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Discuss this article by @DaleCoz here
Rhineland and Saxony also become independent,Denmark gets its lost territories back and Poland gets everything it wants.I think the hardest aspect of this is managing to make that leap from 'German militias fighting Polish militias' to 'the hardliners make a last bid for conquest in a country that's really not in a position to keep fighting', but if you did manage to square that circle through a mixture of pig-headedness, incompetence and just plain stupidity, yeah a relatively quick war which sees the Germans utterly defeated and harsher conditions imposed seems the most reasonable outcome. Especially when you remember that the allies are already occupying the Rhineland.
The difficulty I can see with the rest of the outcomes postulated is that I'm not entirely certain there's going to be a Germany left after this. There were already calls from Paris to dismantle the country at Versailles- something that both London and Washington were against (not least because of the difficulty of imposing it) but in a circumstance where the apparent situation is 'we beat them, we tried to sort out a peace treaty and despite everything they still just want to start wars again', that calculus may well change.
There were already divisions during the war between the Prussians and the other Germans in the German army, and I can easily see this being spun as 'Prussia lost and just wanted to drag everyone else down with them' in both a significant amount of popular sentiment and allied propaganda. Bavaria probably declares independence about the point when the French have reached Stuttgart. The Saar is getting annexed to France outright. Baden and Wurttemberg likely 'declare independence' once the French military move in (they may not survive that long of course). Those vague plans to annex land to Belgium and the Netherlands probably get brought out. There'll probably be talk of resurrecting Hanover, though nothing may come of it.
Oh and whatever's left of Germany- even if it's just the north- absolutely will see the state of Prussia utterly dismembered.
Same here. Can't remember if it was this one or a similar one on @ChrisNuttall 's Changing the Times, but I remember it being titled something like "World War II in 1919" which is a striking way to put it.Very good essay that I vaguely remember reading many moons ago.
Same here. Can't remember if it was this one or a similar one on @ChrisNuttall 's Changing the Times, but I remember it being titled something like "World War II in 1919" which is a striking way to put it.
I didn't think you wrote it, but you did host essays by other people didn't you - like that bloke in Australia who seemed convinced that Indonesia was about to invade any day now?That one, I think. I wrote a WW2 in 1930 timeline, but that was different.
Chris
It's an interesting scenario, like all of the works by @DaleCoz, but I find this one unrealistic. Had Germany refused the Treaty, there would've been no resumption of the war because the Entente by the Summer of 1919 were in no position to resume fighting.
The French Army and the First World War by Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Pages 375:
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World by Margaret MacMillan largely concurs with such analysis. From Page 159:
And the Allied forces were shrinking were shrinking. In November 1918, there were 198 Allied Divisions; by June 1919, only 39 remained. And could they be relied upon? There was little enthusiasm for renewed fighting. Allied demobilization had been hastened by protests, occasionally outright mutiny. On the home fronts, there was a longing for peace, and lower taxes. The French were particularly insistent on the need to make peace while the Allies could still dictate terms.Further on, same page:
While his pessimism was premature, it is true by the spring of 1919 Allied commanders were increasingly doubtful about their ability to successfully wage war on Germany. The German Army had been defeated on the battlefield, but its command structure, along with hundreds of thousands of trained men, had survived. There were 75 Million Germans and only 40 million French, as Foch kept repeating. And the German people, Allied observers noticed, were opposed to signing a harsh peace.Previously on Page 158:
Among the Allied leaders only General Pershing, the top American military commander, thought the Allies should press on, beyond the Rhine if necessary. The French did not want anymore of their men to die. Their chief general, Marshal Foch, who was also the supreme Allied commander, warned that they ran the risk of stiff resistance and heavy losses. The British wanted to make peace before the Americans became too strong. And Smuts spoke for many in Europe when he warned gloomily that "the grim spectre of Bolshevist anarchy was stalking the front."
Overall, the Entente were just as exhausted as the Germans and by the timeframe in question lacked the material edge that forced the Germans to the peace table six months earlier. It was also not coming back, as Turkey overturning its own treaty with force Post-War showed in the Chanak Crisis. Still, that does leave the question of what does happen then to formally end the war? I think it's likely everyone returns to the peace table and something gets hashed out on the basis of the Germany May 1919 counter-offer, which was privately well received by the Entente officials; John Keynes called it the best treaty he had ever seen.
I didn't think you wrote it, but you did host essays by other people didn't you - like that bloke in Australia who seemed convinced that Indonesia was about to invade any day now?
Rhineland and Saxony also become independent,Denmark gets its lost territories back and Poland gets everything it wants.
Not sure what happens to the rest of Germany though.
It's an interesting scenario, like all of the works by @DaleCoz, but I find this one unrealistic. Had Germany refused the Treaty, there would've been no resumption of the war because the Entente by the Summer of 1919 were in no position to resume fighting.
