Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

[Michate]

Michael Mills,

I was speaking from memory from the Cox article mentioned by woneil. Peeking into it again, the case looks somewaht different, with a broader range of donors in former Allied or neutral countries and Hoover given particular prominence. Anyway, the article reminds me a bit of a moral tale.

Generally, I have to confess I have little knowledge of the matter, as my interest in the period is mostly limited to strictly military matters. However, sometimes my aversion against the usual peddlers of "world peace and democracy" just gets the better of me.

[michael mills]

Hoover certainly played a major role in persuading the Allies to sell food to Germany. His motivation was to help out the pig-farmers in the US by providing a market for their product, for which the domestic market had collapsed.

That matter is dealt with at length in the book by Offer.

[woneil]

Hoover certainly played a major role in persuading the Allies to sell food to Germany. His motivation was to help out the pig-farmers in the US by providing a market for their product, for which the domestic market had collapsed.

That matter is dealt with at length in the book by Offer.

Anyone who looks objectively at Hoover's Herculean efforts to feed the hungry across the years 1914 and 1922 has to conclude that he was not primarily motivated by economic or political concerns. In fact, he encountered a lot of opposition for helping "the wrong people," both in the former Central Powers and the Soviet Union. I am not one of Hoover's great admirers in many ways, but only a fool or a doctrinaire Marxist-influenced economic determinist can deny that the man did genuinely have a good measure of humanitarian (and pacifist) values.

Of course in this period it would scarcely have been possible to provide any significant amount of food from non-U.S. sources, and whatever was in long supply was bound to be cheapest and easiest to obtain.