What If the United States Had Remained Neutral During World War I?

Without U.S. Involvement, the War Would Have Ended in a Compromise Peace and Nazi Germany, Communist China and Perhaps Even the Soviet Union Would Never Have Existed

June 2, 2024 Update: Here is an excellent documentary on how history likely would have turned out if the First World War had never broken out. The documentary blames the punitive provisions of the Treaty of Versailles against Germany for the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the Jewish Holocaust and World War Two. It concludes that without the First World War, there would have been no Cold war as the Soviet Union and Communist China would have never have existed. The implication being that even if World War One had broken out, had there been some kind of compromise peace that was fair to Germany and restored the balance of power in Europe to something resembling the status-quo ante, then Hitler could never have come to power. Rather the Britain Empire and Imperial Germany would likely have ended their Cold War and become allies and some kind of European Union dominated by Germany would have formed.

(Author’s Note—This article was originally published in the The National Interest on March 22, 2022).

The First World War was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Instead, the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war, gave birth to Nazism in Germany, ensured the victory of Communism in Russia, and led to a Second World War that cost the lives of nearly four times more people than died in the previous world war, including over five million Jews. At the time the Treaty was signed in June 1919, British Prime Minister Lloyd George despaired that the treaty would lead to a future war worse than the last within twenty-five years due to its harshness and injustices towards the defeated Germans. They had surrendered to the Allies on the basis of President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but the final Treaty excluded seven of them, including most notably the five most favorable to Germany.

As late as January 1917, President Woodrow Wilson had called for “a peace without victors” and that is exactly what Europe so desperately needed to ensure against the outbreak of a Second World War. However, that same month, German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II met with his top military commanders. He was told that if Germany were to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare, America would likely declare war on Germany but they could likely starve Britain within six months before the Americans could send large numbers of troops to the Western Front to help the Allies break the deadlock. The Kaiser decided to take a risky gamble on the future of the Reich by approving their plan to do so while German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman doubled down on the Kaiser’s fateful decision with an offer of German support to Mexico in reclaiming lost territory if the U.S. declared war on Germany.

Ultimately, it was the revelation of this Zimmerman Telegram, which pushed the U.S. Congress to declare war on Germany less than three months later. Tragically, repeated requests by the German government including the Kaiser himself beginning in August 1916 asking President Woodrow Wilson to mediate a peace conference ending the war in return for a full German withdrawal from Belgium and most of northern France had caused Wilson to plan to schedule a peace conference to be attended by all the warring powers in February 1917 but when he was notified of the German decision to begin unrestricted submarine warfare, he reacted with rage, severed diplomatic relations with Germany and expelled the German Ambassador declaring war on Germany a couple months later.

Tragically, it was the US declaration of war on Germany on April 6, 1917 which caused the Kaiser to reluctantly authorize sending Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to Russia three days later with 30 million Deutsche marks to overthrow the Russian government forcing it to accept peace with Germany. Had the U.S. remained neutral, the Kaiser would never have authorized doing so. Thus, in a very real sense, it was Wilson’s decision to seek a congressional declaration of war on Germany that led to the takeover of Russia by the Bolsheviks and the subsequent spread of Communism to control one-third of the world’s territory and people scarcely more than three decades later. Were it not for US entry into the war, Communist China, North Korea, and most likely the Soviet Union, would never have existed. 

Many authors have speculated that it was the U.S. entry into World War One on April 6, 1917 that served to prevent a negotiated peace which would likely have been a far more just and lasting than was the Treaty of Versailles. In an essay entitled, “The Failure of Peace by Negotiation in 1917” published in The Historical Journal in 1991, David Stevenson concluded, “When the Americans declared war on Germany, Britain had the wherewithal to finance only three weeks' further purchases in the USA. Without American entry, economic paralysis, coupled with the February revolution, would probably have driven the allies into, at best, an unfavorable compromise.” France had also exhausted its ability to pay for U.S. goods by April 1917. But what if the Kaiser had followed the advice of German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg not to implement unrestricted submarine warfare and the U.S. had remained neutral during World War One creating the conditions for the signing of an armistice in the fall of 1917 followed by a negotiated compromise peace treaty that was acceptable to all of the great powers to ensure the future peace in Europe? Had the Germans not provoked the U.S. to war with its unrestricted submarine warfare campaign and especially by the German Foreign Minister admitting his infamous Zimmermann Telegram was genuine, Germany’s appeal to President Woodrow Wilson to mediate a negotiated peace settlement which was fair to both sides and largely restored the status quo ante bellum as early as February 1917 might well have succeeded. Even if it hadn’t, the Allies would have been forced to make peace with Germany by summer 1917 because without US loans they would have run out of money to buy U.S. arms and supplies which they needed to continue the war.

