If Teddy Roosevelt won in 1912, how would this affect America’s participation in WW1?

Would Teddy Roosevelt have gotten the U.S. into the war earlier?

  • Yes

    Votes: 106 89.1%
  • No

    Votes: 13 10.9%

  • Total voters
    119
How can they supply Germany when the British are blockading Germany?

And for those who say TR would have challenged the British blockade, there was a precedent when the Union blockaded the South during the American Civil War.

I think the British changed the game a little by adding food to their contraband list. Which violated treaties on naval commerce much more recent than the 1860's.

And since the British were buying US goods destined for Germany,

But as we mention in all these WWI threads, they could only do that for as long as they had foreign reserves. By 1917, they were running short of that IOTL. Here, if they need to more actively outbid Germany, they will only burn those reserves even faster.

combined with the power of the RN which the US could not match,

Does that matter, though? Given the choice between letting some goods through to Germany, or losing their own access to American credit, to name just one possible US response, could Britain afford to go with the latter?

and add to that TR's Anglophilia, I think TR might have been realistic about the cards dealt to him, and be inclined not to make a fuss about it.

He'd face pressure from the Democratic Congress, and with his own party in tatters due to the spat with Taft, I'm not sure he could resist as easily as Wilson. And would his Anglophilia outweigh his Ameriphilia enough to accept such an infringement on American sovereignty? He did write a book about the last time American trade to Europe was arbitrarily curtailed by the British.
 
FYI On December 10, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win a Nobel Prize. Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work surrounding the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. TR might just decide to try and broker an end the War
 
I assumed he’d unse the sinking of the Lusitania as a cassus belli.

That is not up to him. The decision would rest with Congress, where support for war was negligible.

Were TR silly enough to send them a war message, they probably wouldn't even bother to vote on it - though of course he wouldn't, as he was far too smart to invite a humiliating rebuff and throw away any chance of re-election in 1916.

There is also the question of whether the Lusitania still gets sunk, which it may well not.

In a letter to his son Archie [1] TR blames Wilson and Bryan for the sinking, owing to their feeble response to the earlier case of the American tanker Gulflight, torpedoed with the loss of three American lives. Had TR been POTUS, this incident would have provoked a ferocious note, probably stronger than Wilson's Lusitania ones. The Germans would have backed down before TR as they did OTL before Wilson, and in all likelihood the Lusitania wouldn't have been sunk at all.


[1] May 19, 1915 - reproduced in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol 8, letter 5989
 

Marc

Donor
Keep in mind, another term for Theodore would end in 1916. Unlike his cousin, yet another 4 years is extremely unlikely.
Also, unless you want to hand-wave, he dies in January 6, 1919.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Keep in mind, another term for Theodore would end in 1916. Unlike his cousin, yet another 4 years is extremely unlikely.
Also, unless you want to hand-wave, he dies in January 6, 1919.
He died in 1919 as a result of his Amazonian hunting trip in 1913. That trip ruined his health. If he's elected in 1912, he doesn't go to the Amazon in 1913 and remains in far better health. And with war raging in Europe, a fourth term for TR would actually be pretty likely. Assuming how he handles it. He would also be very popular if he was able to negotiate an early end to the war.
 
He died in 1919 as a result of his Amazonian hunting trip in 1913. That trip ruined his health. If he's elected in 1912, he doesn't go to the Amazon in 1913 and remains in far better health. And with war raging in Europe, a fourth term for TR would actually be pretty likely.

With war raging in Europe, most Americans' principal concern (until US shipping came under direct attack in 1917) was to keep out of it. Why would they see TR as an asset in that? Indeed, unless he was very good at concealing his real views on the war (which I kinda doubt) it would be an excellent reason to get rid of him asap.
 

SsgtC

Banned
With war raging in Europe, most Americans' principal concern (until US shipping came under direct attack in 1917) was to keep out of it. Why would they see TR as an asset in that? Indeed, unless he was very good at concealing his real views on the war (which I kinda doubt) it would be an excellent reason to get rid of him asap.
I'm assuming ITTL that he has done his best to keep the United States out of the war. If he's been agitating to get the US into the war, then you're absolutely right. Voters would be eager to replace him
 

Marc

Donor
He died in 1919 as a result of his Amazonian hunting trip in 1913. That trip ruined his health. If he's elected in 1912, he doesn't go to the Amazon in 1913 and remains in far better health. And with war raging in Europe, a fourth term for TR would actually be pretty likely. Assuming how he handles it. He would also be very popular if he was able to negotiate an early end to the war.

