Should the U.S. Have Entered World War I?

No. Had the US stayed out of their war it would have ended six month to a year earlier because both sides were ready to stop fighting.

Cecil Rhodes and his fellow secret society guys believed a wealthy secret society should work to secure a British-American federation, and he said “the only thing feasible to carry out this idea is a secret society gradually absorbing the wealth of the world. In 1902 when he died and in his will he gave funding to people who could carry out his goal. This secret society was only interested in causing a war to accomplish is mission.

Sir Alfred Milner, the governor of the South African Cape Colony helped to cause the Boer War that led to the British gaining control over South Africa and its gold resources. On Rhode’s death, Milner became the head of this secret society, aka the Round Table Group. He admitted to bring about the war.

Newspaper editor, William T. Stead told Rhodes he supported Milner in any measure short of war.

Milner consider the biggest threat to the secret society’s goal, Germany. From 1870 Germany was becoming more and more economically strong vs. the British, French and Russian economies. Germany was building ships that were somewhat better than Britain. The society believed if they did not act soon, Britain could not defeat Germany in a war. The society worked to change France and Russia from enemies into friends with the goal of crushing Germany. At the end of the Boer war in 1902 Britain was in control of South Africa with Alfred Milner as the Governor.


The society helped get Edward Gray establish as Britain’s foreign secretary in 1905. He set up secret agreements to set the stage for war with Germany. The British saw the increase ship building by Germany. Also Britain had formed an alliance with France and Russia.

The British newspapers printed false news alleging Germany was trying to cut off trade with Morocco and alleging a non-Navy ship was a war ship. (Source: The Two Edwards by Peter Hof)

Britain elite had made secret military commitments to France and Russia and were kept hidden from the British parliament and members of the cabinet who were not members of the secret society. It wasn’t until November 1911 that these agreements were made public.

From 1815 to 1914, Germany was the least militaristic of the European powers, having been in three wars. By 1914, Germany was the world’s third largest overseas empire. Britain had been in ten wars; seven with Prussia (Germany today), five with France, and three with Austria.

Germans feared greatly a Britain blockade her ports and if war broke out, German warships would have had to pass the North Sea and pass through the English Channel or sail around the Scottish coast near the Royal naval base. Britain on the other hand, refused to give Germany a neutrality pledge in return of limits on the German High Seas Fleet.

When the Kaiser Wilhelm II German Emperor and King of Prussia changed his national policy and started building up their navy for superiority in the North Sea, the British saw this as a threat to their empire survival which depended on seaborne free trade, and the supremacy Royal Navy of the high seas. They had a national defense strategy where their navy was to remain ten percent larger than the combined fleets of the next two strongest sea powers. After the Kaiser increased spending on Germany’s military and navy, any misunderstanding could seriously affect the precarious balance of power among the European powers. (Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War, by Patrick Buchanan, pgs. 1-24)

Before the war, the German constitution was working less and less well. Reich chancellors were not responsible to parliament, but to the Kaiser. In the twenty years preceding the war, national policy was made more and more by the army and the bureaucracy. While it is, of course, unlikely that the Kaiser would have been overthrown, it is highly probable that there would have been some constitutional crisis which would have drastically altered the relationship between the branches of government. Source: http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/ifgermany.htm

Republicans, led by Theodore Roosevelt, strongly criticized President Wilson's refusal to build up the US Army in anticipation of the threat of war. Wilson won the support of the US peace element by arguing that an army buildup would provoke war. William Jennings Bryan was Wilson’s Secretary of State. He supported the US not getting involved in the German-French war and resigned in 1915.

In August 1914, Germany declared war on France, Russia, and Japan, and Britain declares war on Germany. In 1914, a German spy organizes the bombing of ships in New York harbor. In 1915, a German naval officer organizes sabotage operations. In May 1915 Italy joins the allies against Germany.