The French Army mutinied in May-June 1917 following the failure of the Neville Offensive causing them to refuse to engage in any more offensives for the rest of the year. Meanwhile a British offensive at Ypres in Flanders beginning in June resulted in 325,000 Allied casualties, with Allied armies advancing only five miles. Thus, the optimal time for both sides to have agreed to an armistice, due to the fact that all of the great powers were exhausted, would have likely been around mid-September 1917 by which time it seemed that the war had reached an increasingly costly and protracted stalemate. That same month, the Kaiser authorized a peace offer to be sent to Great Britain offering a full-German military withdrawal in the West and a restoration of Belgian independence, which British Prime Minister David Lloyd George reportedly wanted to accept much as his predecessor had wanted to accept a similar German peace offer a year earlier. However, he too was overruled by his War Cabinet as they believed Britain could obtain better terms from Germany once millions of U.S. reinforcements arrived on the Western Front. Without hope of U.S. military intervention, the German offer might well have been accepted with certain modifications to satisfy Britain’s French and Italian allies.

Without US military intervention, an armistice ending the war likely would have been concluded by summer 1917. But rather than the armistice calling for the Allied occupation of the Rhineland and bridgeheads on the left bank of the Rhine as was the case in actual history, Germany’s armies would have withdrawn from Belgium and most of northern France but continued to occupy Luxembourg, northeastern France and Alsace-Lorraine until a final peace treaty was signed. This would have enabled Germany to negotiate from a position of equal strength with the Allies, particularly in view of the imminent surrender of Russia. In addition to withdrawing from Belgium and most of northern France, Germany could have offered to end submarine warfare against the Allies and return all U-boats to their bases in return for the partial lifting of the British-led starvation blockade allowing neutral powers including American ships to sell foodstuffs to the Central Powers to immediately relieve the starvation of hundreds of thousands of their citizens. The warring parties would agree that the final peace treaty would be signed by Christmas 1917 permitting the withdrawal of troops from occupied territories to their new national boundary lines along with their demobilization.

Terms of the Compromise Peace Agreement

The specific terms of the final peace settlement, many of which are based on peace offers that were exchanged in actual history and which incorporate elements of all of Wilson’s Fourteen Points, but the one relating to the withdrawal of all German troops from Russia and the one relating to the reduction of national armaments of all of the warring powers, might have included the following provisions:

All Central Powers troops would be withdrawn from France, Belgium, Serbia, Poland, Romania and Greece excluding territorial adjustments. Germany would fully restore and guarantee Belgian independence and ensure that all French industrial areas and mines remain intact doing no damage to Belgian or French property during its troop withdrawal in return for the restoration of Belgian neutrality and Allied agreement not to deploy their troops on Belgian soil. Germany would return all of Alsace-Lorraine except for the Luxembourgish speaking region of Thionville (about 7-10% of Alsace-Lorraine including most of its iron-ore resources) which would be annexed by Luxembourg. In addition, Luxembourg might re-annex the southernmost two percent of Belgian territory (235 square miles) that borders the French province of Meurthe-et-Moselle as well as part of the Briey-Longwy iron-ore basin which consists of only 150 square miles of territory. Germany would then recognize its new border with France as permanent in exchange for the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (with the Grand Duke remaining as its head of state) joining the German Confederation. The rest of Alsace-Lorraine would become a self-governing French autonomous region.

In exchange for the return of over ninety percent of Alsace-Lorraine, France would transfer control of French Indochina and French Morocco to Germany. All German colonies, excepting those occupied by the Japanese Empire, would be returned to Germany along with all captured German merchant vessels. Germany would offer to scrap or transfer to other countries twenty-five of its surviving forty-five surviving battleships including all twenty-one of its pre-dreadnaught battleships and four of its twenty-four dreadnaught battleships representing a reduction of 55% in their total number of battleships with two of its retired battlecruisers eligible for conversion to aircraft carriers. Germany would also sign a naval disarmament treaty with Britain permanently limiting its capital ship tonnage to no more than 50% of the Royal Navy and reducing the size of its U-boat fleet by nearly two-thirds.

Austria-Hungary would cede Trentino and Trieste to Italy, whose control of the Dodecanese Islands would be internationally recognized just as in actual history, while maintaining control of most of the Istrian peninsula including the ports of Pula and Fiume. Albania would become an Italian client state (rather than a protectorate). Austria would have to adopt the trialist proposal and replace the Dual Monarchy with a Triple Monarchy of Austria-Hungary-Croatia giving the Slavs their own kingdom within the empire. Poland would annex the Austrian province of West Galicia with its eastern borders along the same Curzon Line outlined in the actual history Treaty of Versailles, including Chelm but not Lemberg, and would be guaranteed access to the sea though an international railway between Warsaw and Danzig with its independence guaranteed by all signatories to the treaty.

