# A Victorious Luftstreitkräfte-Imperial German Aviation Development After WW1



## SpicyJuan11 (Jan 16, 2017)

Hello, I am currently helping in developing Kaiserreich, an alternate history mod for Hearts of Iron 4. I am currently working on the creating color profiles for the aviation tech tree for the German Empire which has won WW1 and is a superpower in decline. I was wondering how everyone thinks a Kaiserliche Luftstreitkräfte would have developed after WW1, especially compared the the Luftwaffe of our world. Would aircraft development looked similar to that of OTL America, or would imperial beauracracy encounter the same problems as the Nazi RLM? How would the aircraft themselves looked like? Would a focus on heavier tactical bombers and long ranged fighters have developed? Or what of jet fighters? Would they have progressed as fast as in OTL or would they have been deemed too radical in design? Any help would be greatly appreciated.


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## soulezoo (Jan 18, 2017)

I'm going to offer a thought, a completely unqualified opinion. When one deigns to change a portion of history, even a slight detail as often history turns on the slightest outcome of events (like what if Hitler did not survive an early assassination attempt or even if Valkyrie was successful) changes so many other things. These are the things we cannot possibly know and only speculate about.

My thought is this: Hitler had a single minded drive to develop so many things that a traditional government as you suggest may not even consider, or even have the ability, to throw that type of resources at. Progress yes, but I'd bet you'd never see the V2 and how much other of world history (space flight) gets affected by that? I believe that yes, the same issues that RLM encountered would remain. Because it is no longer a Nazi govt doesn't mean that bureaucratic nonsense ceases. Look at US or UK and what messes they created.

So, the question that cannot be answered is what would they have? I would surmise that jets would certainly be there. Maybe even better engines due to access to certain metals unhindered. Side question, what about other arms like tanks for instance? Frankly, with a different govt, there is likely not to be WWII and all of the different planes produced would not happen either.


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## michaelmaltby (Jan 18, 2017)

.. so you're saying that in an alternative universe this website and your post don't exist

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## herman1rg (Jan 18, 2017)

On what premise could the German Empire win WW1?


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## Ascent (Jan 18, 2017)

herman1rg said:


> On what premise could the German Empire win WW1?


If the British stay neutral then that improves their chances dramatically.

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## soulezoo (Jan 18, 2017)

michaelmaltby said:


> .. so you're saying that in an alternative universe this website and your post don't exist



I'd like to think that in that alternative universe that I don't exist. Then my horrid ex would have to work to support herself instead of being a parasite on my alimony!

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## Shortround6 (Jan 18, 2017)

SpicyJuan11 said:


> Hello, I am currently helping in developing Kaiserreich, an alternate history mod for Hearts of Iron 4. I am currently working on the creating color profiles for the aviation tech tree for the German Empire which has won WW1 and is a superpower in decline. I was wondering how everyone thinks a Kaiserliche Luftstreitkräfte would have developed after WW1, especially compared the the Luftwaffe of our world. Would aircraft development looked similar to that of OTL America, or would imperial beauracracy encounter the same problems as the Nazi RLM? How would the aircraft themselves looked like? Would a focus on heavier tactical bombers and* long ranged fighters have developed*? Or what of jet fighters? Would they have progressed as fast as in OTL or would they have been deemed too radical in design? Any help would be greatly appreciated.



In regards to the bolded part. In this alternate universe does Poland not exist? Has France moved further away from Rhine or where is the German/French border. Has England moved? 
Ranges of fighters and bombers are often dependent on Geography. European fighters had short range because potential enemies really were not all that far away and range was sacrificed for performance. 
Japan developed long range fighters for several reasons. For one it is over 1100 miles from the tip of the South Island to the tip of the North Island or greater than the distance from Copenhagen to Naples or about the Distance from Bristol to Brest-Belarus.
Throw in the Japanese possessions in the Pacific (granted some ex German Islands) and the distances involved in China and Manchuria and it is little wonder that the Japanese were designing for long range and sacrificing some other things to get it. 

A lot of development was based on what did expected opponents have or were developing. Sort of keeping up with the Jones's. 
The twin engine multi place "fighter" was popular in a number of countries for a few years in the 1930s. Turns out none of them would perform as claimed/hoped against singe engine fighters. 

It doesn't matter what kind of bureaucracy is involved, weapons requirements (aircraft, artillery, ships) are driven by real needs. They may be shaded by ideology a bit.


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## parsifal (Jan 18, 2017)

I think the suppositions underpinning the scenario need a little more thought.

if the germans win WWI their military is likely to stagnate in a similar way to the French. For the French, having "won" the war, they were reluctant to change any thing about their military, but in particular the aircraft they were flying. the first real money for the Navy didn't become available until 1923, the air force plodded with 1918 equipment until 1924. The army made some very minor changes but nothing really significant until the 1930's.

I think a victorious German army in 1918 is going to be beset by the same reluctance to change things. Similar things happened to the victorious allies after waterloo.

If anyone is going to innovate it would be the british. faced with a Europe dominated by just one hostile power, and having not lived through the horror of the war, the british are going to be cashed up and eager to develop their military capabilities.

There is no way of knowing the precise form of the procurement results, but some of the assumptions should assume very little change for the germans from 1918, and an accelerated rate of change for the british. If the war is assumed to break out in 1924, German technologies should be languishing around 1918, whilst the british development should be powering on to about 1930-31.


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## GregP (Jan 18, 2017)

Perhaps if Germany won WWI, the Schneider Cup races would never have taken place. If not, the radical aircraft and engine developments would not have happened at anywhere NEAR the speed with which they did in real life. There might not be a Merlin at all, and I doubt if a satisfied Germany would pursue the DB600-series engines at the rate of development that happened, either, largely with knowledge of what was gained in Schneider Cup racing engine developments.

That doesn't mean there would have been no developments, but it probably means they would not be the same developments, nor would they happen at nearly the same pace. I'm thinking that modern planes of the Bf 109 / Spitfire type would probably take some 10 - 20 years longer to come out since the threat of war is what caused these weapons to be developed at the speed with which they were developed.

But, it's a thought, not an alternate history suggestion.


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## Shortround6 (Jan 18, 2017)

The Air Force would be the first to move on from WW I equipment. In large part due to the Aircraft and engines not being very durable. 
Ships were designed to last 10-20 years (Destroyers on the low end and Battleships/Dreadnoughts on the upper end). The German army had very few tanks in the Fall of 1918 so left overs in this scenario would be ???? French, by the time contracts were wound up had something like 3000 FT-17s which rather limited the demand for new tanks for quite some time and also limited the tactical thinking. 

WW I aircraft engines lasted between 20-40 hours between overhauls (for the better engines) so new engines are going to be needed relatively soon compared to new field guns and such. French were blessed/cursed with the Hispano V-8 which was one of the first cast block engines. It showed the way for most of the liquid cooled engines to follow and the Hispano V-12s of 1940 were essentially enlarged V-8s (larger bore/stroke) with 4 extra cylinders spliced in. Same valve arrangement and same Siamesed ports. It was hitting it's limits in 1940 pretty hard. 
British also were ahead of the Germans in engine design in 1917-18. While the majority of combat aircraft were powered by the Hispano (and derivatives) and Rotary engines Roy Fedden was running Jupiter prototypes at the Cosmos company and Napier was running Lion prototypes. Less said about the ABC Dragonfly radial the better. The Rotary was a dead end in the early 20s and the separate cylinder Liquid cooled engines ( German BMW and Mercedes and American Liberty and RR Eagle) while serviceable in the 1920s were hitting the end of their lives by 1930 ( German BMW V-12 staggered on a bit longer). Everybody needed new or improved radials and the companies and countries that were able switched to cast block V-12s. 
The wooden and fabric aircraft of WW I and the 1920s required frequent replacement even if designs didn't change much and by the end of the 1920s some air forces were demanding metal air frames even if fabric covered to reduce maintenance. 

Germany may have made faster progress if not limited by the Versailles Treaty. But some progress was limited by available fuels and available knowledge of metal fatigue and vibration. Fuel injected BD 601s were not going to happen in 1929 no matter what.


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## Shortround6 (Jan 18, 2017)

GregP said:


> Perhaps if Germany won WWI, the Schneider Cup races would never have taken place. If not, the radical aircraft and engine developments would not have happened at anywhere NEAR the speed with which they did in real life. There might not be a Merlin at all, and I doubt if a satisfied Germany would pursue the DB600-series engines at the rate of development that happened, either, largely with knowledge of what was gained in Schneider Cup racing engine developments.
> 
> That doesn't mean there would have been no developments, but it probably means they would not be the same developments, nor would they happen at nearly the same pace. I'm thinking that modern planes of the Bf 109 / Spitfire type would probably take some 10 - 20 years longer to come out since the threat of war is what caused these weapons to be developed at the speed with which they were developed.
> 
> But, it's a thought, not an alternate history suggestion.



The Schneider Cup races pre date WW I, being flown in 1913 and 14. The Gordon Bennet races in the US were flown in 1910, 11, 12, and 13 and started again post war. Air racing was much like auto racing. War could halt things temporarily but once peace was at hand the racing would start again. The retractable landing gear monoplane fighter (and bomber) were simply a matter of time and with commercial aircraft like the Lockheed Orion showing up in the early 30s (The Orion first flew in 1931) Military aircraft would not be all that far behind. There had been a number of monoplanes and a number of aircraft using retracting landing gear before the Orion. Including the Verville Sperry R-3 racer in the 1922, 23 and 24 Pulitzer Air races.









Not the only monoplane retractable landing gear racers in the early 20s.


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## GregP (Jan 18, 2017)

I was thinking of the Cup races after 1918, where most of the devlopment took place.


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## Shortround6 (Jan 19, 2017)

The cup races in the Early 20s saw American (in 1923), British (almost from the start), French (in and out) and Italian aircraft. 
Had Germany survived the war in a better position (define WON? French and Italians forced to sign peace treaties forbidding _them_ aviation for number of years?) Germany may very well have joined in the Competition. What that does to development I don't know.


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## swampyankee (Jan 20, 2017)

If one reads some of the German "peace" proposals, from as late as 1917, when Germany had about as much chance of winning WW1 as did Liechtenstein, one would see proposals that made Versailles the apex of generosity: they were vindictive, and imperialistic, mandating puppet governments in all the territories that Germany had invaded.


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## mikewint (Jan 21, 2017)

herman1rg said:


> On what premise could the German Empire win WW1?


I can give you four:
#1. DON’T FIGHT A TWO FRONT WAR 
Germany's Schlieffen plan, called for concentrating on France in the opening days of the conflict while keeping weaker forces in the East. The key was to defeat France quickly while vast and underdeveloped Russia still mobilized, and then transfer forces by rail to settle accounts with the Tsar. However, Russia did attack into East Prussia in August 1914, only to be surrounded and annihilated at the Battle of Tannenberg. They lost 170,000 men to just 12,000 Germans in one of history's most famous battles of encirclement. Yet the Russian advance also frightened German Army Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke into transferring three corps from France to East Prussia. They arrived too late for Tannenberg, while depriving the Western offensive of vital troops at Germany's best time to overcome France and possibly end the war.
From then on, Germany had to spread its forces between West and East, while supporting its Austro-Hungarian and Turkish allies. Consider what happened in 1918 when the Germans forced the new Soviet government to sue for peace, the Germans quickly transferred 500,000 troops to France. They also unleashed innovative new stosstruppen infiltration tactics—an early form of blitzkrieg without the tanks—that enabled them to break the trench-warfare deadlock.
Kaiserschlacht offensives shattered several British armies and compelled British commander Douglas Haig to warn his troops that their backs were "to the wall." After four years of unrelenting combat and economic blockade, Germany still had the strength to achieve more in weeks than four years of bloody Allied offensives at the Somme, Passchendaele and Chemin des Dames.
Ideally, Germany could have found diplomatic means to have fought against Russia alone without war with France, or vice-versa. Failing that, and given the shorter distances in the West, it would have been better to have temporarily conceded some East Prussian territory while concentrating on capturing Paris. It might not have been easy, but it would have been far easier than fighting on two fronts.
#2. DON’T INVADE BELGIUM 
Britain had guaranteed Belgium's neutrality. That "scrap of paper" had been derided by German leaders, but the parchment gave London a casus belli to declare war. Now Germany faced not just France and Russia, but also the immense military and economic resources of the British Empire.
France had a population of 39 million in 1914, versus Germany's 67 million. Can anyone imagine France alone defeating Germany? It failed in 1870, and it would have failed in 1914. Russia could boast of a population of 167 million people, yet shortages of weapons, supplies and infrastructure rendered it a giant with feet of clay. Despite keeping much of their army in France, the Germans were still able to drive Russia out of the war by 1918. Without British support, even a Franco-Russian combination would probably have succumbed to German might.
The entry of Britain and her empire added nearly 9 million troops to the Allies. More importantly, it added the Royal Navy. The French battle fleet was half the size of Germany's and was deployed in the Mediterranean against Germany's Austro-Hungarian and Turkish partners. The Russian navy was negligible. It was Britain's Grand Fleet that made possible the blockade that starved Germany of raw materials and especially food, which starved 400,000 Germans to death and sapped civilian and military morale by late 1918.
It is quite possible that Britain might have declared war on Germany anyway, just to prevent a single power from dominating the Continent, and to preclude hostile naval bases so close to England. But if Germany had managed to stave off British entry for months or years, it would have enjoyed more time and more resources to defeat its enemies.
#3. DON’T BUILD A BIG SURFACE FLEET
Imperial Germany's High Seas Fleet was the second most powerful navy in the world in 1914, behind Britain's Grand Fleet. It mustered fifteen dreadnoughts to Britain's twenty-two, and five battlecruisers to Britain's nine. German surface ships enjoyed better armor plating, guns, propellant and fire control systems than their British rivals.
And what did this powerful surface fleet accomplish? Not much. Its capital ships rarely left port, which also left the British blockade in place. If the German fleet could not break the British blockade, impose its own blockade of Britain, or enable a German amphibious invasion of England, then what was it good for?
It did have value as a classic "fleet in being", staying in port while waiting for an opportunity to pounce, and threatening the enemy just by its existence (Churchill described Royal Navy commander John Jellicoe as the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon). But its main contribution was provoking the British into regarding Germany as a threat even before the war began. Challenging the Royal Navy's maritime supremacy through a naval arms race was the one move guaranteed to arouse the British lion.
Despite ambitions of becoming a global colonial empire, Germany was still a Continental power in 1914. If it won the war, it would be through the immense power of its army, not its navy. What could Germany have bought with the money, material and manpower tied up in the High Seas Fleet? More divisions? More guns and aircraft? Or best of all, more U-boats, the one element of German naval strength that did inflict immense damage on the Allies.
#4. DON’T RESORT TO UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE
It appears such a quaint custom now. But in 1914, submarines were supposed to surface when attacking merchant ships, and allow the crew and passengers to escape. As nobly humanitarian as it was, it also left submarines more vulnerable.
The Germans honored this convention until 1915, and then switched to unrestricted submarine warfare in which ships would be sunk without warning. And the Germans sank plenty of ships, only to rescind it under American pressure, and then resume it in 1917 as a desperate measure to end a conflict that was bleeding Germany to death.
Was it worth it? The all-out U-boat offensive did sink 880,000 tons of shipping in April 1917 alone and endangered the seaborne trade that Britain depended on. Unfortunately, it also helped U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to persuade Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917. The intervention of more than a million fresh American soldiers by late 1918 heartened the British and French armies battered by years of war and the devastating German 1918 offensives.
Wilson believed that America should enter the war against Germany, and perhaps he would have achieved this regardless. Foregoing unrestricted submarine warfare would also have sheathed the dagger that did inflict painful cuts on Britain. It also would have postponed the flood of U.S troops that changed the balance of power on the Western Front in 1918.


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## swampyankee (Jan 21, 2017)

Oh, just some references:
Germany's Peace Terms during WW1 (1916) : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
GHDI - Document


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## parsifal (Jan 21, 2017)

An allied alliance without Britain in the frontline increases Germany's chances for success, but it remains a long shot for them and far from certain.

Tannenberg was a major tactical victory for the Germans, but its effects were tactical, not strategic, and most importantly it was a defensive effort. The elephant in the room for the eastern front was of course Austria, which came within an ace of collapse in 1916. The Russian offensive of June-September 1916 forced the abandonment of the attacks around Verdun .

moreover, the Schlieffen plan of 1914 was not defeated by a shortage of men so much as logistic failures. moreover it is a long bow to draw in the extreme, bordering on the farcical, to claim that the british at this early stage were instrumental or vital to the allied avoidance of defeat. At mons, in august , the major commitment of the BEF before the Marne, a mere 80000 british troops in two corps were committed to try and tackle german 1st army of over 200000 men. The British make much of mons, but in the overall scheme of 1914 operations it was a miniscule affair....just 1600 casualties to some 5000 German dead or wounded .

At the marne, BEF commitment was again very modest, just 6 divs to the French 39. French losses were 67000, British losses just 1700, to 85000 German. I don't think that can be argued as a decisive effort by the british.

Further afield and it becomes more speculative. Whilst much is made about the effects of the MG and the advantages of defensive trenches (which are undoubtedly important, it is often lost that offensive also placed great strain on logistic networks, particularly if some sort of breakthrough was achieved. this was certainly the main reason the failure of the Ludendorf offensive. it had virually nothing to do with the arrival of the americans. Defensive operations absorb far fewer resources, cost far fewer men, and would be well within French capabilities to achieve. if the germans had been forced to continue the attack, their ca. s. ualties would have skyrocketed. if the british were still neutral for some reason, it can safely be assumed that they would still maintain the blockade of the central powers, and also become a major lend lease supplier for the allies, thus evening up the apparent manpower imbalance.

I tend to agree with your notions, but easy or certain victory for the Germans I do not agree with. Germany at best might win a negotiated settlement, emerging heavily weakened, whilst britian if she had remained neutral would be far stronger and able to develop far more efficiently

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## Thud-Dud89 (Jan 21, 2017)

In my opinion, eagerly joining WWI was the real mistake Germany made, as their perceived combat readiness vs actual combat performance were not the same. Of course, since we're on an alternate history discussion, WWI as we know it could easily have not happened had Frederick III not had/survived cancer. Then again, maybe we're just living in one continuity strip, and the next ones over get progressively different [not necessarily better, though] until the end result is nearly unrecognizable [or a "Mirror Universe"].


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## mikewint (Jan 22, 2017)

Michael, agreed. The Germans faced serious problems but they had beaten the French before and certainly could have again so, is it conceivable that the Germans win WWI...IMHO yes

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## swampyankee (Jan 22, 2017)

mikewint said:


> I can give you four:
> #1. DON’T FIGHT A TWO FRONT WAR
> Germany's Schlieffen plan, called for concentrating on France in the opening days of the conflict while keeping weaker forces in the East. The key was to defeat France quickly while vast and underdeveloped Russia still mobilized, and then transfer forces by rail to settle accounts with the Tsar. However, Russia did attack into East Prussia in August 1914, only to be surrounded and annihilated at the Battle of Tannenberg. They lost 170,000 men to just 12,000 Germans in one of history's most famous battles of encirclement. Yet the Russian advance also frightened German Army Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke into transferring three corps from France to East Prussia. They arrived too late for Tannenberg, while depriving the Western offensive of vital troops at Germany's best time to overcome France and possibly end the war.
> From then on, Germany had to spread its forces between West and East, while supporting its Austro-Hungarian and Turkish allies. Consider what happened in 1918 when the Germans forced the new Soviet government to sue for peace, the Germans quickly transferred 500,000 troops to France. They also unleashed innovative new stosstruppen infiltration tactics—an early form of blitzkrieg without the tanks—that enabled them to break the trench-warfare deadlock.
> ...





mikewint said:


> #2. DON’T INVADE BELGIUM
> Britain had guaranteed Belgium's neutrality. That "scrap of paper" had been derided by German leaders, but the parchment gave London a casus belli to declare war. Now Germany faced not just France and Russia, but also the immense military and economic resources of the British Empire.
> France had a population of 39 million in 1914, versus Germany's 67 million. Can anyone imagine France alone defeating Germany? It failed in 1870, and it would have failed in 1914. Russia could boast of a population of 167 million people, yet shortages of weapons, supplies and infrastructure rendered it a giant with feet of clay. Despite keeping much of their army in France, the Germans were still able to drive Russia out of the war by 1918. Without British support, even a Franco-Russian combination would probably have succumbed to German might.
> The entry of Britain and her empire added nearly 9 million troops to the Allies. More importantly, it added the Royal Navy. The French battle fleet was half the size of Germany's and was deployed in the Mediterranean against Germany's Austro-Hungarian and Turkish partners. The Russian navy was negligible. It was Britain's Grand Fleet that made possible the blockade that starved Germany of raw materials and especially food, which starved 400,000 Germans to death and sapped civilian and military morale by late 1918.
> It is quite possible that Britain might have declared war on Germany anyway, just to prevent a single power from dominating the Continent, and to preclude hostile naval bases so close to England. But if Germany had managed to stave off British entry for months or years, it would have enjoyed more time and more resources to defeat its enemies.



