America had no reason to enter WWI. By doing so, it broke the battlefield stalemate, allowing Britain & France to impose a punishing peace on Germany - which led to Hitler, World War Two and the Cold War.
Entering World War One against Germany was America’s greatest blunder of the 20th century and launched the young century on its course of decades of unprecedented violence.
America had no reason to join Europe’s devastating three-year-old struggle. By sending two million doughboys to the Western Front, America shattered the battlefield stalemate and won the war, allowing Britain and France to impose a punishing peace on Germany, thus igniting toxic German cries for revenge. Absent America’s entering the war, the exhausted combatants would have had to negotiate a peace of compromise. There would have been no victor, no vanquished, no Versailles Treaty, no reparations, no German demands for revenge -- and thus no Hitler and surely no World War II and even no Cold War.
The tale of how America stumbled into the war and changed history is told by America’s Greatest Blunder. Mobilizing decades of research, it chronicles America’s journey from sensible neutrality to its declaration of war and describes how British propaganda controlled what America knew about the war, how the U.S. mobilized an army of millions, why the peace broke America’s promises to Germany and how the war could have ended differently had America not entered.
Professional Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Pines provides an epic exercise in historical speculation in this detailed and thought-provoking review of the United States entry into WWI. His daring thesis, buttressed by a sweeping review of sentiment at the time, is that U.S. intervention into a war in which American interests were not threatened laid the basis for the disastrous peace agreement, a vengeful postwar spirit, and ultimately WWII and the Cold War. Contending that the Allies and Central Powers were too exhausted to continue the fight, Pines maintains that, had the U.S. troops not entered the conflict, a negotiated peace would have ensued. The surrender terms imposed on Germany, he argues, led to a legacy of bitterness that helped foster subsequent Nazi rule.
Pines’s re-examination of the atmosphere of these times is fascinating food for thought as we approach 2014, 100 years after the start of “The War to End All Wars.”
Kirkus Reviews
A detailed look at one of history’s greatest turning points: the American decision to intervene in the First World War.
In this painstakingly detailed, thoroughly researched analysis, Pines (Out of Focus, 1994, etc.) examines the circumstances that led to President Woodrow Wilson to take the United States into World War I in April 1917, and that decision’s short- and long-term consequences. Without that intervention, the author writes, there would have been “[n]o punishing Versailles peace treaty, no humiliation of Germany, no German drive for revenge, no Hitler, no World War Two and likely no Cold War.”
These are all familiar hypotheticals, but Pines reinvigorates them with new perspectives
and energetic prose. For example, he highlights the British propaganda campaign to sway isolationist America; the departure of staunch neutrality advocate William Jennings Bryan from Wilson’s administration and its effect on American foreign policy; and the March 1917 collapse of Russian czarist rule. He draws attention to the fact that huge portions of America’s manufacturing and agricultural economy were invested in the European war.
Pines also looks at the most-discussed factor in American intervention: the German sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 which killed 128 Americans. For Pines, however, the bulk of the blame falls on Wilson himself, whose 1916 re-election slogan (“He kept
us out of war!”) belied his interventionist leanings.
The book balances expertly narrated accounts of WWI battles with vigorous extrapolations of what might have happened if those battles hadn’t been fought. American doughboys weren’t needed to save the Allies from defeat, Pines contends—“they were needed only to hand them victory,” and at an enormous cost. While some of this book’s theories may seem a bit complacent (German militarism, for instance, was a
cultural fact regardless of the Treaty of Versailles), its main arguments are immensely insightful. A carefully and winningly argued case against military adventurism.
Readers' Favorite Book Reviews
This is an excellent overview of WWI. Well written, well researched, informational and compelling. I thoroughly enjoyed the book.
America's Greatest Blunder by Burton Yale Pines is a fascinating story of America's involvement in World War I. The author takes the reader through a detailed account of the war in a well-referenced documentary with a very descriptive narrative. Consider it a compilation of every history book written about the war. The author's descriptions throughout the book are well-written. "Germany’s grand, carefully studied, meticulously tweaked and extensively rehearsed Schlieffen Plan for a swift victory over France had crumbled," is one of the many excellent sentences from the book.
The author's description of the Western Front brings a feeling of being there and most certainly allows the reader to feel the power and horror of war. We are taken through the Wilson administration and his failure as a peace broker. The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, following a Declaration of War on Imperial Germany by Congress. In June 1917 the first American troops arrived in France. The American soldiers became known as "doughboys" and the author does an excellent job of taking us on the journey of war.
I highly recommend this book for history buffs and those who would like to learn more about WWI, but don't want to read 30 or 40 books on the subject. This book will give an accurate overview. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
