Debate at work

[Matt Dixon]

Have come home from spending an afternoon skiving, and talking about the Great War.

I am sorry if this topic has come up on here before, I haven't been coming on here long, so I'm sorry if you are all bored with this, but I would be interested to hear the Pals views on this subject that provoked animated comments all afternoon and produced an excellent battle map made using staplers and coffee mugs for machine gun posts:

Did America win the War?

[Guest Pete Wood]

[Matt Dixon]

????????????????

Been a long week, and brain is not working.........

[trenchwalker]

well ww2 yes but ww1 they only helped the french.

if the american had not joined the war there would never been the mass spread of spanish flu.

[Matt Dixon]

We came to the conclusion that "No" they didn't win the war, but they certainly helped!

[Terry]

The US obviously played a key role in bringing the war to an end, but it would be a stretch, I think, to say that the US won the war.

[trenchwalker]

if anything the americans the american were the way they have always been trigger happy.

in my experiance with my grandad who was shot in berlin in 1946 whilst on watch by some yank driving around in a jeep.

and my cousin and a couple of my mates who are in iraqi now they are the americans are bullet magnet. look how they got on at bellau wood.

[Matt Dixon]

This debate came up as my old man was at a lecture with John Keegan this weekend just gone and asked the same question, and his response was the same as yours Terry!

Trenchie....bit harsh about Belleau Wood mate I think. Inexperienced yes, trigger happy in WW1, maybe not.

[Roberta]

No, the U.S. did not win the war.

Roberta, the Yank

[Guest Pete Wood]

I thought this thread might prove to be controversial

But it seems I had no need to take cover ( ). It's all so clear now: the Americans obviously weren't on 'our' side, but helped the French instead.

And so Spain must have won the war by giving everyone a cold - or have I not grasped the situation....??

[Matt Dixon]

Perhaps it's just as well I am going to hide my face in the pub for the night......no intention to try and provoke an international incident, was simply interested to hear the point of view of the experts on this site.

Sorry if this has been misconstrued in any way.

[BeppoSapone]

Have come home from spending an afternoon skiving, and talking about the Great War.

I am sorry if this topic has come up on here before, I haven't been coming on here long, so I'm sorry if you are all bored with this, but I would be interested to hear the Pals views on this subject that provoked animated comments all afternoon and produced an excellent battle map made using staplers and coffee mugs for machine gun posts:

Did America win the War?

America - three years too late for both World Wars, and always trying to start the Third one!

Seriously though. I think that we would have been lucky to win WW1 without them. Not just the troops, which did not arrive in time, or in numbers enough to help too much in the field by November 1918. What probably "swung it", was the munitions, food and things like doctors, horses and mules that came from America. IMHO these really helped.

I honestly believe that we would never have won WW2 without America, it would probably have ended in some form of negotiated peace. However, I also believe that it was America's fault that there was ever a WW2 at all.

At the negotiations surrounding Versailles Woodrow Wilson promised to guarantee the French borders. In the event of a revived Germany threatening France both America, and the British Empire, would come into the war right away. However, when Wilson got back to America the US Congress refused to ratify this treaty, and America retreated into Isolationism.

Some believe that the "Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee" was a fore runner of NATO, and if ratified would have prevented WW2. Discuss!

[Neil Burns]

Hi All,

2,000,000 men certainly helped but the US certainly did not 'win' the war. US supplies for the Allies were also instrumental.

As far as the flu goes, there were enough US merchant sailors and livestock coming in to Europe due to the war to make it plausible that the flu may have spread anyway.

Trench,

As far as the Berlin story goes I can assure you that the person who shot your grandfather at least 8 months after the war ended was an exception not the rule.

I also fail to see how Belleau Wood as a first major combat experience compares unfavorably with the Somme after 23 months of fighting.

My apologies for soapboxing,

Neil

[Guest Jeff Floyd]

The large number of fresh troops coming from the US certainly must have given the German High Command pause. Whatever they thought about the fighting skills of the Doughboy, they certainly could not have dismissed the sheer mass. Add to that the agricultural and industrial potential of the US and the American entry into the war was probably just enough to tip the balance.

I've never studied the German literature on the subject, do any of the main German sources address this?

As for being trigger-happy, I'd suggest that American forces have always considered bullets cheaper than men. The availability of, and willingness to use, firepower is a force multiplier of tremendous impact.