Invading Belgium was an intrinsic part of the Schlieffen Plan, and a basic indication of the political stupidity of the German officer class and of the German government, primarily Kaiser Wilhelm II. The generals lost the war for Germany in 1914. 



mikewint said:


> #3. DON’T BUILD A BIG SURFACE FLEET
> Imperial Germany's High Seas Fleet was the second most powerful navy in the world in 1914, behind Britain's Grand Fleet. It mustered fifteen dreadnoughts to Britain's twenty-two, and five battlecruisers to Britain's nine. German surface ships enjoyed better armor plating, guns, propellant and fire control systems than their British rivals.
> And what did this powerful surface fleet accomplish? Not much. Its capital ships rarely left port, which also left the British blockade in place. If the German fleet could not break the British blockade, impose its own blockade of Britain, or enable a German amphibious invasion of England, then what was it good for?
> It did have value as a classic "fleet in being", staying in port while waiting for an opportunity to pounce, and threatening the enemy just by its existence (Churchill described Royal Navy commander John Jellicoe as the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon). But its main contribution was provoking the British into regarding Germany as a threat even before the war began. Challenging the Royal Navy's maritime supremacy through a naval arms race was the one move guaranteed to arouse the British lion.
> Despite ambitions of becoming a global colonial empire, Germany was still a Continental power in 1914. If it won the war, it would be through the immense power of its army, not its navy. What could Germany have bought with the money, material and manpower tied up in the High Seas Fleet? More divisions? More guns and aircraft? Or best of all, more U-boats, the one element of German naval strength that did inflict immense damage on the Allies.



Navies -- especially battleships -- are about prestige and the appearance of power. Submarines would not supply that. 



mikewint said:


> #4. DON’T RESORT TO UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE
> It appears such a quaint custom now. But in 1914, submarines were supposed to surface when attacking merchant ships, and allow the crew and passengers to escape.



As naval ships acting as commerce raiders had done for a very long time. For the most part, 18th and 19th Century fleets and armies claimed not to target civilians.



mikewint said:


> As nobly humanitarian as it was, it also left submarines more vulnerable.
> The Germans honored this convention until 1915, and then switched to unrestricted submarine warfare in which ships would be sunk without warning. And the Germans sank plenty of ships, only to rescind it under American pressure, and then resume it in 1917 as a desperate measure to end a conflict that was bleeding Germany to death.
> Was it worth it? The all-out U-boat offensive did sink 880,000 tons of shipping in April 1917 alone and endangered the seaborne trade that Britain depended on. Unfortunately, it also helped U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to persuade Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917. The intervention of more than a million fresh American soldiers by late 1918 heartened the British and French armies battered by years of war and the devastating German 1918 offensives.
> Wilson believed that America should enter the war against Germany, and perhaps he would have achieved this regardless. Foregoing unrestricted submarine warfare would also have sheathed the dagger that did inflict painful cuts on Britain. It also would have postponed the flood of U.S troops that changed the balance of power on the Western Front in 1918.



Germany's navy switched to unrestricted submarine warfare because their navy was weak and they required imported nitrates for their munition production, at least until the Haber process was sufficiently industrialized. Nitrates also supplied the fertilizer that Germany needed to maintain its agricultural productivity. While the nitrate supply was throttled -- and _nobody _except Germany and its allies were at all outraged by the RN's surface blockade, as it didn't tend to kill innocents, as did trying to blockade by U-boats -- the German Navy needed to do something to weaken Britain. A few trivial raids were annoying to coastal communities, but killing a few civilians in Dunwich-by-the-bay wasn't going to do much except get a couple of marginally useful old ships to be posted as guard ships.

For Germany to keep Britain out of the war, they couldn't go through Belgium, but if they didn't go through Belgium, they'd not have access to the parts of France that were most vulnerable. Once Britain was in the war -- and Britain did have a formal alliance with France in case of German attack -- the German Navy would have to respond to the blockade that would inevitably follow.


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## The Basket (Jan 22, 2017)

The airpower of air forces stagnated in the 1920s so that by the 1930s the best RAF fighter was the Bristol Bulldog. 
But so what? Bulldog was perfectly fine in peacetime. 
Unless their is an arms race then militaries stagnate and so only with a powerful enemy and war on the horizon would you get modern airplane.

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## nuuumannn (Jan 22, 2017)

Yep, even though the Allies were officially victors after the Great War, military development took a back seat, perhaps in contrast to WW2 where the potentials of jet power were being realised and led to astonishing growth of technology over a very short period, spurred on by tensions between the West and the Soviet bloc. This didn't happen after the Great War, nations' armed forces were stripped bare; you also have to remember that the effects of war on ordinary people's lives took an enormous toll on national development immediately after each of the wars - the Great War was particularly savage as the first real pandemic of the modern age was underway - between 1917 and 1919, some 40 million people round the world lost their lives to influenza, that's more than three times the number (accepted as around 11 million, give or take a few either side) that died in the four years of the Great War.

The possibilities are endless in terms of speculation of what could have happened to cause a German victory, let alone what might have happened afterwards, but it was highly unlikely that Britain sit on the sidelines and watch Europe tear itself apart. As for Germany being dragged into the war; the Germans started the war; the killing of Franz Ferdinand was a trigger, but did not directly lead to the all-out global conflict without Germany jumping in and declaring that war is inevitable; on the scale that it became, it wasn't necessarily unavoidable immediately after his assassination. Enacting the Schlieffen Plan and its consequences had nothing to do with Ferdinand's assassination; what was France's involvement in that and how did invading France and Belgium bring about some sort of recompense for it? The German High Command decided the road to war.

As for what might have happened if Germany emerged victors? Who knows? Germany, like each other country involved had her youth stripped from her, there was a blockade imposed on her that brought starvation, riots and more needless death. Even with victory on the Western Front, the troubles at home would not have disappeared in the click of a finger. Just like in France and Britain, a period of suffering and rebuilding took place and who knows, just like in Britain, after the terrors suffered by its population, perhaps the Germans, without the spectre of Nazism might have had the same attitude that prevailed in Britain for the between-the-wars period - peace at all costs.


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## Shortround6 (Jan 22, 2017)

A lot of things sometimes need to happen for large advances in "progress" to be made. 

The Sopwith Camel was on it's way out in 1918, it was being replaced by the Sopwith Snipe among others and even the Snipe would have been replaced in due course in 1919 by the Sopwith Snapper had all gone according to plan. It didn't. 
The Camel used a lot of engines but the average was a 130hp engine of about 16.3 liters that weighed 173KG. The Snipe used a 230hp engine of 24.9 liters that weighed 220kg, The Snapper used a 340hp 22.8 liter engine of about 270KG. This was the famous (or infamous) ABC Dragonfly that could have won the air war for the Germans in 1919. All these engines ran on fuel that was anywhere from 40 (common) to 70 (rare) Octane. and nobody knew which batch was which. 

The put upon Bulldog used a 28.7 liter engine of 440hp that weighed around 800lbs It ran on 73-77 octane fuel and was supercharged, making it's rated power at 12,000ft and that rating was max continuous or at least 30 minute rating. 
Yes the RAF used WW I left overs during the early 20s but both the aIrframes and engines wore out. The engine makers figured out how to make radials instead of rotaries and the fuel guys figured out the octane scale and how to measure and blend fuel to get what they wanted rather than try to get gas made from the crude of a particular oil field. Manufacturing of engines was also advancing. The Jupiter VIIs went through several models. The Jupiter VIIF going to forged alloy cylinder heads screwed and shrunk onto the steel barrels instead of trying to use an aluminium cooling "Muff" shrunk onto the a closed end steel cylinder. The Jupiter VII F.P. added pressure feed lubrication to the wrist pins in 1930. The Bulldog may still have been a biplane but it was 38mph faster than the Snapper and had 6,000ft more ceiling, it's engine was more reliable than anything made in WW I and went longer between overhauls. 

This required not only better fuel but better metallurgy(it took years to find aluminium alloys with similar expansion rates as steel alloys), it took a better understanding of vibration, especially harmonic vibration (one of the main failings of the Dragonfly) and better cylinder cooling (another Dragonfly failing, a copper coating over the fins does NOT make up for not enough fin area to begin with).
The Bulldog was all metal construction with a fabric covering, a major advancement over the mostly wood framework of many WW II aircraft. 

The 20s were a period of great advancement, or at least the behind the scenes advancement that made the progress of the 1930s possible. The Early 30s might well be criticized as with some of the knowledge/tools in place progress still didn't move forward very fast in some nations. The Lockheed Orion should have been a major wake-up call. 





near the end of 1931, top speed 210mph at 6,000ft, cruised at 180mph while carrying 6 passengers (170lbs each) and 90lbs baggage, 100 gallons (US) of fuel was good for range of about 650 miles.


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## The Basket (Jan 23, 2017)

In my view the lack of development in fighters wasn't a big deal. The RAF didn't need fighters so only needed bombers to keep the empire in line.

This why the Gee Bee could claim the record as the fastest land based aircraft because there was no development in fighters. Unless the victorious Kaiser faced a direct threat from somebody then the expense would have been wasteful.


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## nuuumannn (Jan 23, 2017)

And it is worth noting that the biggest advances in aircraft structures and incorporation into useable aeroplanes were in American civilian machines, not European warplanes. In Europe, it was the likes of Junkers who was one of the first to put into production all metal aircraft, again, airliners rather than combat machines. That's not to say military machines did not advance, but they did so at a much slower rate. In the mid 1930s, some of the fastest airliners in service were quicker and had better altitude than the military's fastest fighters in many of the countries these aircraft flew in, like the Lockheed 10 Electras, for example.

America certainly lost large numbers of youth during the Great War, but did not suffer nearly as much in terms of the percentage of her population lost during the war, so in terms of impact, whilst being great, was certainly not as devastating as to Germany, France or Britain. The country that lost the largest percentage of people during the war compared to its population was New Zealand.

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## Shortround6 (Jan 23, 2017)

Race planes could claim the title of fastest planes for several reasons.
1. No armament means lighter, more streamline plane.
2. Lighter structure due to low "G" load limit. 
3. Liquid cooled engines could use rather absurd radiator arrangements. Like surface cooling. 
4. Race planes usually had a "low drag" canopy which generally meant lousy vision for the pilot 

Since even 1920s aircraft took over a year to go from drawing board to squadron service (and engines took much longer) sitting on your hands waiting for threats to develop was a sure fire way to get get caught. Development and small scale production was the prudent way to go. Massive orders for planes that would be obsolete in a year or two was a waste of money.


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## Elmas (Jan 23, 2017)

It must be noted that the beginning of the theory of bending and stretching thin plates (Bredt formula etc.), that led to monocoque fuselages and torsion resistant D-boxes in the wings, was a German affair of middle ‘20s, and took several years to be developed and applied to aeroplane structures. And so the glues that made plywood possible . Almost in the same years were developed the first aluminium alloys of practical use in aeronautics.

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## nuuumannn (Jan 23, 2017)

Here's a wee gem of a clip that I saw on another forum; it was produced in 1935. Take a look at the aeroplanes in use by the RAF at that time, four years out from WW2. Avro 504s, Vickers Virginias, Blackburn Ripons, Fairey Seals, Supermarine Southamptons, Hawker Furies all feature, not an all metal monoplane in sight. Look for the cameo by the world's first true aircraft carrier, HMS Furious.

This illustrates the technical status quo for most, if not all air forces round the world at that time. This was the year the Douglas DC-3 and significantly in terms of this discussion, the Hawker Hurricane and Messerschmitt Bf 109 first flew, bearing in mind.


_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgwAphuwPMY_


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## pinehilljoe (Jan 23, 2017)

herman1rg said:


> On what premise could the German Empire win WW1?



if the US stayed completely neutral, the German's may have won.


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## Shortround6 (Jan 23, 2017)

Define "completely neutral" as the Americans seemed to trade with both sides. At least until early 1917.
Trouble being that France and Britain had pretty much free access while German access to American goods was limited to a handful of blockade runners. German merchant Submarine _Deutschland _being a case in point. 
The tonnage of goods, food, and war material supplied to both sides was absurdly lopsided in favor of the Allies but not actually violating being "neutral". Not the Americans fault the German merchant ships ( or ships working for the Germans) couldn't avoid the British blockade.


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## swampyankee (Jan 23, 2017)

Shortround6 said:


> Define "completely neutral" as the Americans seemed to trade with both sides. At least until early 1917.
> Trouble being that France and Britain had pretty much free access while German access to American goods was limited to a handful of blockade runners. German merchant Submarine _Deutschland _being a case in point.
> The tonnage of goods, food, and war material supplied to both sides was absurdly lopsided in favor of the Allies but not actually violating being "neutral". Not the Americans fault the German merchant ships ( or ships working for the Germans) couldn't avoid the British blockade.





The US was legally neutral, although the elites were probably more anglophilic than pro-German. The Black Tom sabotage (terrorist) incident probably didn't help the German cause.


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## Shortround6 (Jan 23, 2017)

To get back to the original subject/question the 1920s saw a lot of changes and improvements in both engines and fuel. A lot of these are inter dependent. Without better materials (stronger engines) there is little need for better fuel. Without better fuel there isn't much need for superchargers or better fuel.
One "AH-HA" moment in fuel development came in WW I when the Allies (pretty much the Americans) realized that fuel made from California oil would allow higher compression to be used than fuel made from Pennsylvania oil. Or in reverse, engines that ran fine on California fuel melted pistons or blew cylinder heads off using Pennsylvania oil. It is not that the Americans were really that much smarter, it is that the British and French were often using fuels from other oil fields.
Now for the Germans, IF they are getting their fuel from one oil field, or if there isn't a big difference in the fuels from oil fields that are close together need a different "AH-HA" moment to start researching better fuels. 
When tested later in the 1920s (after the development of the octane scale) the Pennsylvania oil made gasoline of about 40 octane while using the same refining process the California oil made gasoline approaching 70 octane. 
The Germans had built "high altitude" engines in WW I. No supercharger though, What they did was use a higher than normal compression ratio and then used a throttle linkage and gate that prevented the throttle from being fully opened at low level. Once a certain altitude had been reached the throttle handle was moved to another slot so that the movement allowed the carb butterfly to be fully opened. Opening the carb butterfly at sea level might allow the engine to make enough power to wreck itself (or perhaps reach the denotation limit of the fuel.) 
Many engines used iron pistons although aluminium pistons were coming in at the end. 
And lets remember that the whole sleeve valve saga was an attempt to get around the limitations of the poppet valve cylinder as it existed in the 1920s. 
Forced late comers, like the Germans, in the late 20s or early 30s could make full use of all the research and development done by other countries. However a lot of that development was going to happen regardless of war/conflict. Certain things did swap back and forth with upper level car makers and aircraft engine makers. Better valve seats, better valves (not counting sodium cooled valves) newer and better alloys. Better valve springs and piston rings. Aircraft superchargers got their "start" so to say as "mixing fans" on radials to help ensure that all cylinders got an equal mixture both quantity and quality. Early manifold pressure often didn't go above normal sea level atmosphere. In other words they didn't do much more than make up for the losses in the induction system.


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## parsifal (Jan 23, 2017)

US involvement on the ground was hardly pivotal to the outcome. They made some noteworthy contribution, to the extent of eight divisions out of over 65 allied divisions, mostly French, at 2nd Marne, but it is a very long bow to claim they were needed to win the war on the western front, or anywhere really.

The US had shipped over 2 million men to France by armistice, but only a fraction of these ever saw combat or even came close to the front. The maximum frontline strength of the US army actively engaged peaked at about 320000 in September 1918. During 1918, at St Mihiel they played a significant, but not vital, role with the eight divisions mentioned above, and from September to November, Pershing with nearly a million men, mostly French, under his command made significant inroads on the German lines during the Meuse-Argonne offensives. Overall casualties were just over 50000 to combat causes and over 60000 to the influenza outbreak. This was less than even Australian casualties in the same time period.

By any measure, US intervention was not decisive in 1918, b ut the presence of such vast manpower reserves put the writing on the wall for Ludendorf. Had the fighting continued into 1919, there is little doubt that the Germans were facing toatal defeat, which is exactly what Pershing wanted to do.

US entry was caused by a multiple set of reasons but at the top was the german unrestricted submarine warfare. The only way that the US could be kept out of the war was by the germans not using their submarines for unrestricted warfare, and if they did that the allies would have been in a position economically and manpower wise of being much stronger than they were.

Either way, with the US neutral or the US in the war, Imperial Germany was doomed after April 1918, probably earlier really.

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## The Basket (Jan 23, 2017)

Unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 was supposed to have won the war for Germany in short time and it certainly achieved results. However it didn't. America was ill prepared in 1917 so it's declaration of war could be discounted if the Germans believed that some kind of victory was possible in 6 months. 
One way Germany could have won is by not having a huge navy. That money and manpower could have been spent elsewhere and UK reasons for entering the war is to stop a new naval rival.


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## parsifal (Jan 23, 2017)

Assuming that Britain would hang back and allow the Germans a free hand in Europe, simply because the Germans were nice enough not to build a fleet is trying to ignore the fact that for more than 300 years, the British policy had always been to never allow a single nation to become the overwhelmingly dominant power in Europe. They always opted to support the lesser factions, to achieve balance in the European order. That wasn’t because the British were super chaps. By keeping a delicate balance in the distribution of power in this way, it ensured that British colonial and commercial interests could not be swallowed up or overtaken by a single great power in Europe. With or without a fleet to worry them, the British were going to respond in some way to German aggression. Granted they may not get directly involved, that I would grant you, but there were any number of ways the British would ensure the German ability to project their power and dominate their opponents was kept in check.


Britain enjoyed a massive advantage in this regard, and her naval capabilities gave her an ability to apply indirect pressure in a way that was nearly always decisive. This cosy situation was eroded by the rise of the non-European powers like the US and Japan


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## The Basket (Jan 23, 2017)

Austria Hungary aggression.
Ww1 is crazy complicated so understanding every nuance is very much a full time job. 
Britain was a naval power and had a small army in 1913 so not sure how it believed it could be desisive in any land war.


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## Graeme (Jan 24, 2017)

Some authors believe the destruction of E.4/20 demanded by the Inter-Allied Control Commission held up aircraft design for nearly 10 years.
So if the Germans were victorious at the end of WWI......
Would the advances in civil aviation made here then overflow to the military?

Zeppelin-Staaken E-4/20 - Wikipedia


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## nuuumannn (Jan 24, 2017)

> Would the advances in civil aviation made here then overflow to the military?



Yep, pretty much as it did in real life, but again, I'm thinking the Germans, like the rest of Europe would not have been so keen to rush into military spending - not that they could after the war. In the late 20s German society began a reboot and good times looked like they were ahead, but for the stock market crash in 1929, which had enormous impact round the world.

The Albatros H.1 was a German attempt at an altitude record after the war, but its wings fell off whilst taxying. The fuselage is in MLP in Poland: Polish Aviation Museum Cracow



> One way Germany could have won is by not having a huge navy. That money and manpower could have been spent elsewhere and UK reasons for entering the war is to stop a new naval rival.



Britain didn't enter the war to stop a new naval rival. It's reason for doing so was because Germany invaded Belgium. Initially the government was not willing to be dragged into it. The growth of Tirpitz' navy definitely started well before the outbreak of war; Kaiser Bill made no bones about the fact he envied the size and scope of the British fleet; as a lad he used to love going to Cowes Week and Germany even created its own version, Kiel Week. He attended the Spithead Naval review with Granny Victoria, which left an indelible impression on him.

Also, the blockade against Germany was carried out by the Grand Fleet; Germany's efforts to counter it notwithstanding, if it had any hope of breaking it, it was with its navy, specifically its u-boats, but Tirpitz's Risk Doctrine relied on both the surface and undersea vessels to break the RN. The dithering of the German high command in introducing unrestricted submarine warfare contributed to the country's downfall, as had it maintained this from the outset, it might have made a big difference to the course of the war - again, arguable, but the U-boats were its best hope of doing real damage to Britain. In 1917 alone, a greater tonnage of merchant shipping was sunk by U-boats than the previous years of the war combined. Improved British countermeasures; anti submarine patrols by airships and flying boats, and the introduction of convoys sought to bring Britain back from the brink and prevent what might have been disastrous.


