Role of Germany in the First World War - Essay Example

So while in some ways he did not want to enter the war, being a pacifist at heart, Wilson knew that the outcome of the war could have drastic impacts on the way the world worked after it, and these impacts would be decided upon solely by the victors. Knowing all this, Wilson wanted to have a seat at the victor’s table, to be a part of determining the new world order. His championing of the League of Nations following the First World War shows what kind of world order he imagined, and he perhaps thought that, through going to war this one time, he could help prevent future conflicts from ever occurring again. He was sadly mistaken, obviously, both because of the harsh reparations demanded by the allies and because o the US government’s unwillingness to take part in the League, but his aspirations were high all the same.

So while the Zimmerman telegram was certainly inflammatory, there are ways in which would argue that it was used more as a pretext to enter the war than being the sole cause of the US’s entrance – Wilson had a lot to gain in going to war for the Victorious side, and so probably would have taken much less inflammatory bait had it been presented.

It is impossible to know for certain how the world would have turned out had the United States never entered the war: it is even hard to know which side would have won, or if victory ever would have happened in any kind of real way. I would argue that without US intervention, neither side would really have been able to win the war, and a much less harsh peace process would probably have had to occur, which would have led to better consequences.

The defining feature of much of the First World War was a terrible stale-mate – lines of trenches were established, and because defensive technology was, for this brief period, so much more effective than offensive technology, it was hard for any side to win an advantage. Germany and its allies were well balanced against the Allies, and neither side could make any significant advances. The United State’s entrance to the war on the side of the allies, however, was a game-changer. Not so much because it made a huge difference in the tactics – the trenches were still hard to claim – but because it made victory for Germany a near impossibility. There would be no way to starve out England with American convoys supporting it, and it would be impossible to win a war of attrition against such a large and populous country that was completely unscarred by the war so far. So Germany was forced to surrender when if America had not entered the war Germany probably could have continued to drive a stale-mate until both sides grew weary of the war effort and eventually had to settle. America’s entrance into the war, however, caused an Allied victory, and along with that an incredibly harsh set of restrictions and reparations on Germany.  These harsh victory terms were a major part of the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War. So if America had never entered, and the war had ground down naturally, it might have prevented the horrible tragedies of the Third Reich and the Holocaust.