{"id":10046,"date":"2017-04-03T10:48:36","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T17:48:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=10046"},"modified":"2017-04-07T06:51:33","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T13:51:33","slug":"the-yanks-over-there-100-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-yanks-over-there-100-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"The Yanks over There \u2014 100 Years Ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review<\/em><\/p>\n

American intervention saved Western Europe in World War I, but the result was a failed armistice.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The United States did not win the war alone, given the far earlier and greater sacrifices of Great Britain, France, Italy, and czarist Russia.<\/p>\n

But America\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

On this centennial of America\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Until World War II, the conflict was initially known as the Great War, on the na\u00efve premise that the \u201cwar to end all wars\u201d would never have to be repeated. But World War I did not solve problems as much as it led to even greater ones.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, World War I ended with an armistice \u2014 at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The victorious Allies soon hosted conferences outlawing deadly weapons, declaring war obsolete, and calling for collective security through the new League of Nations.<\/p>\n

In response, the losing Germans often blamed back stabbers for their defeat and first interpreted such utopianism as Allied guilt \u2014 and later as weakness. Under Adolf Hitler, Germany rearmed and began absorbing neighboring borderlands eager to replay the verdict of World War I.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s nihilistic wars.<\/p>\n

Yet that very disengagement weakened the European democracies\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

World War I broke out in 1914 at an age when new offensive technology \u2014 machine guns, airplanes, poison gas, mass-produced artillery shrapnel shells, submarines \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Mass deaths \u2014 especially during the great flu outbreak of 1918 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

In time, savage new ideologies \u2014 Fascism, Nazism, Communism \u2014 filled the void and promised to restore national pride and prosperity.<\/p>\n

What can Americans learn 100 years later from the belated entry of the United States into World War I, and from the war\u2019s beginning, conduct, and aftermath?<\/p>\n

Seemingly isolated incidents \u2014 such as the assassination of Austria\u2019s archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 \u2014 can lead to nearly 20 million dead.<\/p>\n

Isolationism and disarmament only encourage aggressors to do something stupid. Military power and deterrence persuade them not to try.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Wars \u2014 easy to start, hard to end \u2014 usually last far beyond what the original belligerents imagined.<\/p>\n

Stalemate at the front ensures horrendous casualties. The Allies had no strategic plans \u2014 or ability \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Defeat and occupation force an enemy to cease its aggression. Armistices without a definite result only lead to postponements \u2014 and eventually more war.<\/p>\n

World War I\u2019s 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 \u2014 at least so far.<\/p>\n

\n

http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/article\/446239\/world-war-i-american-isolationism-turned-intervention-1917<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[116,99,1,102,347,307],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2C2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11507,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-11th-hour-of-the-11th-day-of-the-11th-month-100-years-ago\/","url_meta":{"origin":10046,"position":0},"title":"The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month\u2014100 Years Ago","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The First World War ended 100 years ago this month on November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m. Nearly 20 million people had perished since the war began on July 28, 1914. 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