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## mikewint (Jan 24, 2017)

In 1888, Kaiser Wilhelm II became Emperor of Germany, an empire that had been guided by the sure hand of its “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, since 1871. It was clear when Wilhelm took the throne that, although quick witted, he was also emotionally unstable and had a violent temper. Impatient to have his own way in everything no matter how trivial, he chafed at any restrictions. In his eagerness to extend Germany’s power and influence throughout Europe and the rest of the world he embarked on a program of rapid territorial conquest and military expansion that worried his European neighbors. When Bismarck tried to steer him toward a more cautious approach to foreign policy, the young emperor made it clear that he intended doing things his way, and that he was not content to be merely a figurehead for an ambitious chancellor. Wilhelm’s obsession with the armed forces meant that he came under the influence of the Prussian military elite whose advice he sought with alarming regularity. Finally, having been frustrated by his chancellor once too often, Wilhelm asked for, and obtained, Bismarck’s dismissal from office.
With Bismarck’s removal, Wilhelm began to take Germany in a new and dangerous direction. The chancellors he appointed were weak and vacillating, reducing the government’s effectiveness, which meant that Germany was now under his personal rule. Wilhelm’s poor grasp of the political world of the late 19th century lead him to make blunder after blunder. 
For example, *in 1908 seeking to allay British fears about Germany’s naval build-up,* Wilhelm had his views published in a popular British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph: _“You English are mad, mad, mad as March Hares. What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions quite unworthy of a great nation?”_ With these words Wilhelm tried to win over the hearts and minds of the British in what has to be the most inept attempt at international diplomacy ever seen. But worse was to come as he implied that France and Russia had tried to persuade Germany to enter the Boer War to fight with the Boers against Britain. He thus alienated both the French and Russians. Then he went on to declare that the German naval build up was aimed more at Japan than at Britain alienating the Japanese as well.
Believing that his personal relationships with fellow monarchs were what counted (he was a grandson of Queen Victoria) he allowed a defense treaty with Russia to lapse in 1890, enabling the Russians to forge a treaty with France instead. He maintained his alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, even though it was on a collision course with Russia, an event which might lead to a war which would drag in France and Britain as well, because of the treaties signed between the three nations.
After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Bosnian Serb on June 28, 1914, Wilhelm offered his support to Austro-Hungary if it were to take action against the Serbians. As soon as Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, the Russians began to mobilize troops along both the Austrian and German borders. Seeing this, and recognizing that since France had not declared itself neutral, it would therefore come into the war on the side of Russia. Military officials in Germany persuaded Wilhelm to sign the mobilization order and initiate the Schlieffen Plan, by which Germany would attack France. Although Wilhelm was worried by the approaching conflict, he vacillated between asking for more time for negotiations and fully supporting his military commander’s approach. In the end, he gave the approval for Germany to declare war on Russia on August 1 followed by a declaration of war on Russia’s main ally France on August 3. When Belgium asserted its neutrality, by denying Germany the right to cross its territory, the Germans invaded anyway on August 4. * Britain did not have a mutual defense treaty with Belgium. * The 1839 Treaty of London guaranteed Belgian independence as a collective agreement among several nations except Germany which did not become a nation until 1871. Legally the treaty called for a collective, not an individual response. Legalities aside Britain had the excuse it needed and had been looking for and the countries leadership took it. Had it not been for the Four Powers Imperial delusions, WWI may never have been fought in the first place. If Britain had not intervened, and Germany had defeated France in a European war, the circumstances that bred Hitler would never have eventuated. A German victory would have refashioned the face of Europe, with the next big war likely to have been a clash between Germany and the rising tide of Communism in the east. World War II would have been avoided. And with nothing to hasten the fall of the old imperial powers, the way would not have been so clear for the United States and the USSR to emerge as the two contending superpowers of the second half of the twentieth century.

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## The Basket (Jan 24, 2017)

Germany threatened UK by naval power not as a land power.
The UK also thought France was a future enemy so all bets were off.
Britain had a small army so had the war been as short as was envisioned then British army would have played a small role in comparison.
Fokker was a Dutch national so maybe if you wanted you can see what he did and maybe say if he was still based in Germany he would have carried on.


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## nuuumannn (Jan 25, 2017)

> _In 1908, seeking to allay British fears about Germany's naval build-up_



Yet, Tirpitz' 1895 Risk Doctrine was aimed solely at overcoming the superiority of the Royal Navy over the new German fleet.



mikewint said:


> Britain did not have a mutual defense treaty with Belgium.



They had a sort of _defence_ treaty though; the Treaty of London was a guarantee of Belgium's neutrality in that those signatories would go to its defence to maintain it. The British government stood by this as a pretext for entering the war. The argument about the injustice of Germany's decision to ignore Belgium and invade was also played upon in an emotional appeal to war.

From Wikipedia: "Under the treaty, the European powers recognised and guaranteed the independence and neutrality of Belgium and established the full independence of the German-speaking part of Luxembourg. Article VII required Belgium to remain perpetually neutral, and _by implication _committed the signatory powers to_ guard that neutrality in the event of invasion_." My italics.

Noted historian A.J.P.Taylor asserts that; "They had gone to war for a cause - the neutrality and independence of 'Little Belgium'. Therefore the British talked, from the beginning, in idealistic terms. This was a 'war to end war'; to 'make the world safe for democracy'."

This is why I don't buy Niall Fergusson's assertion that Britain could have stayed out of the war. In the modern era, Britain couldn't stand back and allow Germany to rip through Europe.



mikewint said:


> A German victory would have refashioned the face of Europe, with the next big war likely to have been a clash between Germany and the rising tide of Communism in the east.



It was quite likely, since everyone hated the communists, but it might have resulted in another devastating war in Europe; again, no guarantees either way whether it would or wouldn't have led to a 'Second World War'. If Germany attempted to invade Russia in the years following WW1 if they won, I suspect the Russians wouldn't just beat them off at the border )), but head toward Berlin as they did historically - again, no telling what might happen.


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## GrauGeist (Jan 25, 2017)

If a unified Europe, led by Imperial Germany turned on the Soviet Union, I suspect that Uncle Joe and his minions would have suffered a serious ass-kicking.

Germany would not have had all of it's resources stretched thin fighting (and securing) multiple fronts. It would have been able to marshall all of it's resources into one solid front and roll in from the west.

Also, I might add, that in this scenario, there would be no Hitler. Hitler was a result of a crushed and destitute people in the wake of the "Great War". If Imperial Germany (and the Austrian Empire) had been victorious, the NSDAP would have never gained any momentum. Who knows what the little Corporal would have done post-war, but I seriously doubt there would have been any beer hall speeches and similar shenanigans.

So without Hitler's intervention, the Imperial German General Staff might have actually been able to do what they knew best - fight a war.

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## swampyankee (Jan 25, 2017)

The German Imperial Staff did such such a good job fighting a war that it didn't think that their actions would bring in the two largest economies, those of the US and the UK against them. Fighting wars and making enemies out of powerful neutrals. Great technique, that.


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## The Basket (Jan 25, 2017)

The war was supposed to be short so long term strategic planning is what others did.
What did UK and USA do when WW2 ended? Cancelled contracts and designs and put future development on the back burner. So that is probably same here.
If Germany wins supposedly in first year does Russian Revolution happen? Or say say the French sue for peace so neither France or Germany lose? If the Roman empire endured would the Me 262 still fly in 1942?


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## swampyankee (Jan 25, 2017)

The Basket said:


> The war was supposed to be short so long term strategic planning is what others did.
> What did UK and USA do when WW2 ended? Cancelled contracts and designs and put future development on the back burner. So that is probably same here.
> If Germany wins supposedly in first year does Russian Revolution happen? Or say say the French sue for peace so neither France or Germany lose? If the Roman empire endured would the Me 262 still fly in 1942?




Obviously not! The Romans wouldn't permit the Germans such a thing.

And the Teutons wouldn't have moved west and south; Atilla would have been stopped much farther east.


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## GrauGeist (Jan 25, 2017)

swampyankee said:


> The German Imperial Staff did such such a good job fighting a war that it didn't think that their actions would bring in the two largest economies, those of the US and the UK against them. Fighting wars and making enemies out of powerful neutrals. Great technique, that.


Ahh yes, quite right, I suppose that my saying that the German General staff was smarter than Hitler must have been in error.


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## swampyankee (Jan 26, 2017)

GrauGeist said:


> Ahh yes, quite right, I suppose that my saying that the German General staff was smarter than Hitler must have been in error.


The problem with the German Imperial General Staff is their strategic view ended at the battlefield. The problem with Germany was that the staff was too dominant, and nobody could call them to heel. Hitler brought the general staff under his control, then made the same sort of strategic mistakes and added genocidal mania to the mix. His anti-communism and anti-Semitism probably made him seem much less of a threat.


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## GrauGeist (Jan 26, 2017)

When Europe mobilized in WWI, the idea was to neutralize France as quick as possible and then turn to the east to counter the blow fom Russia that was to be expected.

It was a sound idea and made sense, because Germany did not want to be caught inbetween two armies. The execution didn't go as planned, but what else was Germany to do? The pre-emptive move was an effort to at least even the odds.

Interestingly enough, Germany nearly ran the same gameplan in WWII...


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## soulezoo (Jan 26, 2017)

There is ample evidence to suggest that France was begging for retribution over the Franco-Prussian war and colluded with the Russians to provide that two front war. Combine this with a Kaiser that seemed to be itching to flex his military muscle somehow. And an arrogant Austria-Hungary... There's also evidence (not suggesting proof) that Russia "fired the first shots" and had mobilized and step foot over German territory first giving Germany the pretext it needed to spring into action as GG notes above.


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## SpicyJuan11 (Jan 26, 2017)

Hello everyone, sorry for coming back so late. Looks like I should expand more on the setting of the mod.


herman1rg said:


> On what premise could the German Empire win WW1?


The POD is that the Lusitania never sank and unrestricted submarine warfare is never adopted by Germany. The timeline is available here:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...iserreich-timeline-our-official-canon.504384/



Shortround6 said:


> In regards to the bolded part. In this alternate universe does Poland not exist? Has France moved further away from Rhine or where is the German/French border. Has England moved?
> Ranges of fighters and bombers are often dependent on Geography. European fighters had short range because potential enemies really were not all that far away and range was sacrificed for performance.
> Japan developed long range fighters for several reasons. For one it is over 1100 miles from the tip of the South Island to the tip of the North Island or greater than the distance from Copenhagen to Naples or about the Distance from Bristol to Brest-Belarus.
> Throw in the Japanese possessions in the Pacific (granted some ex German Islands) and the distances involved in China and Manchuria and it is little wonder that the Japanese were designing for long range and sacrificing some other things to get it.
> ...


Here is a map of Europe:





The Commune of France, Union of Britain, and SRI are all "Syndicalist" (Commies), National France is the exiled French government and is part of an alliance with Canada (the exiled British government) and the remains of the Commonwealth, while Austria (with Bohemia, Hungary, and the Italian Federation are non-aligned). The Baltic Duchy, Flanders-Wallonia, Lithuania, Ruthenia, and the Ukraine are under the German sphere. Germany is a massive but declining world empire. Russia and the USA both end up in civil wars who can turn communists or remain neutral. 
Here is the world map as well:





So, what are everyone's thoughts?


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## Elmas (Jan 26, 2017)

That, in this scenario, is missing just a thing: a Martian invasion...

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## GrauGeist (Jan 26, 2017)

Elmas said:


> That, in this scenario, is missing just a thing: a Martian invasion...


The Deathstar and the Battlestar Galactica would intercepted and crushed the incoming Martians - that's why they aren't included in this scenario...


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## SpicyJuan11 (Jan 26, 2017)

Elmas said:


> That, in this scenario, is missing just a thing: a Martian invasion...


Even if so, this is simply the setting for an extremely popular mod tbh and thus irrelevant


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## parsifal (Jan 26, 2017)

One of the great myths of history was that the loss of the LUSITANIA was pivotal to the entry of the US into the war. It was a significant event, but it was just a symptom of a bigger malaise that drew the US inexorably into the war. There were a number of overt decisions made by the Germans that led to the US entry, and at the top of that list was the German decision to unleash unrestricted mercantile warfare on all shipping within a declared area, and then after a short break 9brought about by a number of sinkings of US ships in 1915-16, to fall into the same trap and do it all again in 1917.


Coupled with several other events, most notably the Zimmerman affair. This enraged the US public, and after its release in March 1917 led to the US DoW in April.


Zimmerman demonstrates that the Germans were prepared to risk war with the US, they found it necessary to take this risk because of the effect the US was having on Allied capabilities. US supplies including foodstuffs were pouring into the Allied nations, US ships were transporting imperial supplies and manpower, and these acts of clearly pro-allied actions was having a marked effect on the Allies strength. Vast amount of manpower, vast amounts of mechanisation and war making supplies were entering France and Britain. The Germans were reaching desperation point and needed to stop this flow of supplies whatever the cost. All this talk about the germans not having a Navy and Britain not acting in a similar way to the US if she remained neutral is conveniently ignoring the fact that the germans simply had to take drastic action at sea to try and snatch victory, or least avoid collapse in the war.


Moreover the scenario is simply a Germanophile wet dream in which the known Allied (particularly British) reactions to German aggression , or if you prefer German attempts to control Europe would simply be allowed to happen. Everything about British foreign policy and past aggression suggests the opposite.


The scenario is not a serious investigation into alternate history. It’s a fantasy, devised by a mind lacking any real grasp of real world events and disinterested in applying event modelling in any rational or supported way. As some have suggested, you might as well introduce a martian invasion or star wars style attack. As a wargamer myself, ive seen this sort of “wet dream” event modelling so many times before, and its embarrassing to be honest.

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## SpicyJuan11 (Jan 26, 2017)

parsifal said:


> Moreover the scenario is simply a Germanophile wet dream in which the known Allied (particularly British) reactions to German aggression , or if you prefer German attempts to control Europe would simply be allowed to happen. Everything about British foreign policy and past aggression suggests the opposite.


Did you read the timeline I posted by any chance?



parsifal said:


> The scenario is not a serious investigation into alternate history. It’s a fantasy, devised by a mind lacking any real grasp of real world events and disinterested in applying event modelling in any rational or supported way. As some have suggested, you might as well introduce a martian invasion or star wars style attack. As a wargamer myself, ive seen this sort of “wet dream” event modelling so many times before, and its embarrassing to be honest.


Kaiserreich is by no means a Germanwank, it is likely the most popular mod ever created for any Paradox game. Kaiserreich is also by no means an intellectual counter-factual more like a very interesting Turtledove-ish mod which has successfully crafted a narrative.


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## parsifal (Jan 26, 2017)

I will have another read and get back if it changes my opinion.


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## nuuumannn (Jan 26, 2017)

GrauGeist said:


> If a unified Europe, led by Imperial Germany turned on the Soviet Union



At the time of the Great War there was no such thing as a Unified Europe - how could there be? France was still smarting after the Franco Prussian war. A pipe dream and the divisions within the nations in continental Europe were very deep. Beating Russia might seem a pushover, but the Russians have the ability to absorb massive amounts of punishment, losses over time, yet still bounce back. Not to mention that crossing into Russia has been the thing that has defeated armies in the past. Rule Number One in a European War; Don't Invade Russia.


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## GrauGeist (Jan 26, 2017)

If, according to this "what if", Imperial Germany won WWI, then much of Europe would be under German rule - hence "unified".

Russia dropped out of the war and went through it's political upheaval while the war raged in Europe. Regardless of who won (Central powers or Allies), Russia was still going to end up under Communist control.


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## swampyankee (Jan 26, 2017)

Unimpressed. The US was not at a risk for communism, nor was the UK. Syndicalism.was a fascist model; communism was defeated in Germany more by social security and national healthcare than the secret police.


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## parsifal (Jan 26, 2017)

_Did you read the timeline I posted by any chance_?

This is the list Ive seen. Ive rated events either a (+) (pro-allied) or (-) (pro-German) on a scale of 1 to 10 for each event. A 0 is neutral. Comments where I think appropriate

Here is my take on the event timeline

*1914*
_While visiting Sarajevo on the 28th of June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assasinated by Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip. In a reaction Austria-Hungary sends an ultimatum to Serbia, whose contents are deliberately made unacceptable to the Serbs. Austria-Hungary declare war on Serbia shortly after receiving German backing. Russia in turn declares war on Austria-Hungary and Germany, dragging its ally France, waiting for an opportunity to reclaim Alsace-Lorraine, into the war too._

Rating: (0)

Comments; None

_When Germany invades neutral Belgium to execute the Schlieffen-plan the British Empire declares war on Germany. The German advance to Paris is halted at the Marne and a series of flanking attempts, known as the Race to the Sea, prove unsuccesful. The war in the West grinds down to a halt._

Rating: (0)

Comments; None

_The Germans are much more successful in the East, repulsing the Russian invasion of East Prussia and defeating the Russians at the battles of the Mazurian Lakes and at Tannenberg. The architects of these victories, Field Marshall Hindenburg and general Ludendorff would play key roles in the final German victory._

Rating: (0)

Comments; Ive assigned zero bias here, bvut the battles mentioned were tactical victories only with not strategic importance whatsoever. I suspect the designer is going to make something out of nothing judging from the tone

_The Ottoman Empire joins the Central Powers later in the year, after a dispute with Britain about the confiscation of ships being built for the Empire. _

_Almost all German colonies are occupied before the end of the year, besides German East-Africa. Here general Von Lettow-Vorbeck will play a game of cat and mouse with the allied forces until the end of the war._


Rating: (-1)

Comments; the reasons given for Turkish entry are a construct, designed to give greater weight to a pro-German bias than really existed. Turkish entry with the central Powers was about protecting Turkish access to industrialised Europe and garnering support with whoever was interested. There were only two nations that fitted this, one was Germany the other Russia. Britain showed a distinct lack of interest in any alliance The GOEBEN and BRESLAU incident were a bi-product, not a cause of this maneuvering.

*1915*

_In the West the lines remain static, but the fighting increases in brutality, with chlorine gas being first used during the Second battle of Ypres on 22th of April. _

_In the East Russia is being pushed back by the Germans, but manages to hold on to Galicia._

Rating: (0)

Comments; none

_Bulgaria joins the war on the side of the Central Powers and Serbia becomes the first allied nation to be defeated. Italy joins the war on the allied side, hoping to claim the Austro-Hungarian Illyrian provinces. The campaign bogs down to trench warfare._

_In an ill concieved effort to knock the Ottomans out of the War, allied troops land near Gallipoli, hoping to gain control of the vital Dardanelles. The whole campaign becomes a disaster and the allies will pull back their forces before the year ends. A British invasion on Mesopotamia is repelled and the remaining troops retreat to Kut, where the disastrous siege of Kut will start._

Rating: (0)

Comments; None


_A German submarine sinks the Lusitania. A severe backlash in the United States leads to Germany abandoning its unrestricted submarine warfare, which had hoped to strangle Britain into submission. Many speculated that a continuation of the unrestricted submarine warfare could have led to the entry of the United States into the war._

Rating: (0)

Comments; None


*1916*

_The battle of Verdun starts, attempting to bleed the French army dry. In reality all sides bleed equally in a battle which soon loses its military objective. A similar attempt the British forces at the Somme has the same outcome. 1916 also saw the first use of tanks at the battle of Cambrai._

_In the East the Brusilov offensive is launched. While very succesful at first, the offensive doesn’t manage to either knock the Austro-Hungarians out of the war, or drive Germany from Russian Poland._

Rating: (-5)

Comments; Fails to understand the significance of Brusilove in a crucial way. Brusilov was the direct reason for the Germans abandoning Verdun and later rationailsing their lines in front of the Somme. The comments fail to understand allied reasoning behind the attrition battles. They were just that, designeed to bleed the Germans white of manpower, in the knowledge that the allies could lose several times as many as the Germans and still count it as a win

_The British troops at Kut are forced to surrender, dealing a heavy blow to British prestige. The Ottomans are being pushed out of the Caucasus and Armenia by a succesful Russian campaign. The Sharif of Mecca starts of a general Arab revolt against the Turks._

Rating: (-4)

Comments; Does not acknowledge the Central powers defeat at Romani and the successful defence of Sinai/Suez by the Australian Light Horse and others. This was in fact the turning point of the war in the middle east

_At sea the First Battle of Jutland ends in a tactical German victory, but a strategic British victory, as the Hochseeflotte will remain in port until late 1918._

Rating: (-6)

Comments; It was more than just a mere containment of the German Fleet though that was the immediate effect. In fact the “draw” at Jutland was a direct link to revolution and defeat in Germany. Her people starving as a result of the British blockade, unable to challenge that blockade and isolated by their guerre De course campaigns. This was a major reason for German defeat

_Romania tries to profit from Austrian setbacks and invades Transsylvania. German assistance would lead to a quick collapse of Romania, with Bucarest being taken by August von Mackensen within the year. Further south the allies have taken positions around Salonica._

Rating: (-1)

Comments; Comments about allied positions being limited to Salonika are inaccurate. In fact several French formations are being used to stiffen the Serbian 1st army positions to the west and ensuring the secondary transport lines are firmly anchored. To the East of Salonika, Greek formations are busy defeating in detail the combined Bulgarian/German formations (mostly Bulgarian 2nd and 4th armies, whilst only the german 11th army is facing the main allied positions at Salonika. Far from being in a position to attack, the Gerams are in real trouble with inadequate communications , terrible terrain and vastly outnumbered.

*1917*

_In Germany chancellor Von Bethmann-Hollweg is forced to resign, being replaced by Georg Michaelis. It was soon clear that Michaelis was little more than a puppet for Hindenburg and Ludendorff._

_On the Western front the heavy French casualties at Chemin des Dames lead to a strike among the French soldiers. This would paralyze the French Army until the end of the year, giving Germany a chance to recover from the Brusilov Offensive._

Rating: (-8)

Comments; This is grossly inaccurate. Far from Paralysing the French, which suggests the French army could no longer be relied upon, it in fact was more that the French high command is forced to avoid any significant offemsive action until they have reconfigured their techniques. The Anzac contingent, followed by the Canadians will show them how to get more from the heavy casualties than is currently the case.

Manpower shortages in the German army lead to further withdrawals of the German army

_Russia collapses into anarchy, with the Czar abdicating early 1917. A provisional government is formed under Alexandr Kerensky, but this government was overthrown by Lenins Bolshevists in november 1917, starting the Russian Civil War._

_In Italy the Caporetto Offensive beats the Italians back to the Piave river, where a last minute defence saves Venice in the nick of time._

Rating: (0)

Comments; None

_The Ottomans receive blow after blow, with both Baghdad and Jeruzalem being lost to British forces._

Rating: (0)

Comments; None

(Special Note) missing from this years event timeline is the entry of the US and the re-commencement of the German unrestricted U-Boat offensive. It’s a massive omission either way, with no explanation given as to what the consequences are. Lets assume there is no commencement of U-boat attacks. Immediately strengthens the British/Commonwealth and French forces by about a million men each, provides vital equipment for the minor allies including Italy and Greece and allows the RN to complete the four or five dreadnoughts currently on hold due to steel shortages

Rating: (-10) (should be more)

Comments; see above

*1918*

_In early january the Peace of Brest-Litovsk is signed between the Germans and the Bolsheviks, freeing thouzands of German and Austrian troops. The Bolsheviks turn over Finland, the Baltics, Belarus and Ukraine to the Germans_.

