How would the USA be different if it had not entered World War One?

[repoman]

I am trying to keep this idea mostly to domestic issues, but obviously it would also affect foreign affairs further down the line. The Treaty of Versailles would have been affected, but that will maybe make this topic overly broad?

Some factors:

- No large amount of black veteran soldiers who could still not vote
- no sedition act? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
- How would socialists be seen?

Seems like an interesting topic.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

In actuality, the U.S. did not sign the Treaty of Verseilles. The entry into the war let the world know the US was now a world power, and its isolationist policies could not be counted on. The US also meddled in Russia in the red vs white Russian civil war after WWI. The US would no longer be nation that confined itself to the Americas.

 

[Trausti]

If just for domestic issues, there would not have been prohibition. Prohibition was a spin off of the first feminists / suffragettes. They organized while the men were off fighting a war. When they returned, the matriarchy had won. The goal of stopping men from doing what men like to do had succeeded, for a time.

 

[Bronzeage]

There's no way to consider this question without including the effects of the Central Powers, Germany and the Austro Hungarian Empire, winning the war. Russia had already made a separate peace which included the loss of tremendous amounts of their territory. It's unlikely the Bolsheviks could have maintained power and the Soviet Union would not exist.

 

[bilby]

There's no way to consider this question without including the effects of the Central Powers, Germany and the Austro Hungarian Empire, winning the war. Russia had already made a separate peace which included the loss of tremendous amounts of their territory. It's unlikely the Bolsheviks could have maintained power and the Soviet Union would not exist.

I seems highly implausible that the Central Powers could have won if America had remained neutral; it would perhaps have taken them another year to lose, but there was really no path to victory for them on the Western Front once the line stabilised. Having failed to flank the British and French armies during the 'Race to the Sea', the Germans simply had no answer to the question 'how can we defeat France' after October 1914; their only hope was to outlast the French and British, which their geographic position and the strength of the Royal Navy rendered impossible.

By the time that the AEF arrived in France in significant numbers, in the summer of 1918, German troops were routinely carrying out trench raids with the objective of stealing food from the opposing British and French armies. The food, fuel and other supplies situation in Germany itself was even worse, with the military getting first priority for supplies.

Germany couldn't win. The only question was how quickly they would lose, and how painful the terms would be.

The biggest effects of US involvement in WWI were domestic and diplomatic; their military contribution was negligible. Only about a million Americans saw action on the Western Front, compared to over eight million French and two million British troops active in-theatre at the time. Doubtless their contribution was important in saving huge numbers of lives and shortening the war by at least several months. But the outcome of the war was not in doubt by the time they arrived - nor even a year earlier, when America formally declared war.

 

[Underseer]

If just for domestic issues, there would not have been prohibition. Prohibition was a spin off of the first feminists / suffragettes. They organized while the men were off fighting a war. When they returned, the matriarchy had won. The goal of stopping men from doing what men like to do had succeeded, for a time.

Matriarchy?

Oh, do tell. What is the "matriarchy"?

Is it a secret conspiracy by women to persecute you?

 

[lpetrich]

Here is what I think would have happened in Europe. Germany and Austria-Hungary got big territories in the east from Russia in the Brest-Litovsk treaty, but later in that year, the Bolsheviks succeed well enough in consolidating power to make Germany's leadership antsy. Combined with lack of progress on the western front, Germany's leaders decide on a peace deal with Britain and France: keeping eastern Europe in exchange for withdrawing to the prewar boundaries in the west. Britain and France agree, and WWI officially ends.

The eastern territories become nominally independent, but nevertheless subject to Germany and Austria, and they eventually dislike their new masters. The Bolsheviks propose "liberating" them, and it becomes an awkward dilemma for them. So might Germany and Russia fight again before long?

 

[lpetrich]

The Prohibition amendment was the 18th one. It was passed by Congress on December 18, 1917, and ratified January 16, 1919.

The women-voting one was the 19th one. It was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, and ratified August 18, 1920.

One of the big opponents of women voting was the alcoholic-drink industry. But Prohibition was a big defeat for it, and women had an easier time getting the vote.

I've found this interesting artlcle: What people get wrong about Prohibition - Vox The Anti-Saloon League used pressure-group tactics that would make the National Rifle Association proud.

 

[Bronzeage]

There's no way to consider this question without including the effects of the Central Powers, Germany and the Austro Hungarian Empire, winning the war. Russia had already made a separate peace which included the loss of tremendous amounts of their territory. It's unlikely the Bolsheviks could have maintained power and the Soviet Union would not exist.