At the beginning of the war, Britain established a naval blockade of German, and in violation of international law, restricted food and cotton "contraband of war". Because of this action, Germany believed they were justified in attacking merchant shipping with their submarines. In 1915 Germany announced that it would not discriminate between merchant ships and vessels of war. They warned the Allies that any ship moving into hostile waters was at risk of being attacked. This, the Germans hoped, would convince the United States to slow or even stop its arms trade with England and France. German submarines were killing US sailors and civilian passengers and President Wilson demanded that Germany stop, but he kept the US out of the war. Wilson protested some British violation of neutral rights, where no one was killed. His protests were mild. On May 7, 1915, a British ocean liner, Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine killing more than 1,200 people and 128 Americans were among those killed.

No one told the Americans (or the Lusitania's passengers) that the liner was carrying 4.2 million rifle cartridges (the equivalent of ten tons of gunpowder) and 1,250 cases of shrapnel shells in its hold. This information was kept secret by Britain until 2014.

Both Germany and the United Kingdom relied heavily on imports to feed their population and supply their war industry. German High Seas Fleet set out multiple times, from 1914 to 1916, to reduce the British Grand Fleet and regain access to vital imports. The German Board of Public Health in December 1918 claimed that 763,000 German civilians died from starvation and disease caused by the blockade up until the end of December 1918. An academic study done in 1928, put the death toll at 424,000. The blockade was maintained for eight months after the Armistice in November 1918, into the following year of 1919. According to the New Cambridge Modern History food imports into Germany were controlled by the Allies after the Armistice with Germany until Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.

In August 1914, German geologists posing as archaeologists discovered oil around Mosul in northern Mesopotamia. Rich oilfields in the Caucasus made Russia the world’s top oil producer. The oil era was just beginning. After war broke out in 1914, the battlefield presence of cars, trucks, and aircraft, as well as British navy’s reliance on oil rather than coal power, made oil an even more important war resource. Large new oil fields in the US and British development in Persia, together with Russian production still accounting for 15 percent of world output, gave the Allies a leg up in dominating oil geography. After Germany failed to win a quick victory advancing into France in 1914, the war moved into trenches. Motor transport and aircraft use mushroomed, and Germany’s lack of oil became perilous. Germany did have an advantage in coal, iron, and rail transportation.

News reports or stories coming from the battlefront were intercepted and censored by a British propaganda operation. Any unfavorable news from the front was axed and only British approved material was allowed to be forwarded to the United States. Despite the disapproval and protest of the American press, the British held on to this power of censorship for the duration of the war. And the information they did let through was much of their own fabrication, designed to make the Germans (or Huns) look evil.

President Woodrow Wilson had little interest in the nuts and bolts of party politics, including the distribution of patronage and the selection of men for cabinet and other high-level positions, and he left these decisions largely in Edward M. House’s hands. House became the de facto US foreign minister (Secretary of State). House was even provided living quarters within the White House.

Secretary of State Bryan resigned in June 1915 because of his pacifist (neutrality) opposition to going to war against Germany. Wilson hired Robert Lansing as his new Secretary of State and he served from June 1915 until February 1920. The US House of Representatives and Wilson’s special advisor Edward House began to preach the need to for increase defense spending and improved readiness of the army and navy.

Historian Nicholas Ferns argues that Britain’s foreign secretary Edward Gray’s ideas meshed with House's. Grey's diplomatic goal was to establish close Anglo-American relations; he deliberately built a close connection to further that aim. Thereby Grey re-enforced House's pro-Allied proclivities so that Wilson's chief advisor promoted the British position. House was supported by J.P. Moran, Jr. and Wall Street bankers. Morgan brokered a deal that positioned his company as the sole munitions and supplies purchaser during World War One for the British and French governments, bringing his company a 1 percent commission on $3 billion ($30 million). He was also a banking broker for financing to foreign governments both during and after the war. Following its outbreak of war, he made the first loan of $12,000,000 to Russia. In 1915, he loaned $500,000,000 to France and Britain.

Super-rich US bankers had huge economic investments with the British and French. If they were to lose, then they would not be able to pay back this debt (amounting to about $2 billion while Germany only borrowed a mere $27 million). France and England were financing their war with US loans. In addition, they were buying massive amounts of arms from the US on credit. The US wanted to make sure that it got paid back. Germany also purchased arms, but in a much more limited fashion. President Wilson was also told that the US economy could collapse if we did not enter the war to assure payment from Great Britain, and so he caved in to the US arms manufacturers.