Rating: (0)

Comments; I don’t enough about the Baltic states or Finland after the defeat of Russia, For the Ukraine, temporary relief by the wholesale confiscation of the grain harvest by the germans gave them temporary respite from the famine afflicting Germany at that time, but by the latter half of 1918, german forces were withdrawing as elements of the “Green army” began harrying them mercilessly in the eastern parts of the new nation.

_A great allied spring offensive, designed at breaking the Germans before their reinforcements arrive, is being repulsed at great cost of life._

Rating: (-10)

Comments; There was no great allied spring offensive planned or implemented until after the French were deemed recovered and tactics fully reviewed. It would be July before the first baby steps by the allied offensive following the defeat of the new infiltration tactics by new allied methods pioneered by men like Monash who emphasized all arms co-operation and detailed planning wherever possible. By the end of the german offensives in July, the German army lay prostrate, defeated and exhausted, just in time for the 100 days offensive.

_Operation Teutoberg is launched, attempting to kick Greece out of the war. Instead of assaulting the Salonica stronghold head on, the Central Powers make extensive use of specialized stormtroopers and so called infiltration tactics. The defenders at Salonica are pinned down while the rest of the Central forces sweep through Greece. Athens falls on july 3rd, causing the Greek government to surrender. The forces at Salonica are evacuated soon afterwards._

Rating: (-8)

Comments; My best guess is that this “event” is on the assumption that the germans remain on the defensive in the west for the time being. It has numerous problems. It assumes that the logistic situation in the Balkans could support significantly higher levels of operation when it cant. It assumes that the Salonika bridgehead can be bypassed when substantially it cant. It assumes no theatre reserves that the allies could call on, and assumes that there would be no reinforcement and re-equipment of the the TO as a result of the Germans not restarting their U-Boat attacks. It fails to give any consideration of the fighting qualities of the greeks themselves, or the terrain that the Central powers would need to fight.

_General Allenby manages to pull of the last great allied victory of the war, encircling and destroying large parts of the Ottoman Army and conquering Damascus. Only the las minute arrival of two German divisions in Asia Minor prevent an invasion of Anatolia._

Rating: (-6)

Comments; It was certainly possible for the Germans to provide some assistance to the turks, but the turks were spontaneously combusting in that theatre by then and the new german forces arriving lkacked experience in the Desert. The allied formations by this were by this time enhanced with experience and had sevreral times since romani routed german forces sent to propr up the turks.


_The successful allied tactics against the German u-boats and the bloccade of Germany itself leads to a desperate sally of the Hochseeflotte, now led by admiral Hipper. The Second Battle of Jutland ends in a tie, but the shock of being assaulted forces the Royal Navy to break their blocade. The end of the blocade and the influx of Ukranian grain ends all fears of Germany being starved into submission._

Rating: (-10)

Comments; The RN Battleship fleet had expanded to 36, including the R and Queen Elizabeth classes. There would be more if the U-boats were not active. Against this the German fleet stood virtually no chance in 1918. There is no basis to support the notion that the RN would abandon the blockade. This would be about the last thing they would do, even if faced with the most dire situation on the continent. , and

Final bias ratings
1914: (-1)
1915: (0)
1916: (-16)
1917: (-18)
1918: (-34)

In other words a heavily biased set of assumptions in favour of Germany

Final comments
I gave up at this point it is obvious the scenario is hopelessly biased . there are increasingly shrill and improbable pro-German assumptions, and not one counterbalancing assumption to balance it up. As I said, a Germanophile wet dream designed by a person with virtually no understanding of the real situation that faced the protagonists

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## mikewint (Jan 27, 2017)

[QUOTE="parsifal, post: 1311945, The scenario is not a serious investigation into alternate history. It’s a fantasy, devised by a mind lacking any real grasp of real world events and disinterested in applying event modelling in any rational or supported way. As some have suggested, you might as well introduce a martian invasion or star wars style attack. As a wargamer myself, ive seen this sort of “wet dream” event modelling so many times before, and its embarrassing to be honest.[/QUOTE]

Michael, I love most of your posts and agree with most but we part company here. I'm not sure what constitutes "serious investigation into alternate history". By its very nature it's all pure speculation and mostly just plain FUN. There are SO many turning point in history where events could have gone one way or another. Jumping to WWII for example, consider the assassination attempts on Hitler. WHAT IF any one of these had succeeded?
Before 1933: Before the seizure of power; four attempts, including one with poison in the Hotel Kaiserhof (1930).
After 1933: Ten attempts, including one by an unknown SA man in Obersalzberg and another by the Luttner group in Königsberg.
Date Location Attempted by
1934 Berlin Beppo Römer
1934 Berlin Helmut Mylius
1935 Berlin Marwitz group
1935 Berlin Paul Josef Stuermer
1936 Nuremberg Helmut Hirsch
1937 Berlin Josef Thomas
1937 Berlin Sportpalast Unknown man in SS uniform
September 28, 1938 Berlin Oster Conspiracy; not executed due to conclusion of Munich Agreement
November 9, 1938 Feldherrnhalle, Munich Maurice Bavaud
October 5, 1939 Warsaw Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski
November 8, 1939 Bürgerbräukeller, Munich Johann Georg Elser
1939 Berlin Erich Kordt
1940 Paris, France Erwin von Witzleben
1941 Berlin Nikolaus von Halem
1941-1943 (several) Berlin Beppo Römer
1943 Walki, USSR Hubert Lanz, Hans Speidel, Hyazinth Graf von Strachwitz
March 13, 1943 Flight to Smolensk, USSR Henning von Tresckow, Fabian von Schlabrendorff
March 1943 Smolensk, USSR Friedrich König, Philipp von Boeselager
March 21, 1943 Zeughaus, Berlin Henning von Tresckow, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff
1943 Wolf's Lair, East Prussia Unknown Pole
1943 Berlin Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff
November 16, 1943 Wolf's Lair, East Prussia Axel Freiherr von dem Bussche-Streithorst
January 1944 Wolf's Lair, East Prussia Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin
March 11, 1944 Berghof, Obersalzberg Eberhard von Breitenbuch
1944 (several) Berlin Claus von Stauffenberg
July 20, 1944 Wolf's Lair, East Prussia Claus von Stauffenberg

Yet fascinating as these questions are, why are they any more fascinating than asking what would have happened if Imperial Germany had not invaded Belgium in 1914, if the Kaiser had built more U-boats, or if America had not entered the war? If it is certainly plausible to imagine a historical timeline where the tsars still rule Russia, the British Empire was never exhausted by war, and the Ottoman Empire still controls the Middle East.
Perhaps it is the grim aura of fatalism that discourages speculative history of the Great War. The sense that no matter what, the conflict would have been one long, miserable slaughter, a four-year live performance of "Paths of Glory." But the combatants were not drones or sheep, and the conflict was more than mud, blood and barbed wire. There was mobile warfare in Russia and Poland, amphibious invasions in Turkey and guerrilla campaigns in East Africa.
It is also easy to assume that German defeat was inevitable at the hands of an Allied coalition richer in manpower, weapons and money. Yet Germany nearly captured Paris in 1914, crushed Serbia and Romania, bled the French Army until it mutinied, drove Russia out of the war, and then came oh-so-close to victory on the Western Front in 1918. Don't underestimate the power of Imperial Germany. Until the armistice was signed in a French railway carriage on November 11, 1918, Germany's enemies didn't.

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## Elmas (Jan 27, 2017)

mikewint said:


> …….
> 
> Michael, I love most of your posts and agree with most but we part company here. I'm not sure what constitutes "serious investigation into alternate history". By its very nature it's all pure speculation and mostly just plain FUN.
> 
> ……





One of the reasons, and not the last of the defeat of Axis in WWII was the use by Allied of a new science, called _Operations research_, or _operational research_

Operations research - Wikipedia

_What if’s_ are of common use in such science, but they must be used with a grain of salt… like this, wich is a few miles far from my house…


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## mikewint (Jan 27, 2017)

Golly I love statistics. Off topic here but bear with me for a bit. Where were these guys when the following occurred:

1. The Failure to Attack Germany After It Invaded Poland
One of the worst mistakes of the Second World War occurred right at its outset. When the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, both Britain and France declared war on Germany — and then promptly did nothing. Not only was this a betrayal of a trusted ally (France and Poland worked together to steal an Enigma machine, for example), it allowed Germany to walk unscathed through Poland at a time when they were ill prepared to defend themselves on two fronts (a theme that would reprise itself some five years later, the war in Italy notwithstanding).
Indeed, Germany's generals were so afraid of an immediate counter-attack by Allied forces that they placed 46 infantry divisions — of which only 11 were fully trained — along Germany's western border. By contrast, France had, at least on paper, the ability to mobilize well over a hundred divisions, not including four divisions of the British Expeditionary Force. Indeed, as Field Marshal Erich von Manstein noted in his memoirs, Poland's situation was so dire that it's only option was to "hold out until an offensive by the Western Powers compelled the Germans to withdraw the mass of their forces from the Polish theatre." An attack that, regrettably for them, never came.
The subsequent failure to attack Germany, despite the proclamation of war, gave Germany an entire year to prepare for its attack on France. It also sent a message, whether true or not, that the Western Powers weren't prepared to intervene with any kind of military resolve. And as a final aside, as France's ultra-defensive Maginot line indicated, the country was clearly not thinking about offense. As we'll see next, its military planners were anticipating a strategic repeat of World War I.
2. The Failure to Anticipate a German Blitz Through the Ardennes
Sure, Manstein's Sickle Cut Plan may be one of the greatest strategic maneuvers of the Second World War, if not of all military history — but it takes two to tango. The French completely failed to notice the German build-up along its eastern border, thinking that the Germans would simply repeat the pattern of 1914. And when the first wave of the attack came, it most certainly appeared that way. Allied forces rushed north, only to be outflanked by the Germans to the south, resulting the the so-called Miracle of Dunkirk.
But worst of all — and this is the big mistake here — the French had no strategic reserves left to deal with the Germans now flooding in unscathed; the door to Paris was wide open. The Blitzkrieg, which left the Allied forces completely dazed, caused France to fall in just six weeks.
3. America's Failure to Immediately Adopt the Convoy System
By the time the United States entered the war, the British had extensive experience dealing with German U-Boat tactics in the North Atlantic (including World War I). By sending chunks of convoys comprised of 30 to 70 ships, they stood a far better chance of avoiding detection, and then dealing with and dispatching U-Boats when they attacked. It was an anti-submarine tactic that worked; the math proved it. But owing to a confluence of factors, including Admiral King's unwillingness to press the issue, and the fact that the US failed (and underestimated the need) to produce the required number of escort ships, the United States did not adopt the convoy system until May 1942. By the time the change was made, the US suffered disastrous shipping losses — two million tons lost in January and February alone.
4. Underestimating the Japanese
Only old folks will remember this, but before World War Two the Japanese were widely regarded as sub-human barbarians incapable of original thought. Their military was regarded as a pathetic attempt to copy the obviously superior western militaries, and there was no doubt their forces would prove no match for western forces. This had many results, the first was that for the most part the Allies only had second string troops and leaders in Asia to defend against Japan. Secondly, the Allies made little effort to study the Japanese military and truly assess its capabilities. Lastly it resulted in Japan conquering more territory in the first six months of the war than any conquerer in history. That's right, the initial Japanese advance in World War Two was the greatest conquest in history. Pretty slick trick for sub-human barbarians. Just to illustrate how racist and/or ignorant Americans were back then, it was a commonly held belief that Japanese troops couldn't see very well in the dark.
5. The Utterly Useless Raid on Dieppe
Historians are still scratching their heads over this one — as are Canadians. On August 19, 1942, 5,000 Canadian infantry, along with a thousand British troops (many of them commandos) attacked the French port of Dieppe on the English Channel Coast. It was supposedly an attempt to occupy Nazi-held land in Europe, but it ended in complete disaster. After nine hours of bitter fighting against a prepared and alert enemy, over 1,000 soldiers were dead and 2,000 taken prisoner. The resulting air battle cost the Allies 106 aircraft to Germany's 48.
Some historians speculate that it was an attempt by Churchill to show the United States how difficult an attack on European soil would be. Historian David O'Keefe claims it was actually a massive commando raid — the goal of which was to capture a Nazi Enigma machine. At the very least, it showed the Western Powers what it would take to secure a beachhead — something that wouldn't happen until D-Day some two years later.
6. FDR's Demand of "Unconditional" German Surrender
At the Allied Casablanca Conference in January 1943, US President Roosevelt gave a speech in which he demanded the "unconditional surrender" of Germany. It was an impromptu and utterly thoughtless remark that stunned a completely unsuspecting Winston Churchill. Prior to that stage, nothing had been formally decided about how to end the war — but now the die was cast.
Nazi Germany's diabolical propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, was jubilant, claiming he could never have dreamt up a more effective strategy to persuade the doomed Germans to fight to the last breath. Historians Agostino von Hassell and Sigrid Macrae write:
Goebbels's propaganda was shrieking that all Germany would be enslaved; there was no alternative but to fight to the bitter end. [Allen] Dulles quickly changed his mind [about the policy of unconditional surrender]. He came to agree with the opposition that Goebbels had been handed an extraordinary coup. Backing the nation into this cul de sac could only prolong the war. He also knew about the stab-in-the-back theory promulgated by conservatives after Versailles—namely that Germany had not really lost the war militarily, but that revolutionaries and democrats on the home front had stabbed the army in the back. Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff had an interest in camouflaging the German defeat, and blamed it on insufficiently patriotic factions on the home front. Hitler had exploited this theory expertly.
Indeed, the demand of unconditional surrender does much to explain the fanatical resistance exerted by the Germans in the weeks and days leading up to the end of the war. And the infamous Morgenthau plan didn't help either — the plan to de-industrialize Germany after the war and turn it into an agrarian state.
7. The Failure to Seize the Early Initiative At Anzio
By early 1944, the German forces fighting in Italy were forced back along their Winter Line. Eager to restore mobility to the Italian Campaign, Allied commanders drummed-up Operation Shingle — an amphibious landing in the area of Anzio and Nettuno designed to outflank German forces and enable an attack on Rome. The invasion got off to a good start on January 22, 1944, catching the Germans by surprise — but the immediate objective of outflanking the Gustav Line completely failed. And that's when things got ugly, resulting in a World War One-like battlescape that Hitler himself called the "Anzio abscess."
During the four months of bitter fighting, the Anzio Campaign cost the Allies over 66,200 casualties (of which 37,000 were noncombat casualties). German figures were comparable.
The US Center of Military History offers its final analysis:
Anzio failed to be the panacea the Allies sought. As General Lucas repeatedly stated before the landing, which he always considered a gamble, the paltry allotments of men and supplies were not commensurate with the high goals sought by British planners. He steadfastly maintained that under the circumstances the small Anzio force accomplished all that could have been realistically expected. Lucas' critics charge, however, that a more aggressive and imaginative commander, such as a Patton or Truscott, could have obtained the desired goals by an immediate, bold offensive from the beachhead. Lucas was overly cautious, spent valuable time digging in, and allowed the Germans to prepare countermeasures to ensure that an operation conceived as a daring Allied offensive behind enemy lines became a long, costly campaign of attrition.
8. The Premature and Overly Ambitious Operation Market Garden
This is the military engagement that Bernard Montgomery haters love to hate. Immortalized in the classic film, A Bridge Too Far, it was an airborne attack deep in Germany's rear areas that commenced in mid-September 1944. The plan was to send airborne troops along a narrow corridor extending approximately 80 miles (128 km) into Holland from Eindhoven northward to Arnhem.
The troops were supposed to secure bridges across a number of canals as well as across three major water barriers. But the troops were met by ferocious resistance each step of the way and quickly became overextended. By the end of the conflict, Allied troops lost somewhere between 15,300 to 17,000 troops, while the Germans may have suffered as little as 3,300 casualties (though estimates are incomplete, and could be as high as 13,000). When planning for Market Garden, the Allied leaders were clearly overconfident, riding high on their recent successes, while mistakenly thinking the Germans were done. It became very clear at this point that the war would not be over by Christmas.

I could go on, by including the failure at Kasserine Pass, the inability of the US and British to produce quality tanks (and in the case of the latter nation, effective anti-tank guns), Churchill's untimely decision to send troops to Greece in 1940, General Mark Clark's failure to cut off the German Army in Operation Diadem, the various mistakes made early-on in France after D-Day, the US habit of sending inexperienced troops directly to the front lines, and on and on.

Then there's Eisenhower's failure to prevent the German evacuation from Sicily and his reluctance to beat the Soviets to Berlin. Some would even argue that the Allies made the mistake of not continuing to take the fight to the Soviets, thus preventing the rise of the Iron Curtain, and quite possibly the Cold War. But given how strong the Soviets were at that point, such a decision would have led to certain disaster — with Stalin pushing into France and claiming all of Europe for himself. But then again, the Americans were on the verge of developing the atom bomb.


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## parsifal (Jan 27, 2017)

thanks mike and I do find you your replies very interesting.

There is nothing wrong with event modelling that is a bit out there. plenty of games do that and are still lots of fun. Monopoly or chess are the ultimate forms of that approach. in the case of chess there was once even some military benefits from how it worked, as even are games like stratego or risk. Further up the food chain are games with some historical basis but things and events are simplified to make them playable. These things are posing as history but aren't history, though people that play them are often sucked into believing they are offering a realistic alternative history. examples of this sort of game design (for WWI) might be "Verdun", "Clash of Empires" or "the "Victorious" series. They all have their assumptions, biases but all to a greater or lesser extent will provide some historiography to the subject. 


At the top end of the simulation world are the serious, often not commercially available simulations used by the military to test theories and methods. Its done all the time. The US Navy uses a program called SEATAG I believe. In the pre-computer age it was the Germans who perfected the best system to test their operational plans, it was called "Kriegspiel" and most the major operations executed by the Germans were tested using it, including Schlieffen, Case White, case Blau and case Yellow that I know of. These functions are now mostly tested using computers. At the tactical warfare school at HMAS Watson there is an entire 9 storey building packed with the best computers to run these simulations. its loads of fun ......with people in separate rooms standing on a Bridge" of a given ship, going up against other guys in other rooms controlling other ships and/or a/c. And our simulator is a toy compared to what is available in the US.

These sims are not commercially available, but there are some sims that are commercially available that approach this level of detail at least and do try hard to follow known historical parameter. Examples I can think of include boardgames like "War in the Pacific", "To the Green Fields and beyond", "war Between the states" even "Next War"". Probably the best ive seen are "Market Garden" and "Campaign for North Africa", I have my own design but never published though tested extensively we called it "Might and Power"". CNA takes about 2 years to play (4 days per month or about 600 hours) with 11 players. It has 36 square feet of map which are based on the actual OKW situation maps of the time. now that's a serious sim I can assure you, apparently still used at Sandhurst as a training aid. ive met and reviewed some of the work of the designer, Richard Berg. Bergie is a freak, but a formidable designer and one of the clearest minds I have ever met.

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## Shortround6 (Jan 27, 2017)

SpicyJuan11 said:


> Hello, I am currently helping in developing Kaiserreich, an alternate history mod for Hearts of Iron 4. I am currently working on the creating color profiles for the aviation tech tree for the German Empire which has won WW1 and is a superpower in decline. I was wondering how everyone thinks a Kaiserliche Luftstreitkräfte would have developed after WW1, especially compared the the Luftwaffe of our world. Would aircraft development looked similar to that of OTL America, or would imperial beauracracy encounter the same problems as the Nazi RLM? How would the aircraft themselves looked like? Would a focus on heavier tactical bombers and long ranged fighters have developed? Or what of jet fighters? Would they have progressed as fast as in OTL or would they have been deemed too radical in design? Any help would be greatly appreciated.



Well, with your alternate time line, technological progress would be hard pressed indeed to match what happened historically. 
While some things, like jet engines, were done behind closed doors other things and lot of the back ground technology was not. There was a lot of sharing between nations/industries of metal alloys, stress analysis, vibration problems, metal fatigue , test procedures and instruments. This time line reduces most of the industrial nations of the world, except Germany, to either rubble or rabble. Civil wars, if protracted, being more destructive to productivity and research than anything seen in WW I. 
While the British government might take refuge in Canada for instance the British Steel Industry could not pull up stakes and move nor could whatever aircraft industry there was and so on. If the US dissolves into civil war, the is no US Auto industry to build plants in Canada and Canada, being a small country population wise in the 1920s and 30s was not going to be able to ramp up it's industry on it;s own to any great extent. Like were are machine tools to come from? 
A fair amount of Russia's industry of the 1920s and 30s was actually purchased from western nations, lock stock and barrel. By that I mean the Russians signed contracts and got hundreds of western engineers to come to Russia and build a complete plant and equip it with mostly western built machinery. One pilot plants were built Like the first 1 or 2 steel mills, the Russians just duplicated the plant design and machinery in other places, The did things like only build one ot two models of blast furnaces. Number of different types/sizes of lathes was severely restricted. 
This time line has those western nations (for the most part) embroiled in their own revolutions or government breakdowns leaving Germany as the sole technical leader. WIthout some sort of competition the drive for success becomes much less.


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## GrauGeist (Jan 28, 2017)

To add to SR's points, the development of the oil industry was primarily backed by U.S. interests, both in Russia and the Middle East - not to mention major sources in California, Oklahoma and Texas.

