Posted on 04/23/2011 8:53:56 PM PDT by freepguy
I'm trying to get the facts that show why the USA got into WW1. As I can tell, Wilson was president. The US was neutral...did not want to get involved. Britian and the Allied Powers were losing the war against the Central Powers. The Balfour Declaration promised a Jewish state in Palestine. The Lusitana was armed and ordered to attack German U-boats. Propaganda was created to convince American populace that Germany needed to be conqered.
Can anyone help me get more info on the subject?
Thanks. FG
The U-boat blockade was a red herring; the British blockaded the German coast, and we abided by that. The British government never let divers examine the Lusitania because of the widespread suspicion that it was carrying arms to Britain. Whatever the truth, it sank in 20 minutes compared to the Titanic, which took 2 hours.
The US entered the war in 1917 because Russia had surrendered, and Britain & France would have undoubtedly lost the war at that point. They were barely hanging, between the trench mutinies in the French army and the fact that they were running out of men (France lost 1.7 million men in WWI); over 1 million German and Austro-Hungarian troops became available with the Russian surrender on the Eastern Front (side note: critics of Operation Barbarossa often forget that Russia surrendered in 1917; rather they harken back to Napoleon’s failue 100 years before). The U-boat campaign was working, and all loans to Britain would be lost when they inevitably had to surrender as well.
Anything about “making the world safe for democracy” was hogwash; at the time the “sun never set on the British Empire”.
Like many things, this can be debated in circles forever.
“The Guns of August” was great; should be required reading for all high school students.
Seven years of college down the drain :)
“Would the Soviet Union even have existed if the Germans had won?”
Probably, because after the territorial concessions they were left to their own devices (fighting the civil war that put the communists in power).
Germany would not have attacked the Soviet Union but would have allied with it already having a peace treaty which gave it huge amounts of Russian territory. In addition, the USSR would not have had to endure attacks from Poland. Germany had already succeeded in getting Russia out of the war.
I suggest you look into the German political scene during WWI it is not commonly known that the High Command controlled the party which eventually became the Nazi party long before Hitler left the trenches. Hitler’s spying and reporting on the group does not mean it was not resuscitated. The Army acted on those reports.
There is no question that the defeat in WWI shattered Germany structure to the core and led to the rise of nihilism which produced Hitler. But the war was produced as much by German paranoia as anything else. Its foreign policy was based on the Schliefflen Plan wherein mobilization on either frontier (France or Russia) would cause Germany to attack on the Eastern and Western fronts. One should also recall that Germany had invaded France 40 years before and which had militarism playing a very prominent role in its society for a couple of centuries.
Sounds like it should answer your question, since it appears that it has been asked before.
I think this portion of the article on her essays may answer your question:
"I remembered almost nothing about it. It is not, as I thought, a rather elegiac portrait of the good old days before the world tore itself apart, but a clear-eyed depiction of how the nations of the West were setting themselves up, all unwittingly, for the catastrophe to come."
“Germany was under the control of the Kaiser who was practically certifiable.”
That is ridiculous.
“The creation of the Soviet Union was more the fault of Germany than any other nation.”
The creation of the Soviet Union was the fault of the Russian nobility who refused to grant some basic rights to their citizens; while the Germans aided the revolution, Americans saved Stalin 20 years later from destruction so must be credited with preserving the Bolshevik Revolution.
He grew up in Georgia and South Carolina during Reconstruction, and remembered meeting Robert E. Lee. He didn't go north until he went to Princeton.
Wilson only won his first term because Teddy split the Republicans with his Bull Moose party, and Wilson only got 41% of the vote.
The Soviet Union existed because Germany nocked Russia out of the war early. If Germany would have won Germany in league with the Whites might have gone back after the Reds. Sending Lenin back to Russia was a nice touch by the Germans.
uh...Pearl Harbor was WW2
uh...Pearl Harbor was WW2
The Lusitania was carrying war materiel, but it certainly had no capability to take offensive action against submarines. It was an ocean liner. The only way it could attack anything would be by ramming.
“Most of the European territory that became the USSR was handed to them at Versailles.”
Russia got nothing from Versailles - they were excluded from it; the territory the Germans took, as well as additional territory, was used to create the new (sometimes “renewed”) states of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland.
Simplest explanation is probably Mencken’s: By the late Spring and Early Summer of 1917 Germany had basically won WW-I fair and square; France, England, and Russia richly deserved to spend the next hundred years under German hegemony or dominion and WOULD have... except that Germany had exhausted herself doing it and at that point in time, Britain owed those big banks in NY too much money for Wilson to allow her to lose a major war.
Yeah. Read post #6.
‘They were at peace with Germany?
Then you really don’t know anything about Russia.’
They had signed a Peace Treaty, demobilized their military, retreated behind shrunken borders, overthrown the government which had declared the war and executed its former leader. They were just as at peace with Germany as the Southern States were at peace with the Union in 1866.
Forget it, he’s rolling.
This is an odd way to phrase things.
Propaganda it might have been. Or not. In any case I cannot see the word "conquered" being appropriate here. "defeated," perhaps.
Is English your first language?
The more I learn of history ,the more I see that evil men bent on control lead America into wars that were unjust or none of our business.
The South didn't invade the North,it was the other way,and the disagreements could have been better solved without the deaths of 600,000 and the wanton,vicious destruction of Southern cities.
The Spanish-American War need never have happened.
And The U.S. need not have gotten involved in the 1914 War of the Empires.
Nor should the U.S. have gone into Bosnia,Libya, or even Iraq at the times and for the reasons stated.
Politicians routinely lie,some lie more than others.
Presidents are politicians.
It was Santa Ana attacking the Alamo that really got things started.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.