WWI-The forgotten war in feature films

Quote: Fleastiff

The movie remains a public relations movie made on behalf of Warner Brothers for the "Get the USA into the War" movement.

Quote: Winston Churchill - according to the New York Enquirer - in 1936 has said literally

America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government - and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.

There is an ongoing dispute whether Churchill really spoke these words. When Churchill later denied having said that the US should have minded her own business, William Griffin, publisher of the New York Enquirer, testified in Congress that it was indeed Sir Winston Churchill who made this comment in an interview with him in London in August 1936 (sworn statement, Congressional Record, October 21, 1939, vol. 84. p. 686.).Griffin also brought a $1,000,000 libel suit against Churchill.

April 6, 1917 is when President Wilson asks Congress for a declaration of war with Imperial Germany.

It is an interesting alternate history, to say the least.

Quote: Fleastiff

Quote: Pacomartin

The telegram from Germany to Mexico inviting them to attack the USA was the deciding factor".

The Zimmerman note was a triumph of British intelligence who forged it.

"However, any doubts as to the authenticity of the telegram were removed by Arthur Zimmermann himself. First on 3 March 1917, he told an American journalist, "I cannot deny it. It is true." Then on 29 March 1917, Zimmermann gave a speech in which he admitted the telegram was genuine.[12] Zimmermann hoped Americans would understand the idea was that Germany would only fund Mexico's war with the United States in the event of American entry into World War I."

(see wikipedia)

I don't think it was a forgery...

About the Zimmerman telegram:

1) It went through the US first! You can see the Western Union letterhead. No matter how neutral the US was, you can be sure any telegrams from germany were intercepted.

2) Mexico was still fighting a civil war. This was the time when Pancho Villa riaded US border towns and was pursued by "Blackjack" Pershing. Things were perhaps not as chaotic as they'd been earlier int he decade, but Mexico was in no position, political, military or economical, to seriously invade the US, even if the leadership had been crazy, mindless, brainless and stupid enough to try; German aid or no German aid.

3) It has to be one of the biggest political and operational blunders in the history of the world.

Quote: Nareed

About the Zimmerman telegram:

Mexico was still fighting a civil war. This was the time when Pancho Villa riaded US border towns and was pursued by "Blackjack" Pershing. Things were perhaps not as chaotic as they'd been earlier int he decade, but Mexico was in no position, political, military or economical, to seriously invade the US, even if the leadership had been crazy, mindless, brainless and stupid enough to try; German aid or no German aid.

• The lower 48 states achieved statehood by February 14, 1912 so all the land taken from Mexico in the 19th century was no longer territories.
• The message came as a coded telegram on 16 January 1917 to the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt.
• Zimmermann sent the telegram in anticipation of the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by Germany on 1 February 1917, an act which Germany predicted would draw the neutral U.S. into war on the side of the Allies.
• Mexico ratified it's constitution on 5 February 1917.
• The first Russian revolution was on 8 – 12 March 1917, but it is often called the February Revolution because it was February on Julian calendar.

Mexico's population of 15 million in 1910 may have lost a million in the revolution, but the former Mexican territories in the US were at least half the population of the country of Mexico by 1920.
California 3,426,861
Texas 4,663,228
New Mexico 360,350
Arizona 334,162
Nevada 77,407
Utah 449,396