Remove that from the historical timeline and you'll throw a wrench into the development of modern internal combustion engines.


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## Elmas (Jan 28, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Golly I love statistics. Off topic here but bear with me for a bit.




Mike
statistics are certainly most important but someone once said that statistics are exactly like bikinis: what they show is suggestive, but what they hide is essential...

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## swampyankee (Jan 28, 2017)

I think the very common threads to "if the Germans won WW1" are the presumptions that Versailles caused all of Germany's post-war extremism,even though the roots of that extremism were already present by 1916, and that not winning would cause political collapse in the Western democracies. Kaiser billy and his field marshall masters were cowards, because they ran away instead of behaving with courage and admitting defeat.


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## swampyankee (Jan 29, 2017)

As for everybody who keeps thinking "poor Germany! Versailles was the meanest treaty ever, and nobody could ever survive!"

France, after losing the Napoleonic Wars had to pay reparations that were greater in proportion to national wealth than did Germany after Versailles. They didn't go and scapegoat minorities and invade their neighbors; they paid the bill.

Weimar was faced with two problems: one is that the people responsible for the war and Germany's defeat ran out of town leaving the new government holding the bag. Kaiser billy legged it to Holland and Ludendorf and his coterie just flat out refused to deal with it. The Entente should have forced them all to sign the peace treaty.

In public.

In Berlin. Under the Brandenburg Gate


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## GrauGeist (Jan 29, 2017)

Were the French people starving in the streets after the Napoleonic wars? Did it take a wheelbarrow full of marks to buy a loaf of bread?

All of the other Central Powers nations weren't crushed like the Germans, yet they had as much of a role in the war as Germany.

And it was this oppressive, depressed condition imposed on the Germans that gave rise to civil unret and was a major factor in the rise of the NSDAP.


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## parsifal (Jan 29, 2017)

Agriculture in Restoration France underwent a major overhaul which averted a famine, however there was major unrest, culminating in revolution in 1830. I think your point here is "was France unstable after 1815, the answer is yes, at least as unstable as post war Germany


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## swampyankee (Jan 30, 2017)

GrauGeist said:


> Were the French people starving in the streets after the Napoleonic wars? Did it take a wheelbarrow full of marks to buy a loaf of bread?
> 
> All of the other Central Powers nations weren't crushed like the Germans, yet they had as much of a role in the war as Germany.
> 
> And it was this oppressive, depressed condition imposed on the Germans that gave rise to civil unret and was a major factor in the rise of the NSDAP.



Did the French government _deliberately_ try to hyper-inflate their currency?

Did the French police and military refuse to support the civil government, especially, but not exclusively, against right-wing unrest?

Do note that Austria lost something like 90% of its territory, so I'd say that they were pretty crushed, arguably worse than Germany 

Do note that the Germany military leaders also started its campaign of anti-Semitism during the war, that its leaders, unlike France's after the Napoleonic Wars, ran away so they wouldn't have to sign a peace treaty, and made goddamn sure that their successors wouldn't be seen as legitimate. Maybe Versailles was excessively harsh, but blaming all of Germany's post-war woes on Versailles is the biggest case of playing the victim card in world history.

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## mikewint (Jan 30, 2017)

Germany abandoned the gold backing of its currency in 1914 and had made the decision to finance the war by borrowing not by savings and taxation. Thus in Germany prices doubled between 1914 and 1919. The war was expected to be short and Germany had expected to win territory, resources, and reparations from the countries it had defeated. Unfortunately for the Germans, after four disastrous years they had lost the war. Under the Treaty of Versailles it was forced to make a reparations payment in gold-backed Marks, and it was due to lose part of the production of the Ruhr and of the province of Upper Silesia. But the prices that had doubled from 1914 to 1919 doubled again during just five months in 1922. Milk went from 7 Marks per liter to 16; beer from 5.6 to 18 Marks per liter. Thus Germany defaulted on a payment in January 1923 as a result France and Belgium occupied the Ruhr in an effort to force payment. Instead, they met a government-backed campaign of passive resistance. Inflation in Germany, which had begun to accelerate in 1922, spiraled into hyperinflation.
Initially the German Mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira all had about equal value, and all were exchanged four or five to the dollar. That was in 1914. In 1923, at the most fevered moment of the German hyperinflation, the exchange rate between the dollar and the Mark was one trillion Marks to one dollar, and a wheelbarrow full of money would not even buy a newspaper
When the 1,000-billion Mark note came out, few bothered to collect the change when they spent it. By November 1923, with one dollar equal to one trillion Marks, the breakdown was complete. The currency had lost all meaning.
Enter the United States and the Dawes Plan. With the European powers stalemated over German reparations, the Reparation Commission formed a committee to review the situation. Headed by Charles G. Dawes (Chicago banker, former Director of the Bureau of the Budget, and future Vice President), the committee presented its proposal in April 1924. Under the Dawes Plan, Germany’s annual reparation payments would be reduced, increasing over time as its economy improved; the full amount to be paid, however, was left undetermined. Economic policy making in Berlin would be reorganized under foreign supervision and a new currency, the Reichsmark, adopted. France and Belgium would evacuate the Ruhr and US banks would loan the German government $200 million to help encourage economic stabilization. U.S. financier J. P. Morgan floated the loan on the U.S. market, which was quickly oversubscribed. Over the next four years, U.S. banks continued to lend Germany enough money to enable it to meet its reparation payments to countries such as France and the United Kingdom. These countries, in turn, used their reparation payments from Germany to service their war debts to the United States.
In the autumn of 1928, another committee of experts was formed, this one to devise a final settlement of the German reparations problem. In 1929, the committee, under the chairmanship of Owen D. Young, the head of General Electric and a member of the Dawes committee, proposed a plan that reduced the total amount of reparations demanded of Germany to 121 billion gold marks, almost $29 billion, payable over 58 years. Another loan would be floated in foreign markets, this one totaling $300 million. Foreign supervision of German finances would cease and the last of the occupying troops would leave German soil.
While the German economy SEEMED to be improving it was a house of cards waiting for a wind. Enter the Great Depression in the very country that had been propping up the Weimar Republic. The disaster began in the United States of America. The Wall Street stock exchange collapsed 29 October 1929 and the American economy collapsed with it. The Great depression had begun
The Dawes and Young plans had loaned Weimar money to prop up the country’s economy. Now America needed those loans back to assist her faltering economy.
After the Wall Street Crash, America gave Germany 90 days to start to re-pay money loaned to her. No other world power had the money to give Germany cash injections. Britain and France were still recovering from the First World War and the Wall Street Crash was to have an impact on industrial Britain. Stalin’s Russiawas still in a desperate state and embarking on the 5 year plans. Therefore, an impoverished Weimar Germany could only call on America for help and she was effectively bankrupt by the end of 1929 and quite incapable of lending money.
Countries that relied on industrial or agricultural exports, like Britain and Australia, suffered the worst. British unemployment more than doubled to 2.5 million; in its northern industrial areas, the unemployment rate was as high as 70 per cent. In Australia the demand for wool and food exports slumped, along prices, wages and unemployment. By 1932 almost 30 per cent of Australian workers were without a job.
The impact on Weimar Germany was even more dire. Germans were not so much reliant on exports as they were on American loans, which had been propping up the Weimar economy since 1924. No further loans were issued from late 1929, while American financiers began to call in existing loans. Despite its rapid growth, the German economy was not equipped for this retraction of cash and capital. Banks struggled to provide money and credit; in 1931 there were runs on German and Austrian banks and several of them folded. In 1930 the US, the largest purchaser of German industrial exports, put up tariff barriers to protect its own companies. German industrialists lost access to US markets and found credit almost impossible to obtain. Many industrial companies and factories either closed or shrank dramatically. By 1932 German industrial production was at 58 per cent of its 1928 levels. The effect of this decline was spiraling unemployment. By the end of 1929 around 1.5 million Germans were out of work; within a year this figure had more than doubled. By early 1933 unemployment in Germany had reached a staggering six million.
The effects this unemployment had on German society were devastating. While there were few shortages of food, millions found themselves without the means to obtain it. The children suffered worst, thousands dying from malnutrition and hunger-related diseases. Millions of industrial workers – who in 1928 had become the best-paid blue collar workers in Europe – spent a year or more in idleness. But the Great Depression affected all classes in Germany, not just the factory workers. Unemployment was high among white-collar workers and the professional classes. A Chicago news correspondent in Berlin reported that “60 per cent of each new university graduating class was out of work”.
The Weimar government failed to muster an effective response to the Depression. The usual response to any recession is a sharp increase in government spending to stimulate the economy – but Heinrich Bruning, who became chancellor in March 1930, seemed to fear inflation and a budget deficit more than unemployment. Rather than ramping up spending, Bruning decided to increase taxes to reduce the budget deficit; he then implemented wage cuts and spending reductions, an attempt to lower prices. Bruning’s policies were rejected by the Reichstag – but the chancellor was backed by president Hindenburg, who in mid-1930 issued his policies as emergency decrees. Bruning’s measures failed and probably contributed to increased unemployment and public suffering in 1931-32. They also revived government instability and bickering between parties in the Reichstag.
The real beneficiary of the Great Depression and Bruning’s disastrous policy response was Adolf Hitler. With public discontent soaring, membership of the NSDAP grew to record levels. In September 1930 the NSDAP increased its representation in the Reichstag almost tenfold, winning 107 seats. Two years later they won 230 seats, the most won by any single party during the entire Weimar period. Hitler found the failures and misery of the Great Depression to his liking, remarking: “Never in my life have I been so well disposed and inwardly contented as in these days. For hard reality has opened the eyes of millions of Germans.”

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## swampyankee (Jan 30, 2017)

While this may explain the economic issues, it does not explain or excuse tge essential disloyalty of the security services or the army or essential cowardice of the kaiser and the military heads who refused to honor the government they forced to sign the peace treaty.


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## tyrodtom (Jan 30, 2017)

How many times in reading history have you ever heard of the generals and admirals taking the responsibility for losing a war.

They always pass the blame elsewhere.

They can pass the blame just as fast as any politician.

There got to be some instances somewhere where a general just admits " I f---ed up "


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## mikewint (Jan 30, 2017)

Well...not sure about your terms. Let's look at actual history:
The First World War was a war of attrition. After the United States of America joined the war on the side of the Entente, Germany simply lacked the ability to place enough men and military resources on the western front to provide an adequate challenge, especially in light of the abandonment of Germany by its allies Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire, all of whom began negotiating their own independent armistices in September 1918. Yet, despite losing the war of attrition and facing total defeat, Germany did not lose the war militarily as it was not defeated by a crushing Entente invasion. In fact, by the end of the Great War, Germany still had troops in foreign lands and there was no fighting. As such, some historians have maintained that Germany did not lose the First World War, as an armistice is “a cessation of hostilities by common agreement of the opposing sides; a truce,” to be concluded by a peace treaty, not a surrender by either side.
The German Empire was a parliamentary system with limited male suffrage that was tiered in favor of industrialists and the landed elite. The Kaiser was the Head of State and was able to appoint and dismiss the Chancellor as well as dissolve the Reichstag. The Kaiser was also the Commander in Chief of the German military. Yet, the Kaiser Wilhelm II was a poor military strategist and a military commander only in theory. Therefore, at the outbreak of the war in 1914, he transferred “the right to issue operational orders in his name” to the Chief of General Staff, the position to which General Paul von Hindenburg was appointed in August 1916. This, combined with the trend of shielding the Kaiser from bad news, resulted in the Kaiser becoming an increasingly peripheral figure. Moreover, it enabled General Hindenburg and fellow military strategist, Quartiermeister General Eric Ludendorff, to establish a de facto military dictatorship sometimes referred to as “the Duo”. Though the military commanders were to be subjugated to Prince Maximilian von Baden (appointed Chancellor in 1918) by the government restructuring at the end of September 1918, “the Duo” still managed to rival and undermine his authority.
In July 1918, the Germans’ Spring Offensive that had been launched in March was successfully “withstood” by the Allies who then began a counter offensive that steadily pushed the Germans back. Following this turn of events, the notion that Germany was losing the
war and would have to commence peace negotiations with the Entente powers was brought to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s attention for the first time in August 1918. Despite the military setback, General Ludendorff ascertained that “although the military situation was grim, it was not hopeless,” but over the following month the German High Command came to recognize the immense strength and power of the American military. Thus, approaching the Kaiser just over a month later, on September 29, 1918, Ludendorff was certain that Germany’s loss of the war was inevitable and impending. Along with General Hindenburg, he called for the immediate undertaking of armistice negotiations for a peace treaty based on President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff sought an “honourable peace” for the German military and relied on the American President’s call for “a just peace and ‘impartial’ justice.” Therefore, though Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff had not read the Fourteen Points, they requested that the ensuing peace treaty be based on them in order to allow Germany and the German army to escape a “shameful peace”.
The United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies on April 6, 1917. However, the U.S. entered the war reluctantly. Unlike many European nations, the U.S. wasn't fighting over territory or in revenge for past wars. Wilson wanted the end of the war to bring out lasting peace for the world. Through this speech and the Fourteen Points, Wilson became the only leader of the countries fighting in the war to publicly outline his war goals.
*Summary of the Fourteen Points*
1. No more secret agreements between countries. Diplomacy shall be open to the world.
2. International seas shall be free to navigate during peace and war.
3. There shall be free trade between the countries who accept the peace.
4. There shall be a worldwide reduction in weapons and armies by all countries.
5. Colonial claims over land and regions will be fair.
6. Russia will be allowed to determine its own form of government. All German troops will leave Russian soil.
7. German troops will evacuate Belgium and Belgium will be an independent country.
8. France will regain all territory including the disputed land of Alsace-Lorraine.
9. The borders of Italy will be established such that all Italians will be within the country of Italy.
10. Austria-Hungary will be allowed to continue to be an independent country.
11. The Central Powers will evacuate Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania leaving them as independent countries.
12. The Turkish people of the Ottoman Empire will have their own country. Other nationalities under the Ottoman rule will also have security.
13. Poland shall be an independent country.
14. A League of Nations will be formed that protects the independence of all countries no matter how big or small.
The leaders of the other Allied Nations, including David Lloyd George of Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France, thought that Wilson was being too idealistic. They were skeptical as to whether these points could be accomplished in the real world. Clemenceau of France, in particular, did not agree with Wilson's plan for "peace without blame" for Germany. He fought for, and got, harsh reparation penalties against Germany.
It was the second American note that the repercussions of the German officials’ unfamiliarity with Wilson’s Fourteen Points became apparent. Over the course of 1918, Wilson had made addendums to his Fourteen Points, creating twenty-four points in total. The note referenced Wilson’s critical nineteenth point: “the destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can…disturb the peace of the world.” This was a direct reference to the destruction of the Hohenzollern monarchy, which also conveyed that “justice might not be the ‘forgiveness’” that the Germans had envisioned.
Though the Americans had alluded to the necessity of the Kaiser’s abdication in their previous note, the “abdication crisis” truly began on October 23, when it was made clear by Wilson in a third note that peace could not be attained without the abdication of the Kaiser. As Prince Maximilian had suspected, having sent the request for peace so soon after the formation of the new government had caused “Wilson and his allies…to believe that Germany was defeated and should be shorn of all its power,” beginning with the removal of the Kaiser. Furthermore, the failure of the German officials to read the Fourteen Points, instead relying on the points’ hearsay, and the military’s insistence on starting peace negotiations, is indicative of how desperate the German position in the war of attrition had become. Had the German officials taken the time to familiarize themselves with Wilson’s points, they would have known the significance of the nineteenth point demanding the Kaiser’s abdication and perhaps decided against utilizing the Fourteen Points as the basis for peace. Instead, the Germans appeared desperate to Wilson, giving him the unquestionable authority to dictate that Wilhelm II must abdicate. This negligence thus began Germany’s diplomatic loss of the Great War. As for the Kaiser’s officials, merely three weeks after having called for an armistice, Generals Ludendorff and Hindenburg reneged. The terms of the third note, the demand of abdication, were unacceptable to them and instead they argued that Germany should fight to the glorious end. This change in policy was not in accordance with the rest of the government. Yet, rather than lose Prince Maximilian, the Kaiser kept General Hindenburg, but “allowed” General Ludendorff to resign, thereby ending the military-civilian “double government”.
Despite this change, the Kaiser remained a peripheral figure. The armistice negotiations were entrusted to the government, which was hesitant to relay bad news to the Kaiser. Furthermore, Kaiser Wilhelm II isolated himself. During the crucial month, he “made few speeches, failed to attend a number of important meetings, and ratified…whatever Prince Maximilian told him needed royal assent.” Nevertheless, though Kaiser Wilhelm II was stubbornly opposed to relinquishing his throne, Prince Maximilian accepted the necessity of the Kaiser’s abdication. Thus, in pursuit of the armistice, Prince Maximilian no longer supported the Kaiser. Kaiser Wilhelm II became further isolated and, feeling betrayed by his Chancellor, identified him as the leader of the abdication party.
On October 29, despite Prince Maximilian’s protests, Kaiser Wilhelm II returned to the military headquarters at Spa. This decision is considered controversial, as many historians consider this to be the fatal mistake that Kaiser Wilhelm II committed against the Hohenzollern Dynasty’ it is surmised that had the Kaiser stayed in Berlin the throne might have been saved. Nonetheless, Kaiser Wilhelm II returned to Spa in hopes that his presence on the front would resuscitate the soldiers’ morale and encourage them to maintain the offensive. He hoped that high morale at the front might spread inwards, perhaps quieting his people’s call for his abdication.
While the Kaiser was at Spa, there was a naval mutiny in Kiel on October 30 that caused the threat of revolution to boil and spread throughout Germany. During the time the Kaiser spent at Spa from October 29 to November 9, 1918, Prince Maximilian and other officials tried to convince Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate, but he would hear nothing of it. By November 8, Berlin appeared to be on the eve of a serious revolt. On November 9, a general strike broke out, the scene becoming reminiscent of Russia’s March 1917 revolution. In response, the Kaiser attempted to gather a small group of soldiers with which to march into Berlin. The Kaiser was told by one of his generals that the army was “not under the command of Your Majesty, whom it no longer supports.”
At 2 o’clock in the afternoon of November 9, the Kaiser was prepared to abdicate and subsequently flee to Holland, when he was given word that Prince Maximilian had abdicated on his behalf an hour earlier. The situation in Berlin had become so grave that “the masses might have proclaimed the deposition of the Kaiser and established a provisional government.” Given this crisis, Prince Maximilian was “determined to give the crisis a constitutional solution.” In this sense, domestic and international pressures combined to bring about the Kaiser’s abdication. Though Wilhelm did not abdicate himself, his acceptance of the abdication showed that he had done what was perceived as being best for his country; rather than let a revolution overthrow the monarchy in a potentially violent uprising, he had seemingly provided Germany with a more favorable position in the eyes of the Associated Powers going into the peace negotiations. On November 11, 1918, the Armistice was signed.

Although the nature of the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles was that of a dictated peace, a weak government, such as the new-born Weimar Republic government, had even less authority to protest the conditions being imposed. As Wilhelm II wrote in his memoirs, “the Entente would never have dared offer such [harsh] terms to an intact German Empire.” Furthermore, until the imposition of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, it was easy for Germans to imagine that they were…undefeated. In this way, the deposition of Germany’s monarch meant its loss of a strong, established central actor that embodied the nation and, had he been supported, could have defended Germany in the peace negotiations.
Without the Kaiser, Germany was made vulnerable, allowing for its defeat in the Armistice and peace negotiations. Thus the nature of Germany’s loss of the Great War, while intrinsically tied to its inability to continue the war of attrition, was diplomatic.

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## Peter Gunn (Jan 31, 2017)

Mike, I gotta go to a meeting so I ask you to boil down that wall of text a bit for me, well, really only one question I have and that is this.

Are you saying that Germany wasn't defeated militarily in WWI? I don't have time to read all of your post (sorry) but I was pretty sure even though the German army was still in France, it was only a matter of time before the big three came knocking on the door of the fatherland and there wasn't going to be much Hindenburg and Ludendorf were going to do about it.

Again, need clarification, not trying to be argumentative. Great posts BTW.


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## Elmas (Jan 31, 2017)

The 4th of November 1918 the Regio Esercito defeated Austro-Hungarian Army in the Battaglia di Vittorio Veneto ( the Austrian lines were just a thin sheet of paper) and started to march through the Trentino and Tirol valleys. It was just a matter of week, if not days, to get Bavaria and Monaco, and the Germans would have been completely surrounded. This fact was underestimated in the Peace Conference in Versailles, and the Italian public opinion was very worried aboout it. That led, a few years after, to the Marcia su Roma and the Fascismo.


