America’s
Greatest Blunder: The Fateful Decision to Enter World War One – a history
Kindle ebook by Burton Yale Pines
This
is a provocative, unorthodox telling of a tale of how an American decision in
1917 helped propel the 20th Century onto its unprecedented course of war,
violence, dictatorships, genocide and such catastrophic events as the rise of Hitler,
World War Two and the Cold War. That American decision, to declare war on Germany
and enter World War One, turned out to be what the author, pulling no punches,
declares was America’s greatest blunder.
Praised
by Amazon reviewers for its fast, fluid pace and as an easy read, America’s Greatest Blunder is aimed at
those general-interest readers fascinated by history’s rare pivot-points that
change the course of human events. Solidly researched, the book is packed with
information and describes what one reviewer calls “fascinating episodes” which bring to
life how America stumbled into war, how its two million doughboys were
recruited and trained and then broke the battlefield stalemate and won the war and how that victory allowed Britain
and France to impose their punishing peace on Germany.
And
had
America not entered World War One? The book’s answer: The war’s
combatants
– Britain and France on one side and Germany on the other – exhausted
from
nearly four years of massive battles and staggering casualties on a
deadlocked
Western Front, running short of men and resources and facing mounting
homefront
cries for an end to the fighting, ultimately would have dragged
themselves (however
reluctantly and unhappily) to a conference table and there negotiate a
compromise
peace. There would have been no victor, no vanquished, to punishing
Versailles Peace Treaty, no reparations, no German cries for revenge –
and thus no Hitler, surely no World
War Two and likely no Cold War.
As the centenary of World War One’s
1914 outbreak fast approaches, the reader will be faced by a mounting number of
new and excellent books about that catastrophe. One book may well prove unique and
a valuable accompaniment to the others. With its sharp focus on America’s
game-changing role in that war and the tragic consequences that flowed from it,
America’s Greatest Blunder offers the
reader a special perspective on the war.