The French Army and the First World War by Elizabeth Greenhalgh, Pages 375:
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World by Margaret MacMillan largely concurs with such analysis. From Page 159:
And the Allied forces were shrinking were shrinking. In November 1918, there were 198 Allied Divisions; by June 1919, only 39 remained. And could they be relied upon? There was little enthusiasm for renewed fighting. Allied demobilization had been hastened by protests, occasionally outright mutiny. On the home fronts, there was a longing for peace, and lower taxes. The French were particularly insistent on the need to make peace while the Allies could still dictate terms.Further on, same page:
While his pessimism was premature, it is true by the spring of 1919 Allied commanders were increasingly doubtful about their ability to successfully wage war on Germany. The German Army had been defeated on the battlefield, but its command structure, along with hundreds of thousands of trained men, had survived. There were 75 Million Germans and only 40 million French, as Foch kept repeating. And the German people, Allied observers noticed, were opposed to signing a harsh peace.Previously on Page 158:
Among the Allied leaders only General Pershing, the top American military commander, thought the Allies should press on, beyond the Rhine if necessary. The French did not want anymore of their men to die. Their chief general, Marshal Foch, who was also the supreme Allied commander, warned that they ran the risk of stiff resistance and heavy losses. The British wanted to make peace before the Americans became too strong. And Smuts spoke for many in Europe when he warned gloomily that "the grim spectre of Bolshevist anarchy was stalking the front."
Overall, the Entente were just as exhausted as the Germans and by the timeframe in question lacked the material edge that forced the Germans to the peace table six months earlier. It was also not coming back, as Turkey overturning its own treaty with force Post-War showed in the Chanak Crisis. Still, that does leave the question of what does happen then to formally end the war? I think it's likely everyone returns to the peace table and something gets hashed out on the basis of the Germany May 1919 counter-offer, which was privately well received by the Entente officials; John Keynes called it the best treaty he had ever seen.
The blockade has barely been lifted and can be reimposed again. The food situation is dire, the country at war with itself. Remember the food? One of the most contributing factors to that little thing, the revolution?
This is so much tosh and it gets trotted every so often with utter confidence, usually by you.
The Kaiserliche Marine is gone, interned or scuttled. Plenty of the heavy guns and machine guns and planes and trucks gone by the armistice, though Erzberger saved a hell of a lot, for all the good it did him when his assassins came. The blockade has barely been lifted and can be reimposed again.The food situation is dire, the country at war with itself. Remember the food? One of the most contributing factors to that little thing, the revolution? that and that other factor, wanting to commit national suicide through war?
The only Entente country where the situation is remotely equivalent is Italy. The Americans are still partly there. The demobilised troops can be be mobilised again. Yes, the people won't like it but it's the equivalent of the 1917 strikes: they're not against all forms of war, just those that seem senseless to them, so no to going fighting far abroad against Russian Bolsheviks when many sympathise with or are Communists, yes to war with Germany which resumes the war.
Anyway, resume the war where? with what allies left? with what plans? Any brilliant invasion of Belgium this time around? France has recovered its industrial regions, even though they're not fully back online yet, thanks to the campaign of destruction by the retreating Germans, but guess what? the Rhineland is occupied since the days of the armistice. It's German territory that's under occupation, the most productive parts, the one that kept the Reich from keeling over for nearly four years. Grain gone, coal gone, steel gone, weapons gone no civilian population available to enslave or commit war crimes against the best to loot the place. No lines of defence readied. Hello, flat, flat Northern German plain! Against armies that have now been able to hammer together a working united command and working tactics, operations and strategy against the Germans that have worked and now the Germans without any heavy material left.
Enough with the apologism for those German übermenschen who'd spring from the ground and be the only ones that do. Where were they in 1923? in 1919 in the West, for that matter? You'd have thought the treaty as it was, so intolerable as it was described by all who bemoaned having to sign it, would trigger that giant uprising against perfidious Western powers? What's that? No? Just okay with gunning down communists and fighting in the East? Fancy that.
Avner Offer's The First World War, an Agrarian Interpretation, for example, found that even with the Spanish Flu raging, the crude death rate merely reverted to the levels prevailing in the years 1901-1905. This makes sense, given we know food rations actually were on the increase at this time:
In which case, Avner Offer's analysis is, to put it mildly, flawed.
Food rations were on the increase, from 800 calories per day to 1000 calories per day. Which translates as "not starving quite so fast".
The crude death rate was by no means that prevailing in 1901-1905. There was around 1 million deaths attributable to food shortage in 1919.
Given the Allies warned they would invade across the Rhine within 24 hours if the Germans did not sign and the Germans believed them I think that's a citation in itself that the German situation wasn't considered rosy by either side.
I usually don't like to reply to comments not directly addressed to me, but I do think this point deserves response.
In the Fall of 1941, Hitler, Goebbels and co spent much time publicly exclaiming the fall of the USSR was nigh and discussing the implications of what that coming victory would entail; it ended in all of them dead and the Red Army in Berlin. About a generation later, Nikita Khrushchev exclaimed before the United Nations that the verdict of history was that the Soviet Union would bury the West; the end result of that was the USSR is gone and until recently modern Russians were eating McDonalds. All this to say that that diplomatic threats should not be taken as a statement of intent, nor especially as one of means. Indeed, in international relations we have the existence of entire concepts based on this understanding, from saber rattling to "Mad Man" theory.
In particular, I think in this case you're leaning far too closely on the German interpretation while ignoring the massive amount of evidence modern historians have unearthed in considering the Entente side, which was certainly not rosy either. In private, we have the documentation to prove they were very scared the Germans would refuse the Treaty, with no less than Marshall Foch himself casting doubt on the ability of his formations to force the Germans under. As I said before, Foch famously intoned the Treaty was merely an armistice for 20 years; clearly, he was under no allusions about it crippling Germany, possibly the same as the Germans themselves realized, but it also begs the question of why then didn't the Allies utilize the immense advantage being suggested here to eliminate the possibility of German recovery. Why didn't the French seek to have their victory parade in Berlin instead of Paris? Clearly, the fact they didn't would suggest there was very valid reasons as to why such was rejected which I think my sources are able to demonstrate in full detail.