Should the US have gotten involved in Europe in WWI?

[XemaSab]

12 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
	Yes, we should have gotten involved.
	4 (33%)
	We should have stayed out.
	8 (67%)
	1 DU member did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[DemocratSinceBirth]

1. We had no choice after Germany declared war on us

But we were involved much earlier than that with the Lend-Lease program.

[thucythucy]

3. The question was about World War I.

You're thinking of WWII.

The US declared war on Germany after Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain, which was itself a response to Britain's blockade of Germany.

Had we not declared war on Germany, it's doubtful Germany would have declared war on us.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

4. Too early in the morning

My bad.

But there were many opportunities to stop Hitler at little cost which were unfortunately missed.

[thucythucy]

5. I know the feeling.

First thing in the morning, all I'm capable of doing is starting the coffee.

Thoughts before my first cup of coffee: "Must drink coffee. Must drink coffee. Must drink coffee."

And I agree, Hitler could and should have been stopped long before he invaded Poland.

Best wishes.

[zipplewrath]

9. The treaty of Versailles

The time to have prevented Hitler was Wilson at the Treaty of Versailles ending WW I. It was far too punative and created the environment for a Hitler to rise to power. It's easy to see this now in hindsight, probably not so much at the time.

The real lesson here is that wars aren't "won". Wars rearrange the combatants for the next war. Some are eliminated, some are strengthened, some are created. We gotta stop trying to solve everything by killing people.

[HardTimes99]

14. Versailles didn't go far enough, imho. The Allies should have broken Germany up into its

constituent parts and principalities (and maybe partitioned Prussia for good measure).

On second thought, the Allies did do that to the Ottoman Empire and look where we are today. So still thinking this one over.

[LibertyLover]

29. The Treaty of Versailles' onerous provisions

were not Wilson's fault. He had wanted a more equitable peace, however, as I remember, he was ill during the peace conference, possibly even having a small stroke or two, and was not able to fight the individuals who wanted to punish Germany. I recently watched a fascinating program on the last day of World War 1. The agreement for the cease-fire was signed in Compagne at 5 am, with active fighting to end at 11 am on November 11th. But the French commander in chief refused to issue orders to the allied troops allowing them to break off fighting immediately. So along the front-line trenches, some officers insisted their troops go 'over the top' and continue fighting for land that in just a few hours they would be able to walk on without let or hindrance. The French commander had lost his son and son-in-law and hated the Germans so much that he was happy to condemn other men to die when there was no need. It was that attitude that pervaded the peace conference and dictated the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Wilson more or less went along with it because he had no energy to fight against so many determined statesmen.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. The sinking of 4 US ships within a one-month period

by German U-boats in early 1917 was essentially a declaration of war.

[HardTimes99]

19. By that point, though, weren't we already in de facto violation of the

laws of neutrality? It's been awhile since I've studied the period, but I seem to remember we were transporting arms and munitions to the Entente Cordiale (UK) on dual-use commercial passenger liners like the Luistania.

[Savannahmann]

22. Yes, and on the side of the Germans.

Wilson allowed the Germans to send encrypted messages across the State Department Cable to Berlin from Washington. This was supposedly to allow them to negotiate. In reality the Germans were using it to notify their envoys that war was imminent, and if it broke out they were to encourage Mexico to go to war with the United States.

Wilson was so personally insulted by this revelation that he classified the route the Zimmerman Telegram took as top secret, and then a month later asked Congress for the War.

We were selling arms and munitions to the Entente primarily because they could get ships here to pick up the items. The Germans couldn't, although they did make a couple trips with their big cargo submarine. We traded with that too before the War broke out.

[brooklynite]

16. But if you buy into the isolationist position, we wouldn't have been supplying the UK with arms....

[el_bryanto]

2. I could have sworn we did this one already.

But I think that while Europe did let us get to second base, that's no reason that Europe should have expected a commitment. We're a growing country; we have needs that Europe just couldn't satisfy by herself. I mean we still see Europe now and again when we are drunk or lonely, but really that's as much of a relationship as we need.

