How America won WWI for the Entente Powers - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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The First World War (1914-1918).
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#14747578
pugsville wrote:You have to understand, (a) the German blockade was Killing US citizens, maybe not many, but that did not go down well with the US public, (b) Britain dominated US investment, (about 65% of all foreign investment in the US) Britain was well positioned to buy vast amounts of stuff from the US in a way the central powers were not. Britian was doing business on vast scale which was very profitable for the US. (c) The Base of the British Blockade was legal, the base of the unrestricted submarine warfare was not.

SO
(a) emotionally the German blockade was much worse
(b) finically the British were a m8ch superior trading partner
(c) Legally the British had a much better case.

There was no reason for the US to get into any of this nonsense, they could have merely declared at the start:

"we will be trading with all nations through this war, and anyone that tries to interfere with any trade carried out under the American flag will be considered to have committed an act of war against the United States."

They could have simply taken the line: we'll not have Britain, France , Germany ir any one else telling us who we can and can't trade with.
#14747655
Rich wrote:There was no reason for the US to get into any of this nonsense, they could have merely declared at the start:

"we will be trading with all nations through this war, and anyone that tries to interfere with any trade carried out under the American flag will be considered to have committed an act of war against the United States."

They could have simply taken the line: we'll not have Britain, France , Germany ir any one else telling us who we can and can't trade with.


Blockades had been accepted part of war for some time, coming out and unilaterally rewriting the rules would be hardly likely be overly recognised. The US was also a signatory to the Hague Conventions which explicitly legalised blockades.

Cutting off trade to Britain would have been very bad for the US.

But almost none of the trade was carried out under a american flag. lost all the British trade was carried on British ships.
#14766024
US entering the war did decide it as it was impossible for exhausted Germany + Austria-Hungary to mobilize enough troops to keep replacing losses. WW1 was about manpower. The war lasted so long because it took some time to wear down Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Even without US entering the war Central powers probably cannot win it but neither can Entente. There is too much land to conquer for heavy losses and little gain. France and Britain were unwilling to sign peace agreement.
#14766027
The loss of World War I according to Hitler:

Hitler-Reichstag 1941 wrote:Greece, which least of all required such a guarantee, was offered her share to link her destiny to that of the country that provided her King with cash and orders.

EVEN TODAY I FEEL THAT I MUST, AS I BELIEVE IN THE INTEREST OF HISTORICAL ACCURACY, DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE GREEK PEOPLE AND THAT THIN TOP LAYER OF CORRUPT LEADERS WHO, INSPIRED BY A KING WHO HAD NO EYES FOR THE DUTY OF TRUE LEADERSHIP, PREFERRED INSTEAD TO FURTHER THE AIMS OF BRITISH WAR POLITICS. To me this is a subject of profound regret.

Germany, with the faint hope of still being able to contribute in some way to a solution of the problem, had not severed relations with Greece. But even then I was bound in duty to point out before the whole world that we would not tacitly allow a revival of the old Salonica scheme of the Great War.

Unfortunately, my warning was not taken seriously enough. That we were determined, if the British tried to gain another foothold in Europe, to drive them back into the sea was not taken seriously enough.

The result was that the British began in an increasing degree to establish bases for the formation of a new Salonika army. They began by laying out airdromes and by establishing the necessary ground organization in the firm conviction that the occupation of the airdromes themselves could afterward be carried out very speedily.

Finally a continuous stream of transports brought equipment for an army which, according to Mr. Churchill's idea and plans, was to be landed in Greece. As I have said, already we were aware of this. For months we watched this entire strange procedure with attention, if with restraint.

The object of this Salonika army was to attack Germany from the south, inflict a defeat upon her, and from this point as in 1918 turn the tide of the war.


Salonica army in World War I(1918) that Hitler is referring to:

wiki-Macedonian Front wrote:On 30 May 1918, the Allies launched an offensive on the heavily fortified Skra salient, commencing the battle of Skra-di-Legen. The battle marked the first major Greek action on the Allied side in the war.[21] Utilizing the cover of heavy artillery a Franco-Hellenic force made a rapid push into the enemy trenches, conquering Skra and the surrounding system of fortifications. Greek casualties amounted to 434–440 killed in action, 154–164 missing in action and 1,974–2,220 wounded, France lost approximately 150 men killed or injured. A total of 1,782 soldiers of the Central Powers became prisoners of war, including a small number of German engineers and artillery specialists that served in Bulgarian units; considerable amounts of military equipment also fell into Entente hands. The plan for a Bulgarian counterattack against Skra remained unfulfilled as the Bulgarian soldiers refused to take part in the operation. Both the Greek and the French press used the opportunity to extol the efforts of the Greek army, favorably influencing the Greek mobilization.[22][23][24]

The fall of Skra prompted Bulgarian prime minister Vasil Radoslavov to resign on 21 June 1918. Aleksandar Malinov who assumed office immediately afterwards pursued secret negotiations with Britain, offering Bulgaria's exit from the war with the condition that Bulgaria fully retains eastern Macedonia. However, British prime minister David Lloyd George rejected the proposal, assuring the Greek ambassador in London Ioannis Gennadius, that Britain would not act against Greek interests.[25]


The battle which led to the collapse of Bulgaria and opened the flanks of the Germans:

wiki-Battle of Skra wrote:The Battle of Skra di Legen (Skora di Legen) was a two-day battle which took place at the Skra fortified position, located northeast of Mount Paiko, which is north-west of Thessaloniki, on May 29–30, 1918, on the Macedonian front of World War I. The battle was the first large-scale employment of Greek troops on the front, and resulted in the capture of the heavily fortified Bulgarian position.

