Where do you think Uncle Stalin’s boys got the idea.
Maybe, but America had no compelling reason to get involved in yet another European war in WWI, which wasn’t really a world war on the geographic and homicidal scale of WWII.
Germany, consistent with Hitler’s unnecessary and idiotic declaration of war on America in WWII, forced strongly neutral America into war against Germany by the Zimmerman telegram and the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare which would target US ships.
When it comes to dealing with the US in world wars, Germany really had a death wish.
Don’t forget the large number of loans the U.S. banks were making to the Allies. And while Germany made many mistakes in regards to handling the Americans in the First World War, both sides realized early on that inevitably the United States would fear and never accept a complete domination of Western Europe under German occupation.
As for WWII, Hitler was in a bind realizing that he could never compete with America on an economic level of sheer production. His drastic action was Operation Barbarossa–hoping that taking control of the best parts of the Soviet Union–would give him all the grain, oil, factories, and (slave) labor to compete with the U.S. strategically in a long war, if Adam Tooze is to be believed…