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Subject: Would We and the World Be Better Off If the US Had Stayed Out Of WWI?
CJH    4/30/2005 10:53:57 PM
I admire George Washington even more than I admire Robert Edward Lee. George Washington's farewell address is remembered for his warning us against political parties and for warning us against foreign entanglements. We followed his advice concerning foreign entanglements until April 1917 when we entered WWI. My own opinion is that the consequences of our entering WWI made WWII inevitable and that had we not entered WWI there would not have been a WWII in Europe. Would the world and the US be better off if the US had kept out of the war in Europe in 1917? Could we have avoided war with the Japanese Empire? Could we have gotten away with standing on the Monroe Doctrine and telling the world's powers to keep out of the Western Hemisphere?
 
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verdunjp    RE: To timon-phocas   9/28/2005 1:17:51 PM
You have good points timon_phocas. But do you realy believe that peace in Europe could have been achieve after WWII without the threat of nuclear wepons? Second question: You consider that the Versailles treaty was a bad one. what allies should have done?
 
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timon_phocas    RE: To timon-phocas   9/29/2005 9:10:18 AM
>>You have good points timon_phocas. But do you really believe that peace in Europe could have been achieve after WWII without the threat of nuclear weapons?<< 1) Thanks for the compliment about having good arguments 2) I think the dominant factor for peace in immediate postwar Europe was everybody?s exhaustion and war weariness. People just wanted to rebuild their lives after 6 years of non-stop catastrophes. An example of this was the 1945 election of Bevin to be Prime Minister of Britain, ousting Churchill. 3) The US only had a handful of atomic weapons in the immediate postwar period. Production was quite low. 4) The US started a very traditional (for the US, anyway) radical reduction in forces almost immediately after the war ended. As a matter of fact, war production had peaked in 1944 and was already being reduced in 1945. 5) The US was swinging towards a traditional isolationist stance in 1945/46. This had to be altered by a concerted campaign to change public opinion. >>Second question: You consider that the Versailles treaty was a bad one. what allies should have done?<< 1) The most difficult decision a politician can make is to be generous to a defeated enemy. Especially an enemy that you have spent years, sometimes generations, whipping up fear about. From the vantage point of the 21st century, I think that the victorious allies should have been more generous to Germany. Nobody had learned that lesson, however. It would have taken an enormous leap of understanding, and it?s not easy to put into practice. Abraham Lincoln tried to do it with the former states of the Confederacy, but his plans were thwarted but revenge-minde
 
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verdunjp    RE: To timon-phocas   10/13/2005 1:11:32 PM
People were exhausted after WWII but whitout The existence of nuclear weapons, I realy think that a war between the east ans the west would have been inevitable. Concerning the Versailles treaty, I think that with or whitout it, WWII would have taken place. The causes of WWII is far from the Versailles treaty. It is rather a question of radical ideology mixted with an bad economical context that explain origins of WWII. The proof is that Italy, winner of WWI and non subject to any treaty, became facist and expansionnist in the 30's. Regards, JP
 
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JIMF    RE: To timon-phocas   10/13/2005 6:37:24 PM
Interesting dialogue. Margaret MacMillan's book on Versailles was very good. As timon observed for all Wilson's good points he made a politcal hash of selling the treaty to the senate. He didn't bring any Republicans with him to Versailles, and when he returned to the U.S. he managed to gratuitously insult Republican Senator Lodge. Clemenceau observed that sitting between Wilson and Lloyd George was like sitting between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.
 
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PowerPointRanger    Versaille & the US   11/6/2005 12:59:54 PM
There's no question in my mind that the WWI would have ened in largely the same way had the US not entered. The war ended more for economic reasons than military ones. The Germans were simply broke. History has recorded that the US was a moderating influence on the post-war treaty, which suggests that without our participation WWII would probably have been worse. I don't believe the treaty was especially harsh, nor the primary cause of German resentment. It was the excuse, not the cause. The reparations themselves were minor in comparison to the costs of the war itself. Recall that the previous war had lasted only a matter of months. Wartime debts were manageable, even with reparations. In comparison, WWI lasted 4 years and left all party burdened with crushing debt. Reparations were simply the straw that broke the camel's back. What about the US itself? We ended the WWI as a world power not because of military arms, but because of wartime profits. Our economy made huge gains by selling supples to Europe. We became the world's largest creditor nation by the end of the war (replacing Britain as the world's dominant economic power). I have no doubts in my mind that the Pacific war would still have happened. The Japanese benefitted from WWI almost as much as the US and Japan devoted most of the gain to visions of conquest. None of that would have changed had the US not participated actively in WWI.
 
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