No Lusitania, No Zimmerman

If somehow both the sinking of the Lusitania and the sending of the Zimmerman Telegram were both avoided, would US entry into the Great War be butterflied or delayed? If American entry into the war is avoided or delayed, how does this affect the overall war. Without the hope of American entry would the French army mutinies be worse? Would France collapse by 1918, and Germany wins the war?
 
It depends on how the sinking of the Lusitania is averted. Simply having it make that voyage safely would probably result in it sinking on a different voyage or some other similar ship sinking from unrestricted submarine warfare. For the purposes of making this interesting let's assume that the Germans either don't start USW or if they do start it they stop before any major loss of American life. Yes, averting this and the Zimmerman telegram would keep the USA from directly entering the war. It's possible the French mutinies would be worse, but it should be noted the mutinies weren't so much about uprising or abandoning the trenches; they were more about refusing to keep charging into no man's land. So even though news of American entry helped calm them down, they'd have to get worse, not simply deteriorate for a CP victory. This could happen with the spring offensive if there's no news of American entry to boost morale, but it's not certain.

Note if the reason for the lack of unrestricted submarine warfare is a lack of American weapons/munitions sales to the Entente, either from a neutrality law embargoing arms shipments or a ban on loans to belligerents, then the best the Entente can get is a negotiated peace.
 
In hindsight, the resumption of USW and the Zimmerman Note were both terminally dumb and incredibly risky moves... the CP were soon to be on the upswing in 1917, and doing provocative things that were damn near certain to pull the US off the sidelines was a blunder almost beyond belief... but...
Would doing neither had kept the Infernal Meddling Klansman out of the conflict for the duration? Somehow I doubt it. I think Wilson was looking for an excuse, any excuse to drag the US in.
 
In hindsight, the resumption of USW and the Zimmerman Note were both terminally dumb and incredibly risky moves... the CP were soon to be on the upswing in 1917, and doing provocative things that were damn near certain to pull the US off the sidelines was a blunder almost beyond belief... but...
Would doing neither had kept the Infernal Meddling Klansman out of the conflict for the duration? Somehow I doubt it. I think Wilson was looking for an excuse, any excuse to drag the US in.
Which is weird because he ran off of STAYING out of the war...
 
Which is weird because he ran off of STAYING out of the war...
Everyone wanted their "place in the sun"... I think Wilson had the idea that the US needed to have more of a presence on the world's stage, and to spread his conception of "democracy" (hey, gotta make the world safe for it, right?) back to the benighted Old World... he was an egotist and an idealist (a dangerous combination), and he was getting old... it was his last, best chance.
 
Everyone wanted their "place in the sun"... I think Wilson had the idea that the US needed to have more of a presence on the world's stage, and to spread his conception of "democracy" (hey, gotta make the world safe for it, right?) back to the benighted Old World... he was an egotist and an idealist (a dangerous combination), and he was getting old... it was his last, best chance.
What if Charles Evans Hughes wins in 1916 instead of Wilson? Just flip 4,000 votes in California and all of history changes. Most seem to think he would be more pro-war, however I’ve heard the take that since he’s from the same party as Roosevelt, the Germans would reconsider doing USW.
 
What if Charles Evans Hughes wins in 1916 instead of Wilson? Just flip 4,000 votes in California and all of history changes. Most seem to think he would be more pro-war, however I’ve heard the take that since he’s from the same party as Roosevelt, the Germans would reconsider doing USW.
FWIU, Hughes believed in preparedness and a strengthened military, but he wasn't particularly pro-interventionist. That being said, he possibly would've done the same thing as Wilson did in the wake of the resumption of USW and Zimmerman. The Republicans were largely an isolationist party at the time, and Hughes probably would've viewed it as political suicide to push for US entry without a really good reason. Unfortunately the Germans were pretty adept at giving potential foes an excuse... :/
 
FWIU, Hughes believed in preparedness and a strengthened military, but he wasn't particularly pro-interventionist. That being said, he possibly would've done the same thing as Wilson did in the wake of the resumption of USW and Zimmerman. The Republicans were largely an isolationist party at the time, and Hughes probably would've viewed it as political suicide to push for US entry without a really good reason. Unfortunately the Germans were pretty adept at giving potential foes an excuse... :/
But would the Germans be more cautious with a President from the anglophilic Republicans as opposed to President “he kept us out of the war” Wilson?
 
But would the Germans be more cautious with a President from the anglophilic Republicans as opposed to President “he kept us out of the war” Wilson?
Now that, I don't know... had Der Kaiser had better sense, he would've shit-canned Bethmann-Hollweg in 1914 when he tendered his resignation as Chancellor, and cleaned house in the Foreign Office (since quite a few of them had flat-out lied and withheld or falsified communications during the July Crisis...) short of that, I think the High Command was just obtuse enough to have done what they did (push for measures like USW), regardless of who was in charge in the US...
At the time though, the Germans knew that the US Navy was a force to be reckoned with... but as far as ground forces, they had their doubts regarding American ability to put boots on the ground 1) in any numbers in sufficient time and 2) that had any clue what they were doing - an understandable view given the pre-war state of the US Army. It was a calculated risk but one that wasn't thought through very well :)
 
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