Bryant

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. When I was a teen, I spoke to an actual WW1 vet who emphatically said no.

He said that it was completely pointless.

[HardTimes99]

17. My paternal grandfather served there and he said the novel and subsequent film

All Quiet on the Western Front (Nichts Neues im Westen) summed up his feelings perfectly. Apparently the film version was quite the bombshell (npi) for its time when it premiered and showed.

[zipplewrath]

7. At what point?

We did stay out initially. By the time we got involved, the situation had changed dramatically. The origins of WW I were complex. The question for me has always been whether the US, or many other nations could have prevented it in the first place.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. It was sold as the war to end all wars. It was sold as a war to create lasting peace.

Was that objective obtained?

[jakeXT]

10. chickens

[Arctic Dave]

20. OMG! Thatt was hilarious.

[JustAnotherGen]

11. They declared war on US

Japan released the formal document on December 8, 1941 even though they opened hell on Pearl Harbor on December 7th (US).

December 11, 1941 - Italy and Germany declared war on the US.



Those also were not civil wars happening in Asia or Europe.


Poland was a sovereign nation as was France and every other place Hitler invaded.


And China and Japan well - you know - the rape of nanking was not carried out by the Chinese against their own. . .

[Rowdyboy]

12. Wrong war. The question and the poll are about World War I (1913-1917)....

I almost made the same mistake.

[JustAnotherGen]

26. Ahh

[HardTimes99]

13. Democratic Socialist here. I'm going to cast my lot with Eugene Debs on this one and say

we should have stayed out of WWI.

ETA: I've gotten a few chuckles watching the double-take people do when they realize they've somehow conflated WWI with WWII. Don't know if you intended this but amusing nonetheless

[JustAnotherGen]

27. Multi Tasking for me

[cthulu2016]

18. Well, our involvement did prevent WWII... hey, wait a minute!

[zipplewrath]

24. Wille McBride

Green Fields Of France
by Eric Bogle

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.

[Bradical79]

21. Honestly I'm ashamed to admit

that I can't seem to recall how we got involved in WWI. With all the history classes I've taken over the years, that fact seems to have gotten shoved right out of my brain :-P

[zipplewrath]

25. Masters Thesis

People still get Masters Thesis answering that question. The Disney version is that the Germans sunk some of our ships. As one can imagine, it 's a tad more complicated than that.

[Paladin]

23. The Hundred Years War: Necessity Or Needless Bloodshed? (nt)

[JustAnotherGen]

28. Second

No - but I'm the Great Granddaughter of a French Man who lost several toes to trench rot - and came here in 1920/1921 because as an officer - he really thought the 'peace' negotiated sucked. It just sucked. And it happened again. Making WW I in his pov worthless in general.

[reformist2]

30. Given all the WWI/WWII confusion, methinks your poll results are contaminated.

[jwirr]

31. I voted yes, but Ghandi has a quote that asks if any more would have died if we had just stayed out

of it. The difference was that they would have died in the concentration camps instead of in war. I assume he was thinking of the dead on both sides.

Oops! Changed my vote to no when I realized it was WWI.

[Historic NY]

32. In the end we were sucked into the war....

Last edited Tue Sep 3, 2013, 03:19 PM - Edit history (1)

which had been going on "tit for tat", from 1912 onward. The crescendo was the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand and his wife in July 1914 increased the echoes of war.

European politics and Imperialism and the arms race were part of the root cause along with petty greivances from the 1880 period. Pretty much it seems everyone hated each other.

All out submarine warfare against our commercial ships eventually brought Wilson to the table, once neutrality failed. The final blame was the Lusitania, but it was in the works long before that... as groups worked to gin up our entry. Wilson finally caved when he saw Germany's Imperialistic goals threaten not only the world but US interests. Nothing stood in their way with the Russian Revolution turning out the Czar. The anti-warists slowly evolved to see that it was a moral threat and slowly withdrew their opposition. Wilson finally declared was on the German Empire in 1917.