[tintin1689]

The AEF ended the war probably earlier than otherwise BUT Germany would have lost in 1919 or 1920

It sticks in my throat to say this, but the Navy does n't have its massive role acknowledged. The RN blockade had reduced the German economy horrifically.Their home front would not have borne up to much more war.

If you can get hold of a book called "Victory Must Be Ours" about Imperial Germany during the Great War you can see how desparate things were.I have read a lot on the Great War and I was shocked.

This blockade continued through the peace negotiations and the pressure partly explains why the Germans settled for such poor terms.

The RN may not have been able to beat the Germans ship for ship in fleet action and Naval casualties were very small compared to the Army, but they throttled Germany

[Annette Burgoyne]

Hi tintin1689

The RN may not have been able to beat the Germans ship for ship in fleet action and Naval casualties were very small compared to the Army, but they throttled Germany

I very much agree with you.

As for did the Yanks win the war -No - not on the battlefield itself but it bucked our lads up no end to know that thousands of Yanks were moving into the fight.

Regards

Annette

[Frank_East]

This subject has been debated many times but is one of those points in history which will always be revisited.It can depend on which side of the Atlantic one resides which will determine the "dimension" order.

As Neil has stated the entry of the USA into the conflict gave the Allies the advantage in manpower on the fighting front.The Germans had failed in a gamble to gain a strong hand in any peace discussions when their 1918 Spring offensive failed.Further, the fateful summer of 1918 culminating in the Black Day of August 8th 1918 forced depression on the German High Command.US manpower had built up to 2 million men on the Western Front by this time with the likelihood of more to follow.

The Allied blockade of the German homeland gradually ground down the output of German war economy and subjected the civilian population to deprivations and conditions not previously experienced.Civil unrest loomed ahead.

The autocratic rule of Hindenburg and Ludendorff came under threat as early as July 1917 when the Reichstag proposed a peace resolution.It has to be said that it took Ludendorff longer to appreciate Germany's military position,that is until the failures of August and September in 1918 when on the brink of Germany's collapse,he dropped his slogan of a victorious peace and called for negotiations.

The other very important point is that wars,wars of technology cost money. The US assumed the financial role of backers to the Western Powers in the provision of credit, supply of goods,materials both military and for the home front.( I have not got the figures for the Great Britain Great War debt to the US but I believe the final payments were only made a few years ago.France, although victorious owed the US 4 billion dollars and had a destroyed industrial economy where as German industry was largely untouched.)

My own view is that the German war machine was adversely effected sooner than that of France and Britain.The mode of war was fought on defensive lines which created a stalemate.There was no Blitzkrieg techniques to bring an overall victory for any side.It was a simply a matter of Germany running out of resources and the will to win before the Western Powers did.

Regarding the security of France and its borders.France had a real problem after the Great War.Everyone went home.The US to its "spendid isolationism", Great Britain to try and solve its many domestic problems. (although GB stayed on in the Rhineland until 1928 and France in Trier until 1930).

France realised it could not take on Germany by itself in the future and had the experience that her former Allies (principally Great Britain) would not support her against German infringments of the Versailles Treaty and later the undertaking of the safeguards of the Locarno Treaty.It has been said that the principal reason for the outbreak of the Second World War was the inward looking foreign policy of the US. Refusing to ratify the Versailles Treaty and not entering the League of Nations gave a clear signal to any aggressor that the US was not likely to intervene. (That aside it did seem strange today when I thought I heard George Bush comment on the reason for the demise of the League of Nations.)

A.L.Rowse comments in his "Appeasement" that all the mistakes that Great Britain made in the 1920s and 1930s did not equal the one enormous and irreparable mistake that the US made in contracting out of the world system after the Great War.For whatever reason those Great Britain mistakes were,they were made because Great Britain "slept".

Missed the pub,looks like drinking in the Mess. Waitress service and the lady refuses tips.

Regards

Frank East

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

I believe this is a bit simplistic. It does not take into consideration the French desire for absolute revenge, repatriations, occupying the German coal and industrial centers after the war, the confiscation of rail equipment and hundreds of other items needed by Germany to recover from the war.

The economic disaster of the post war depression was even worse in Germany as the import restrictions continued after 1918. It is no wonder that the German people took to a leader who was preaching nationalism and German unity. I doubt any single country can be blamed for WWII starting, instread it is a combination of many different events.

