Talk Elections

I've recently been pondering the morality of the US entry into WWI. While it is true that the US was a pro-allied neutral before and that Britain also violated our neutrality with the North Sea blockade, I still have to say that our entry was necessary.
The democracies of Europe, Britain, France, Belgium, and the Russian Provisional Government until October, needed our help to stop the Germans from overruning Europe and creating a new empire. Without US the allies may have lost and that could have meant the complete genocide of the Armenians, the further depopulation of Belgium, further slaughter of poles, the enslavement of the Ukrainians and other inhabitants of the Ober-Ost, and many more potential atrocities. About the only good thing was that the Germans would have supported the whites in creating a warlord government in Russia that could only hurt itself.
What do you say, forum?

American boys dying overseas to protect the corrupt and brutal British and French empires, not very approving of it.

It's interesting how the first woman elected to Congress, Jeannette Rankin, managed to vote against both World Wars despite only serving two terms. She was the only vote against WWII, just like Barbara Lee would be the only vote against Afghanistan 60 years later.

We should not have gotten involved in that one.  There were no good guys.

We should have entered the war in 1914, but against Britain for mining international waters in the North Sea.  A more practical approach might be to wait until 1915 when we could be better prepared to occupy Canada, but on the other hand, that also gives the Japanese time to mobilize in defense of their British coimperialists as well.  Besides, an early US entry might well encourage Italy to honor its Triple Alliance obligations and declare war on France.

It's doubtful we'd end up sending troops to Europe in such a scenario.  Quelling Franco-British bases in the Americas and defending the Philippines against the Japanese Yellow Peril would be the main theaters of operation for the United States at first.  Hopefully, denying the Anglo-French Entente the resources they need to harass Germany would give the Germans and the Dual Monarchy the breathing space to deal with the pan-Slavic conspiracy in the East behind the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Hopefully, by 1916, the British and French would be prepared to see reason, and if not, a US invasion to liberate Ireland from English misrule combined with German and Italian advances further into France would compel them to abandon their warmongering ways or at least their embrace of the Servian irredentism that led to the Great War.

Meh. I'd say we should've gotten involved.

No reason to join the war effort for either side, even though I probably would have supported the Centeral Powers at the time.

Utterly pointless.

I find it weird that some people think that the authors of the Polish Border Strip scheme to be on par morally with the Entente.

The Entente were not good guys, no, but they were far superior then the Central Powers. Europe under the boot of the Kaiserreich (especially if the OHL is still as insane as was) would not be a pleasant place to live in. Ideally, we should have come in to save the day late enough for the Tsar to still fall, but early enough to save the provisional government. Preventing German domination of Europe was a worthwhile goal overall.

Certainly Imperial Germany was awful, but the rule of all Europeans in Africa was worse than anything in Europe, and Tsarist Russia was clearly worse than Germany/Austria/Bulgaria (arguably not Turkey for obvious reasons).

Yeah, the only way that the Central Powers were worse is if you only care about white people.

I'm not the biggest expert on colonial Africa, but wasn't Germany considered one of the more brutal colonial empires?

Pointless war

Depended upon the colony.  German East Africa was in many ways a model of the best of colonialism, but German Southwest Africa was a model of the worst colonialism had to offer, tho to be fair I think SWA suffered from thinking the example in South Africa was how to go about the task of colonization.  Of course neither SWA or SA compares with the absolute degeneracy that was the Congo Free State.

Well, it helped my country regain the independence, so my opinion is positive, even if biased :P


The United States benefited a lot from the victory in Europe, both economically (displacing the British Empire as a leading industrialized economic power) and in terms of geopolitical influence, so it was hardly "just to protect British and French interests".  

Awful. Our eventual intervention in WWII would have been just as awful, had Japan not attacked us.

Of course there ís the genocidal war against the Hereros in present Namibia, but if you evaluate the broad picture I think: Worse than Britain and about equal to France in oppression, is about right.

Imperial Germany had a parliament and a free press and would likely have developed into a full fledged democracy in time. Also a German victory  would have prevented the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Germany was the biggest country in Europe and some kind of German domination was the "natural" situation. Trying to keep Germany down was the main cause of the war on a more structural level.
All the atrociies you mentioned were the result of the war situation and its not likely they would have continued after the war.

There is a strong pro-British bias in American history about Europe IMO and your evaluation reflects that.

HA. America would have better been utilized as a mediator in peace negotiations.