The Ottoman Empire would have to withdraw its troops from and grant independence to Palestine, Transjordan, the Hejaz (western Arabia) and Hasa (south of modern-day Iraq) while granting greater autonomy to the Arabs of modern-day Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and guaranteeing the safety of Armenian Christians, allowing their safe relocation to Armenia. Serbia would be given access to the sea through a union with Montenegro. An internationally-supervised plebiscite would be held in Vardar Macedonia (which was 81% Bulgarian) to determine whether its inhabitants wish to remain part of Serbia or unite with Bulgaria. Southern Dobruja (which was 47% ethnic Bulgarian and only 2% Romanian) would be returned by Romania to Bulgaria while Romania would annex the Russian province of Bessarabia as compensation for this loss.

All of the great powers would join together in supporting the establishment of the League of Nations. Friendly trade relations between the warring powers would immediately be resumed in order to ensure a more rapid economic recovery for the war-torn nations of Europe. The great power blocs which contributed to the outbreak of the war would be dissolved and banned by treaty. A five-power Concert of Europe consisting of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Austria-Hungary-Croatia would be re-organized to negotiate all future international disputes through peaceful diplomatic means. No reparations would be owed or paid by any nation to any other. The British starvation blockade against the Central Powers would be lifted immediately after the treaty was signed. Germany would also agree not to annex any territory from Russia. Following the armistice between the Central Powers and Soviet Russia, this treaty would be modified to guarantee the independence of the newly created states of Finland, the Baltic Duchy (consisting of the modern-day states of Estonia and Latvia), Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and the Transcaucusian Republic (consisting of the modern-day states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan).

Aftermath

This treaty would have amounted to a separate peace between the Western Allies and Germany following the Bolshevik Revolution of November 7, 1917 and their subsequent agreement to an armistice with Germany later that month allowing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed in March 1918 (likely earlier given all of Russia’s former allies dropping out of the war) to be implemented in the east and made permanent. Thus, Germany would be effectively conceding defeat in the west in exchange for victory in the east.

Had such a compromise peace treaty been signed, Hitler and the Nazis could have never have come to power in Germany and the Jewish Holocaust would have been entirely averted. Germany would have remained a satisfied, rather than a revanchist, power dedicated to maintaining the peace and would not have started another world war. The Soviet Union might never have existed had Germany helped the White Russian Armies defeat the Soviets in the Russian Civil War. Even if it had, it would have been more constricted in size as well as in terms of its military and industrial power, counterbalanced by Imperial Germany and its Eastern European allies in the west and by Imperial Japan in the east. The Second World War would likely have started with Soviet, rather than German aggression against Finland, the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and Romania, attempting to recover lost territory just as the Soviets did in actual history from September 1939-July 1940. But in this counterfactual historical timeline, there would have been no Hitler-Stalin Pact and no unholy alliance with the U.S. and U.K. to help them do so. In fact, it is even possible that Britain and France would have joined an increasingly democratic Germany in opposing one or more of these aggressions, fighting on the same side of the war.

The Pacific War between the United States and Imperial Japan, which was sparked by a crushing U.S.-led oil embargo on Japan imposed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a “back door to war” with Germany, likely would never have occurred. This is due to the fact that without the German conquest of France in 1940, Roosevelt likely would have accepted the Japanese offer to withdraw from Indochina and mainland China, excepting Manchuria and Jehol province, in exchange for lifting the oil embargo. Without Soviet involvement in a U.S.-led Pacific War against Japan, the Nationalist Chinese would likely have defeated Mao’s Red Army in the Chinese Civil War and Communist China and North Korea would likely never have existed. The world would be far safer, more secure and much freer than it is today with a Nationalist-led China fighting on the Western side during the Cold War against the Soviet Union.

History has proven that negotiated, compromise peace agreements, such as the one outlined above that could have safeguarded most of Europe and the world from the ravages of the Second World War, in which the vital security interests of all great powers are recognized, are the key to achieving long-term resolution of major conflicts. Were U.S. leaders to prudently negotiate a similar compromise peace agreement with Russia, which recognizes Russia’s legitimate security interests as well as our own, it could end the war in Ukraine and prevent the conflict from escalating into an unnecessary, and potentially nuclear, Third World War involving the U.S. and NATO today.

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and H.Q. staff officer with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security and is a contributor to Dr. Peter Pry’s new book Blackout Warfare. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.