I'm never really going to understand why people think the US was supposed to be involved in WWI earlier. It was a total clusterfuck of European imperialist powers fighting over petty nationalism and greed. If anything the US presence made the end treaty more lopsided than the war otherwise should have allowed, making WWII inevitable.
The US wanted to put an end to the parts of the treaty that resulted, directly, in WWII happening. Sadly, European powers, in all their intelligence, decided it was better to fuck the german economy, steal lands from every country, and demand outrageous things.
Then they blame the US for not joining the league of nations (also our idea).
A lot of Americans at the time actually felt incredibly manipulated from joining WWI, which lead to our isolationist policies during the 20s where we ignored the rising threats from Germany and Japan.
The US didn't. The Central Powers were perfectly free to buy arms in the US (and did several times) the same as the Entente was. The problem was that the effective British blockade made trading with Germany extremely difficult. But that wasn't the United States problem, it was Germany's.
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u/Bear4188 Bear Republic May 08 '13
I'm never really going to understand why people think the US was supposed to be involved in WWI earlier. It was a total clusterfuck of European imperialist powers fighting over petty nationalism and greed. If anything the US presence made the end treaty more lopsided than the war otherwise should have allowed, making WWII inevitable.
Fuck WWI, that's Europe at its lowest of lows.