I'm not sure that I would rate France as definitively beneath Britain on the oppression scale. After all, while the French did use Congo-Free-Statesque policies in their equatorian colonies, Britain only had full universal sufferage for a few years and also had bouts of extreme violence such as with the Indian rebellion and Tanzania.

Do Armenians classify as white?

Do the Circassians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Circassians) classify as white?  As is often the case, we decry our enemies for doing what our side already did earlier.

Several million more killed in death camps and Stalin controlling all of continental Europe > losing 100K American men?

1. The Indian Rebellion is prior to high imperialism (1870-1914), which is the relevant era in this context.
2. Tanzania was created in 1961 and Tanganyika was German prior to WW1, so what are you talking about?

Anyway, if you evaluate the big picture Britain clearly had a less oppressive colonial policy than France relying more on the market mechanism and with a greater respect for the rule of law. This is of course a relative evaluation and not to say that British imperialism wasn't highly oppressive and used quite heavy handed measures from time to time, but generally the British managed to rule and extort in a more subtle and rational (as in cost efficient) way requiring less use of force.

Grade A Whataboutery from Ernest!

It did indeed have a parliament, but that parliament (as you well know) was almost entirely toothless. The votes cast by the people (on an ironically broad franchise) had no influence over government policy. The military, the state bureaucracy, and the country's social and economic elites were opposed to democracy on principle. The excessively elevated status of the military in particular was a massive barrier to democratisation (as leading Social Democrats knew only too well). The development of anything that can be meaningfully described as a democracy could only have happened after a revolution.

I suppose because the anniversary of the war is coming up? But it's the wrong question to ask. The trouble with asking 'was this the right decision' is that you end up getting stuck in counter-factual fantasy, rather than addressing the actually interesting questions.

One of which, for example, would be why did the United States enter the war at all? Never assume that this kind of thing is obvious. Another would be - and you can argue that it might actually be a more important question - why did the United States adopt a position of sham 'neutrality' (in reality very much favouring and supporting the economically very overstretched Allied Powers) rather than actual neutrality?

A combination of it being financially lucrative to have done as we did plus the fact that Wilson was an Anglophile who favored the continued dominance of English-speaking peoples, but did hope to make us Americans the dominant member thereof.  Wilson wasn't quite as much of a idealist wearing rose-tinted glasses as he is often thought of.  We entered the war primarily because it began to look that if we maintained our then current policy of sham neutrality, the Allies would lose and by extension, those who backed them financially would lose.

Well, I think its a matter of time.

There were great tension between modernising and reactionary tendencies in Wilhelminian Germany and in the long run the modernising forces in German society would have prevailed.
 
Even if the Reichstag never achieved full control of the executive, it became increasingly powerful after Bismarck and no chancellor could survive for long if he was unable to work with it.

Furthermore there was a basis for change. Besides the strong labour movement you got a united liberal (pro-democratic) party being formed which was quite successful immediately before 1914 and could have allied with Social Democrats in the future.
Germany being a federal country with devolved powers made for progressive domination on the local level in a large number of cities. Which also forms a basis for opposition.
While the junkers certainly were far stronger than the aristocracy in Western Europe the German bourgeoisie and upper middle class were self-confident and part of it superior in wealth and influence to the old aristocracy around the Court.

Culturally it's a rather progressive society with experiments in art and music and a strong element of social criticism in its literature, and while this doesn't directly translates into political attitudes I think it would eventually have undermined the cultural ethos in the academic middle class necessary to sustain the old order (I know Prussian civil servants were pretty good at being culturally progressive and politically conservative –but slow erosion is still erosion).

All in all without the defeat in WW1, I could see the German bourgeoisie and middle class becoming more liberal and pro-democratic as time goes by and eventually taking over the reins of government. While this would have meant a conflict with the old elite I don't think you need a revolution to accomplish this. At some point the military-feudal elite would have caved in and compromised in order to avoid internal conflict and be able to succeed on the international stage.

All this Sonderweg stuff is seen in the rear mirror. What made the Weimar republic an inevitable failure was being associated with defeat and humiliation, not being a liberal democracy per se.

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification (the short-term stability, prestige and military prowess of the regime was greatly bolstered by industrialisation), but let's run with it anyway. Why would the 'modernising' forces have inevitably prevailed? We know now that the entire Modernisation Thesis is basically just teleological wishful thinking, don't we? And why would they have necessarily prevailed peacefully? Or prevailed over the longer term? It's one thing to sweep away Kaisers and Generals, perhaps quite another to eradicate völkisch tendencies and related nasties.

