WHAT IF…

THE US HAD STAYED OUT OF THE GREAT WAR?

A prolonged conflict, a modified Treaty of Versailles and no League of Nations may have transpired without direct American involvement

Interview by David J Williamson

LOVELY DAY FOR IT

INTERVIEW WITH

© Clive Webb

CLIVE WEBB

Professor of Modern American history at the University of Sussex, Webb’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, Independent and The New York Times. His book Vietdamned: How the World’s Greatest Minds Put America on Trial is on sale now.

© Iwan Morgan

IWAN MORGAN

Emeritus Professor of US Studies at the Institute of the Americas, University College London, and an honorary fellow of Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute, Morgan has authored many books on US presidents, including FDR: Transforming the Presidency and Renewing America.

Although the United States had supported the Allied cause in the First World War with weapons, supplies and financial considerations, the introduction of American troops and other military assets in a direct role in 1917-18 was welcomed by the war-weary nations of Britain and France, and was an ominous development for Germany and the Central Powers. However, the absence of this US commitment to an active military role in the Great War may well have altered the outcome of the conflict along with the structure and steadiness of the tenuous peace that followed the armistice and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

How would the outcome of the Great War have been altered if the US had not entered the fight?

Clive Webb: Historians are not usually in the prediction business, not least when it concerns a future that never came to pass, and that may account for the lack of consensus about how US neutrality would have affected the outcome of the First World War. Some alternative histories have the Central Powers claiming victory. That would have led to Germany dictating peace terms that established it as the hegemonic power in Europe. Britain and France would’ve been ruined economically and unable to pay their debts, which in turn would’ve had ruinous consequences for their American creditors.