Great Britain was buying massive amounts of munitions, foodstuffs and other provisions for the war. They were also selling these war essentials to Russia at up to 1000 percent markup. Yes that is correct, what they bought for one pound from us they sold for ten pounds to Russia and other countries, and all on credit from the US.

The US had made a declaration of neutrality in 1914. Some 30 to 50 percent of the US population at this time had family relations in Germany, so they were against any talk about war with Germany. Wilson's 1916 re-election campaign used the popular slogans "He kept us out of war." and "America First," to appeal to those voters who wanted to avoid a war in Europe. Wilson was saying Republican victory would mean war with both Mexico and Germany. Had the US not gotten into World War One, most likely the Central Powers (Germany and Austria-Hungary), the Allies (British, French, etc.) would have made peace in early 1917 because both sides were badly beaten down/suffering.

At the beginning of the World War One, the British press was reporting that German soldiers in Belgium were tossing Belgian babies into the air and catching them with their bayonets. These atrocity stories were then fed to newspapers, who were quite willing to publish them.

President Wilson was narrowly re-elected in 1916.

The British navy blockade German ports to prevent her from getting any oil. The Germans responded by controlling surface waters with a submarine campaign that decimated British ships and oil tankers.

In late 1916, neutral Romania joined the Allies, and the Germans attack their oil fields, but the oil production equipment and pipelines had been destroyed and it took a year for the Germans to repair them. (American Dynasty, by Kevin Phillips, pgs. 250-253)

German saboteurs blow up an ammunition depot in an Island in New York harbor. On January 11, 1917, they blow up an ammunition factory in Kingsland, NJ. In early 1917, Germany adopted unrestricted warfare against Allied shipping using subs, doubling the tonnage sunk from a year earlier. The British Navy’s oil supply was reduced to levels that threatened paralysis of its ships.

The declaration of war by the United States against Germany was passed by the Congress on April 4, 1917, and was approved by the President on April 6, 1917.

Wilson also established the first western propaganda office, the United States Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, the "Creel Commission", which circulated patriotic anti-German appeals and conducted censorship of materials considered seditious. Many recent immigrants, resident aliens without US citizenship, who opposed America's participation in the war were deported to Soviet Russia or other nations under the powers granted in the Immigration Act of 1918.

Wilson declared that the Germans would be held strictly accountable for any deaths on the high seas. The real reason the US went to war for the right of Americans to travel in British merchant ships carrying arms thru war zones. On April 2, 1917, made a speech asking Congress to declare war on Germany. (Source: Hidden History, The Secret Origins of the First World War by Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor)

In 1914 the United States Army comprised 98,000 men, of whom some 45,000 were stationed overseas. The regular army was backed up by the 27,000 troops in the National Guard. All males between the ages of 21 and 30 were required to register for military service. By July 1918 there were over a million US soldiers in France. By September 12, 1918 around 4,000,000 men were drafted into the armed services. Of these, 50 per cent served overseas during the war. More than two million troops eventually reached Europe, but a large number arrived too late to see any action. The American Expeditionary Force suffered 264,000 casualties during the war. It has been calculated that 112,432 Americans died. Of these, around 50 per cent died from disease (mainly from the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic). 675,000 people in the United States died during this flu pandemic. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. https://spartacus-educational.com/FWWusa.htm

No this is not simple to answer. Interesting article, thank you for posting this.

Your statement is absolutely correct. We didn't stay engaged after the conflict. We didn't enter the League of nations, and you know what happened a little over 20 years later. Thank the republicans Henry C. Lodge and William Borah for that mess. You also can look at our stupid reaction with Russia after communism fell to see the same thing repeat. Had Ronnie (false valor) Reagan helped Russia instead of forgetting about them, we may not have gotten stuck with the dictator Putin. Oh, he did the same thing in Afghanistan after Russia left. Say, aren't we still there???