David Frum has an interesting alternative history speculation over at Atlantic you might wish to look at it. As should be almost needless to say I disagree strongly with his conclusions.
I believe that, if the U. S. had not entered WWI on the side of the TE, the TE would not have won the war outright. On that much we’re in agreement. However, I think that if the TE had not won outright that doesn’t mean that the Central Powers would have won. I think it means the TE would have sued for peace and that, in turn, means that there would have been no Treaty of Versailles and no Treaty of Sèvres. The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires would have remained intact, at least for a while. Germany would not have been saddled with war reparations.
That means less struggle in Germany to cope with the debts it had incurred during the war, a reduced likelihood that Hitler would have risen to power, and a possbility that, if the Austro-Hungarian Empire went to war again a generation later, it would have been with Soviet Russia rather than Western Europe.
The problems of the Middle East would have taken on a very different cast with a continuing rump Ottoman Empire. What form? It’s open to debate.
My general take is that our entry into the Great War despite its notionally favorable outcome may have been just as boneheaded as our invasion of Iraq.
Daniel Larison has some push back against Frum’s counterfactual as well
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/a-bad-wwi-counterfactual/
I think the TE would have won the war without the U.S.; it just would have taken longer. The entry of the U.S. was not part of the strategic designs of Great Britain and France, but Germany believed the U.S. would enter the war when it resumed unrestricted submarine warfare. That it was willing to bring the U.S. into the war shows that the Germans felt their situation deteriorating, even as their troops moved towards Central Asia. The naval blockade was starving Germany of needed resources. German success on the Eastern Front tied down troops in a hostile occupation, to coerce resources from locals to feed the occupation. And Germany’s leaders became increasingly concerned about internal revolution due to food shortages.
The U-Boats block supplies to Britain, and a great German offensive would defeat France before the Americans arrived. Unrestricted submarine warfare failed because the British had adopted the use of convoys and mines. The Western offensive made some ground, but at great cost. Arguably the Germans lost the war before the Americans arrived, but their arrival and the promise of Wilson’s more liberal peace terms persuaded Germany to agree to an armistice to give it time to re-arm.
An alternative history has to unbundle all of those issues surrounding the German’s decision to resume unrestricted warfare. In an alternative world, perhaps Germany has some conventional naval success that limits the blockade and the TE’s ability to obtain resources from abroad. Maybe, a meaningful peace treaty with the Soviets allows the Germans to really focus everything on the Western Front.
Doubtful. Although we tend to think that the 1917 October Revolution settled everything there was chaos in Russia for several years following the revolution. What I’m skeptical about isn’t the treaty part but the meaningful part.