Discussion/argument: If America hadn't entered WWI, Hitler & Nazis wouldn't and couldn't have taken power, invaded Europe & done the Holocaust

[raharris1973]

Here's a topic for discussion and debate -

I'll assert that if America hadn't become a belligerent in the Great War, Hitler and a genocidal Nazi regime wouldn't and couldn't have taken control over Germany, invaded most of Europe and implemented a partly successful genocide.

....more simply put - If America hadn't entered WWI, Hitler & Nazis wouldn't and couldn't have taken power, invaded Europe & done the Holocaust.

[consider this Part 2 of my 'Blame America first' pair]

After all American intervention in the war and Wilson's rhetoric about 'peace without victory' amplified themes, aspirations, and legitimacy of self-determination globally, and encouraged false hopes of leniency among the German people and officials. Without this rhetoric German self-deception about the meaning of surrender or armistice on Allied terms would have been harder and the terms of Versailles less surprising.

While it is debatable whether it was decisive in the final outcome of forcing Germany to armistice on terms Allied advantage/German abject disadvantage, American belligerency certainly boosted the resources and confidence of the Entente powers and helped remove thoughts of having to consider compromises from Allied leaders' minds. Without America providing unlimited supplies of men, horses, supplies, and unsecured loans from 1917, the Allies might have compromised, or, like General Haig proposed, accepted less severe armistice terms not forcing the occupation of the Rhineland & Rhine bridgeheads & leaving the retreated German Army with more weapons, leaving it all less helpless & with more autonomy autonomy to shape its eastern borders with the Poles and Czechs and Austria.

American belligerency in the war, and the fact of the Americans being 'over there' post-war for the peace conference and a (limited duration) occupation of the Rhineland allowed the United States to join Britain in (supposedly) credibly promising France a 25-year treaty of Anglo-Franco-American alliance in exchange for France dropping its preference to either annex the Rhineland or prop up a separatist Rhineland puppet state as a buffer with Germany. If only the British were in position to press the French and promise the carrot of alliance while America was a military nullity in Europe, France might have done as much as it physically could in the Rhineland, possibly a multi-decade protectorate. The Americans and British both reneged on the alliance promise to France.

American belligerency in the war, and America's vast resource contribution, probably gave both the major Entente/Allied powers, and the smaller and newer nations benefitting from the collapse of the Central Powers and the Russian Empire, an exaggerated sense of the strength and permanence of the post-Armistice and Versailles order as written and mapped out. Without that American influence, Britain and France might have accomodated Italian or Russian aspirations more. Smaller, newer nations might have anticipated futures with a resurgent Russia and Germany and been more selective about how many and which neighbors to have territorial disputes with.

US belligerency allowed a further explosion of war debt from Europe to America, via unsecured loans. Without unsecured loans, the Allies couldn't have gone much deeper into debt than they'd gotten by early 1917, with loans backed by collateral. The Allies would have had to source more materiel internally, tax more or requisition more assets, sell more foreign collateral, tighten their belts more, reduce peripheral efforts to keep up the war effort. They could consequently win or lose or draw, but they'd sure try to win and hadn't been cut to the bone or had a turnip winter yet (at least west of Russia). As it was, while accumulated date through early 1917 was quite serious, combined with the additional debts from the remainder of the war, they haunted economies for decades and encouraged the Depression which encouraged the rise of Nazism.

Without unsecured loans being extended from spring 1917, and hopeful American rhetoric (and optimism about US participation) indeed the Russian Provisional Government and its leading parties might not have been able to delude themselves into thinking a continuation of the war was even possible, making it more likely they would quit the war with Germany before the establishment of a one-party Bolshevik state, and all the knock-on consequences of that, which ended up being favorable for Red Scares and European Fascism and Nazism.

In short, without American intervention in WWI, the alternative futures you get, in descending order of probability, are:

1. A 1919 Entente victory that is nearly a peace of equals, with an armistice on less harsh terms. Germany loses all its colonies, all the Central Powers Empires fall apart, Russia had quit the war in fall 1917 and given up Poland and Lithuania doing it, the Poles and Lithuanians now de-puppetize themselves and the Czechs set up their own state, but the Germans can set up eastern borders incorporating the Polish corridor, Sudetenland and German Austria. In the west, they have had to fall back from France, including Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, and the Saar, but no further. They've had to party disarm heavy weapons and fortifications and agree to reparations in order to get the blockade lifted, and exiled the Kaiser and liberalized the constitution but not overthrown the monarchy.

