World War I was the greatest folly by far
to befall Western civilization. The second greatest folly was America
entering the catastrophe. The totalitarian rebounds that followed were
consequences that could have been avoided.
I am
not excusing German militarism, which indeed played a major part. The
kaiser was arguably mentally ill, with dreams of martial glory and building an
empire.
He had
ignored the advice of Bismarck, who, though militarist himself, had enough
sense to limit his territorial ambitions. Bismarck knew that Germany was
surrounded on all sides and that it is not good to provoke rivals. So the
kaiser pressured Bismarck to resign. The kaiser wanted Germany to have
her "Place
in the Sun."
The
problem was that the sun was already owned by the British, and it never set on
their empire.
Now,
to be sure, British complaints about German militarism rang hollow when Britain
sought a navy as big as her next two competitors combined, and when the British
Empire owned a quarter of the planet, against the wishes of most of its
inhabitants. The French Empire was similarly culpable, though not quite
as large. Nor can the French be excused of the charge of militarism.
After her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, France went on an
arms-building binge. Her policy toward Germany was "revanchism"
– revenge.
What
uniquely happened before WWI was that Britain's usual practice of playing off
the third power in Europe against the second power, so Britain could remain the
first power, no longer worked.
In the
16th century, when Spain was powerful, and France was upcoming, England was
allied with France against Spain during the Anglo-Spanish
War. When France rose to supremacy, England was on Spain's side,
during the Napoleonic Wars.
Historians
like to say England kept the peace by making sure no power got control of
Europe. England maintained a balance of power. Maybe! One
could equally assert that England purposefully and ruthlessly kept the whole
continent off balance so England could reign supreme.
Around
1872, England found herself in the usual predicament. There was, once
again, up and coming competition challenging England's supremacy.
It
would have been England's usual practice to make alliances with other powers
against the rising second power. However, in 1872, England had two
competitors on the rise at once: the United States and Germany. The
United States had just come out of the Civil War with a massive military, while
Germany had just been unified under Bismarck. Both were industrializing
rapidly, and both would soon surpass England in output. Now England had
to face two number twos at once. Worse yet, to England's horror, at that
time in history, Germany and America had no historical animosity toward each
other, while one of them, America, had historical animosity toward Britain.
What
was England to do? England's usual game was to turn the rivals against
each other, but this time, it appeared as though this wouldn't work.
England
appealed to a shared Anglo-Saxon heritage with the United States. But
that could go only so far. A good portion of America's Anglo-Saxons had
fought England in the Revolution. Then there were the German- and
Irish-American communities. The German-Americans were often proud of
Germany's success, even if they were removed from it, and not given to Germany's
nationalism. The Irish-American community was often hostile to Britain.
There
was no reason for America and Germany to go to war. So how did Britain
maneuver this situation?
Unbeknownst
to most Americans, in the latter third of the 19th century, Britain played a
game of deference to America in order to win America over to her side.
In
1895, though the British had a bigger fleet than America's, they backed down to
American insistence that a land disagreement between Venezuela and British
Guiana be submitted to arbitration.
In
1898, after America defeated the Spanish fleet in the Philippines, the German
fleet tried to land troops in Manila. Dewey's ships were outclassed.
But the British fleet stood by Dewey.
During
the Klondike Gold Rush, the Canadians had wanted a Yukon corridor to the sea,
and they had argued with Americans over the border. It had almost came to
shooting. In 1903, during the Alaskan-Canada border arbitration, the
British went out of their way to agree with Americans rather than the
Canadians. The U.S. case was legally good – even the Canadians admitted
it – but the Canadians felt they had been ignored by the British just to defer
to the United States.
A mere
seventy years earlier, the British were trying to subvert America – from
dissuading Texas joining the Union to later helping the Confederacy. What
happened? Why did "Perfidious Albion" stop being so perfidious?
What
happened was Germany!
Britain
could no longer afford to antagonize America with Germany on the rise.