Mind you, I happen to think that the First World War was a) unavoidable and b) changed 'everything', so this is at a very abstract level of idle speculation.
 

It's true that it was hardly irrelevant, but it was not even close to being a democratic legislature. We then need to consider all of the other legislatures in Germany, many of which had significantly more direct political power...


Sure, it was a society with a lot of tensions. No doubt about it. And one in which there was a massive groundswell for change: no doubt about that either. But that wouldn't have made gradual democratisation of the sort seen in Britain or Denmark inevitable or even all that likely.


But the state parliaments and many city councils were systematically rigged in favour of the regime. And, yes, the new industrial elite was powerful but it was also frequently politically reactionary.


I don't buy into the Sonderweg thesis (which is reliant to an embarrassing extent on a complete misinterpretation of 19th century British history, as well as the always dubious idea that there is a 'normal' path for anything), but all history is seen through the rear mirror. Including (and especially) counter-factual history.

Anyway, there are some odd misconceptions lurking around this thread that probably could do with some dealing with. I'll make a vague attempt to deal with one now and another one later...

The first is the old hard left myth that the First World War was an 'imperialist war'; that it was principally the result of the various belligerents acting out of a desire to protect (and/or expand) their colonial possessions. As comforting as this idea obviously is, it is completely untenable. The imperial interests of Britain (for example) clashed with those of France and Russia (it's allies by 1914) far more than with those of Germany. The war was also not triggered by conflicting imperial claims: the international system of diplomacy that so spectacularly failed in 1914 had actually done a decent job of resolving potential flashpoints created that way. But it could not cope with a crisis on the home continent itself: this is not insignificant. And it is undeniably true that none of the belligerent nations joined in the bloodbath to protect their overseas Empires, however important they were in other respects. They would all have been much better protected by neutrality.

Of course it is obviously true that tensions caused by imperialism played a part in what happened (viz. the Kaiser's wish for Germany to find it's 'place in the sun'), but a comparatively minor one. The mentality that led to High Imperialism on the other hand...

Yes, there was a constitutional and quite liberal country among the Central Powers, but it  Germany. The correct answer is Austro-Hungary.

You cannot possibly state that Germany, still largely ruled by the junkers and new industrial elite, were anywhere close to France or the United Kingdom, as far as political freedom and role of the parties and the electorate in governing was considered.

I can understand the "there were no good guys" position (even if I do not completely agree with this assessment, considering that a number of nations did achieve freedom in result of the Central Powers defeat), but the whole revisionist look ("Imperial Germany was sooo great") is getting annoying.

As far as the colonialism is concerned (and, as Al rightly pointed out, was not a reason the WWI broke out), there indeed were no "good guys", including the United States at the time (Phillipines for example).

Hands down the worst colonial empire, at least in Africa, was Belgium. And even though it wasn't in Africa you also had Tsarist Russia, so I really fail to see how the Central Powers were significantly worse.

So essentially two terrible sides fighting a very pointless war. Why get involved?

While in many ways the two sides were equally "horrible", the Entente victory (to which the US entry significantly contributed) brought freedom to many, just to mention Czechoslovaks, Yugoslavians and Poles.

Also, as far as the colonialism is concerned, the WWI was one of the first step toward end of the colonial empires. Yes, it was a very long process and it took another WWII to produce more visible results, but it shook the fundamentals of the imperial world order (for example, Britain's loss of the foremost position in economic affairs). So yeah, things weren't so black and white.

Yeah, about the only oppressed European group who might've been better off in the event of a Central Powers victory would be the Irish.  And even that as doubtful, as Irish Independence was probably on the Kaiser's list of priorities somewhere between taking the spike off the German helmet and shaving off his sweet 'stache.  Which is to say, it was a pretty low freaking priority.  The Central Powers weren't really fans of empowering the lowly nations of Europe, though in the case of Ireland there could be a pretty strong advantage to having an inherently anti-British state on the side of the Germans if another struggle comes up.  In that case I could see an Armistice Treaty where the British are forced to give up Ireland and the political functions of the First Dail and the Senadad are allowed to continue without British interference.  And of course there is the possibility that the British refuse the Treaty and the Central Powers intervene in a possible conflict in Ireland that could result in a permanent German occupation to prevent "future intrusions" that ultimately ends up with an Irish state that becomes a puppet state to the German Empire.  And that's if the Germans aren't too busy with the Soviet power they helped install to their east.

