By Victor Davis Hanson// National Review
American intervention saved Western Europe in World War I, but the result was a failed armistice.
One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I. The ongoing conflict ended just 19 months later with an Allied victory.
The United States did not win the war alone, given the far earlier and greater sacrifices of Great Britain, France, Italy, and czarist Russia.
But America’s late arrival, with some 2 million doughboys who landed in France less than three years after the start of the war, saved the teetering Allied cause.
By late 1917, Germany had knocked Russia out of the war and seemed likely to swarm the sole Western front and finish off the exhausted British and French armies.
On this centennial of America’s entry into the war, debate still rages over the cause and results of World War I in a way not true of the far more lethal World War II (an estimated 60 million dead) just two decades later.
Until World War II, the conflict was initially known as the Great War, on the naïve premise that the “war to end all wars” would never have to be repeated. But World War I did not solve problems as much as it led to even greater ones.
Unfortunately, World War I ended with an armistice — at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 — and not with an unconditional surrender of the defeated. Although Germany and Austria-Hungary clearly lost the war, their countries were not occupied and monitored, as would be true after World War II.
The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that was supposed to bring peace is often blamed for being too harsh on the losers. But it was more complicated than that. The settlement of Versailles combined the very worst of both worlds: blaming the defeated side, but without any means of ensuring that the humiliated losers would not rearm and try their luck again.
The victorious Allies soon hosted conferences outlawing deadly weapons, declaring war obsolete, and calling for collective security through the new League of Nations.
In response, the losing Germans often blamed back stabbers for their defeat and first interpreted such utopianism as Allied guilt — and later as weakness. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany rearmed and began absorbing neighboring borderlands eager to replay the verdict of World War I.
The United States was depressed that World War I seemed to have brought no lasting peace. It returned to its former isolationism during the depression years of the 1930s, disarmed, and was determined to never again become involved in Europe’s nihilistic wars.
Yet that very disengagement weakened the European democracies’ common front. Both European appeasement and American isolationism only encouraged the new Axis Powers to become even more determined to reverse the outcome of World War I.
World War I broke out in 1914 at an age when new offensive technology — machine guns, airplanes, poison gas, mass-produced artillery shrapnel shells, submarines — had vastly outpaced the arts of defense and medical care. It proved far easier to kill than to protect soldiers. And it was the first major war that was truly global, spreading beyond Europe to areas of the Middle East and Africa.
Mass deaths — especially during the great flu outbreak of 1918 — in the trenches from the Swiss border to the North Sea over four years of fighting nearly destroyed Europe. The war finished off the German, Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires.
In time, savage new ideologies — Fascism, Nazism, Communism — filled the void and promised to restore national pride and prosperity.
What can Americans learn 100 years later from the belated entry of the United States into World War I, and from the war’s beginning, conduct, and aftermath?
Seemingly isolated incidents — such as the assassination of Austria’s archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 — can lead to nearly 20 million dead.
Isolationism and disarmament only encourage aggressors to do something stupid. Military power and deterrence persuade them not to try.
Had the United States been fully armed in 1914 (or again in 1939) and ready to help its allies, Germany might not have invaded Western Europe, or at least not have achieved such initial successes.
Wars — easy to start, hard to end — usually last far beyond what the original belligerents imagined.
Stalemate at the front ensures horrendous casualties. The Allies had no strategic plans — or ability — to attack German industries or invade German cities. And Germany and Austria could not reach the heart of Allied power in London, Paris, or New York.
Defeat and occupation force an enemy to cease its aggression. Armistices without a definite result only lead to postponements — and eventually more war.
World War I’s terrible irony is that today its horrible carnage seems even more senseless than the far greater death toll of World War II, which ended quite differently and did not lead to another world war — at least so far.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446239/world-war-i-american-isolationism-turned-intervention-1917
Discussion (9)
Join the conversation. Logged in subscribers avoid the Captcha verification and get priority commenting approvals. No vulgarity, links, or code allowed.
After beating those terrible indians and avinging Little Big Horn, the USA hardly had any need for a large army. And large armies are expensive.