She had to decide who was more of a threat. So England offered a
pretense of Anglo-Saxon unity – due in no small part to the ideas of Cecil
Rhodes – that was sold to America. Some American elites sopped it up,
moved by now discredited ideas of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. So when World
War I started, Britain did not have to worry about America.
The
president at that time, Woodrow Wilson, claimed to be neutral, and he
criticized German-Americans in favor of Germany and Irish-Americans against
Britain.
However,
what was hidden from, or played down to, the public was that Wilson was an
inveterate Anglophile. His paternal grandfather came from Orange stock
(the pro-British element) in Northern Ireland. His mother was from
England. Wilson, who decried hyphenated Americans, was no
less guilty than they were, only his affections were deemed
acceptable.
In actuality, Wilson tilted entirely to the British Side.
He made the right of Americans to travel on British ships ... a cause of war.
[He] allowed munitions sales to Britain and gradually moved toward government
loans to pay for them, the latter not really permitted by international law. He
accepted the British boycott of food and raw materials sent to Germany, both
dubious acts in international law. When Britain lay mines far from German
ports, and stopped American ships on the high seas, the United States tolerated
the actions even though they were highly illegal by international law[.]
His
secretary of state, Williams Jennings Bryan, was so infuriated by this double
standard that he
resigned.
Bryan insisted that Wilson send a similar protest to Britain
for its violations of neutral rights, an act the president rejected. Wilson's
dispatch of a second note demanding an end to German submarine warfare prompted
Bryan to resign on June 9, 1915.
The
usual causes listed for America's entry into World War I are Germany's
unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram, an intercepted
telegram offering Mexico an alliance should Germany and America go to war.
True,
the Zimmerman Telegram was what fired American fury, but in fact, it was a
worthless, conditional treaty, to take effect if, and only if, America and
Germany were at war. Given Mexico's descent into civil war, it was not
much of a threat. Indeed, Pancho Villa's armed raid into Columbus, New
Mexico in 1916 was quickly driven off. So much for Mexican martial
prowess.
German
unrestricted submarine warfare, though controversial, has to be balanced
against Wilson's de facto belligerency. The U.S. was arming the Entente
Cordiale and, de facto, preventing a German victory. The U.S. was a
silent partner in the Allied war effort, thanks to Wilson's non-neutrality.
I am
not here to argue in favor of the kaiser, whom I consider one apple short of a
strudel. I am here to argue that America was mistaken to enter into World
War I and that we should have stayed out of it. We should not have
preferred either side, but merely insisted on neutral rights.
At the
worst, a negotiated peace would have occurred. More likely, the British
and French would have won anyway. The British and French introduction of
tank warfare – which the Germans ignored during WWI – was the chief instrument
of victory. Such a victory might not have occurred until 1919, but it
would have arrived. American troops were not critical. They came in
late and merely sped up the inevitable.
Even
in the highly unlikely chance that the Germans won the war, it would have been
a negotiated victory, not a total surrender. The kaiser, as nutty as he
was, was not Hitler. He was hamstrung by a left-wing Reichstag.
Eventually, Germany would have become a constitutional monarchy.
There
would have been no rise of fascism in the West. No rise of bolshevism in
the East. Any German gains would have been soon smothered under a rising
wave of East European nationalism that the Germans could not have controlled.
During the war, the Germans began to realize they would have to concede
some autonomy or independence to Poland. It would be a rump state, but
still a start.
There
was no way Austria-Hungary could have survived, even had Germany won.
Austria-Hungary was a collapsing mess.
But
best of all, the United States would have stayed out of world affairs.
The
ridiculous urge to save the world would not have become part of our national
psyche. We would have stayed home and minded our business. The
prosperity the United States enjoyed after the Civil War and before World War I
would have been our heritage.
We
should have remained neutral and stayed out of it.
Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who wishes he had
availed himself more fully of the opportunity to learn Spanish in high school,
lo those many decades ago. He just started a website about small
computers athttp://thetinydesktop.com.