Would the world be a better place if Germany had won WWI?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Molly,

Your obession with a single mid grade functionary is hardly a convincing arguement.

I have no such obsession, but don't by any means let that spoil your rhetoric.

The brutal and unacceptable repression of the Maji Maji revolt 100 years ago will always remain one of darkest chapters of the German colonial history.

This has been stated by the German Ambassador to Tanzania, Wolfgang Ringe, in a special message on the occasion of commemorating the Maji Maji War yesterday in Songea.

In commemorating the event, the Government of Germany has pledged 8.5m/- to facilitate the renovation of the Maji Maji Memorial Museum in Ruvuma Region.

’100 years ago this place witnessed one of the most cruel punishment operations of the German colonial troops against insurgents in the so-called ’Maji Maji War,’ says Ring in the statement.

’The last victims of this operation against the Ngoni people and their chiefs were buried in mass graves here on 27 February 1906,’ reads part of the statement.

He explains that the reasons that prompted the war were many-fold, including the structure and the process of insurrection itself, which was very complex.

’The German rulers were confronted for the first time with insurgents from different tribes united in their will to resist the inhuman German colonial system,’ says Ringe.

However, there is no justification and no excuse for the brutal repression and the collective punishment used by the German forces, he states, adding: ’In the end even more people died of hunger than on the battlefield.’

During the Maji Maji War a lot of critical voices, i.e. in liberal and left political circles, were raised in Germany at the time, says Ringe.

They questioned the inhumanity and the necessity of having colonies as a civilized nation, he adds.

However, he clarifies, the conservatives prevailed and the colonial system was maintained, adding;’the collective identity of modern Germany is based on the assumption that a nation will only be able to create the future if she is aware of her past.

In this sense, he adds; ’the Maji Maji War will always remain part of the German collective memory as yet another example of inhumanity, which should never happen again.

http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2006/02/28/61023.html

I'm using a specific example for a specific theatre, South West Africa in the previous instance, German East Africa now.

And it is generally accepted that German colonial rule in Africa was far less intrusive in Africa that the other powers. Especially in China.

That doesn't actually make any sense, but in any case feel free to support your assertion. They seemed to achieve an awful lot of deaths for a such a short-lived colonial empire in Africa.

[Cort Haus]

Re: Re: Re: Would the world be a better place if Germany had won WWI?

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Which is, why I think,too, that a german victory very probably would have prevented the holocaust.

Perhaps a better post-war settlement than Versailles could have prevented the Nazi's rise too. OTOH, France felt the need to make its victory stick, and as was said earlier, a German victory may have lead to an equivalent humiliation of France.

Of course, Germany did win half of its WW1, though to do so it had to assist the Bolsheviks to power. The irony of this should not be lost to history.

The Balkans element was also mentioned, and I think this is important. Germany's wartime opponents to its West tend to think of the two great conflicts as all about themselves, but AIUI what Germany was really after in Europe was extending its power and influence to the East.

[Cort Haus]

While on the subject of what-ifs, What If the German workers had taken control of the country post-WW1 under a red flag? Proper industrial-level revolution, as imagined by Marx, rather than the not-in-the-script transformation in backward, pre-industrial Russia.

Without the war waged by the west on the fledgling USSR, the autocracy initiated by Lenin and subsequently perpetuated and extended may not have been necessary, and communism may have developed under more benign lines, especially if it had European allies. Economically, an under-siege USSR could not deliver economic success under this military pressure, any more than the Sandinistas could deliver the goods during the Contra war, leading to failure for both revolutions.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Spiffor
"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions." - Robert Lynd

WW1 started with the same illusion, however everybody started to disenchant as soon as fall 1914. If Germany had been fighting a new war shortly after its WW1 victory, war weariness would have appeared very, very quickly.

Edit: also, remember that the French General Staff was certain that Berlin would fall very quickly as well. With the Germans taken between France and Russia, they looked doomed from the French perspective.

Uh... if Paris had fallen in the fall of the first year (as almost DID happen if those taxi cab drivers didn't move the soldiers around), it would have been a very quick war. Probably similar to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A quick peace and then if the Germans decided to fight Communism in a new war, I think the nationalism would be overwhelmingly great.

[Wycoff]

Had the U.S. not entered the war:

In the East: Treaty of Brest-Litovsk would have been enforced as crafted.

In the West: Possible stalemate, possible German victory.

If stalemate, then most likely the west would have returned to status quo ante.

However, the French were teetering on the brink in 1917: mutiny was a very serious concern. Without the hope of American entry into the war, and without the eventual million troops contributed by the AEF, it's possible to foresee French military will collapsing. Germany would have taken retribution against France similar to French retribution against Germany.

In the short term, there would have been no USSR. (Britain and the US tried to intervene in the Russian Civil War. I'm sure that Germany would have intervened, and that they would have intervened decisively. Certain things that happened, like the Polish intervention, simply could not have happened.) After said intervention, Russian government would have been reorganized to suit Germany, most likely in some sort of Constitutional Monarchy.

Germany planned to reorganize central Europe with Berlin at the center. They were planning one single European gauge railroad track, annexation of Luxembourg, and the creation of a German centered European Economic Community. This situation, while German dominated, would have been infinately more humane than what the Nazis were planning. There would have been no Nazi party, and there would have been no Holocaust. (Despite anti-semitism, Jews were better off in the Kaiserreich than in Tsarist Russia or in pre-war France. It took the "November Criminal" idea, the Sparticist revolt, and massive socio-economic upheaval to turn anti-semitism into a legitimate political platform in Germany. None of those things would have happened had Germany won WW1.)