Later day Germany, Britain, and France are all more concerned with rebuilding than with European territorial gain or colonies. Germany resents its fairly unique lack of colonies, but sublimates it by paying lip service to colonial independence movements. Germany does not have any border claims to make on a self-determination basis.. And nostalgia for lost land in France and Denmark is not enough to inspire war.

2. A 1919 Entente victory where the armistice terms match those of OTL 1918, and the Entente follows a French-driven policy maintaining a seperate Rhhineland protectorate and supporting a cordon of states east of Germany. Germany is simply bludgeoned and blockaded into accepting Allied armistice terms that enable imposition of such a harsh peace, because of exhaustion and internal unrest. Although Britain sees the French-directed order as less than ideal, they tolerate it because they know France is their only available partner. In the 4 decades ahead, France and its eastern allies, sometimes supported by Italy, reliably keep Germany in line.

3. A genuine peace of equals - either a precise, or near-precise reversion to status quo ante-bellum, or a finely equitable horse trade of equally valuable territories and assets. Boths sides step out of the war feeling it was quite futile., especially in the first instance.

4. German victory - Germany imposes territorial cessions on Belgium, France, and Italy, possibly restores some colonies, and forces Britain to suspend the war and blockade. Germany's preoccupation going forward is protecting its dominat position in Europe and buffer states, not new expansion. It never gets motivated to mass murder its own citizens/subjects or those of its puppets/clients.

---
The counter-argument I suppose would be that Hitler and the Nazis, or an equally murderous leader/party could come to lead Germany to conquest and genocide even under somewhat altered circumstances. Perhaps in scenario #4, victorious Wilhelmine Germany could have evolved into something as genocidal as the Nazis. Perhaps in scenarios 1-3, a different power, maybe a Soviet Union or Russian dictatorial regime , would have committed a Europe wide 'Red Alert conquest or a genocidal pogrom. Or to turn away from usual suspects, maybe Anglo-French imperialists would atomically massacre colonial subjects rather than let them win independence. Or in some of the more evenly matched endings to the Great War, perhaps a cycle of endless rematches and intermitted Cold War in between leads to European and possibly global immolation from multi-sided atomic warfare at close quarters developing in its midst. But I feel like I am working kind of hard to top OTL here.

See attached poll, respond to it. Articulate on the thoughts behind your vote in this thread!

Did Woodrow Wilson and his Uncle Sam give the world the 'gift' of the torchlight Nuremburg rallies, Anschluss, WWII, the Holocaust, and Generalplan Ost, not to mention the Cold War aftertaste, or could Germany and the rest of the world done as bad all by itself? Was there more than one way to skin this cat? What thinks you?

 

[David Flin]

I'll assert that if America hadn't become a belligerent in the Great War, Hitler and a genocidal Nazi regime wouldn't and couldn't have taken control over Germany, invaded most of Europe and implemented a partly successful genocide.

....more simply put - If America hadn't entered WWI, Hitler & Nazis wouldn't and couldn't have taken power, invaded Europe & done the Holocaust.

That rather presupposes that Germany wasn't moving in that direction at the start of the war and before US involvement. That needs to be considered against the thesis that, in early 1915, Germany was well along the route of becoming the monster that arose.

Evidence for this thesis:

1. War crimes and casual murder in Belgium. I'm aware that the Entente, Britain in particular, made use of actions as propaganda, but the fact remains that it was German policy to carry out reprisal executions against Belgian civilians for, well, pretty much anything they felt like. A guide gets lost? Shoot 10 civilians. Some fires a gun nearby (even if it turns out to be other Germans executing a civilian or two)? Shoot civilians. The atrocities in Belgium were real and can't be simply be brushed aside as one of those things. This was policy from on high.

2. When you compare Entente lists of what soldiers they lost from being captured and German lists of troops they'd captured, one clear, unequivocal fact stands out. Coloured soldiers. Specifically, the discrepancy here. Put simply, coloured soldiers fighting for the Entente (Indian, Senegalese, Algerian, Jamaican, etc) were shot out of hand. This started from the time the first non-white troops arrived on the front, and it continued right through until 11am, 11 November 1918.