I seems highly implausible that the Central Powers could have won if America had remained neutral; it would perhaps have taken them another year to lose, but there was really no path to victory for them on the Western Front once the line stabilised. Having failed to flank the British and French armies during the 'Race to the Sea', the Germans simply had no answer to the question 'how can we defeat France' after October 1914; their only hope was to outlast the French and British, which their geographic position and the strength of the Royal Navy rendered impossible.

By the time that the AEF arrived in France in significant numbers, in the summer of 1918, German troops were routinely carrying out trench raids with the objective of stealing food from the opposing British and French armies. The food, fuel and other supplies situation in Germany itself was even worse, with the military getting first priority for supplies.

Germany couldn't win. The only question was how quickly they would lose, and how painful the terms would be.

The biggest effects of US involvement in WWI were domestic and diplomatic; their military contribution was negligible. Only about a million Americans saw action on the Western Front, compared to over eight million French and two million British troops active in-theatre at the time. Doubtless their contribution was important in saving huge numbers of lives and shortening the war by at least several months. But the outcome of the war was not in doubt by the time they arrived - nor even a year earlier, when America formally declared war.

This depends on our definition of "enters the war." The Central Powers may not have won, in any triumphant sense, but could have settled a less crippling armistice. If the US truly wanted to stay out of the conflict, this would have meant not risking their own ships to send cargo to Europe. Take US supplies out of the equation, along with unrestricted German submarine warfare, and it's possible the UK could be forced to sue for peace, in some form, long before the real time line brings the US into the war.

 

[Politesse]

The Great War had a profound impact on my patrilineal family, many of whom served in various capacities. It resulted in a resettlement (from the Appalachians to California) and killed many of the young men in that generation, leading to not just a decline in the numbers of our clan, but a loss of the name as the remaining women married out without new ones marrying in. On the other hand, we prospered economically from the new location, and my great-great-grandfather's training, which he leveraged into a productive career in factory work for Kaiser and others, themselves rich off the fat of the war. Some of our family skeletons from the pioneer era were more easily buried with war stories to talk about in a new place. My great-great uncle had come back an alcoholic, a scourge which he passed down to his offspring. So a mixed bag I suppose, but a profound one. I have a hard time imagining the alternative history.

I know a lot of my students have told me similar stories; those of Native extraction invariably mention how reservation life changed during the wars, from being glorified concentration camps to something more like an actual land base as handsome young veterans came back from the wars with a mind to change the way economic life was being "handled" by the BIA. Without the military service to boast on and draw experience from, would this kind of progress have been made so quickly?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

If the US had not entered WWI. A difficult subject considering that most of the discussion on WWI center on what Europe would have done had the US not entered.

The first is that there would have been no sedition acts under Wilson nor would there have been the War Economy that later progressives looked to as a model. After that it involves reaction to events outside the US.

It is generally assumed that, absent US involvement, the war would have ground to a stagnation, then a negotiated peace, without Germany suffering under the Treaty of Versailles. Without the harsh reparations and the harsh tariffs, we would have lacked one of the primary reasons the US and the rest of the world entered a depression.

The depression in the US had other reasons as well, but the punitive tariffs was one of them. Therefore the crash of 29 would have been less severe. There would have been less panic as a result, and that crash could have been remedied in the same way as the more severe crash of 1920.

The further forward in time we go, the more branches become available so it is harder to determine which one is most likely. Still, a much less severe crash, if it happened at all, means that the New Deal becomes less likely and therefore the US recovers faster.

The lack of WWII is a wildcard that makes it even harder to determine what happens next. No cold war (it was the US that pressured Russia to stay in the war after the fall of the Tsars and before Lenin took over, in the short lived Russian Republic). After that it becomes impossible to really tell.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Germany wins, no WWII, so our entry to superpower status delayed till the next round of idiocy.

Russia invaded by allied coalition, Bolsheviks overthrown.

Would the Hapsburgs still be running their empire?

 

[LordKiran]

Germany wins, no WWII, so our entry to superpower status delayed till the next round of idiocy.

Russia invaded by allied coalition, Bolsheviks overthrown.

Would the Hapsburgs still be running their empire?

Unlikely, the war would have destroyed Austro-hungary from the inside out if not as a result of losing the war. The austrians never really latched onto the idea of uniting the people around a common national identity the same way the rest of Europe kind of did, so that empire was carrying an expiration date no matter what imo.