I of course would still be against the war had I lived back then, but the Central Powers certainly weren't morally superior on the whole topic of minority rights.

Well, I can definitively see some sort of protectorate, since Germans were attempting to create some new puppet states, such as the "Kingdom of Poland" (a rump created from the Russian partiation), or the "Kingdom of Lithuania", who were to be independent in name only (and, in Polish case, nothing would change in the Prussian and Austrian partiation, naturally).

Note that popular opinion in Ireland towards its colonial masters only turned truly septic after the bungled response to the Easter Rising and the whole conscription fiasco.

I'd make Japan an exception...not in a desire to defend their empire, but they joined the war in a blatant push to claim all of Germany's Asian colonies while the Germans were distracted and couldn't fight back.

The German Colonial Empire fell pretty early during the War, hasn't it?

Yes, all colonies in West Africa, islands in the pacific + Kiatschou in China in 1914 and German South West Africa in mid 1915.  Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck held out for years in Eastern Africa and only surrendered in Northern Rhodesia November 14. 1918 after crossing through Mozambique, but that was a guerilla war from mid 1916 onwards when he withdrew to the jungles and savanna in the south of Tanganyika.

1. Never claimed Germany was liberal, but that it had a liberal opposition (along with a strong labour movement) and the potential to develop in that direction in the long run. While Ludendorffs de facto military dictatorship certainly wouldn't have helped this development, I think its wrong to assume that Germany would have stayed an autocracy indefinitely after the war.

2. "Imperial Germany was sooo great" = strawman.

Comment: As a Dane I obviously think it was great that Germany lost, so we could get Northern Sleswick back and it freed the nations in eastern Europe (all though they mainly ended up as fascist dictatorships in the following two decades).

But seen in the big picture the price was Holocaust and WW2 + the Soviet Union (which a German Empire likely could have removed later on). So on balance I think it might have been worth it if the German intelligence had found out half the French army were in mutiny in late April/early May 1917 and they only had to sweep aside two loyal divisions to get to Paris.

Obviously a negotiated peace would have been the superior option. But  both sides were too convinced they could win for this to happen.

I have a more positive view of the modernization thesis. All though it is obviously flawed it has a core of truth in my view.

I agree WW1 was unavoidable, the outcome and consequences wasn't.

This is a preliminary answer. I might get back to it, if I have the time. Though perhaps this is derailing the original question about US entry.



Very true.

Well, it's easy for you to say "but", considering that your people were independent. Color me biased, but I still think Czech, Slovaks, Hungarian, Poles and others has the same rights.


The WWI itself did not cause the Holocaust and the WWII. The blunders of Versailes, lack of strong international institutions and, most importantly, the economic crisis (which wasn't even that related to the war) were responsible, and Hitler's rise to power was preventable as late as 1932.

Beside, you cannot be positive another Great War wouldn't happen had the Tipple Alliance won and Entente lost. We might very well seen a humiliated France going fascist. There were quite a lot far-rightist there.

Indeed.  I've considered from time to time writing as an alt-history William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Empire.  But it never got very far because France would not have had much territory to make irredentist claims on, and that which it did would have been directly held by Germany and in any purely Franco-German conflict, Germany is going to easily win.

German irredentism was the only likely trigger for a pan-European war that becomes WW II.  Hungarian, Bulgarian, and/or Serbian irredentism might easily have triggered another pan-Balkan war, but I fail to see how the results of a victory by either side in WW I provides conditions under which a Balkan conflict would have triggered WW II.

While this statement is generally true, I would have to disagree with the Hungarians being lumped in with the other peoples. The Kingdom of Hungary was an organization that allowed Hungarians to be top dogs in their lands, as opposed to the oppressive systems against the other nationalities.

Indeed, it was the Hungarians more than the Austrians that were the stumbling block to further reform of Austria-Hungary.  To a large degree, that was because the Austrians assumed they'd be the top dogs in the Hapsburg lands no matter what system was in place while the Hungarians feared being made coequal with additional peoples in the empire would lessen their status.

Sort of like the EU today.  Germany has no real fear of a stronger EU since it feels it will dominate it no matter what. Contrariwise, Britain fears a stronger EU will weaken it.

 Totally pointless.