Actually, the clinical impression was that he died of a PO - which can and does happen to otherwise healthy people. And regardless of Africa, his health was increasingly precarious during the last decade of his life.
A great, imperfect, man who was dealt a bad hand when it came to health. Like his cousin.
 

JAG88

Banned
FYI On December 10, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first American to win a Nobel Prize. Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work surrounding the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. TR might just decide to try and broker an end the War

Problem is how? Status quo ante bellum? And the hundreds of thousands dead?

A good chunk of France and Russia are occupied, depending on the date so is Serbia, so the Entente is "losing", Germany is "winning", which means they would want to get something for peace, with the other side refusing to negotiate under occupation...

Even in 1916, the Germans agreed to US mediation, the Entente refused, after all the US was being very helpful with the blockade and did not do a thing to apply any pressure on the Entente, ever. So why would they?

TR might be able to apply such pressure... and end the runaway economic bonanza for the US... choices.
 
Problem is how? Status quo ante bellum? And the hundreds of thousands dead?

A good chunk of France and Russia are occupied, depending on the date so is Serbia, so the Entente is "losing", Germany is "winning", which means they would want to get something for peace, with the other side refusing to negotiate under occupation...

Even in 1916, the Germans agreed to US mediation, the Entente refused, after all the US was being very helpful with the blockade and did not do a thing to apply any pressure on the Entente, ever. So why would they?

TR might be able to apply such pressure... and end the runaway economic bonanza for the US... choices.

He could potentially try to mediate during the July Crisis before war had broken out. Not sure that would be any more successful, though.
 

JAG88

Banned
He could potentially try to mediate during the July Crisis before war had broken out. Not sure that would be any more successful, though.

Problem is, many people were unaware of the seriousness of the situation, the French and UK govts kept their countries in the dark, hell, Grey kept his own govt in the dark!

AH was happily stumbling around, got caught by surprise by Russian and German actions...

Nicky agreed with everyone, so the game his "minions" played was keeping him from talking to too many people...

Bethmann-Holwegg still believed he could pull a diplomatic coup, right until he realized the Russians were mobilizing in secret... Moltke thought and wanted war, for him it was simple, tomorrow would be worse.

Would TR care about Serbia? Or simply didnt give a damn as most people in Europe did? Because that is what it was, some silly stuff about Serbia, who can expect THAT to turn into a general European war?
 
Problem is, many people were unaware of the seriousness of the situation, the French and UK govts kept their countries in the dark, hell, Grey kept his own govt in the dark!

AH was happily stumbling around, got caught by surprise by Russian and German actions...

Nicky agreed with everyone, so the game his "minions" played was keeping him from talking to too many people...

Bethmann-Holwegg still believed he could pull a diplomatic coup, right until he realized the Russians were mobilizing in secret... Moltke thought and wanted war, for him it was simple, tomorrow would be worse.

Would TR care about Serbia? Or simply didnt give a damn as most people in Europe did? Because that is what it was, some silly stuff about Serbia, who can expect THAT to turn into a general European war?
Well bizmark and his "dam fool thing in the Balkans " speech
 

JAG88

Banned
Well bizmark and his "dam fool thing in the Balkans " speech

Well...

"Ever since the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership in 1871,
Bismarck had been content to consolidate the boundaries of the new
German empire, trying to avoid unnecessary foreign adventures at all
costs. Bismarck’s famous remark about the Balkans not being ‘worth
the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier’ is in fact a misquote:
what he actually said was that ‘the whole Orient’ – meaning the entire
Ottoman Empire – should not be a concern of Germany’s foreign
policy. Although Bismarck did support the spread of German influence
in Turkey, personally approving the dispatch of a German military
mission led by Generalmajor Otto Kaehler on Abdul Hamid’s request
in 1883, he did so as quietly as possible, for fear of ruining Germany’s
fragile relations with Russia, which viewed the Straits at Constantinople
with greedy eyes.

In 1887, Bismarck had tried to counter
Russian suspicions with his ‘Reinsurance Treaty’, in which Russia
and Germany pledged to remain neutral in wars with third countries
(including Ottoman Turkey).† And now here was the Kaiser making
an unprecedented state visit to the Sultan, confirming the Russians’
worst fears about German intentions in the Near East."


The Berlin-Baghdad Express - McMeekin
 
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