The Allied force comprised three Greek divisions of the National Defence Army Corps under Lieutenant General Emmanouil Zymvrakakis, plus one French brigade. The three Greek divisions included the Archipelago Division under Major General Dimitrios Ioannou, the Crete Division under Major General Panagiotis Spiliadis, and the Serres Division under Lieutenant Colonel Epameinondas Zymvrakakis. The 5th and 6th Regiments from the Archipelago Division were in the center, the 7th and 8th Regiments from the Crete Division were on the right flank and the 1st Regiment of the Serres Division was on the left flank.
#14777766
The USA was essential to victory in WWI----but not as essential as France, Britain (and Empire), or Russia. Metropolitan France (i.e. not counting the nations of the French empire) lost over a million dead in battle. According to Martin Gilbert, in his history of the 20th century, the USA actually lost fewer dead in battle than Canada did in WWI, with Canada taking about 50,000 dead and the USA about 48,000. At the time, the USA had perhaps twelve times as many people as Canada. The losses taken by Britain and Russia were also huge, on the order of France's losses, although Britain's were somewhat less. The USA was conscious of their having taken far fewer losses than their "associated" powers, and after the war, bundled the losses that their army in Europe took from the Spanish influenza with their war losses---which is why figures significantly higher than 48,000 are often quoted in histories.

The USA's participation was still essential to the victory, however. During the war, before 1917, Britain and France needed to buy both food (their farmers were in the army) and military and military-related supplies in abundance. The USA made a great deal of money selling to them. It was a great time to be an American farmer, the last really good time until the end of the Great Depression decades in the future. Farm prices soared.

Also, the effect of American participation on German morale was huge in 1918. They only had to fight enough to let the Germans know that they weren't a hopelessly un-military people, and the Germans could do the math: the USA had as many people as Britain + France and 1918 was their effective 1914. After their 1918 offensives had been absorbed by the Entente + USA, the Germans knew that they were done. Other factors, such as the tank, which was a better innovation than Hutier tactics, as they did not require a limitless supply of experienced soldiers, but were products of factories----were important. The Germans themselves made the British blockade more effective by not organizing their own food supply as well as they could. They counted on a short war in 1914, and did not work to keep their agricultural land productive in the war. Also, they had control of Ukraine in 1918. Organizing it for agricultural production for Germany would have been a lot more relevant to Germany's good at the time than anything the strosstruppen could have accomplished.

I remember reading decades ago that the average American soldier in WWI was allocated about 4000 calories of food a day---while the German soldier in 1918 had to make do with about 1800. That was the fault of the vaunted German General Staff, which saw war too much in Napoleonic terms. They also failed to see the significance of the tank. They had the technical capacity to make them in numbers, and they had designs offered to them by inventors, but they just didn't see it.

I have to take issue with the word "for" in the topic subject. You might not have meant it in an offensive way, but sometimes Americans tend to regard their interventions in European wars as colossal acts of disinterested charity. Clemenceau of France strongly objected to this tendency of American thought at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The gist of his famous objection was that it was the persistence of German aggression that brought the USA into the war, not anything uniquely idealistic.

Of course, it is also true that neither Britain, nor France, nor Russia fought Germany for the sake of the USA.
#14777802
Essential suggests that the entente would have lost without the US. This is simply not true. Germans were starving to death in the streets entirely thanks to the Royal Navy blockade. The German Empire would not have been able to continue to war in this state forever even if the US hadn't finally turned up and made its miniscule contribution. :roll:
#14777906
Decky wrote:Essential suggests that the entente would have lost without the US. This is simply not true. Germans were starving to death in the streets entirely thanks to the Royal Navy blockade. The German Empire would not have been able to continue to war in this state forever even if the US hadn't finally turned up and made its miniscule contribution. :roll:


Poland and Ukraine have lots of land to feed both Germany and Austria-Hungary. I guess there was no time to use it since Russia made peace only in spring 1918. Had it occurred one year earlier it might have made some difference.

For Central powers to win, they would have needed to only defend on Italian front and use Polish, Ukrainian, Austro-Hungarian troops against France. That works only as long as US doesn't enter the war.
#14778655
Result of Gorlice–Tarnów offensive made it possible to grow food in today's Poland starting from 1916. But the situation probably wasn't too bad so early. In 1918 they were trying to solve the food problem with Ukraine by giving it independence in Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Germans also requisitioned grain from Romania in 1918 after Treaty of Bucharest.

Agricultural production was greatly underestimated during the war. But not always. For example when von Hotzendorf pressed for war after assasination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, when he got the chance to wage war he delayed as it was July and men were needed to work on fields. Russians launched their Brusilov Offensive in 1916 in June and not earlier for the same reason.

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