It was remarked by the Black soldiers of the AEF that being captured was a death sentence. That, along with the good treatment those that fought with the French Army (because Pershing didn't want them), made them determined (if not necessarily expert - that came with experience) fighters.

3. Enslavement. Able-bodied men of fighting age in the occupied zones of Belgium and northern France were taken and sent to Germany as slave labour. Few of them ever returned.

4. Anti-Semitism. German soldiers, according to History on the Net, hanged an estimated 35,000 Jews, along with Poles and "sub-human" Slavs on the Eastern Front.

“The excesses were arranged and planned at the highest level. They included hostage-taking and hostage-shootings, massed deportation, incarceration, and forced labour and mass executions… rape, looting, arbitrary killings and the destruction of houses.”

***

The thesis here would be that while US involvement and actions may have helped shaped the form that Hitler and the Nazis took, Germany was already well on the route to going somewhere like that.

 

[raharris1973]

Well thanks @David Flin - that adds a new dimension- an argument that Kaiserreich was becoming essentially Nazi. I guess that would regard separating the two regimes as drastically different in kind as a different version of the ‘clean Wehrmacht’ myth, and the German record in WWI was anything but clean.

A lot of what you mentioned is undeniable, although I don’t have verification for each and every line item.

But setting this aside, surely you don’t think American belligerency was vital to British/Allied victory over Germany?

Blockade and superior imperial resources were doing the Kaiserreich in for sure, right? Britain’s victory did not rest on the backs of ill prepared, disorganized mess of the AEF who refused to learn from others and pigheadedly insisted on repeating the early war mistakes of others, right?

I think I read you argue once the Germans were doomed by blockade even if they had somehow toppled France in 1914 or 1915. Since they had not achieved even that by 1917, it would be inconsistent to imagine Germany still having a shot at winning by then, USA in the war, or not.

How do you see the war end, the peace settled, and the peace enforced without American belligerency?

 

[David Flin]

But setting this aside, surely you don’t think American belligerency was vital to British/Allied victory over Germany?

That's a separate question entirely.

The food situation in Germany after the Turnip Winter was dire. The average food for the civilian population of Germany in 1918 was around 800 calories, and this was non-equitably distributed. That meant, quite simply, that the country was starving. They'd looted all there was to loot in northern France and Belgium; they'd acquired productive land in the East, for sure, but the distribution network - never particularly great to start with (compare and contrast how the British dealt with the food shortage issue with how Germany did; one gets the impression that the German civil servants involved in dealing with food distribution on the home front simply didn't want to do the job and longed to be moving tokens on a map of the Western Front. I digress).

How would the war develop in the absence of American belligerency?

Making the assumption that America is not going to change its fiscal support of the Entente, and that it continues as it had been, watching as the European powers churn up the earth with blood and explosives while selling to the Entente and making money hand over fist, then I see it playing out thus:

1. Does Germany launch its 1918 Spring Offensive? My feeling is that it will. It is well aware that it has to do something, as it is losing the war of attrition and it's facing starvation. It can't just sit and wait. It has to win, and win soon (the concept of admitting defeat and going home is one that would never occur to anyone there). That means an offence. The direction and timing might be different, but essentially that Spring Offensive was the last throw of the dice.

Let's assume that it plays out much as it does OTL. I can't see any great reason to change anything much, and the output with what are essentially the same inputs is likely to be pretty similar.

2. Then what? The Entente offensive is still going to go ahead, and here the details are going to be different. The American forces may have been underprepared, but there were a lot of them coming along the pipeline, and as they were gaining experience (especially the 93rd Division, which learned very quickly. I digress).

My suspicion - and other outcomes are possible - is that without the weight of the Americans being involved, two connected things will happen. Firstly, the 100 days won't be quite as dramatic as it was in OTL. The German Army is still going to get a kicking; the British Army in particular had managed to get combined arms - tanks and artillery and aircraft working to support a breakthrough to get exploited by infantry - down to something of an art form. But the sheer bulk of exploitation just isn't there, so the phases will run out of steam a little earlier, and tertiary objectives probably not achieved.

