re: Would it have been better if Germany would have won WW1? The First One.

Germans! top echelon of humanity!

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Another way that Imperial Germany could have mustered a few more divisions: commission more Officers. You see, Germany had the manpower for the extra divisions in 1914, but, because they had a strictly enforced policy of commissioning only members of the higher classes as Officers, Germany didn't have enough young Officers to command these extra divisions. Had Germany allowed qualified young men of common ancestry to be commissioned, the two divisions needed to win the war would have been present.

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They were doing this by the end Of the war, no?

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Because I know that every World War One thread around here eventually turns into a World War Two thread, I'll say right here that Germany came much closer to winning The Great War than she did WW2. Germany really didn't come close to conquering Britain at all. Germany really beat up on the Soviet Union in 1941, but, I still say that Victory was closer in 1914 than it was in 1941.

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I'm inclined to agree. If not for the Allied victory at Marne, the German Imperial Army very likely takes Paris by the end of 1914 at the latest, in which case the British - not wanting the BEF wiped out - sues for peace. If that happens, they do what they did in 1941 and turn their full attention toward Russia (though unlike with WWII, they were already fighting the Russians at the outset of the war).

However, one thing to take into consideration is how the Germans were not exactly hospitable occupiers, and German brutality towards conquered territory and citizenry didn't just start with the Nazis. Like someone pointed out earlier in this thread, perhaps Germany sets up state kingdoms in conquered territories after the presumed end to WWI (or at least the Western theater) which in turn rebel later after years of sociopolitical unrest.

Either way, I'd proffer that the Russian Revolution was an inevitability by 1914, and the onset of the Great War only hastened it. The Bolsheviks were virulently anti-imperialistic, which was evidenced by how Russia self-receded from the global stage during the interwar period. Stalin, or a dictatorial figure like him, still likely comes to power, but the Soviet Union still probably maintains its staunch isolationism. They were still mostly an agrarian country up until the late 1920s and early 1930s. It is interesting to think what the relationship dynamic between the Bolsheviks and the Hohenzollerns would have been like in the 1920s and beyond and whether it would have prompted Soviet industrialization and militarization like the rise of Nazism did.

In the end, the world, or at least Eurasia, was primed for war by the early 1910s. If WWI doesn't end up devolving into a lengthy, horrific, drawn out slaughter of millions, we likely see a second conflict sooner rather than later.


ETA -- props to everyone involved for this thread going 8 pages and still not devolving into idiocy. Great discussions and points in here.

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Either way, I'd proffer that the Russian Revolution was an inevitability by 1914, and the onset of the Great War only hastened it. The Bolsheviks were virulently anti-imperialistic, which was evidenced by how Russia self-receded from the global stage during the interwar period. Stalin, or a dictatorial figure like him, still likely comes to power, but the Soviet Union still probably maintains its staunch isolationism. They were still mostly an agrarian country up until the late 1920s and early 1930s. It is interesting to think what the relationship dynamic between the Bolsheviks and the Hohenzollerns would have been like in the 1920s and beyond and whether it would have prompted Soviet industrialization and militarization like the rise of Nazism did.

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Maybe a German victory makes them less likely to promote the overthrow of the Czar, and Lenin doesn't get a foothold without the help of the German intelligence services. Maybe Nicholas stays in power, or maybe he's still overthrown, but the more democratic elements prevent the Bolsheviks from hijacking the revolution.

OTOH revolution has a very high chance of breaking out in defeated France. There had already been incipient, and sometimes open, mutiny in the Army that was barely quelled with with a combination of harsh punishment for the ringleaders and concessions for the rank and file. Marx predicted it would break out in an industrial state, and the revolution in semi-feudal Russia surprised a lot of Marxist theorists. A Soviet France would have been a lot harder to contain than was a Soviet Russia in the post-Great War years. So maybe you don't have an aggressive Hitler taking over Europe, but a revolutionary France fomenting insurrection among its neighbors. Maybe some kind of fascist regime still rises in Germany as a response to the red threat, but doubtful it would have been Nazism, with it's eastward lebensraum tunnel vision.

ETA: And I have to disagree about Russia receding from the global stage. The Soviets were often preoccupied with their own internal problems, and they were often too weak to do anything but pay lip service, but they weren't shy about stating that their ultimate goal was worldwide revolution. And they were always aggressively imperialistic about territories they considered to be in their sphere of influence-the Baltic states, Ukraine, and the far east.

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everything I said should be taken as a derivative of the OP for context

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Then your scenario makes even less sense then it did before.

I'm listening to part 3 right now for the 3rd(?) time.


It really focuses on the absolute psychological horror of the trench warfare that settled in after the German advance was stopped.

Poison gas, barbed wire, constant artillery.
God. The horror of the trenches. I just can't help but think if it could have been avoided it would have been better than that.

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Poison gas, barbed wire, constant artillery. God. The horror of the trenches. I just can't help but think if it could have been avoided it would have been better than that.

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Therein lies the biggest danger when trying to understand WWI. We have the benefit of hindsight so to many the trench warfare that dominated the Western Front for most of the war seems absurd and wasteful. However, from the standpoint of those in command at that time, the solution to break this stalemate was not nearly as clear. WWI was a totally new exprence and nobody had any reference to fall back on to try and solve the puzzle of freeing up the front. And contrary to modern day myth, almost as soon as both sides started digging in, the generals of both sides started looking for ways to free their forces of the trenches. All the major innovations of the war, poison gas, creeping artillery barrage, "storm trooper" tactics, flame thrower, and finally the tank had the same goal of creating a breakthrough. And as bad as the trenches were, they actually did save lives. If you look at the casualty figures during the "mobile" phases of the war (first couple months in 1914 and last few months in 1918) and compare them to the rest of the war when the front was gridlocked in trench warfare, you'll see that the periods of open warfare for the most part saw far higher casualty rates than those where the armies fought from trenches.

That's one of my favorite first hand accounts from WWI.

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I'd think there would have been a great potential for a Hitler-type or worse to rise up from either England or Russia or (shudder) the United States.

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A "Hitler-type" (arguably and objectively worse than Hitler) did rise up in Russia.

And why would England or the US be affected by that? Britain is a island empire and the US already had vast swaths of land.