I was assuming events happened as they did IRL, up to the point of American "entry" into the war in 1917.  Of course, if Central Powers momentum gets stronger much earlier and the war ends before 1916, the point is moot.  If it last longer than that though I imagine there would at least be a Conscription crisis due to desperation for more men, or there would be a joint German/IRA plot like there was in real life (and of course, the success or failure of the armament shipments could prove irrelevant given the environment).  In any case, I consider the likelihood of an actual free Irish state in the event of Central Powers victory to be even less likely than under an Entente victory, for obvious reasons.

I don't like it. The Kaiser and his boys winning would have ended the possibility of Hitler, conquered France and Russia, and maintained Ottoman peace in the Middle East along with stabilizing it with war profits.

Basically, if they won, the world could have been really nice.

I'm not sure how "peaceful" that would have been for the Armenians, or why a German conquest of France would be a desirable option.

Horrible. The only country that looked even remotely positive was the UK, so at least we entered the "right" side.

I don't really see how the UK would be positive while the French wouldn't. After all, this is the same UK who's policies helped starve millions of Indians less that 20 years prior.

Likely it would have ended with German annexation of disputed territories, not a full annexation.

And, yes, there would be a problem with the Armenians. In hindsight, it's much less costly than WWII.

We should have stayed out.

The Armenian genocide was a fait accompli in 1918, so its not a factor. The idea that the Turks would somehow have hunted down every surviving Armenian anywhere in the region to "finish the job" is not realistic.

The Ottoman Empire had already fallen apart by this time. Some areas had liberated themselves and some had gained independence through British help. It would not have been possible to put it back together and its unlikely that anyone would have tried this - not even the Turks themselves.
Germany would have been interested in acquiring protectorates and oil concessions in the Middle East, not helping a former ally regain its empire.

A good entry, turned America into a superpower.

 Um, no. That happened after WWII.

Question: Would you hop into the trenches and fight the fight?

Can only soldiers and veterans have opinions on foreign policy?

I think it was right for the US to enter the war. I also think we should have gotten involved sooner.

Since they are the ones in the trenches dying for the cause, I'd leans towards saying yes, actually. Anyone who supports a war but doesn't want to fight it is a coward of the worst kind.

Sans a U.S. entry, Europe would have fought itself into oblivion.  U.S. entry into the war is probably a huge net positive in that regard. 

Not true. A non-US intervention scenario is ceteris paribus a German win within a year and a British withdrawal from France. The British Empire is intact, Germany takes over the French and Belgian colonies.

Outside of MittelAfrika and possibly Morrocco, I'm not sure Germany had that much interest in French colonies. I could definitely see them amputating Briey-Longwy and gutting French industry, though.

The German military and industrial elite clearly wanted to be a world power with a colonial empire.
Do you have any basis for your claim?

Combining the French, Belgian and German colonies - as well as possibly Kenya and Uganda if Britain had been forced to pay a price for getting its prisoners of war home - would have made perfect sense.
 
They were reluctant to include large non-German speaking areas in France and Belgium. It was on the table in internal discussions, but I doubt they would have gone for it.

Well, I have never seen any German interest in French colonies outside of Africa. Also, outside of Indochina which Japan could very well veto, I'm not sure France had any important colonies from the German perspective at the time.
Hence the German interest in Mittelafrika, although I'm not sure the Germans could get the British to part with their valubles.
Briey-Longwy had the majority of French Iron ore and you had many politicians, even Bismark, who regretted not also annexing it. It would be a minor nibble population wise: small enough to either garrison or ethnically clense as the Kaiserreich was apt to do.

Clearly Central Africa was Germany's primary colonial target during WWI and with continued British dominance at sea, I can't see Germany wanting colonies in the Mediterranean.

Horrible, utterly horrible.

After the vote an angry mob followed her, and she was forced to hide in a telephone booth and then called congressional police to rescue her. Jeez. I think liberals don't realize sometimes that their beliefs could lead some to think that they are not just someone with opposing views, but that they make themselves into enemy combatants of the country due to radical views.

Wait, how is opposing entering a war "making oneself into an enemy combatant of the country"?

Well we've slid it in as "conscientious objectors" but I'm sure there were many, many Americans who felt betrayed.

That's not what "enemy combatant" means. I feel betrayed by your very existence, but you're not an enemy combatant.

Well this wins for worst post of the week I think. Why do I get the feeling you blame rape on how women dress?

This is very interesting, I do not know much about it. Where would be a good place to read about Imperial German parliamentary politics and structures in further depth?