That, in turn, will enable the German High Command to convince themselves that they just need to find that One Simple Trick that the Entente hates which will turn things around, and there's no Armistice in November, and things drag on.

However, the situation on the German Home Front is desperate. The German Army is falling apart, and things are not looking good.

Still, no Armistice, with Germany looking for a way to wriggle out from under.

3. Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans fall on schedule. That's going to free up a lot of Entente soldiers.

4. Seeing that, German High Command comes up with a plan of Great Cunning. They'll launch another Spring attack in 1919 before the Entente soldiers from Salonika and Italy and Arabia and elsewhere reach the Western Front in numbers. This will go about as well as one would expect, and in future years, teenagers and those of Germano military phillic tendencies will swear on a stack of Mein Kampfs that it would have worked, if only the (fill in the blank) grouping hadn't let them done, because the German Army was obviously the best, by far. Another futile attack that destroys the cream of the German Army (yet again), and then another push from the Entente, and it's all over, Red Rover.

5. The big question is what gives out first: the German military capacity to resist in any meaningful way, or disgruntlement on the Home Front leading to riots and revolution. My view? Toss a coin.

 

[Charles EP M.]

The other big argument against this is that the Nazis didn't actually gain power in Germany until almost fifteen years after the war ended; while America did help shape the post-war settlement, fifteen years means there's a lot of other countries (and Germans themselves) having an influence and making choices. In the end, what got them in at the time & place they managed it was Papen and Hindenburg playing political games and thinking Hitler was a controllable man (ooops) which is a specific decision by German politicians.

(The invocation of stabbed-in-the-back is also unrelated to America and that was a key argument of the German right.)

 

[Ana_Luciana]

I think you can make the argument that Germany was moving in an increasingly totalitarian direction whilst also acknowledging that the Nazis were a unique production of their time and place. A big difference between the Nazi Regime and the German Empire was Prussian Junkers' domination of the Kaiserreich. Hitler and his cronies defined themselves as being opposed to the aristocracy. Remember that the Nazis promoted the idea of the volksgemeinschaft the idea that Germans regardless of class were equal and should be able to achieve high office (so long as they were of 'sound breeding'). In a WW1 without American intervention, where the German Empire's governmental system comes through intact, I don't see the Junkers allowing the Nazis to come to power. I don't think it's impossible for a totalitarian, antisemitic, irredentist German regime to emerge after WW1 without American intervention. But I don't believe the Nazi Party would have been controlling it.

 

[David Flin]

In a WW1 without American intervention, where the German Empire's governmental system comes through intact, I don't see the Junkers allowing the Nazis to come to power. I don't think it's impossible for a totalitarian, antisemitic, irredentist German regime to emerge after WW1 without American intervention. But I don't believe the Nazi Party would have been controlling it.

It's perfectly true that a totalitarian, antisemitic, irredentist German regime with a penchant for genocide (Herero, etc) could arise that might not be controlled by the Nazi Party.

Given the trajectory, I'm not sure that the detail of whether it was Prussian Junkers or a Hitler-esque opposition to the aristocracy would have made a great deal of difference to the Poles and the Jews and the Slavs and the other untermensch both were happy to murder in large numbers.

 

[Ana_Luciana]

It's perfectly true that a totalitarian, antisemitic, irredentist German regime with a penchant for genocide (Herero, etc) could arise that might not be controlled by the Nazi Party.

Given the trajectory, I'm not sure that the detail of whether it was Prussian Junkers or a Hitler-esque opposition to the aristocracy would have made a great deal of difference to the Poles and the Jews and the Slavs and the other untermensch both were happy to murder in large numbers.

On that we agree. Hitler and his gang of thugs weren't "anti-aristocracy" it was moreso they thought white, "Aryan" Germans of all backgrounds should be able to get in on the business of being aristocrats.

 

[raharris1973]

1. Does Germany launch its 1918 Spring Offensive? My feeling is that it will. It is well aware that it has to do something, as it is losing the war of attrition and it's facing starvation. It can't just sit and wait. It has to win, and win soon (the concept of admitting defeat and going home is one that would never occur to anyone there). That means an offence. The direction and timing might be different, but essentially that Spring Offensive was the last throw of the dice.

