A Victorious Luftstreitkräfte-Imperial German Aviation Development After WW1

[mikewint]

[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.

 

[Elmas]

…….

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…

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[parsifal]

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.

 

[Shortround6]

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.

 

[GrauGeist]

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.

 

[Elmas]

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...

 

[swampyankee]

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.

 

[swampyankee]

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

 

[GrauGeist]

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.

 

[parsifal]

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

 

[swampyankee]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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."

 

[swampyankee]

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.

 

[tyrodtom]

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 "

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[Peter Gunn]

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.

 

[Elmas]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[swampyankee]

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.