I'm pretty sure Rankin was well aware of that.

I assume Germany would take control of all of Belgium.  What of France?  Is Germany constantly then dealing with uprisings in the various parts of its continental empire?

The Germans didn't incorporate France in 1871 (save Alsace-Lorraine); do you think they would have acted differently without Bismarck?

They would have acted somewhat differently I'm sure, but not to try to incorporate all of France.  But with Germany already holding Alsace-Lorraine at the start, what would have been the terms they demand from a French surrender?

Perhaps an astronomical sum in reparations payments? :P

In addition to that, most of France's iron came from the Briey-Longwy region and Germany had stated ambition in annexing that area. There was some talk of a German occupation of the channel ports, but I think the Germans would probably trade that away for the Brits giving back some of Germany's colonial empire.

Germany automatically gets back its colonies. The British have prisoners of war (many from prominent families) in German camps. Giving Germany back its colonies is the minimum, the question is if Britain would pay an additional prize in the form of territory or a cap on the size of its navy.

Japan cant veto anything if they are on the losing side.

If the German elite should challenge Britain for the top spot they would have needed to go for it all. including strategially important islands in the pacific (New Caldenia and New Hebrides) and in the Indian Ocean.

I think you underestimate how big a blow a loss in WW1 is to British power, You get a boost for the nationalist movement in India and Indian indepence in the 1920s. Britain is in no position to prevent Germany from rising.

Do you read German or does it have to be in English?

But that's the thing: Britain and Japan have technically not lost to Germany. Unlike France or Russia, Germany can't knock them out of the war or dictate terms like the allies did to Germany. While I will admit that Britain is certainly going ot go downhill, they had pretty much mortgaged their economy on war loans and a lot of collateral is going to be taken since they don't have reparatons to pay their debt, Germany can't immediately dictate terms to Britain.
I would see Germany taking critical areas on the French and Belgian borders, financially crippling  France with reparations, potentially getting the Belgian Congo for giving up their occupation of Belgium, and then trading concessions on the continent like a nicer peace with France and no occupation of channel ports for colonial concessions.
I think that they will probably give up their minor pacific colonies to Japan without a fuss considering the Kriegsmarine can't force Japan to give up their conquests and Britain certainly isn't going to try. The only issue would be Tsingtau, which the Germans were quite attached to, but then they may cede that to China to stir up the far east.

So I assume you defer to John McCain and Lindsey Graham on foreign affairs? Both men have served in the military and McCain even served in combat.

Since I oppose the draft, the armies I'd "send to war" would have voluntarily chosen this path*. So it's not like anyone is being forced. But if you enlist, of course you should be ready to go die in trenches. Isn't that what armies are for?

*Obviously, in my ideal society, all citizens would also be provided with basic living standards and economic security, so that enlisting wouldn't be the only way out of poverty for many people.

The best policy would have been absolute neutrality, if we did intervene at all, at least in hindsight backing the central powers would have been better (no nazis, no holocaust, no hitler, no ww2, or at least not a same scale ww2, perhaps less Japanese militarist aggression and expansion, and the colonial issue was just as bad for the British and French as for the Germans).

I'll also add on the colonial policy question, the French and British suppressed natives and used them as cannon fodder also in WW1, while the German army in Colonial Africa led by Lettow Von Vorbeck was primarily full of native African troops who were well treated and liked their commander.  

Also a CP victory probably prevents Russia from going red, which means no Soviet Union, and no Soviet gulags and atrocities, and no Stalin, and no cold war..

on the Ottoman question, Skyes-Picot messed up the middle east worse than they did, and all the dictators and wars (to this day) have to be as bad as the Ottomans were (Saddam, Shah, Ayatollah, Palestine wars etc.)

How would there have been less Japanese militarism? If the US had backed the central powers, it would have been war between the US and Japan. Any lost territory would feed revanschist attitudes in the country against the US.

AH buff(oons) need to be banned from talking about actual history. Banned, I say.

There was no credible chance of USA siding with the Central Powers, and the German attitude towards unrestricted submarine warfare and its inherent strangling of what was a very export-minded commercial economy meant that the USA and Germany weren't going to be on friendly terms.  Neutrality was a very difficult tightrope indeed.  The most obvious step towards the US remaining neutral would be for Arthur Zimmermann to not send a boneheaded message to Mexico City, but given how high tensions were running over the unrestricted submarine warfare and its implications on the US economy I doubt even that would have been sufficient.