Let's assume that it plays out much as it does OTL. I can't see any great reason to change anything much, and the output with what are essentially the same inputs is likely to be pretty similar.

In OTL the German spring offensives didn’t reach their final gasp until July or June.

Assume they’d run about as long, or a few weeks longer?

Without the Americans gradually joining the trenches with the promise of more to come, would the British or French need to delay, limit, or completely liquidate any peripheral campaigns like Salonica-Macedonia, interventions in Russia, loaned Anglo-French divisions to Italy, or the Palestine or Mesopotamia campaigns in order to concentrate their reserves to halt the Germans in the west by summertime?

Alternatively, or additionally, would the Allies augment their manpower in the absence of inflowing Americans by raising, training, and and equipping more colonial troops for 1918? I’m thinking Africans (and just maybe Indochinese) for the French lines, and Indian troops for the British?

Or could any desirable or needed manpower augmentations for first half 1918 be achieved by getting DLG to release men historically held back in Britain?

Of course a ‘no US participating and no US unsecured loaning’ scenario, for all the resource surplus it denies the Allies should, realistically, be paired with more restrained German submarine ROE, or an exempt transatlantic “lane” for US merchant ships, that should provide a partly offsetting resource bonus to the Allies.

Seeing that, German High Command comes up with a plan of Great Cunning. They'll launch another Spring attack in 1919 before the Entente soldiers from Salonika and Italy and Arabia and elsewhere reach the Western Front in numbers.

One thing about this. Sure the British and French troops engaged in the Balkans and Italy can, after the supposed on-time Austrian, Ottoman, Bulgarian collapses, retrograde back to the ports, embark, disembark in the French Riviera, and entrain to reinforce the western front, but can they also not keep marching, driving, and train riding through surrendered Austro-Hungarian territory, alongside the Italian, Serb, Greek, and Romanian troops they were working with to invade barely protected Germany from the southeast. Cross the border from Tyrol and they’re in Bavaria. From Bohemia, to Saxony and Silesia.

Post armistice, the Bavarians and Saxons may resent being left undefended while the Generalstab sent the Army haring off in spring 1919 one last ride on the western front like Butch & Sundance. They might end up more genuinely supportive of state separatism than the Rhenish.

 

[David Flin]

Alternatively, or additionally, would the Allies augment their manpower in the absence of inflowing Americans by raising, training, and and equipping more colonial troops for 1918? I’m thinking Africans (and just maybe Indochinese) for the French lines, and Indian troops for the British?

I'm not in a position to talk about French colonial troops, but the British did have a fair few Indian troops raised and more in the pipeline.

The entirety of the Indian Army in WWI was volunteer. Approaching 2 million in OTL, and with considerable untapped potential. The British weren't shy about making use of them. To be fair, only the Expeditionary Force A went to the Western Front; Forces B through G went to other fronts, mainly because they were easier to support from India.

Now, recruiting more would have had an impact on India. One of the reasons so many volunteered can be summed up in one word. Caste. Becoming a soldier meant entering the warrior caste, and for many, that was a big step up.

There was a second reason why Indian troops were less used on the Western Front than elsewhere, and that was because the Germans on the Western Front did not take Indians (or other non-whites) prisoner. The German High Command stated categorically:

"the threat to the supremacy of the ‘white race’ if Asian (and African) soldiers were trained in the handling of modern arms. .... They will lose all respect for the white man if they are allowed to participate as equals."

But, to answer your question, since the British were in the process of raising, training, and equipping more Indian troops for the conflict zones, I suspect that they were, indeed, prepared to augment their manpower in the absence of inflowing Americans by the use of such forces.

Of course, post-war, that could lead to all sorts of interesting butterflies. Indian Independence might take a different route than it did OTL, for a start.

 

[raharris1973]

But, to answer your question, since the British were in the process of raising, training, and equipping more Indian troops for the conflict zones, I suspect that they were, indeed, prepared to augment their manpower in the absence of inflowing Americans by the use of such forces.

Of course, post-war, that could lead to all sorts of interesting butterflies. Indian Independence might take a different route than it did OTL, for a start.

Very interesting.


Possibly leading to earlier demand for, and acquiescence in, Indian Home Rule or independence? Possibly while Japan is still free to be a menace in the Far East. I wonder how an imperial devolution/dissolution going on in the 30s/early 40s would effect British resistance to Japan or late wave of threats in Europe.

