WW1 without the US?

this topic may have been 'done to death', but there has never been a consensus on what would happen. Results range from 'it takes longer for the Allies to win' to 'Germany will win' and 'both sides are exhausted and sue for a mutual peace'.
 
Why would it go on longer? If Britain is no longer able to subsidise her continental allies, they'll be unlikely to last even as long as they did.

Is it my imagination, or is there a tendency in some quarters around here to try and handwave away the economic effects of US abstention, which are likely to be monumental?
A lot of amateur historians tend to think the only thing that matters in a war is the number of troops on the battlefield and ignore things like logistics and the national economy's capacity to support and carry on the war effort. That's why every couple weeks we have to explain to new posters why Germany couldn't pull off Sealion, Japan can't invade the US, etc. The US's physical battlefield contribution was minor, but the economic support provided to the Entente was enormous, and US entry was a major morale boost to Entente forces.

It doesn't help that the question of how important the US's (or any country, really) contribution to WWI was tends to get heavily politicized/nationalized. Americans tend to overestimate their importance, and non-Americans downplay it.
 
this topic may have been 'done to death', but there has never been a consensus on what would happen. Results range from 'it takes longer for the Allies to win' to 'Germany will win' and 'both sides are exhausted and sue for a mutual peace'.


Dave,

It has been Done to Deathtm and the consensus results are more fixed they seem.

The consensus results are arranged on the sliding scale you mention because the type of neutrality the US can adopt is also on a sliding scale.

Simply put, the more US neutrality leans towards the Entente, the poorer the results for the Central Powers.

If one of these repetitive OP's added: ... and the US will maintain a neutrality policy of X, Y, Z.... the majority of the responders would agree to a single consensus result.


Bill
 
Without America (and I mean war entry with our troops), France and Britain are bled dry same as Germany. There is no miraculous last offensive that cracks the trenchline and leads onto Berlin. There may be revolutions and governments might fall. If this does not happen, then there is a negotiated peace with German troops still occupying significant parts of western Europe. In other words, a slight pro-Greman outcome of the negotiated peace treaty. And if Germany is very lucky, she looses all her colonies.
 
Without America (and I mean war entry with our troops), France and Britain are bled dry same as Germany. There is no miraculous last offensive that cracks the trenchline and leads onto Berlin. There may be revolutions and governments might fall. If this does not happen, then there is a negotiated peace with German troops still occupying significant parts of western Europe. In other words, a slight pro-Greman outcome of the negotiated peace treaty. And if Germany is very lucky, she looses all her colonies.


Could well be. It is theoretically possible to draw up scenarios where the Entente wins without the AEF, provided that US economic support is maintained at OTL levels, but to my mind

a) The proviso is an "artificial" and unlikely one - see my earlier messages on how things were going in 1916/17.

b) Absence of the AEF gives the Entente far less margin of safety. They can still win on paper, provided they avoid any mistakes - but this is WW1 we're talking about. <g>

I like your remark about the colonies. Looking back on it, I sometimes wish that we hadn't only let Germany keep her existing ones, but given her British East Africa as well. That way the Mau Mau business would have been fought by German national servicemen instead of British ones. Not, you understand, that I have anything against German national servicemen, but I "hold this truth to be self-evident" that if any dirty job can possibly be unloaded onto Johnny Foreigner, then it should be so unloaded at the first opportunity.

Could the victors have forseen the future, they would have been pressing Germany to accept more colonies, rather than taking them from her. For analogous reasons, we should have refused to grant the Turks an armistice until they promised to take Iraq and Palestine back. But, as the poet said "Hindsight is always 20/20".
 
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