A complete military history of France.

[GePap]

I have to agree with sandman: after the collapse of the German Spring offensives, the steam had run out of the German war machine on the western front, and on all other fronts, the Palestinian, the Italian, and the Balkan the allies begun to make headway without a single US soldier, bringign down the Austrians, Ottomans, and Bulgarians.

US economic aid was utterly critical for Allied victory, but US military aid, while helping the allies win outright, did not stave off allied defeat. The British ecopnomic blockade did that.

Given what happened after Versailles, perhaps an imcomplete, negotiated truce would have been better for Europe than the outright victory of the Allies that US forcse made possible.

[Sandman]

On the other hand, without the moderating influence of America, France and Britain might have extracted even more punishing terms from the Germans. The politicians and the general public were determined to 'squeeze Germany until the pips squeaked'.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sandman
On the other hand, without the moderating influence of America, France and Britain might have extracted even more punishing terms from the Germans. The politicians and the general public were determined to 'squeeze Germany until the pips squeaked'.

The idea of Britain verging on bankruptcy is a new one to me too. Without facts and figures to back it up, it remains a somewhat dubious claim. Undoubtedly Great Britain was forced to liquidate overseas investments, and it did indeed borrow heavily from New York banks to finance itself and its allies, but the bankruptcy notion...
Although Great Britain owed $ U.S. 4.7 billion, it was owed $ U.S. 11 billion by its allies. France owed the United States and Great Britain $ U.S. 7 billion. What hit Great Britain badly was the loss of pre-war export markets in the United States, Japan, and other countries whose internal economies had not been badly affected by the war.

Post war, both Great Britain and France tried to persuade the United States to write off their debts as contributions to the war effort. When the Americans refused, and also turned down a request for reconstruction credits, this made the Allies determine to recoup their losses from Germany in the form of reparations- such as the French securing German timber and other construction materials to repair the wrecked industrial areas and mines of northern France.

What finished Germany off was not so much the presence of 1 million American troops (who first saw action half way through 1918), but the naval blockade which reduced, for instance, German meat imports from 120 000 tons in 1914 to 8 000 in 1918, and live cattle from 356 000 in 1914 to 125 000 in 1918. Similarly butter and fats imports declined from 175 000 in 1914 to mere 27 000 in 1918. Severe food shortages occurred in Germany, with frequent rioting, and workers being offered inducements and extra rations to convince them to return to work.

The number of deaths attributable to the blockade:

1915: 88 235
1916: 121 114
1917: 259 627
1918: 293 760

Cities in which food riots broke out in 1916 included Berlin, Kiel, Lubeck, Magdeburg, Essen, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Koln, Frankfurt, Koblenz, Hannover and 19 others.

In 1917, there were strikes in Hamburg, Berlin, Magdeburg, and Leipzig against reductions in the bread ration, and in 1918 there were strikes in January of that year in Kiel, Hamburg, Duisburg, Essen, Nurnburg, Berlin, Danzig, Magdeburg, Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Munchen against the continuation of the war. Early in 1918, 'meatless' weeks were introduced.

The role of the tank in WWI warfare is more crucial than has been admitted- perhaps because it was a British invention? Because of ground lost (mainly due to bad tactics and a tenacious German infantry) after the initial great success of British tanks at Cambrai, the Germans did not appreciate their significance (and also, some old fashioned British commanders failed to discern how to integrate tank, infantry and artillery attacks) but the tanks were decisive in the final Allied advance. It is worth finding out what Churchill thought of the role of tanks in WWI (and what their potential could have been), in his 'World Crisis' vol.4 .

But don't take my word for it, read J.F.C. Fuller's 'Tanks in the Great War', 1914-1918 and Basil Liddell Hart's 'The Tanks' and of course A. J. P. Taylor's 'The First World War (an illustrated history)', and Vincent J Esposito's 'A Concise History of World War One', and Martin Gilbert's 'First World War Atlas'.

[Alexander's Horse]

There is no doubt American troops staunched the German tide in 1918. The blockade played an important part in defeating Germany but if France had been knocked out of the war in the summer of 1918 Germany would have got much more favourable peace terms - which was the real aim of the German offensive.

On the financial and economic side, American support was vital to the allied war effort. America did underwrite French and British war loans from 1917, averting a financial crisis which might have crippled the allies.

Tanks were overrated as a potential weapon in world war I with the hindsight of world war II. The technology hadn't advanced far enough. More tanks broke down than were destroyed in battle. Both sides used them but both sides also quickly realised that small field guns could neutralise the slow and cumbersome tanks that were available at the time. Of more importance was the development of infantry minor tactics, including smaller machine guns and better communications. But both sides adapted to this.