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## mikewint (Jan 31, 2017)

Peter, Depends on how you look at it. Technically speaking the Germans signed an ARMISTICE followed by a PEACE Treaty. The Germans never actually surrendered.
The Allied push towards the German border began on October 17, 1918. As the British, French and American armies advanced, the alliance between the Central Powers began to collapse. Turkey signed an armistice at the end of October, Austria-Hungary followed on November 3.
Germany began to crumble from within. Faced with the prospect of returning to sea, the sailors of the High Seas Fleet stationed at Kiel mutinied on October 29. Within a few days, the entire city was in their control and the revolution spread throughout the country. On November 9 the Kaiser abdicated; slipping across the border into the Netherlands and exile. A German Republic was declared and peace feelers extended to the Allies. At 5 AM on the morning of November 11 an *armistice *was signed in a railroad car parked in a French forest near the front lines.
The terms of the agreement called for the cessation of fighting along the entire Western Front to begin at precisely 11 AM that morning (the 11th day of the 11th month at 11AM).
*The Paris Peace Conference* opened on January 18, 1919, with the goal of developing a treaty that would meet the goals of the various Allied Powers. Negotiating the treaty, which would be known as the *Treaty of Versailles, *was a long and complex process. At first, the Council of Ten, consisting of the heads of state and foreign ministers of ten Allied Powers, tried to hammer out a deal. The Council soon proved to be too large, and its members had too many conflicting opinions. By March, the treaty negotiations were being handled by the Big Four, namely, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy. Italy soon dropped out of the process when its representative became angry that his demands for more territory were rejected.
Only the Big Three were left: the United States, led by President Woodrow Wilson; Great Britain, led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George; and France, led by Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Each of these men had a different view of what peace should look like and how Germany should be treated. Wilson was interested in building a world trade network, avoiding war in the future, proposing his Fourteen Points for a better world, and avoiding harsh treatment of Germany. George was also looking ahead to potential world trade, but he wanted Germany to pay reparations. Clemenceau, whose country suffered some of the worst damage during the war, desired large-scale reparations from Germany and a demilitarized zone between France and Germany in case of future German aggression.
None of the defeated nations had any say in shaping the treaty. The German delegation was presented with a fait accompli; it was shocked at the severity of the terms and protested the contradictions between the assurances made when the armistice was negotiated and the actual treaty. Accepting the “war guilt” clause and the reparation terms were especially odious to them.
A commission that assessed the losses incurred by the civilian population set an amount of $33 billion in 1921. Although economists at the time declared that such a huge sum could never be collected without upsetting international finances, the Allies insisted that Germany be made to pay, and the treaty permitted them to take punitive actions if Germany fell behind in its payments.
The United States did not sign the Treaty of Versailles, but established its own treaty with Germany. The United States also did not join the League of Nations which was first introduced by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points. The reparations that Germany owed from the Treaty of Versailles were renegotiated several times and were not finally paid off until well after World War II.


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## swampyankee (Jan 31, 2017)

As a rule, countries that lose a war don't get a heck of a lot of say in terms. The German Navy was defeated at sea (did it break the blockade? No. Was that it's primary war aim? Yes. ) and the army was defeated on land (did it defeat France, the Commonwealth, the US, and Belgium? No. Could it? No. If it couldn't between the time Russia collapsed and US contributions became significant, it never would. Damn,but the Entente should have demanded a victory parade through the Brandenburg Gate with the Kaiser in the reviewing stand, saluting the flags of the victors.

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## mikewint (Jan 31, 2017)

Once again the Germans did not loose or surrender. The signed an ARMISTICE and eventually a PEACE treaty, but I digress-
Ah Yes, that wonderful feeling of beating your enemy into the earth and making him eat a crapola sandwich without bread. Consider all the peace and tranquility it breeds.
*Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto the wrath of God : for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord.*
Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor was certainly not a softie, but he did know how to really WIN a war.

At the Battle of Königgrätz, the Austrian army of 240,000 faced the Prussian Army of the Elbe (39,000) and First Army (85,000). One would assume a 2-1 advantage would make a difference, but nonetheless Prussia won handily.
King William and his generals were excited. They wanted to push onward, conquer Bohemia and march straight into Vienna.
However, Bismarck aware that the winds of luck are fickle and that planting the seeds of resentment yields a crop of vengeance, enlisted the help of the Crown Prince (who had opposed the war but had commanded one of the Prussian armies at Königgrätz) to dissuade his father at a very angry meeting. Bismarck had insisted on a "*soft peace*" with no annexations and no victory parades, so as to be able to quickly restore 'friendly' relations with Austria. Fortunately he got his way and a pattern was established. Each time Bismarck won a battle, he found a way to allow the vanquished side to *safe face*. His caution served him well.
The “soft” approach allowed Prussia to get everything they wanted at the Peace of Prague (1866). First the German Confederation was dissolved. Then Prussia annexed former Austrian territories Schleswig, Holstein, Frankfurt, Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, and Nassau.
Thanks to Bismarck’s “soft” policies Prussia now controlled practically all of Northern Germany with Austria as an ally.


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## parsifal (Jan 31, 2017)

_The First World War was a war of attrition. After the United States of America joined the war on the side of the Entente, Germany simply lacked the ability to place enough men and military resources on the western front to provide an adequate challenge, especially in light of the abandonment of Germany by its allies Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire, all of whom began negotiating their own independent armistices in September 1918. _


US intervention was not decisive to the outcomes achieved in 1918. It would have begun to have a massive effect had the fighting continued into 1919 and beyond


_Yet, despite losing the war of attrition and facing total defeat, Germany did not lose the war militarily as it was not defeated by a crushing Entente invasion. _


Germany was facing invasion after the results of amiens and the 100 days offensive. August 8 was described as the german army’s “black day” by Ludendorf, who within a fortnight was admitting privately that Germany was doomed. A really good account of what the germans were facing and the effects of the last allied offensive was having on them is to be found in _The German Army on the Western Front 1917-1918_

by David Biltone


_As such, some historians have maintained that Germany did not lose the First World War, as an armistice is “a cessation of hostilities by common agreement of the opposing sides; a truce,” to be concluded by a peace treaty, not a surrender by either side._


Germany was driven to the “armistice” because her armies , indeed her entire society, were facing abject and total defeat if they did not agree to the terms of ‘armistice” presented to them. They thought they could rely on the 14 points, but this was never agreed to by the main entente nations. The supreme german commandeer of the western front armies, Crown Prince Rupprecht gave a detailed assessment of the plight of the German army, summarized in the following












What the germans were facing were Wilsons so called “14 points” which in effect amounted to a German capitulation, an abandonment of all their war aims. The western allies and significant element of the US establishment rejected the 14 points as too lenient on Germany. Pershing, the head of the US army in France was prophetic in his appraisal, knowing that a negotiated settlement was not sufficient and in fact the allies could, and should, demand unconditional surrender. The germans until the very end were unable to accept even the dove like proposals submitted by Wilson,


_In July 1918, the Germans’ Spring Offensive that had been launched in March was successfully “withstood” by the Allies who then began a counter offensive that steadily pushed the Germans back. Following this turn of events, the notion that Germany was losing the war and would have to commence peace negotiations with the Entente powers was brought to Kaiser Wilhelm II’s attention for the first time in August 1918. Despite the military setback, General Ludendorff ascertained that “although the military situation was grim, it was not hopeless,” but over the following month the German High Command came to recognize the immense strength and power of the American military. Thus, approaching the Kaiser just over a month later, on September 29, 1918, Ludendorff was certain that Germany’s loss of the war was inevitable and impending. Along with General Hindenburg, he called for the immediate undertaking of armistice negotiations for a peace treaty based on President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff sought an “honourable peace” for the German military and relied on the American President’s call for “a just peace and ‘impartial’ justice.” _


This an overly optimistic appraisal of where Ludendorf stood at this point. Using Billton again;





Therefore, though Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff had not read the Fourteen Points, they requested that the ensuing peace treaty be based on them in order to allow Germany and the German army to escape a “shameful peace”.


_The United States entered World War I on the side of the Allies on April 6, 1917. However, the U.S. entered the war reluctantly. Unlike many European nations, the U.S. wasn't fighting over territory or in revenge for past wars. Wilson wanted the end of the war to bring out lasting peace for the world. Through this speech and the Fourteen Points, Wilson became the only leader of the countries fighting in the war to publicly outline his war goals._


It is important to remember that the US was not the major allied power, and that the main power if the entente, France, never agreed to the 14 points. Britain was evasive and non-committal

_Although the nature of the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles was that of a dictated peace, a weak government, such as the new-born Weimar Republic government, had even less authority to protest the conditions being imposed. As Wilhelm II wrote in his memoirs, “the Entente would never have dared offer such [harsh] terms to an intact German Empire.” _


This is typical of the unreality in which the Kaiser existed at the time. By 1918, the over weaning emotion driving the entente leadership was firstly to inflict revenge, and secondly to ensure that the germans be made to pay and accept responsibility for the conflagration. Increasingly Germany was losing its ability to control what happened to it. What was missing from the Allied surrender was occupation of the german capital and unconditional surrender, as Pershing had advocated.

_Furthermore, until the imposition of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, it was easy for Germans to imagine that they were…undefeated. In this way, the deposition of Germany’s monarch meant its loss of a strong, established central actor that embodied the nation and, had he been supported, could have defended Germany in the peace negotiations.

Without the Kaiser, Germany was made vulnerable, allowing for its defeat in the Armistice and peace negotiations. Thus the nature of Germany’s loss of the Great War, while intrinsically tied to its inability to continue the war of attrition, was diplomatic_.

What made Germany vulnerable, and indeed ripe for revolution, was its defeat on the field. If Germany had succeeded in its expansionary war of conquest, it would not have suffered the breakdown that it did. Kaiser, or no Kaiser, it was in for a rough time once it was faced with defeat.


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## GrauGeist (Jan 31, 2017)

And the German Royalty was not being "cowardly" in their leaving to exile - with the unrest in the streets, the lesson recently learned at the expense of the Romanov family was well heeded and certainly the right decision.


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## swampyankee (Jan 31, 2017)

So, you're arguing that a) the German forces didn't surrender. Fine. The navy had collapsed, the government had collapsed, civil society was collapsing, the German people were starving because the German government gave higher priority to munitions than to keeping its people alive, and the German Army was being beaten in the field.

But they didn't lose.

OK. What would a "loss" look like? Carthage after the Third Punic War?


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## GrauGeist (Feb 1, 2017)

swampyankee said:


> So, you're arguing that a) the German forces didn't surrender. Fine. The navy had collapsed, the government had collapsed, civil society was collapsing, the German people were starving because the German government gave higher priority to munitions than to keeping its people alive, and the German Army was being beaten in the field.
> 
> But they didn't lose.
> 
> OK. What would a "loss" look like? Carthage after the Third Punic War?


So what's your point that you're attempting to make?

You've been working really hard at making sure everyone knows how evil and vile the Germans are. 
Fine, point taken and so, now what?

And Germany may have been Carthage after the dust settled in 1918...the country lay in ruins, it's economy was destroyed - tell me, should we have just burned the damned place down and put all the Germans out of their misery?


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## KiwiBiggles (Feb 1, 2017)

GrauGeist said:


> So what's your point that you're attempting to make?
> 
> You've been working really hard at making sure everyone knows how evil and vile the Germans are.
> Fine, point taken and so, now what?
> ...



No, but something needed to be done to make the Germans realise that they lost, and stop the "stab in the back" myth before it started. As it was, the lack of ostentatious victory demonstrations allowed the Germans, and others it would appear, to convince themselves that they didn't really lose.


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## parsifal (Feb 1, 2017)

The answer to that hypothetical is definitely not. The problem however has three main elements.

1) Germany was not a happy place to live in in the aftermath of her defeat.
2) Many germans emerged not understanding that they had lost, the beginnings of the "stabbed in the back myth"
3) Linked to this, there was no tangible allied presence, except for the occupation of the Rhineland, which did not have the effect that should have been a number one priority for the allies

It is inescapable to compare the relative failure of the Versaille peace to peace in 1945. The level of destruction endured by Germany was vastly greater in 1945 than it had been in 1918. In 1918, virtually none of the national infrastructure was affected, the casualties suffered by germany in WWI a fraction of those they had endured in WWII. The allies immediately embarked on a program of denazification, and more importantly were determined to make every German survivor keenly aware of what they had done. their collective guilt was enshrined in the peace treaty. this was attempted in 1918, but largely failed. The Nuremberg trials were a part of that de-nazification and war guilt process

Reparations is another red herring often touted as the reason for the rise of Nazism. Yet in 1945 the reparations bill for the Germans was far greater than it had ever been in 1918. moreover most of the reparations imposed under Versailles were never paid, still aren't.

All these aspects have weight, but really are not the root course for the rise of Nazism. They are peripheral factors at best. Nazism, or fascist tendencies are in my opinion innate to german society until german society was smashed and rebuilt from the ground up in 1945. in order for it to work in 1918, the allies had to be as ruthless and unforgiving as they were to be in 1945. Surrender, no terms, just surrender. Unconditionally.

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## swampyankee (Feb 1, 2017)

GrauGeist said:


> So what's your point that you're attempting to make?
> 
> You've been working really hard at making sure everyone knows how evil and vile the Germans are.
> Fine, point taken and so, now what?
> ...


No. Losing is neither evil nor vile; it's losing. The evil was committed by the nation's security services, who were publicly against the government the Kaiser handed power to and nationalist propagandists who blamed German Jews and socialists for the defeat: after all, the _Kaiser _didn't sign or order the military to surrender or stop fighting. That's my point; that's the historical datum you're ignoring. 

Germany lost. It's armies may not have been defeated in detail or ground to powder, as was done in 1945, but they were defeated. It's nothing but the founding myth of nazism that they weren't.


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## GrauGeist (Feb 1, 2017)

I am fully aware of the historical datum and I am fully aware of the impact that Germany had on the post-war landscape. I am also fully aware of the growing social sentiment of the time, particularly against governments.

With growing attention to Marxism by the working class, failing economies or economies that saw people struggling for their very existance created a hotbed of trouble. Russia was one such example, as their involvement in the war bankrupted the economy and gave the Bolsheviks a way to get their foot in the door.

So Germany was left to rot - staggering national debt, no economy and people starving to death. Add the current Marxist and Anarchist sentiments floating about in social circles - what could have possibly gone wrong?


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## mikewint (Feb 1, 2017)

Michael, excellent points as always and we're in about 90% agreement.
1. Yes, the US had yet to make a "significant" contribution BUT the US had delivered a million men with another million on the way. The German civilian population was enduring severe shortages of everything. The Army fared better but even so shortages of men and materials were severe. Britain and France thanks to the US had literally unlimited material.
2. Actual Invasion of Germany. In late October  Wilhelm had appointed Gen. Groener to fill Ludendorff's post. Transferred now to army high command headquarters at Spa, Belgium, Groener was demoralized with what he found.
In the book, “The German High Command at War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff conduct World War I,” historian Robert B. Asprey wrote: “A tour of the front convinced (Groener) that total defeat was very close. Many divisions had battalion strengths of only two or three hundred men or less; numerous units had no officers. The enemy was advancing in almost all sectors and would probably break through before the army could withdraw ... Bulgaria had already laid down her arms, Vienna and Constantinople had requested armistices.”
Additionally, when the admirals of Germany's High Seas Fleet ordered their ships to make one last glorious attack upon Britain's Royal Navy, sailors at Kiel mutinied and started to riot. Communists had already seized control of much of Munich and proclaimed a “worker's republic.”
3. The 14 points acceptance. The speech was widely disseminated as an instrument of Allied propaganda and was translated into many languages for global dissemination. Copies were also dropped behind German lines, to encourage the Central Powers to surrender in the expectation of *a just* settlement. Indeed, in a note sent to Wilson by Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, in October 1918 requested an immediate armistice and peace negotiations *on the basis of the Fourteen Points.*
4. The Fourteen Points were accepted by France and Italy on November 1, 1918. Britain later signed off on all of the points except the freedom of the seas. The United Kingdom also wanted Germany to make reparation payments for the war, and thought that that should be added to the Fourteen Points.


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## mikewint (Feb 1, 2017)

Swamp & Kiwi well true enough: "All of the inhabitants were enslaved and the city utterly destroyed (the myth that the land was then spread with salt to prevent resettlement is a later invention). A curse was then set on any person who attempted to resettle the area. North Africa was then made a Roman province." So nope didn't happen but hyper inflation did.
I also suggest that you re-read my post #73. The effect of hyperinflation on German citizens cannot be over stated. In 1914, the exchange rate of the German mark to the American dollar was about 4.2 to one. Nine years later, it was 4.2 trillion to one.
The out-of-control inflation began somewhat mildly during World War I, as the German government printed unbacked currency and borrowed money to finance military expenditures. After the war inflation crept up slowly at first, before accelerating rapidly in late 1922. The exchange rate ballooned from 2,000 marks per dollar to 20,000 to a million and beyond in just a few months, riding on a growing wave of economic panic and mistrust.
As the government commissioned 130 printing companies to churn out piles of increasingly worthless currency, Germans struggled to survive in increasingly absurd conditions.
Waiters had to climb on top of tables to announce new menu prices every half hour.
Workers brought wheelbarrows, sacks and suitcases to work to collect their wages. According to one story, a distracted worker found that his suitcase was stolen, with his wages dumped out and left behind. Families burnt money to stay warm because it was cheaper than buying fuel.
The price of a loaf of bread went from 250 marks in January 1923 to 200 trillion in November — when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party attempted the Beer Hall Putsch.


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## mikewint (Feb 1, 2017)

Michael, your post #87:
In early 1918, German forces on the western front were still holding conquered territory but faced a problem. Their forces were finite and being pushed to exhaustion, while their enemies were benefitting from millions of fresh US troops being on their way. A French breakdown in morale a few months before had been saved by the thought other people were coming to help. While Germany might have won in the east, many troops were tied down holding their gains. The German commander Ludendorff, therefore decided to make one final great attack to try and break the western front open before the US arrived in strength. The attack made large gains at first but petered out and was pushed back; the allies followed this up by inflicting ‘*The Black Day of the German Army*’ (Battle of Amiens) when they started to push the Germans back beyond their defenses.

Ludendorff was forced to admit finally that Germany could no longer win and would need to seek an armistice. But he also knew the military would be blamed, and decided to move this blame elsewhere. Power was transferred to a civilian government, who now had to seek an armistice and negotiate a peace. This effectively allowed the military to stand back and claim they could have carried on: after all, Germans forces were still on enemy territory. As Germany went through a transition from imperial military command through socialist upheaval and then a democratic government, the old soldiers blamed these ‘November Criminals’ (those who had helped to form the new Weimar government and broker the peace which Germans had so desperately wanted, but which had ended so disastrously in the Versailles Treaty) for abandoning the war effort. Hindenburg, Ludendorff’s notional superior, said the Germans had been ‘stabbed in the back’ ( Dolchstosslegende was initiated and fanned by these retired German wartime military leaders, who, well aware in 1918 that Germany could no longer effectively wage war and had advised the Kaiser to sue for peace) by these civilians. The Treaty of Versailles’ harsh terms did nothing to prevent the ‘criminals’ idea festering. The military escaped the blame and was seen to stand apart. Socialists were ‘at fault’.
The men of the new civilian government had a hard time negotiating with their enemies, who felt they had completely won. Not only did the November Criminals sign the armistice to end the war, but they went on to be involved in the settlement negotiations that produced the Treaty of Versailles. These weren't negotiations with the Germans, but amongst the allies and then dictated to their enemies. It was a disaster for Germany, and the new, democratic Weimar government was tarred with it.
Vernunftsrepublikaner ("republicans by reason"), individuals like the historian Friedrich Meinecke and Nobel prize-winning author Thomas Mann, had at first resisted democratic reform. They now felt compelled to support the Weimar Republic as the least worst alternative. They tried to steer their compatriots away from polarization to the radical Left and Right. The promises of the German nationalist Right to revise the Versailles Treaty through force if necessary increasingly gained inroads in respectable circles. Meanwhile the specter of an imminent Communist threat, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and of short-lived Communist revolutions or coups in Hungary (Bela Kun) and in Germany itself (Sparticist Uprising), shifted German political sentiment decidedly toward right-wing causes.
Agitators from the political left served heavy prison sentences for inspiring political unrest. On the other hand, radical rightwing activists like Adolf Hitler, whose Nazi Party had attempted to depose the government of Bavaria and commence a "national revolution" in the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, served only nine months of a five year prison sentence for treason—which was a capital offense.
Hitler, recruited disaffected ex-soldiers and military elites, who wielded the stab in the back myth and the November Criminals to enhance his own power and plans. The lie of the November Criminals played a key and direct role in Hitler's rise to power.

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 1, 2017)

Lot's of good stuff in this thread.

Mike, thanks for the reply, not to sound like a jerk, but yes, I pretty much know all that, I was curious on your stance, it seemed you were angling for the "stabbed in the back" theory. I'm convinced I'm wrong about that, I can tell from your posts you obviously realize Germany WAS beaten, more of a question of semantics as far as armistice v. surrender. But technically yes, you're correct, they signed an armistice not a surrender document.

In all my studies it's nagged me what would have happened if there had at least been a reasonable negotiated peace in say late 1916 early 1917. Imperial Germany had it's flaws as any government does, but I'm of the opinion that the Nazi's were far worse. I've pondered what would have happened even in late 1918, if the Kaiser had been allowed to abdicate in favor of his eldest son and kept the monarchy more on the English model. Would we have had another go 'round or would there have been cooler heads prevailing. I tend to think with the Soviets around, peace in Europe was not in the cards anyway.

I also tend to think that the red army wasn't going to just waltz all the way to the Bay of Biscay in '45, I think they would have been in for a rude awakening.

Just my two pennies worth.

Cheers.


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## mikewint (Feb 1, 2017)

Peter, as to Dolchstoss in den Rucken, no I don’t buy it but I do feel that the Germans were mislead as to what the Peace treaty would entail. When the Treaty was forced on them it bred a great deal of resentment and the first domino fell planting the seeds of WWII.

Now, beyond a shadow of a doubt, after the last German offensive on the western front failed in 1918, the German war effort was doomed and raw production figures confirm that Germany could not possibly have won a war of attrition against Britain, France, and the United States combined. The Germans would have to sue for peace. So yes, in all but name the Germans were defeated BUT like the boxer who is knocked down but not out the war had not touched German soil and as such they had a tremendous potential. Whether that would be for good or evil would depend on their perception on the Peace that ensued. 

