Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US were much less a factor in WW1 than WW2. If anything, the US entry forced the Entente's hands to start the planned 1919 offensive early in 1918 and ending the war. The USA did not contribute a large amlint of troops, relative to the armies already deployed, nor did they contribute significant amounts of gear. Lend-Lease was a WW2 thing, in WW1 the majority of US tanks for example were actually French. The US w…
Britain would have lost WW1 and WW2 without massive US support. The WW1 Germans were not amazed by British soldiers' supplies and health. They were amazed by the US soldiers' supplies and health. > Finally, the US war economy of WW2 was decidedly not free FDR mobilized existing free market businesses to convert to war production. It was not a collective, nor was it forced labor. For example, Ford switched from produc…
And you are aware, that France was a major biligerent in WW1, stopped Germany at Verdun and held more than half the Western Front, sucessfully after the race to the sea ended, together with Britain, for years before the US showed up?
Or that the Ententene, without significant US participation, won the strategic victory that defeated Germany during the Kaiserschlacht, the last German offensive in the West? This victory allowed Franch and Britain to start the 1919 offensive already in 1918, the one that ended with German surrender. In fact, they started early, in part, to avoid the impression that it was the US who "won" WW1. Little did they know how WW2 would play out and influence puplic opinion.
Also, being impressed by something doesn't mean being defeated by it... I know the meme, and that is all it is, a meme. And a lazy one at that.
During WW2, economies in the UK, the US and the USSR had a lot in common. Mainly them being not free to choose what they produced. The degrees of freedom regarding how it was produced differed, but that is not what defines an economy as free or not. And please tell me you don't think the USSR functioned without money? People were paid to produce stuff, they didn't have the likes of Ford getting rich building war material so.
Edit: I forgot one theatre in WW1, the Ottoman Empire. Arguably at least as important for Britain than the Western Front, and there the US didn't participate at all. And still Britain won.
This is not to downplay the role the US played in WW2, far from it. Projecting this role to WW1 is just plain wrong so, and only feeds into a whole bunch of wrong preconceptions about WW1. I partialy blame Cold War propaganda for this, that downplayed the Soviet role in WW2, for obvious reasons, and over played the US one. Regarding WW2, this narrative is finally changing, for WW1 not so much. And I don't like factually wrong narratives for historical events.
Edit 2: Just read the first half of FDRs 1945 State of the Union during my lunch break. Not sure how you can consider a national service obligation, in parallel to the normal recruiting of workers, to be equal to forced labour...
You really should look up what real forced labour looked, and looks, like.
Also, the same guy, FDR, who called for "forced labour" and was a "friend of Stalin" was in charge of the war economy. And yet, you claim the war economy led by him was a free market. One of those things is not true, I'd say.