MeisterEckhart wrote on Jul 30^th, 2024 at 1:28pm:


It was the US arguing against harsh penalties for Germany.

What makes you so sure the central powers would not have won without US involvement? They mobilised 5 million out of about 60 million soldiers from both sides. US losses seem low, so presumably they were punching above their weight.

And what makes you think European monarchies and empires would have been a good outcome for freedom?

Aussie wrote on Jul 30^th, 2024 at 6:11pm:


Good points. Waiting with bated breath for "freedom values" FD's response.....

freediver wrote on Jul 30^th, 2024 at 5:56pm:

You mean, what makes me so sure the Allied powers would not have won without US involvement?

Nothing... We're into counterfactuals here.

The US provided fresh troops, economic support, a morale boost and technological and industrial strength,

The Allies may have won or, more likely, the war would have ended in a stalemate which would likely have ended the war by a more balanced negotiation.

The Allied powers' overreach in the pillaging of the central powers' treasure in war reparations caused the collapse of their economies; the loss of their territorial integrity and the overnight destruction of their governments which ultimately led to the rise of extremist governments in Europe - particularly Nazism in Germany.

It was not for no reason that the Austrians ecstatically welcomed the Anschluss in 1938.

Americans' naivety in their concept of forcing democracy on peoples that had never known it. nor fought for it, likely caused them to believe that the collapse of central European monarchies overnight would lead directly to the creation of stable democracies across Europe - this naivety was echoed decades later in Iraq and Afghanistan.

aquascoot wrote on Jul 30^th, 2024 at 5:28pm:


Oh, you are naughty. Guess who the special envoy for women's problems in Afghanistan was.

Yes, dear. Laura Bush.

Ooh-er, no?

The land of the free and the home of the brave:

chimera wrote on Jul 30^th, 2024 at 8:27pm:



pot is for people who hate themselves so they can numb the pain of their own self hatred

pathetic drug for losers 

so, had the US not intervened in WW1:

The war ends in a stalemate.
The German and Austro-Hungarian governments survive.
Tsarist Russia survives.
Austria-Hungary is not dismantled.
Italy is not handed the southern Tyrol.
Crippling reparations are not imposed on the central powers.

Would another war have erupted? More than likely - ethno-separatist wars largely - this is Europe we're talking about, so...

Would they have been as deadly and as massive as WW2? Not likely.

The Soviet Union would not have been established.

Nazism and Soviet Communism would not have developed.

Democratic republicanism would have been the driver of separatism from Austria-Hungary.

Slavic separatism would have swept Europe with Russia agitating for a democratic union of Slavic peoples - a commonwealth united by ethnicity and religion.