Teddy Roosevelt.


Jeff Nilsson over at the Saturday Evening Post posted an article some time ago, postulating how a victory of Theodore Roosevelt in the elections of 1912 would have affected WW1 and the time after it. Now, I love Teddy Roosevelt as much as the next guy (by now he's achieved a reputation as the late 19th century equivalent of Chuck Norris), but I take some exception to the scenario Nilsson builds.

America enters World War I two years earlier.

Teddy Roosevelt could never sit by and watch a fight: he either had to
break it up or join in. So when the old Rough Rider hears, in 1914, that
Germany has marched over neutral Belgium to attack France, he commits
our resources, and then our soldiers, to the Allied cause.

There are several problems with this: one, he needs the support of Congress, and given the mood of neutrality that historically was the prevalent stance in the USA at that time I find it hard to believe that Roosevelt could just will the necessary declaration of war into existence, and against a power that had maintained amicable relations with the USA up to that point no less! In addition, the background issues of World War I were little known to
most Americans. Dealing with a huge influx of immigrants, ongoing
industrialization, labor disputes and the great reform movement of the
Progressive Era, Americans were little interested in foreign affairs,
even after the successful Spanish-American War. When World War I broke
out in 1914, the attitude of the typical American was probably
something on the order of, “There they go again!” - although Europe had
been relatively peaceful for the previous century. 




Secondly, the general mood swing towards interventionism and the rise of a massive anti-German sentiment (Germans constituting one of the largest groups of the US population) necessitated the exposure of the US public to years of anti-German propaganda by the Hearst press and the Franco-British propaganda efforts, something the Kaiserreich didn't combat simply because it didn't grasp the value and impact of it.




Thirdly, why would the US go to war with Germany in 1914? Monroe-Doctrine, anyone? And why not against Great Britain? It's not like there was much love lost between the US and the British Empire at that time!

World War I ends two years sooner.

It takes almost a year to build the ships, arm the troops, train them,
and land them in France. By late 1915, though, the American
Expeditionary Force of 10 million soldiers is fighting alongside the
French and English armies on the Western Front. Even with the wasteful
tactics of the European generals, which sometimes wipe out thousands of
soldiers in hours, the Allies put enough pressure on the Germans to
crack their defenses. The Kaiser’s army falls back, across France, into
Germany, with the Allies in pursuit. As winter begins in 1916, the
Germans are asking for peace terms.

Unlikely on several major accounts.


One is the time span. When the USA entered the war in 1917 its industries had been supplying and adapting to the European conflict for close to three years, with an ever increasing amount of goods being shipped to Britain and France. By that time the arms factories were running and had been expanded and the material for the US' own troops could be somewhat readily supplied. And still, even with this preparation, only limited parts of the US forces in France even saw combat before the war concluded. Even with the US being prepared barely more than 2 million troops were sent to France and Belgium.




The second is the number of mobilized troops. Sorry, no amount of 1914 crash mobilization is going to produce a) the ships necessary to ship 10 million men, b) the army to actually constitute those 10 million fighting men and c) the support infrastructure to keep said men supplied halfway across the globe. A far more industrially potent USA had problems supplying one fifth that number two and a half decades later in the same place, and that was after US rearmament had begun in the late 1930s and not on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack! Secondly, withdrawing that many men of fighting age from the workforce in that short an amount of time is quite simply going to kill your economy. The US' population in 1914 was around 90 million people. The Kaiserreich's was 70 million people. Over the course of four years the Kaiserreich, as the most industrialized nation in Europe, was able to send almost ten million people to the front lines. It was able to supply them (barely) because its civilian population starved and because most of the theaters of war were directly available via railroad. Now try doing the same across a couple thousand kilometers of open sea. Good luck.




Third, yes, a large amount of fresh US troops will undoubtedly make an impact. Unfortunately for them, they won't have access to three years of trenchfighting experience from their Allies. They won't have tanks. And they'll have to go on the offensive against one of the best armies of the world at that time. In a war that puts the defender at a clear advantage. Against their own stretched supply lines. Against a defender in terrain that heavily favors the defender. Just take a look at the whole territory along the Franco-Belgian/German border. I'm sure the American public will still love Teddy for involving them in a war without any need to do so once the first half a million dead bodies come back across the ocean. I'm sure they'll rightly adore him for the fifty kilometers in the Ardennes those bodies bought the Allies...

Adolf Hitler never comes to power.

The German people see their army in retreat, and the Allied armies
occupying their cities. They blame their defeat on the military
adventurers who run the Kaiser’s government. When young Adolf Hitler
starts proclaiming the invincibility of the German army, and the need to
prepare again for war, few Germans are interested. Mostly, they’re
relieved when the occupying Allied forces arrest him and keep him in a
French prison. Without him, the National Socialist party withers away.

What a load of bullshit. Sorry for my French, but come on! When the Allies slowly grind their way into Germany and start occupying German cities they are met with hate. You know, just like when the same happened after WW1?! They blame their eventual defeat on the encirclement by Russia and France and the unexpected taking of sides by both the USA and Great Britain and come to the conclusion that none of these can ever be trusted. When Adolf Hitler AND THOUSANDS MORE LIKE HIM proclaim the need to prepare for war again they are met with open ears and hearts, for he is just one voice in a choir. When he and others are arrested by the occupying forces it sparks massive protests and violence. Regardless of his fate a desire for revanchism remains, as it did historically, also completely independent of him !

The Communists never gain power in Russia.

Although the Russian army suffers a paralyzing defeat on the Eastern
Front, it is mostly intact when the war ends and the troops march home.
The German government is too busy saving itself in 1917 to send the
exiled Lenin back into Russia.

What now? Are we occupied or not? If not, if the fighting is still going on (have fun crossing the Rhine, or fighting in the urban jungle of the Ruhr!) you can bet your Scandinavian-derived name, Mr.Nilsson, that the German government would play every ace it still has up its sleeves. That includes Lenin . Putting a man on a train isn't exactly a task that would overburden a government...

Without their charismatic leader, the Bolsheviks of Moscow make little
progress stirring up revolution. Russian veterans happily round up the
loudest revolutionaries and ship them off to Siberia. By November, when
the Bolsheviks would have seized the government, they have disappeared
underground.

Russia would still be out of the picture, probably with Brest-Litovsk still a reality and the socialist Mensheviki mired in the morass of the unstable country around them. Chances that Russia still descends into civil war are pretty high.



Anyway, somehow out of this furnace of revanchism and nationalism (which would be the logical result) we are made to believe a European union of sorts would arise. Yeah, right.