You are quite right. We often say that we 'won' the war but it bankrupted the country in the process and cost us an empire whilst it was the making of the USA as an industrial giant and a superpower. It all feels like smoke and mirrors to me. Coincidentally I was watching one of the last episodes of 'The World at War' the other evening discussing the economic and social outcome of it all with a very interesting appraisal by a young Stephen E Ambrose (Band of Brothers etc.). We are still living with the consequences of the cataclysmic upheavals of the struggles amongst nations of the last century.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/dec/03/britains-first-world-war-debts-repaid-what-does-it-mean
http://qz.com/290183/in-2014-countries-are-still-paying-off-debt-from-world-war-one/
I particularly like this paragraph:
So the solution to this was brokered by the future US vice-president Charles Dawes, who in 1924 proposed that the US lend money to Germany to fund its reparation payments to France and the UK, who in turn would use the money to repay their war debts. The solution was so good that Dawes won the Nobel Peace Prize the next year in recognition. And the plan worked.
I guess that means that the Americans leant money to Germany so that it could pay back France and Britain who could then pay the money back to America. In effect Germany took on the burden of the allied debts added to its own reparations as dictated to it at Versailles. No wonder Hitler rose to power.