But, getting back to your bottom line outcome from this alternate ending Great War:

They'll launch another Spring attack in 1919… This will go about as well as one would expect … Another futile attack that destroys the cream of the German Army (yet again), and then another push from the Entente, and it's all over, Red Rover.

After the war, would the ATL Britain maintain a strong alignment with France for anti-German containment reasons, or would it indulge (like OTL’s Britain) in silly fears that French attempts to enforce peace treaty terms are too cruel and make France an over mighty threat to Britain and world peace, and the corresponding foolish belief that ambiguity about the permanence of Germany’ eastern borders is good for peace by making it flexible enough to appease German grievances?

 

[Roger II]

The other big argument against this is that the Nazis didn't actually gain power in Germany until almost fifteen years after the war ended; while America did help shape the post-war settlement, fifteen years means there's a lot of other countries (and Germans themselves) having an influence and making choices. In the end, what got them in at the time & place they managed it was Papen and Hindenburg playing political games and thinking Hitler was a controllable man (ooops) which is a specific decision by German politicians.

(The invocation of stabbed-in-the-back is also unrelated to America and that was a key argument of the German right.)

My entire knowledge of Weimar Germany is just reading Peter Gay but one thing he does point out is that from like '24 to 29 there actually was a trend line towards the Weimar Republic consolidating and building legitimacy, if there had been earlier crackdowns on the far right*, no or weaker Great Depression (keep the "Blame America" thing going and chuck it to Andrew Mellon being a much worse treasury secretary than art collector), a stable Popular Front-esque coalition**, or some combination of the above, the Weimar Republic could pretty easily have survived I think.

*Probably an insufficient PoD by itself, but "Hitler Slips on a Banana Peel during the Beer Hall Putsch" would be very funny.
**I forget who but someone had an article saying more or less that if you asked the average European in 1925 to guess what state would turn into an insane antisemitic and revanchist far-right dictatorship in the next ten years it would be France and not Germany.

 

[Roger II]

Come to think of it there's probably an interesting PoD out there where Tannenberg goes catastrophically wrong for the Germans and while that doesn't make the Russians not an omnishambles, it does make them enough of a drain on German manpower that German collapses earlier and harder. And takes out Hindenburg and Lundenorf's careers in the process.

 

[David Flin]

Possibly leading to earlier demand for, and acquiescence in, Indian Home Rule or independence? Possibly while Japan is still free to be a menace in the Far East. I wonder how an imperial devolution/dissolution going on in the 30s/early 40s would effect British resistance to Japan or late wave of threats in Europe.

That's far enough removed from the POD that it is contingent on so many factors as to be undeterminable in outcome. How Home Rule fares in Ireland might - or might not - affect whether it is tried in India. Indian attitudes would be changed by a different WWI experience, but how and what the outcome would be is beyond the scope of my powers of prediction.

After the war, would the ATL Britain maintain a strong alignment with France for anti-German containment reasons, or would it indulge (like OTL’s Britain) in silly fears that French attempts to enforce peace treaty terms are too cruel and make France an over mighty threat to Britain and world peace, and the corresponding foolish belief that ambiguity about the permanence of Germany’ eastern borders is good for peace by making it flexible enough to appease German grievances?

Again, that's going to be contingent on a huge number of factors. For example, it was clear that at the soldier level, by 1917, the Bavarians and the Saxons in particular hated the Prussians. During Trench Truces (a relatively common arrangement where details would vary according to sector, time, and participants), Die Sappe (the trench magazine of some Bavarian units) makes it fairly clear that because the Prussians didn't abide by terms of Trench truces, they were hated by units next to them in the line. To the extent that the Bavarians would warn the British or French when and where the Prussian would be launching a night trench raid so that the Prussians could be killed. "Kill the Prussians and then we can all go home" was a phrase much reported from Bavarian and Saxon troops in English memoirs.

I can quite believe that a war continuing into 1919 would increase these fracture lines*, and that Germany fragments (like Gaul) into three parts; Prussia, Bavaria, and north Germany. If that were to happen, then predicting how Britain and France would react is not easy.