Enter the 14 points, as I posted, Wilsons speech was widely disseminated as an instrument of Allied propaganda and was translated into many languages for global dissemination. Copies were also dropped behind German lines, to encourage the Central Powers to surrender *in the expectation* of a just settlement. Indeed, in a note sent to Wilson by Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, in October 1918 requested an immediate armistice and peace negotiations *on the basis of the Fourteen Points.*

Allied governments paid lip service to the Fourteen Points while the fighting continued. Those nations needed American financial might to assist in their rebuilding after the war and did not want to risk offending Wilson. There was some fear in Europe the United States might seek a separate peace with Germany, freeing that nation to continue the fight without the presence of American forces.
The French and British were particularly unhappy with Wilson’s plan. Both had felt the impact of German militarism much more deeply than the United States and were committed to taking steps that they felt would preclude further German aggression.
The Allies agreed to accept the Fourteen Points as the basis for the coming peace negotiations if Wilson would agree to two reservations:
1. The delegates would not be committed to accepting a provision guaranteeing freedom of the seas
(Point 2) — a measure demanded by Britain.
2. The French insisted that the provision having to do with German evacuation from French territory
(Point 8) be interpreted to allow for the collection of compensation (reparations) for civilian damages
incurred in the war.

Wilson accepted these reservations and forwarded the peace plan to the German government on November 5.

Instead the German delegation was handed the _fait accompli that was the Treaty of Versailles _
The treaty, was written by the Big Three with no participation by the Germans. The negotiations revealed a split between the French, who wanted to dismember Germany to make it impossible for it to renew war with France, and the British and Americans, who did not want to create pretexts for a new war. The eventual treaty included fifteen parts and 440 articles.
Part I created the Covenant of the New League of Nations, which Germany was not allowed to join until 1926.
Part II specified Germany’s new boundaries, giving Eupen-Malmeacutedy to Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine back to France, substantial eastern districts to Poland, Memel to Lithuania, and large portions of Schleswig to Denmark.
Part III stipulated a demilitarized zone and separated the Saar from Germany for fifteen years.
Part IV stripped Germany of all its colonies.
Part V reduced Germany’s armed forces to very low levels and prohibited Germany from possessing certain classes of weapons, while committing the Allies to eventual disarmament as well.
Part VIII established Germany’s liability for reparations without stating a specific figure and began with Article 231, in which Germany accepted the responsibility of itself and its allies for the losses and damages of the Allies “as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.” 
Part IX imposed numerous other financial obligations upon Germany.

The German government signed the treaty under protest. Right-wing German parties attacked it as a betrayal, and terrorists assassinated several politicians whom they considered responsible. The U.S. Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and the U.S. government took no responsibility for most of its provisions.

From "Ludendorff: The Soldier and the Politician" by John W. Wheeler-Bennett the following story:
In the autumn of 1919, when Ludendorff was dining with the head of the British Military Mission in Berlin, British general Sir Neill Malcolm. Malcolm asked Ludendorff why it was that he thought Germany lost the war. Ludendorff replied with his list of excuses, including that the home front failed the army.
Malcolm asked him: "*Do you mean, General, that you were stabbed in the back?*" Ludendorff's eyes lit up and he leapt upon the phrase like a dog on a bone. "Stabbed in the back?" he repeated. "Yes, that's it, exactly, we were stabbed in the back". And thus was born a legend which has never entirely perished.
The phrase was to Ludendorff's liking, and he let it be known among the general staff that this was the "official" version, and so it was disseminated throughout German society. This was picked up by right-wing political factions and used as a form of attack against the SPD-led early Weimar government.
In a hearing before the Committee on Inquiry of the National Assembly on November 18, 1919, a year after the war's end, Hindenburg declared, "As an English general has very truly said, the German Army was 'stabbed in the back'."
Malcolm could not have known at the time but he had used a phrase that had special meaning to the Germans. Hitler of course realized that to Germans: in the medieval legend of the Nibelungenlied, the hero, Siegfried, exhausted from being pursued, stopped to drink at a spring and was murdered by a villain thrusting a spear into his back.
This spawned the Dolchstosslegende and made Germans culturally sensitive to the duplicity of a stab in the back.

So as I already posted in #81: *Ah Yes, that wonderful feeling of beating your enemy into the earth and making him eat a crapola sandwich without bread. Consider all the peace and tranquility it breeds*


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## parsifal (Feb 1, 2017)

mikewint said:


> 4. The Fourteen Points were accepted by France and Italy on November 1, 1918. Britain later signed off on all of the points except the freedom of the seas. The United Kingdom also wanted Germany to make reparation payments for the war, and thought that that should be added to the Fourteen Points.



no, that is not correct, not even close. in fact the formal response from Britain and france was a combined response in the form of a formal diplomatic note and reads;

"_A statement of the Allied Governments after the German Government had indicated its willingness to consider signing an Armistice based on President Wilson's 'Fourteen Points'. _

_The Allied Governments have given careful consideration to the correspondence which has passed between the President of the United States and the German Government.__ Subject to the qualifications__ which follow they declare their willingness to make peace with the Government of Germany on the terms of peace laid down in the President's address to Congress of January, 1918, and the principles of settlement enunciated in his subsequent addresses. They must point out, however, that __clause 2,__ relating to what is usually described as the freedom of the seas, is open to various interpretations, some of which __they could not accept__. They must, therefore, reserve to themselves complete freedom on this subject when they enter the peace conference. Further, in the conditions of peace laid down in his address to Congress of January 8, 1918, _*the President declared that invaded territories must be restored as well as evacuated and freed, the Allies feel that no doubt ought to be allowed to exist as to what this provision implies. By it they understand that compensation will be made by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and their property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea and from the air".*

Sure the allies were moving to outmanouver the germans yet again, but at no point did Britain or France ever accede to the 14 points in their entirety (in fact the qualifications they placed on them were such that they would not apply at all to the resolution of the conflicts insofar as it affected these major western nations. It should have been clear to any clear thinking german government at the time that the western allies were not going to be bound by them. That the US was too naïve and the germans too desperate to pay attention is hardly reason to criticise Britain or France to the hard nosed reality check they were applying). 

The 14 points were used as the basis for the creation of yugoslavia,, the rights of self determination and the like, but for the way the war had affected the core allied nations of Britain and france they were not, and never were accepted and the Allies made that VERY clear from the beginning. Germany had no choice other than to accept these terms because they knew they faced total defeat and occupation if they did not.

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## parsifal (Feb 2, 2017)

The stab in the back myth (German: _Dolchstoßlegende_) was the notion, widely believed in right-wing circles in Germany after 1918, that the German Army did not lose WWI on the battlefield but was instead betrayed by the civilians on the home front, especially the republicans who overthrew the monarchy in the German Revolution of 1918-19. Advocates denounced the German government leaders who signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, as the "November Criminals”. There are various latter day permutations of that basic positioning as is being witnessed here.


When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they made the legend an integral part of their official history of the 1920s, portraying the new weimar republic as the work of the "November criminals" who used the stab in the back to seize power while betraying the nation. The Nazi propaganda depicted Weimar as "a morass of corruption, degeneracy, national humiliation, ruthless persecution of the honest 'national opposition'—fourteen years of rule by Jews, Marxists, and 'cultural Bolsheviks', who had at last been swept away by the National Socialist movement under inspired leadership of adolf hitler.

Scholars inside and outside Germany unanimously reject the notion, pointing out the German army was out of reserves and was being overwhelmed in late 1918. (see _Kolb, Eberhard (2005). The Weimar Republic. New York: Routledge. p. 140)_

In the later part of the war, Germany was essentially a military dicatatorship, with the Supreme High Command (OHL) and General Field Marshal Hindenburg as commander-in-chief advising the figurehead Kaiser. After the failure of the spring and summer offensives of 1918 failed in 1918, the war effort was doomed. In response, by autumn, OHL arranged for a rapid change to a civilian government. General Ludendorf, Germany's Chief of Staff, said:

_I have asked His Excellency to now bring those circles to power which we have to thank for coming so far. We will therefore now bring those gentlemen into the ministries. They can now make the peace which has to be made. They can eat the broth which they have prepared for us!”_

As the military situation for the Germans on the Western Front became ever more precarious, Prince Maximilian of Baden reached out to the American President Woodrow Wilson, indicating that Germany was willing to accept his fourteen point plan. On November 11, 1918, the representatives of the newly formed weimar republic signed an armistice agreement with the allies which would end World War I. The subsequent Treaty of Versailles led to further territorial and financial losses. As the Kaiser had been forced to abdicate and the military relinquished executive power, it was the temporary "civilian government" that sued for peace—the signature on the armistice document was of Matthias Erzberger, a civilian, who was later murdered for his alleged treason; this led to the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.

Wilson’s plan, however, was not widely supported in France or Britain, where attitudes towards Germany were much less conciliatory. The prevailing attitude in Paris and London was that Germany had been chiefly, if not entirely responsible for the outbreak of the war. For that, many argued, Germany should be held accountable and punished. They also called for measures to reduce Germany’s ability to make war in the future, by dismantling or reducing her military and industrial sectors. The push to castrate Germany’s military capacity came chiefly from the French, who had the most to fear from its eastern neighbour. At the Paris negotiations, French prime minister Georges Clemenceau argued forcefully for punitive and restrictive measures against Germany. Clemenceau wanted to send Germany’s economy backwards, from a first-world industrial nation into a weak cluster of provinces concerned with agricultural production and small-scale manufacturing.

The Treaty of Versailles came to reflect much more of Clemenceau’s punitive approach than Wilson’s conciliatory one. Among its main terms and conditions:


Germany lost substantial amounts of territory. She was stripped of all overseas colonies and forced to surrender large amounts of European territory, including some of significant strategic or industrial value. Alsace and Lorraine were returned to France, while other areas were surrendered to Belgium, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia and Poland.


The Rhineland, an area of German territory bordering France, was ordered to be demilitarised, as a means of protecting the French border. Another German border region, the Saarland, was occupied and administered by France.


Germany was banned from entering into any political union or confederation with Austria.


The German _Reichswehr_ (army) was restricted in size. It could contain no more than 100,000 men and was forbidden from using conscription to fill its ranks. There were also restrictions on the size and composition of its officer class.


The German military was subject to other restrictions and prohibitions. Naval vessels were restricted in tonnage while bans were imposed on the production or acquisition of tanks, heavy artillery, chemical weapons, aircraft, airships and submarines.


The treaty’s Article 231 (the ‘war guilt clause’) determined that Germany was single-handedly responsible for initiating the war, thus providing a legal basis for the payment of war reparations to the Allies.

These terms were formulated by the Allies without the input of Germany, which was not permitted to attend the Paris peace summit. In May 1919 German delegates were finally invited to Paris. After being kept waiting for several days, they were presented with the draft treaty. The German foreign minister, Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau, spoke at Versailles, suggesting that while his country was prepared to make amends for its wartime excesses, the suggestion that Germany was alone in starting the war or exceeding the rules of war was baseless:

When news of the treaty reached Germany it generated a firestorm of public anger. Germans had expected a fair and even handed agreement based on Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Instead, they were handed what they called the “Versailles _diktat_” – a treaty that was not negotiated between equals but was forced on a war-ravaged and starving people at the point of a gun. There were few moments of national unity in Weimar Germany – but the response to Versailles was one of them. Erich Ludendorff considered the treaty the work of Jews, bankers and plotting socialists. Gustav Stresemann described it as a “moral, political and economic death sentence”. “We will be destroyed,” said Walter Rathenau. In the Weimar _Reichstag_, delegates from all political parties except the USPD rose to condemn the Versailles treaty and the conduct of the Allies. Almost every newspaper in Germany slammed the treaty and screamed for the government to reject it.

For two tense months the Weimar government debated the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles. The issue brought about the demise of Weimar’s first chancellor, Philipp Scheidemann, who resigned rather than ratify the treaty, which he deemed a “murderous plan”. President Friedrich Ebert was also opposed to the Versailles treaty. In June he contacted military commanders and asked whether the army could defend the nation, if the government refused to sign the treaty and the Allies resumed the war. Both Paul von Hindenburg and Wilhelm Groener advised the _Reichstag_ that the army lacked materiel and munitions and could not withstand an Allied offensive or invasion of Germany. Any refusal to comply with Versailles would also prolong the Allied food blockade, which was still ongoing in June 1919 and contributing to thousands of civilian deaths from starvation and Spanish flu epidemic. Confronted with this advice, the _Reichstag_ had no alternative but to submit to the Allies. Germany’s delegates signed the treaty on June 28th 1919. It was ratified by the Weimar assembly almost a fortnight later (July 9th), passed 209 votes to 116.

For the SPD and other moderates, the acceptance of Versailles was a necessary measure, given reluctantly to prevent more war and bloodshed, an Allied invasion of Germany and the possible dissolution of the German stateitself. There can be little doubt that the civilian leadership was duped by the snior German army leadership. . Some accepted Versailles in the hope that it could be renegotiated and relaxed later. 

Those in the military and the far right, however, saw it as yet another betrayal. “Today German honour is dragged to the grave. Never forget it!” screamed one nationalist newspaper. “The German people will advance again to regain their pride. We will have our revenge for the shame of 1919!” Conspiracists on the far right claimed the ratification was more evidence of destructive forces at work in Germany’s civilian government. The Treaty of Versailles – or rather the question of how Germany should have responded to it – would contribute to political divisions for the life of the Weimar Republic.

The question arising from all this is whether the treaty caused this self delusion, or whether it was innate in the german psyche before the treaty. The treaty was harsh, but not as harsh as those that followed the surrender in 1945. Most scholars agree that the peace treaty as the main cause of the swing to the right is in fact to believe the myths generated by the Nazis and other far right organisations that ate this stuff up and manufactured it for public consumption to a willing and demoralised public. Its up to everyone top make their own minds up, but for me it is clear. Versailles was not the main reason for the right wing reaction in Germany. The seeds for that reaction were already there, any treaty would have caused a swing to the right. What the germans really wanted they could not have. They wanted victory when none was to be had. Without victory they were never going to play ball. Therein lies your long term reasons for the rise of Nazism. It was inevitable, inescapable until the national psyche had been rewritten as it was in 1945.

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## swampyankee (Feb 2, 2017)

Parsifal, 

Thank you for a great summary.

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## mikewint (Feb 2, 2017)

Michael, this
*4. The Fourteen Points were accepted by France and Italy on November 1, 1918. Britain later signed off on all of the points except the freedom of the seas. The United Kingdom also wanted Germany to make reparation payments for the war, and thought that that should be added to the Fourteen Points.*
and this
*The Allies agreed to accept the Fourteen Points as the basis for the coming peace negotiations if Wilson would agree to two reservations:
1. The delegates would not be committed to accepting a provision guaranteeing freedom of the seas
(Point 2) — a measure demanded by Britain.
2. The French insisted that the provision having to do with German evacuation from French territory
(Point 8) be interpreted to allow for the collection of compensation (reparations) for civilian damages
incurred in the war.*
are from: *Grigg, John (2002). Lloyd George: War Leader. London: Allen Lane. ISBN-7139-9343-X*
The rest of your #95 and #96 posts are essentially the same as what I have already posted so I fail to see any substantial differences between our stances.
What point are you trying to make?


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## swampyankee (Feb 2, 2017)

Hopefully, this will be neutral question with a definable answer: when was the final armistice on the Western Front requested and by whom? I've got one source (Germany telegraphs President Wilson seeking armistice - Oct 04, 1918 - HISTORY.com) that says Chancellor von Baden on Oct 4, 1918, in a telegram to US President Wilson.


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## Peter Gunn (Feb 2, 2017)

God I love this place. You all are awesome.

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## parsifal (Feb 2, 2017)

mikewint said:


> Michael, this
> *4. The Fourteen Points were accepted by France and Italy on November 1, 1918. Britain later signed off on all of the points except the freedom of the seas. The United Kingdom also wanted Germany to make reparation payments for the war, and thought that that should be added to the Fourteen Points.*
> and this
> *The Allies agreed to accept the Fourteen Points as the basis for the coming peace negotiations if Wilson would agree to two reservations:
> ...



The main difference is in the way the allied position evolved and its final form as it appeared in the final communique from the entente as it is presented in their note of 5 November 1918. Ive previously given a verbatim account of the final resting position of the French and British governments. They were first formally informed of German peace feelers in early October which was followed by a series of frantic and furious diplomatic exchanges between the Wilson administration and the French and British Governments. The final form in which the 14 points were accepted was nothing like it existed in January. Moreover, the most important difference in our respective positions on this is that the notes passed to the americans In early November make it abundantly clear that insfar as the fourteen points applied to western Europe, the allies were in fact not accepting the full application of the Wilson doctrine. The important differences were, in essence, that Germany be made to pay reparations, that she accept full responsibility for causing the war, and of course the freedom of navigation issues on the high seas. This final position was made very clear by British and the French to the Americans. Whether it made it to the Germans I don’t know.


How accurate or bad your source is, I don’t know. But the sources im relying on are all primary sources, that is the actual transcripts of the actual diplomatic notes at the time. In other words, your relying on a secondary interpretative source, im relying on the actual words as they were recorded at the time.

*

The rest of your #95 and #96 posts are essentially the same as what I have already posted so I fail to see any substantial differences between our stances.*
_
_
*What point are you trying to make?*


Im mindful of the starting position for this debate. The starting point, as I read it was that it would be possible for Germany to obtain a better result from Versailles, by outfighting the allies and through incredible amounts of exceptional luck and downright bias. From there im led to understand that it was surmised that hitler could be easily dispensed with and from there a more moderate, and hence successful post war, or interwar Germany would emerge.


I see numerous issues with this. The first is that the suppositions leading to a german victory were wildly optimistic. Based mostly on the surmise that the US does not enter the war, but then also that the germans could react or initiate new emphasise with no substantive counter reaction. Secondly, the supposition is based on the erroneous belief that German militarism was based solely, or mostly on the so-called unequal treaty of Versaille. That then relates to an even more outlandish claim that german guiltfor WWII can be traced soley and completely to one man, hitler.


None of these suppositions hold any weight. Which is what is motivating my responses. Anti-semitism for example is a symptom of the overall malaise afflicting Germany. This was not a product of the Nazis, or even the defeat suffered in 1918. Rabid anti-0semitism in Germany existed all the way back to middle ages. German militarism and innate conservatism existed well before the treaty had its effect. All of the suppositions relating to the hypothetical are based on a false premise. Versaille did not cause WWII. It was a factor, but far greater was the inherent nature of German society and values that existed well before the treaty and remained with the added incentive of pain after the treaty


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## mikewint (Feb 2, 2017)

29 September 1918 the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor, Count Georg von Hertling at Imperial Army Headquarters in Spa of occupied Belgium, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless.

On 3 October, the liberal Prince Maximilian of Baden was appointed Chancellor of Germany, replacing Georg von Hertling in order to negotiate an armistice.

5 October 1918, the German government sent a message to President Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his and the earlier declared "Fourteen Points".

23 October 1918 Wilson’s second note arrives in Berlin in which he sets a precondition for negotiations, the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and the Kaiser's abdication

Night of 29 to 30 October 1918 in the naval port of Wilhelmshaven, the sailors revolt begins and spreads across Germany

In late October, Ludendorff, in a sudden change of mind, declared the conditions of the Allies unacceptable.

5 November 1918, the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce

6 November 1918 the latest note from Wilson was received in Berlin requiring the Kaiser’s abdication

7 November 1918 The German delegation headed by Matthias Erzberger crossed the front line in five cars

8 November 1918 after being escorted for ten hours across the devastated war zone of Northern France the German delegation arrives at a secret destination in the forest of Compiegne

9 November 1918 the Germans were handed the list of Allied demands and given 72 hours to agree.

9 November, Max von Baden handed over the office of Chancellor to Friedrich Ebert

9 November 1918 Friedrich Ebert issues a proclamation declaring Germany a republic

9 November 1918 Wilhelm's abdication was announced by Chancellor Prince Max von Baden

On Sunday 10 November, they were shown newspapers from Paris to inform them that the Kaiser had abdicated. That same day, Erzberger was instructed to sign by Ebert.

At 5:00 a.m. on 11 November, the Armistice was agreed upon, signatures were made between 5:12 am and 5:20 am, Paris time. The Armistice was scheduled come into effect at 11:00 a.m. Paris time, i.e.:"the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

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## parsifal (Feb 2, 2017)

_5 November 1918, the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce
_
This is the main point of contention, and no matter how many times it is repackaged it will always get the same answer out of me. it was on the 5th November that Britain and France, in a formal diplomatic note to the United States, made their position with respect to the 14 points and how they might apply to the entente. They were "accepted" subject to major qualification, centred around war guilt and reparations, that in turn required complete re-think of the armistice terms. The germans and americans should have been alive to the meaning of the Anglo-French diplomatic note, but they don't appear to have been on top of this at all. For the British, the concept of freedom of the seas was rejected entirely it ought to be noted, though we aren't disagreeing about that. .

In effect, and in the clearest of terms, the main powers of Britain and France made their positions very clear. they were not bound by the 14 points, for the situation on the western front, though they would accept them for other principals like the formation of the league and the rights to self determination. On the critical issues of reparations, war guilt and navigation there was no agreement.

