Sam Spade
SamSpade
Atlas Star
Posts: 27,547
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« on: August 12, 2005, 01:03:31 AM » |
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My answer on this of course, depends on what happens to the Germans. Remember that a lot of what the Allies did after the war led to Hitler's rise and Stalin's rebuilding of Russia.
Whether America's entry not entering into the war is a good thing or not is of course entirely dependent on what happens to the Germans and Russians (and Austria-Hungary and Turkey to a lesser extent) post-war. I think it's fairly safe to assume that nothing much happens to England (except for the massive loss of life and maybe the loss of a few colonies) and France is of course, exceptionally weakened. But France was already considerably weaker than Germany pre-WWI anyway.
And what happens to the Germans depends on a lot things, do they win the war or is it just an exasperating draw that ends with a peace in 1919 (let's say).
Remember that there were a lot of possibilities on the table at the time. I think it's safe to say that the Kaiser would have remained on the throne had he not lost, but other than that who knows. Germany could have stayed strongly authoritarian or it might have moved all the way to a modern social constitutional democracy (remember that in 1914, Germany had some of the most liberalized and strong social programs in the world) and the Social Democrats and Socialists were only growing in number by the bushel.
I'll make a couple of minor what-ifs to tell you what I think would have happened.
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