How is America going to behave in a post-war situation in which it wasn't involved? Splendid isolation? Would it get involved in the Russian Revolution? There's just so many ways that this could play out.

Would an extra year, resulting in the self-evident and undeniable defeat of the German Army prevent the rise of Stab In The Back myths? Unlikely in my opinion, but depending on how it happened, not entirely out of the question.

***

In both these and other circumstances around the globe, what happens next is so contingent on how things developed and the little details that one can't say with any great confidence what the outcome is going to be.

Back in the old days, I wrote a few TLs which continued well past the time of the POD (half of The Flashman Option, a Fast Leg Theory series, even The Death of Lt Arthur Windsor, RN - which only spanned a six month period), and in each case, once I'd got past a certain point, so many butterflies had built up that I was essentially writing fiction. Once I reached that point, I couldn't look to history for how things would develop because things were so different that there weren't comparable situations.

That would be the case here, massively so. With the Entente victorious in 1919 and no American involvement, things are so different that the butterflies have created a brand new landscape. For just one thing: Absent American involvement, and Albert Gitchell not heading to Fort Riley, how does Spanish Flu develop? Differently, for certain. But would the world distribution have been markedly different, or the timescale, or...

Once we reach this point, development is up to the author to justify, and only a fool would say: "This would definitely be the outcome."





* See also discontent over non-equitable food distribution which is only going to get worse in 1919, with Germany looting the eastern gains and - following German practice for distribution, this goes predominantly to the first part of Germany it reaches - Prussia, which ends up comfortably fed - while the rest of the country starves. This was already happening OTL (see the Hamster runs), and it's only going to get more marked.

 

[iainbhx]

I don't believe German civil society would get through the Winter of 1918/19 without at least some attempt at a revolution, which is most likely to occur in some of the great cities, Sachsen and Thüringen. If it gets bad, the Ruhr, the Saar and industrial Silesia will follow. Even an unsuccessful revolution is likely to affect any 1919 Spring Offensive.

Note one thing, if there are enough people to conduct the harvest, Bayern can just feed itself.

 

[Death's Companion]

Didn't American entry tighten the blockade markedly so that an already hungry Germany started starving? If so that might buy a few weeks or months, though weeks or months to do what I'm not particularly sure.

The Germans didn't seem to have any conception of strategy after 1916 or so. In fact it was 1916 where they realised they had lost the war because the material realities were insurrmountable. This of course was a strategic problem, from what I can tell they decided to focus on tactics instead on the assumption eventually the strategic situation would change if they won enough battles.

Without the Americans you could theoretically see a German victory in WW1 or at least a peace of exhaustion but I don't think its that likely. The late war dictatorship was economically illiterate and militarily deluded. They type of men who could revitalise a war economy, shore up multiple collapsing fronts, carefully conserve resources and hit at just the right places and times to maximise their temporary advantages...well those were not the type of people in charge.

 

[raharris1973]

1. Does Germany launch its 1918 Spring Offensive? My feeling is that it will. It is well aware that it has to do something, as it is losing the war of attrition and it's facing starvation. It can't just sit and wait. It has to win, and win soon (the concept of admitting defeat and going home is one that would never occur to anyone there). That means an offence. The direction and timing might be different, but essentially that Spring Offensive was the last throw of the dice.

Let's assume that it plays out much as it does OTL. I can't see any great reason to change anything much, and the output with what are essentially the same inputs is likely to be pretty similar.

2. Then what? The Entente offensive is still going to go ahead, and here the details are going to be different. The American forces may have been underprepared, but there were a lot of them coming along the pipeline, and as they were gaining experience (especially the 93rd Division, which learned very quickly. I digress).

My suspicion - and other outcomes are possible - is that without the weight of the Americans being involved, two connected things will happen. Firstly, the 100 days won't be quite as dramatic as it was in OTL. The German Army is still going to get a kicking; the British Army in particular had managed to get combined arms - tanks and artillery and aircraft working to support a breakthrough to get exploited by infantry - down to something of an art form. But the sheer bulk of exploitation just isn't there, so the phases will run out of steam a little earlier, and tertiary objectives probably not achieved.

That, in turn, will enable the German High Command to convince themselves that they just need to find that One Simple Trick that the Entente hates which will turn things around, and there's no Armistice in November, and things drag on.

