
 
This can mean a lot of things. The Hague 1907 is the key to your POD. A NATION can't sell war materials, etc, but private individuals can sell almost whatever they want to.
Let me pose a variation: did the U.S. Neutrality Acts prohibit sales by corporate subsidiaries? I'm thinking of, for instance, GM Canada selling trucks to Spain in the SCW, or China after '31. This says transshipment to a neutral is illegal uner the '37 Act, but says nothing about production outside U.S. territory by a U.S. firm.
 
IBM subsidiaries continued to supply punchcards to DeHoMag after the declaration of war

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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