The germans could have rejected this and fought on. they knew they could not. They placed false hope that britain and france would follow the 14 points in all respects, which was a promise never given. Therein lies the true courses of WWII. The germans lost WWI on the field of battle and were forced to accept terms that gave them no security. they didn't like it. What they really needed to avoid the unequal treaty was outright victory, something that was completely out of their grasp after Summer 1918, probably earlier.

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## swampyankee (Feb 2, 2017)

parsifal said:


> _5 November 1918, the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce
> _
> This is the main point of contention, and no matter how many times it is repackaged it will always get the same answer out of me. it was on the 5th November that Britain and France, in a formal diplomatic note to the United States, made their position with respect to the 14 points and how they might apply to the entente. They were "accepted" subject to major qualification, centred around war guilt and reparations, that in turn required complete re-think of the armistice terms. The germans and americans should have been alive to the meaning of the Anglo-French diplomatic note, but they don't appear to have been on top of this at all. For the British, the concept of freedom of the seas was rejected entirely it ought to be noted, though we aren't disagreeing about that. .
> 
> ...



I suspect that Wilson got played, pretty effectively, by both the French and British: they had been playing diplomatic tango for centuries, in one of the more interesting international analogies to a co-dependent relationship. "Too proud to fight" Wilson was also, I suspect, too proud to realize that his closest advisors were amateurs. Lord Grey, for example, had started his inadvertent preparation for foreign secretary as a secretary to the consul general of Egypt in 1884, and became under secretary to the foreign minister in 1892; after that he was in and out of the foreign ministry and the shadow cabinet.

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## parsifal (Feb 2, 2017)

I should also clarify that I obtained my diplomatic note material that accurately details the final allied response from a now defunct website called the WWi Document Archive

This reproduced primary source material from _Foreign Relations of the United States_, Washington, D.C., 1918, Supplement, I, 468-69.
A statement of the Allied Governments after the German Government had indicated its willingness to consider signing an Armistice based on President Wilson's 'Fourteen Points'. You can only now access this information either third hand or by travelling to a major library in the US (i think the library of congress)

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## cherry blossom (Feb 2, 2017)

A fascinating discussion which cannot be easily summarised in a single paragraph.

The nature of the Central Powers victory clearly will have effects on the subsequent development of German aviation. However, I disagree with Ascent's proposal that having a neutral Britain will lead to a victory for Germany in WW1. It seems to me that Russia would not have mobilized had Britain not given Russia assurances of support (Nicholson via the French Ambassador to Britain, Cambon) and that Serbia would have either accepted the Austrian Ultimatum or suffered defeat in a soon to be forgotten Austro-Serbian War of 1914.

If we want something like WW1 but with a Central Powers victory, we might try having Austria perform better in 1914 and early 1915. Their best hope would be having someone less idiotic than Conrad in charge of their Army but, unfortunately, Conrad was one of the prime Austrian advocates of war, so we need to step carefully.

If Russia is retreating from Galicia by the middle of March 1915, we probably won't see an Italian entry into the war. If Italy remains neutral, there are bigger holes in the blockade against Germany and Germany cares more about American opinion to try to lever the holes open further. We also may see Austria able to hold any 1916 Russian offensive without a serious collapse, which will probably keep Romania neutral. 

With better prospects late in 1916, it is just possible that Germany might be cautious about raising another enemy by using submarines. Of course, there are many other possibilities. For example, perhaps Germany had invented the tank and was both doing better in the war and needed the steel used for submarines to build more tanks. What is crucial is that American intervention is avoided.

As several posters have noted, the German Army was heavily defeated over the Hundred Days Campaign with the British Army, including Canadians, Australians, Indians, New Zealanders and South Africans, playing the most important role and taking 188,700 prisoners as against 196,070 by the French, American and Belgian armies put together.

However, that will not happen if America has not joined the war because there is nothing to stop Germany standing on the defensive in 1918 if Russia has collapsed. The collapse of Russia breaks the blockade, which in any case will not be so strict whilst America is neutral, and Germany can expect to be stronger in 1919 than 1918. Without a German Offensive in 1918, the German Army will have the reserves to hold their lines.

Unfortunately, we now come to a fork in the road. Will Russia collapse into Revolution or will Britain, France and Russia jointly make peace over 1916-7?

If Russia collapses, one force on German aviation after a victory will be the need to support operations in what was the Russian Empire. Pushed to its extreme, this predicts that the ideal aircraft is something like the Hs 123.

The other force after a war with a neutral America might be to develop aircraft that could fly from German territory to America. Long range aircraft might also be attractive if the British Empire is the most likely opponent.

Finally, will the High Seas Fleet be building its carriers during the Twenties and what aircraft will they carry? Will the Army and Navy maintain separate air forces?


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## swampyankee (Feb 2, 2017)

cherry blossom said:


> A fascinating discussion which cannot be easily summarised in a single paragraph.
> 
> The nature of the Central Powers victory clearly will have effects on the subsequent development of German aviation. However, I disagree with Ascent's proposal that having a neutral Britain will lead to a victory for Germany in WW1. It seems to me that Russia would not have mobilized had Britain not given Russia assurances of support (Nicholson via the French Ambassador to Britain, Cambon) and that Serbia would have either accepted the Austrian Ultimatum or suffered defeat in a soon to be forgotten Austro-Serbian War of 1914.
> 
> ...



It seems that you're almost proposing a WW1 that leaves the Central Powers unimpeded by any enemies, as Russia only entered the war because of Austria-Hungary's attack on Serbia. Since Russia would not be involved, there would be no justification for Germany to attack France, and even less to invade Belgium (the act that most immediately brought Britain into the war), although a pretext could always be found.


What would German aviation development been like had there not been WW1? Tony Fokker probably wouldn't have relocated, for one thing


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## parsifal (Feb 2, 2017)

swampyankee said:


> I suspect that Wilson got played, pretty effectively, by both the French and British: they had been playing diplomatic tango for centuries, in one of the more interesting international analogies to a co-dependent relationship. "Too proud to fight" Wilson was also, I suspect, too proud to realize that his closest advisors were amateurs. Lord Grey, for example, had started his inadvertent preparation for foreign secretary as a secretary to the consul general of Egypt in 1884, and became under secretary to the foreign minister in 1892; after that he was in and out of the foreign ministry and the shadow cabinet.



I don't the answer to that for certain, but my opinion is that the 14 points were a very real attempt at achieving real change in the European political scene so as to improve the world security situation. The pre-war situation was punctuated with secret alliances, mistrust, oppression of minorities little or no respect for the rule of law and a disregard for human rights. Wilson had witnessed that and was rightly appalled.

Wilson was against the germans and saw their actions as the most bellicose of the European powers, He was particularly concerned about the loss of freedom on the high seas, and rightly or wrongly, blamed Germany the most for that loss of innocence.

Certainly the US administration was less experienced than the british, or even the French in the intrigues of diplomacy.

Its a matter of opinion, I cant say ther is any strong supporting evidence, but my notion of german diplomacy is that it was less well developed to that practiced by Britain and France. happy to be corrected on this one


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## swampyankee (Feb 3, 2017)

parsifal said:


> I don't the answer to that for certain, but my opinion is that the 14 points were a very real attempt at achieving real change in the European political scene so as to improve the world security situation. The pre-war situation was punctuated with secret alliances, mistrust, oppression of minorities little or no respect for the rule of law and a disregard for human rights. Wilson had witnessed that and was rightly appalled.
> 
> Wilson was against the germans and saw their actions as the most bellicose of the European powers, He was particularly concerned about the loss of freedom on the high seas, and rightly or wrongly, blamed Germany the most for that loss of innocence.
> 
> ...



Reading history, it sometimes seemed surprising that the Germans would, during the Great War, assume that other countries would react in ways beneficial to Germany: Britain would stand aside over Belgium, the US would acquiesce to Germany's U-boat campaign, or embargo Britain and France, or Mexico would positively leap for a military alliance against the US.


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## mikewint (Feb 3, 2017)

Michael, Once again I find that you and I are in agreement 95%. Going back to your post #101. You quote my previous post and then say essentially the exact same thing. My post was not as complete and I did leave out the contentious articles 231 and 232 a can of worms if there ever was one.
I would also disagree with you about the German ability to win the war. IMHO the Germans had the potential to win and almost did so. The Schlieffin Plan was workable but for the time period had too many assumptions. In my initial post in this thread #15 I set out four changes in German policy that, again, IMHO would have lead to the Germans winning the war. Nothing is of course certain and the first casualty in any battle is your ORPLAN.
Antisemitism - I hope that you are not suggesting that this originated with the Germans either WWI or WWII. Starting in the three centuries (300–600 C.E.) pattern of institutionalized discrimination against Jews occurred: Jews were forbidden to marry Christians (399 C.E.), were prohibited from holding positions in government (439 C.E.) and were prevented from appearing as witnesses against Christians in court (531 C.E.). In addition certain bizarre fantasies about Jews arose in Northern Europe It was alleged that Jews had horns and tails and engaged in ritual murder of Christians. The latter allegation, referred to as “blood libel,” was devised by Thomas of Monmouth in 1150. In 1095, Pope Urban II made a general appeal to the Christians of Europe to take up the cross and sword and liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims. The Crusader army, which more closely resembled a mob, swept through Jewish communities looting, raping and massacring Jews as they went. During the middle of the 14th century, the Bubonic Plague spread throughout Europe. Fear, superstition and ignorance prompted the need to find someone to blame, and the Jews were a convenient scapegoat. In Germany and Austria it is estimated that 100,000 Jews were burned alive for this and other false accusations including using the blood of Christian boys to make Passover Matzoth and for desecrating sacramental wafers. Martin Luther, the founder of the 16th century Reformation and Protestantism, wrote a pamphlet in 1545 entitled *The Jews and Their Lies*, claiming that Jews thirsted for Christian blood and urging the slaying of the Jews. The Nazis reprinted it in 1935. Beginning in the 13th century, Jews were required to wear a distinctive symbol (a badge and/or a pointed hat) so that they could be immediately recognized and were required to live in ghettos, an action that was revisited by the Nazis in the 20th century. Since Jews were not allowed to own land and the Church did not allow Christians to loan money for profit, Jews had few alternatives but to become moneylenders. Once they became associated with the forbidden trade of usury a new set of stereotypes evolved around the Jews as money-hungry and greedy. As moneylenders, Jews were frequently useful to rulers who used their capital to build cathedrals and outfit armies. As long as the Jews benefited the ruler, either through finance or by serving as convenient scapegoats, they were tolerated. When it suited the ruler, they were expelled—from England in 1290, France in 1394, and Spain in 1492.
Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries. The first such incident to be labeled a pogrom is believed to be anti-Jewish rioting in Odessa in 1821.
The perpetrators of pogroms organized locally, sometimes with government and police encouragement. They raped and murdered their Jewish victims and looted their property. During the civil war that followed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Ukrainian nationalists, Polish officials, and Red Army soldiers all engaged in pogrom-like violence in western Belorussia (Belarus) and Poland's Galicia province (now West Ukraine), killing tens of thousands of Jews between 1918 and 1920.


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## soulezoo (Feb 3, 2017)

parsifal said:


> I don't the answer to that for certain, but my opinion is that the 14 points were a very real attempt at achieving real change in the European political scene so as to improve the world security situation. The pre-war situation was punctuated with secret alliances, mistrust, oppression of minorities little or no respect for the rule of law and a disregard for human rights. Wilson had witnessed that and was rightly appalled.
> 
> Wilson was against the germans and saw their actions as the most bellicose of the European powers, He was particularly concerned about the loss of freedom on the high seas, and rightly or wrongly, blamed Germany the most for that loss of innocence.
> 
> ...



With regard to diplomacy, experience doesn't necessarily translate to effectiveness. Hitler vs Chamberlain exhibit A.
That said, world diplomacy _in Wilson's cabinet_ was certainly not up to the European standards of the day. Because the US was still relatively young, that didn't mean it couldn't have great diplomats. One Ben Franklin also comes to mind. Also, ideology plays a part as well.

Great discussion by the way... thanks to all for it!


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## mikewint (Feb 3, 2017)

Articles 231 and 232
On 18 January 1919, the Paris Peace Conference began. The Treaty of Versailles formed only one part of the conference, and dealt solely with Germany. While 70 delegates from 26 nations participated in the negotiations representatives from Germany were barred from attending.

As Michael has already posted, the Americans, British, and French all differed on the issue of reparations. The Western Front had of course been fought in France and it had been heavily damaged in the fighting. In addition France's most industrialized region had been laid to waste during the German retreat. As a result Georges Clemenceau thought it appropriate that any just peace should require Germany to pay reparations for the damage they had caused and additionally those reparations would serve as a means to ensure that Germany could not again threaten France.

British Prime Minister David Lloyd George opposed harsh reparations in favor of a less crippling reparations settlement so that the German economy could remain a viable economic power and British trading partner. Initially Woodrow Wilson opposed these positions, and was adamant that there be no indemnity imposed upon Germany. However as the war progressed Wilson had hardened his position. Prior to the American entry into the war, Woodrow Wilson called for a "peace of reconciliation with Germany", what he dubbed a "peace without victory". Following the war, on 4 September 1919, Wilson commented that the treaty "seeks to punish one of the greatest wrongs ever done in history, the wrong which Germany sought to do to the world and to civilization, and there ought to be no weak purpose with regard to the application of the punishment. She attempted an intolerable thing, and she must be made to pay for the attempt."

In an attempt to reconcile these views American diplomats Norman Davis and John Foster Dulles began work on the wording of Article 231. Davis and Dulles managed to produce a compromise between the Anglo-French and American positions, wording Article 231 and 232 to reflect that Germany "should, *morally*, pay for all war costs, but, because it could not possibly afford this, would be asked only to pay for *civilian damages.”*

The 180 man German delegation had departed Berlin on 18 April 1919. Headed by Foreign Minister Count Ulrich von Brockdorff-Rantzau the delegation was anticipating that the peace talks would soon start and that they and the Allied Powers would *negotiate *a settlement. Before leaving Brockdorff-Rantzau had informed the Weimar National Assembly that Germany would have to pay reparations for the devastation caused by the war, but would not pay for actual war costs. On 5 May, Brockdorff-Rantzau was informed that there would be *no negotiations*. Once the German delegation received the conditions of peace they would have fifteen days to reply. Following the drafting of the treaty, on 7 May the German and Allied delegations met and the Treaty of Versailles was handed off to be translated and for a response to be issued. Following the meeting, the German delegation retired to translate the 80,000 word document. As soon as the delegation realized the terms of peace, they agreed that they could not accept it without revision. They then proceeded to send their Allied counterparts, message after message attacking each part of the treaty. On 18 June, Brockdorff-Rantzau declared that Article 231 would have Germany accept full responsibility for the war by force and that he preferred to reject the treaty than submit to what he called a "rotten peace".

On 16 June, the Allied Powers demanded that Germany unconditionally sign the treaty within seven days or face the resumption of hostilities. On 19 June, Chancellor Philipp Scheidemann resigned rather than sign the treaty and was followed by Brockdorff-Rantzau and other members of the government, leaving Germany without a cabinet or peace delegation. After being advised by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg that Germany was in no condition to resume the war, President Friedrich Ebert and the new Chancellor, Gustav Bauer, recommended that the Weimar National Assembly ratify the treaty. The Assembly did so by a large majority, and Clemenceau was informed nineteen minutes before the deadline expired. Germany unconditionally signed the peace treaty on 22 June.

A major contributor to Germanys rejection to Article 231 was that initially it had not been correctly translated. Rather than stating "... Germany accepts responsibility of Germany and her allies causing all the loss and damage ...", the German Government's edition read "Germany admits it, that Germany and her allies, as authors of the war, are responsible for all losses and damages ...". Germans felt that they had signed away Germany’s honor, and there was a prevailing belief of humiliation as the article was seen, overall, as an injustice.

The Allied delegation initially thought Article 231 to be a mundane addition to the treaty intended to limit German liability with regard to reparations, and were surprised at the vehemence of the German protests. Georges Clemenceau rebuffed Brockdorff-Rantzau's allegations.
Lloyd George commented that "the English public, like the French public, thinks the Germans must above all acknowledge their obligation to compensate us for all the consequences of their aggression.
Both United States diplomats believed that they had "devised a brilliant solution to the reparation dilemma"; appeasing both the British and French, as well as Allied public opinion.

In 1940, Dulles stated that he was surprised that the article "could plausibly be, and in fact was, considered to be a historical judgment of war guilt". For the rest of his life Dulles took it personally that the Treaty of Versailles failed in its intentions of creating a lasting peace and believed that the treaty was one of the causes of the Second World War. By 1954, as United States Secretary of State he commented that "*Efforts to bankrupt and humiliate a nation merely incite a people of vigor and of courage to break the bonds imposed upon them. ... Prohibitions thus incite the very acts that are prohibited.*"

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## Peter Gunn (Feb 6, 2017)

parsifal said:


> *SNIP*
> 
> All these aspects have weight, but really are not the root course for the rise of Nazism. They are peripheral factors at best. Nazism, or fascist tendencies are in my opinion innate to german society until german society was smashed and rebuilt from the ground up in 1945. in order for it to work in 1918, the allies had to be as ruthless and unforgiving as they were to be in 1945. Surrender, no terms, just surrender. Unconditionally.



^^^THIS.

I have often pondered what the political landscape of Germany in particular would have looked like if, in 1918-1919 the allies had continued on into Germany and gave the total knockout blow and demanded unconditional surrender.


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## GrauGeist (Feb 6, 2017)

Peter Gunn said:


> ^^^THIS.
> 
> I have often pondered what the political landscape of Germany in particular would have looked like if, in 1918-1919 the allies had continued on into Germany and gave the total knockout blow and demanded unconditional surrender.


*IF* the Allies had pushed into German proper and forced a surrender and *IF* the Allies had been more of a benevolent factor in post-war Germany, helping to stabilize the German economy, then there is a strong chance that the socialist movements among the population wouldn't have had a fertile landscape to take root.

I do honestly think that there would have been armed confrontations on down the road, as the Soviet Union would not have been affected by Germany one way or another, post-war and there was still going to be trouble in Italy, Spain and other areas that historically ran their course in the decades following the Great War.

However, I do feel that those hotspots wouldn't have had gasoline poured on them by Germany as did happen historically.


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## mikewint (Feb 6, 2017)

By November 1918, the German Army was beaten but by no means routed. The withdrawal through Belgium and out of France was still fairly orderly.
History tells us that newly revolutionary societies can be both militarily aggressive and successful - look at France from 1792 onward and Bolshevik Russia in 1919. Both were able to withstand powerful internal and external counter-revolutionary forces and I suspect that had the allies entered Germany, the newly republican Germans would have resisted fiercely.
Indeed, would not the Germans have in any case have seen a foreign army as an invader rather than a liberator? We know in 1944-45 there was fanatical resistance in both east and west by the Germans (much more so into 1945 in the east but look at the fight the allies had to secure Aachen and the Hurtigen Forest in late 1944).
So, let's imagine a lesser uprising with a more combative Imperial effort to put down the mutinies and disorder while at the same time continuing the war in the west.
November-December 1918 sees a patchwork of confused fighting within Germany as British, French and American forces advance slowly but steadily from the west encountering strong resistance in some areas but almost none in others.
Bavaria declares independence but soon fragments into internal conflict as does Austria and most of the regions of the former Hapsburg dominion.
The onset of winter further slows the allied advance but on December 11th 1918 the French reached the Rhine at Bonn, south of Cologne. Hastily-assembled German artillery barred the way to the east but the German Army was collapsing under internal tensions, food shortages and mass desertions.
By mid-January, reconnaissance showed German forces dissipating east of the Rhine. On January 15th, under an artillery barrage, French and British forces advanced across the Rhine bridges while American troops improvised a waterborne crossing near Oppenheim .
The French and British soon advanced east as the Germans collapsed in front of them. They found towns full of starving people desperate for food and fuel. On its knees Germany surrenders
The peace will be harsher in some accounts - more territorial losses, Germany likely will be partitioned into several smaller entities, maybe the leadership is put to court, the whole fleet will go, military restrictions will be much harder. Considering reparations, I can imagine that it will be somewhat lighter: everybody by then knows that Germany cannot afford much, and the US influence will have grown massively during the later months of the war.


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## delcyros (Apr 11, 2017)

While suggested otherwise, I hold the opinion that the Kaiserreich would continue, and even encourage to search for technological answers to their social problems. It´s too much to cover now but just from the maritime perspective:

-they would probably have continued the WÜRTTEMBERG, MACKENSEN´s, ERSATZ YORKs while decomissioning all PDN´s, followed soon by the NASSAU´s and HELGOLAND´s, at least.
-PRINZREGENT LUITPLOD would finally receive a four months refit to install the MAN 12,000 ihp marine DIESEL plant for the central shaft, which was standing idle waiting since 1917 for installation after passing the service acceptance trials. This would be a trial ship afterwards for Diesel propulsion.
-Another 12000hp Diesel for SACHSEN made by Germania was not fit for installation (it was junk)
-The next battleship design scheduled for laying down was L20eta alpha -ERSATZ KAISER FRIEDRICH III. Had it come to a Washington Naval agreement, it appears highly likely that the vessel buildt after this design would meet the same fate like TOSA, and BB49 class as well as the formidable G3 design.
- Firecontroll improvements across the board have to be reckoned with (including R.G. for directing AAA)
- during 1918, the IGN introduced a new underwater explosive: Schiesswolle 18. This would be still used during ww2 as S1 explosive. It´s an aluminized underwater explosive, considerably more powerful in underwater hammer effect (jet) than TNT and almost as strong as Torpex in this regard but less powerful in blast.

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