As to WWI, America did not win the war but the U.S. involvement certainly shortened it. If you look at the U.S. defensive areas and attacks made in 1918 how would it have been different if French or British troops took on these actions as well. Could the Allies have done it as quickly? I doubt it.

No one country can be looked at as the winner of the war just as no one country can be blamed for starting it. The series of national pre-war treaties, the distrust of the major powers, the mobilization procedures that prevented the war from stopping once it had been put into place, and many more.

Ralph

[BeppoSapone]

I believe this is a bit simplistic. It does not take into consideration the French desire for absolute revenge, repatriations, occupying the German coal and industrial centers after the war, the confiscation of rail equipment and hundreds of other items needed by Germany to recover from the war.

The economic disaster of the post war depression was even worse in Germany as the import restrictions continued after 1918. It is no wonder that the German people took to a leader who was preaching nationalism and German unity. I doubt any single country can be blamed for WWII starting, instread it is a combination of many different events.

As to WWI, America did not win the war but the U.S. involvement certainly shortened it. If you look at the U.S. defensive areas and attacks made in 1918 how would it have been different if French or British troops took on these actions as well. Could the Allies have done it as quickly? I doubt it.

No one country can be looked at as the winner of the war just as no one country can be blamed for starting it. The series of national pre-war treaties, the distrust of the major powers, the mobilization procedures that prevented the war from stopping once it had been put into place, and many more.

Ralph

Ralph

Of course it is simplistic, and given the nature of this forum it could hardly be anything else, short of posting chapters of history books.

All that you say with regard to the post war situation in Europe I agree with. However, given the European situation some sort of treaty was needed. This was realised by Woodrow Wilson, which is why he made the promises he did.

My point is that, with American troops based in Europe, Germany would never have started WW2. When "push came to shove" Hitler could not have bluffed and blustered his way towards world domination.

I still maintain that Americas retreat into Isolationism caused WW2. I note that America did not make the same mistake again after WW2, and American, and other, troops based in Germany kept the Warsaw Pact the other side of the Iron Curtain.

[AndyHollinger]

Ahem ...

America - three years too late for both World Wars, and always trying to start the Third one!

I think the joke goes the US can't win a war not started by GB.

I belive the US was instrumental in winning WWI and WWII - but did niether alone. Our role in WWI was truly more important as a supply storehouse than as soldiers, though the threat of these forces certainly set up the German 1918 offensives. The AEF helped the French, because the French needed help.

However, I also believe that it was America's fault that there was ever a WW2 at all.]

Ho there boy! WWII was probably a direct result of the Versailles Treaty which was hardly an American dictat. If anything the treaty, though it screwed with Maps a lot, was probably most at fault over the reperations. The US is only partially at fault, there. The League being DOA wasn't the American's fault - and the decisions of not intervening in both Etheopia and Spain don't lie at Washington's door ...

In WWII the US didn't even "win" it alone ... heck all we really supplied was LOTS and LOTS of everything ... if you HAD to say some ONE country won the war, you'd have to say RUSSIA for WWII but, WWI is more difficult ... if there would have been victory for the Allies - could it have been done without the US munitions and food? I would say "necessary but not suffecient."

[BeppoSapone]

Ho there boy! WWII was probably a direct result of the Versailles Treaty which was hardly an American dictat. If anything the treaty, though it screwed with Maps a lot, was probably most at fault over the reperations. The US is only partially at fault, there. The League being DOA wasn't the American's fault -

Andy

I agree with you that the demise of the League of Nations was not solely America's fault. Also, that the seeds of WW2 were probably sown at Versailles, and watered by the conditions in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

What I was saying was that IMHO "The Anglo-American Treaty of Guarantee" would have preserved peace. US Congress refused to ratify this treaty, a treaty that President Wilson had agreed to.

[AndyHollinger]

BeppoSapone: An interesting thought, that one. Thanks for the reply.

[Hedley Malloch]

Did America win the War?

Which one?

WW1 - Yes.

WW2 - Yes, but title shared with Soviet Union.

Korea - No - a score draw.

Vietnam - No - period.

Iraq - The jury is still out on this one - but you wouldn't put your mortgage on it.

[Alan Lines]

No I Don't think America won WW-1 and I'm sure the Allies would have still won it without their greatly appreciated help.

America does seem to win the World Series every year though!

[Max]

heck all we really supplied was LOTS and LOTS of everything ...

At top dollar !!!! Its something that we have only just finished paying for.

Andy (a certified yank-o-phile)