However, the situation on the German Home Front is desperate. The German Army is falling apart, and things are not looking good.

Still, no Armistice, with Germany looking for a way to wriggle out from under.

3. Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans fall on schedule. That's going to free up a lot of Entente soldiers.

With the less dramatic 100 days, and smaller scale exploitation in the western front (to the degree the Germans can hold on to fight for another season) why would we still expect Austria, Turkey (and Bulgaria I presume) to fall on schedule?

Are you seeing the reformed Italian forces or Desperate Frankie (Franchet D’Esperey’s L’Armee D’Orient) tuned up forces from Salonica at this time providing the independent impetus for winning in these theaters? Or blockade did all the work against the minor CPs and would here too? Or, Allied pressure in the west, while insufficient to break or panic the Germans, ends up being enough to force the Germans to call back all their German troops, officers and other ‘stiffeners’ from the lesser CPs to protect to west, while the Allies get the flexibility to support the peripheral theaters and deliver the killing blows on time?

Note one thing, if there are enough people to conduct the harvest, Bayern can just feed itself.

All the more reason, if Austria-Hungary surrenders months before Germany, for the Allies to invade Germany from the southeast, through Bavaria, as well as pushing from the west to the Rhine and Ruhr.

 

[iainbhx]

All the more reason, if Austria-Hungary surrenders months before Germany, for the Allies to invade Germany from the southeast, through Bavaria, as well as pushing from the west to the Rhine and Ruhr.

I'd argue Logistics.

If AH is in turmoil, there are going to be problems getting supplies from the Adriatic to the obvious line of approach through the Innviertel and I would expect Imperial Germany to have taken a line on the Inn for that reason, in a similar manner, it may have secured Salzburg.

 

[David Flin]

With the less dramatic 100 days, and smaller scale exploitation in the western front (to the degree the Germans can hold on to fight for another season) why would we still expect Austria, Turkey (and Bulgaria I presume) to fall on schedule?

I'm beginning to feel like I'm doing more work on this than you are.

The status of the Ottoman Empire is pretty much independent of the status of Germany. Supplies, troops, and so on - in OTL there was minimal support from Germany to the Ottoman Empire. A few advisers, and that's pretty much it. Which is what you would expect. Germany never regarded the OE as anything other than a way of keeping Entente resources away from Germany.

Unless one posits additional German support for the OE, in defiance of German practise and rhetoric up to that point, there's no reason for anything to change here.

As for AH, it was already crumbling in 1917, prior to anything the Americans ever did. When it was apparent that this was going on, Germany sent a few men (a couple of divisions, I believe, which was loose change for the numbers on the Western Front), but otherwise let AH fight its own war. The big opportunity Germany had was when Russia crashed out. Rather than transferring the soldiers from the Eastern Front to the AH fronts, Germany decided they were better expended in the Spring Offensives. Unless there is a reason for German policy to change, I would expect the status quo to hold.

When one looks into the course of the war, it's fairly clear that the Entente was essentially an Alliance, where each party tried (not always successfully, and certainly not always without argument) to support each other. The Somme (1916) was specifically to help take the pressure off Verdun. Passchendaele (1917) was likewise an attempt to keep Germany busy while the French sorted out what is commonly called their mutiny.

By contrast, the Central Powers were closer to co-belligerents, each fighting their wars pretty much in isolation from each other.

 

[Beata Beatrix]

I think it’s been significantly memory-holed the extent to which Imperial Germany was a genocidal, anti-Semitic, proto-fascist state. Before the outbreak of war, even, the Kronprinz was very much interested in purging the Reichstag and doing something rather Nuremburg Law-esque about the empire’s Jews. Later, Wilhelm II once wrote that, to his mind, the best thing for Jews was “gas” - he was a fucking bullheaded idiot, not a prophet accurately predicting Nazi logistical expedience to render mass genocide feasible and economical. He was just voicing the German conservative’s id.

Read up on the German plans for the Polish Border Strip - the scale is more limited than we find in Nazi planning, but the ethos and methodology is pretty damn similar!

It seems strange, then, to blame American entrance into WWI for the genocidal tenets of German ultraconservatism, when, as I’ve argued, these tenets were fundamental to that conservatism from its ideological outset.