In one of your recent posts you made the statement " And it was the first major war that was truly global, spreading beyond Europe to areas of the Middle East and Africa." I would disagree. I feel that the Seven Years War is more deserving of the title. The 1914 war was fought mainly in Europe with side actions in the Middle East and Africa. The Seven Years War was truly global with significant land action in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, India. Would you reconsider? I would like to know your further thoughts.
I'd say it's pretty clear that World War 2 did not lead to a third such war. It segued into the Cold War, true, but that is now 30 years behind us. We're still dealing with the unintended consequences of the Cold War, plus Radical Islam, which I think can be considered to be the first post-Cold War challenge to occur.
Thankyou for the excellent article about WWI. Coincidentally, I am in the midst of viewing the TV series "Apocalypse: World War I", fully available on Youtube. It is an amazing series that graphically illustrates the quagmire, death and incoherence of the whole thing. I thought you might be interested in the show, though you likely would have seen it already, anyway.
Excellent article. I know you know your subject far better than I, and I will not presume to add to it, other than reply with a couple of things I think are interesting. Wars have always been terrible and I think the World Wars are the end the long period in which war was simply an instrument of foreign policy (I assume that's what American immigrants were hoping to have left behind). Also, I don't think previous wars have been fought in populated areas to anything like the same extent. It is the era of Total War. I think I'm saying that people did not previously have as many reasons to fear war as they now do, which is why we regard them as tragic and avoidable. I don't think people can have thought about it in the same way.. Do many Americans know about the Zimmermann Telegram?
I usually enjoy reading your insightful posts, but this one makes me an 'angry German reader'. So if its about your own country and its heroic wars, a certain distance and deeper insight that makes a historican a historican does not matter anymore? Then its ok to just tell the propaganda narrative that 'Western Europe was saved from the (evil) Germans', two times, and that especially WW II was simply a war against the 'pure evil'? A more honest approach would be to mention US Finance was then and is now heavily involved when it comes to turn the world into turmoil. And that Germany had just evolved to the naturally dominating force in Europa and claimed its natural role, and that it was really overdue for GB and France to step back in the second row. And that in two wars in a row, all of those European competitors did not stand a chance against Germany and needed to call 2 very big brothers, which in general is not considered very heroic. Not to mention the fact that not intentions matter, but outcome. Even considering the Germans of 1914 and 1933 as pure evil, their Europe of really bad intentions would have probably had a much better outcome than a ruined continent already lost to a mediaval religion of brutal savages from the Middle East, delivered by the oh so good allies to us. Just face it - all these wars and so many dead people were just about GB doing virtually everything to not let hegemony go to the much stronger Germany. When two male lions fight for a pride, who is more evil - the young stronger competitor, who attackts, or the old weak pride lion who does not accept his time is over?
On taking office, President Wilson ensured peace by reducing the means to wage war. He closed one of the two factories making M1903 Springfield rifles for the Army, among other things. Then on the outbreak of war in 1914 he ordered that no military officer will talk to anyone knowledgeable about the European war, or read books, magazine articles or newspaper articles on the European War. The first US troops arriving in France paraded in Paris. They were carrying M1892 Krag-Jorgensen rifles, clearly visible in pictures. WWI happened because the 1825 Treaty of Vienna failed. The honor system did not keep the superpowers away from the ancient invasion routes. At Versailles, did anyone notice that? The ancient invasion routes again were protected by the dinky finances of the neutral nations resting upon them.
Excellent, brief and clear. Will use this to help explain why military strength so important to younger ones I talk to. Have heard you make this point in other longer talks on You Tube but these printable essays are an excellent tool. Latest 36 year old I was talking to has a head in the sand attitude and a history perspective that stops at George W. I'm hoping to chip away at the mental walls these folks have built. Slow but doable over time I hope. Thanks, D
"And it was the first major war that was truly global, spreading beyond Europe to areas of the Middle East and Africa." I'm sorry, Dr. Hanson, but I have to challenge that statement. The Seven Years' War was a global conflict, in that the theaters of war were found in Europe, in North America and the Caribbean, and in India. The combatant nations were Europeans, assisted by local allies. But the First World War certainly overshadows the SYW in its scope, from the number of countries participating, to the number of men under arms, to the number of dead. Best regards!