Austria would still be faced with many ethnic-based internal problems. I don't see how the Hapsburg empire could have survived even with a Central Powers victory. Maybe there would have been further Ausgleichs, with the Habsburgs becoming the Kings of Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, etc.

France would have been deeply embarrassed and shaken to the core from another stunning defeat. I could see either Communist upheaval or, more probably, the victory of Action Francaise.

In Britain, the Black Shirts would probably have received more popular support after a defeat and, presumably, a loss of some overseas territories.

The world really would have been a much different place had Germany won, and I think that it would have been at least a slightly better place, especially for European Jewry. France probably would have gone Fascist, but it would have had to contend with a strengthened German Reich, and I doubt that any subsequent war would have been nearly as destructive as WW2.

[Wycoff]

Re: Re: Would the world be a better place if Germany had won WWI?

Originally posted by molly bloom That Kaiser Wilhelm was dangerously unstable, for one thing.

I think that you have an exaggerated view of Kaiser Wilhelm. Willy was a blowhard, and his big mouth certainly helped Allied propaganda, but he was pretty much cowed by 1909 (after the Daily Telelgraph affair showed him just how much trouble his big mouth could cause for him). In 1913 on the 25th anniversary of his cornation 1913, the New York Times hailed him as a great peacemaker. This indicates that Willy was sane enough at the very least to know how to police his image. He wasn't as emotionally unstable as Hitler, and he was far less powerful. Ultimately, Kaiser Wilhelm couldn't have caused a fraction of the trouble that Hitler caused.

There certainly would not have been genocide in the Reich had Germany won. Men like Hindenburg and Hugenberg would have represented the far right, and, while Imperialists, they weren't Nazis or Fascists. The völkisch, Aryanist mystics would have remained on the fringes of political society. The German right would have resembled the DNVP, not the NSDAP. I don't know what would have happened in the colonial holdings. There would have been British-type atrocities, but I doubt that there would have been racial cleansing.

Ultimately, I think that the biggest post war challenge to a victorious Kaiserreich would have been the inevitable breakdown of the Haspburg's empire. Would Germany have been drawn into Austrian civil wars to protect the status quo, or would it have advocated breaking up the Hapsburg empire, creating puppet states, and annexing Austria into the Reich? I don't have a good answer to this, but my guess is that the Reich would have chosen to do the latter and annex Austria (as the pan-Germans wanted).

[Lancer]

Damn, this is some of the best reading I've had in ages, cudos to all.

[Blaupanzer]

Strongly suspect that German victory would have reversed the French/German roles, with a French secret army, a more moderate Russia nursing wounds that would lead to the same revolution, not necessarily Bolshevik. This would have set up a different pattern for the beginning of WW II, but the two wars really are part of a horrible Danse Macabre. However the first one comes out, the second is inevitable after a rest and rearming. In fact, it is only the arrival of nukes that prevents this pattern from repeating, every 20 to 40 years ad infinitum, though not always with the same instigators.

I don't think victory in WW I dictated much of anything except who would precipitate WW II.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Stronly suspect that German victory would have reversed the French/German roles, with a French secret army, a more moderate Russia nursing wounds that would lead to the same revolution, not necessarily Bolshevik. This would have set up a different pattern for the beginning of WW II, but the two wars really are part of a horrible Danse Macabre. However the first one comes out, the second is inevitable after a rest and rearming. In fact, it is only the arrival of nukes that prevents this pattern from repeating, every 20 to 40 years ad infinitum, though not always with the same instigators.

I don't think victory in WW I dictated much of anything except who would precipitate WW II.

The one difference is that I don't think that Germany would have allowed France and Russia to get to the point at which they could pose a serious threat to Germany. The reasons that France and Russia allowed Germany to regroup was that the 1. U.S. presence at Versailles artificially inflated the bargaining power of France, resulting in a humiliated Germany but a France too impotent to ensure that Germany remained weak. 2. Internal upheaval in Russia resulted in the new Russian government being powerless to prevent (and actually aiding) German re-armament. 3. The promise of the League of Nations deflated by the fact that the powerful nations wouldn't enforce its decrees.

Germany was planning on making France basically indefensible and, through Brest-Litovsk (and through the inevitable intervention into the Russian civil war), Russia would have been far less powerful militarily. While I think that there would have been another war, I don't think that it would have been as destructive, simply because a victorious Germany would have been able to retain its post-war position much more easily than post-war France and Russia were.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Uh... if Paris had fallen in the fall of the first year (as almost DID happen if those taxi cab drivers didn't move the soldiers around), it would have been a very quick war.

The taxi cab drivers have been glorified in popular history, but they only carried a small portion of the troops.

What won the Battle of the Marne was tactics. It was maybe the last time until the 60ies where a French tactician clearly outsmarted his enemies, and made the best use of tactical options.

[lord of the mark]

what if, when posting what ifs, folks actually put in a specific, thought out Point of Departure? Cause that like, you know, makes a big difference to the outcome. When and HOW does Germany win?

[Sava]

In Soviet Russia, the world makes YOU a better place!

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Uh... if Paris had fallen in the fall of the first year (as almost DID happen if those taxi cab drivers didn't move the soldiers around), it would have been a very quick war. Probably similar to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A quick peace and then if the Germans decided to fight Communism in a new war, I think the nationalism would be overwhelmingly great.

The taxi drivers were moving french forces against a German army EAST of Paris. How exactly were the Germans going to take Paris at that point, even if the French mishandle the Battle of the Marne?

A German victory at the Marne weakens the French position further east, and will require a further redeployment. Mayby they wont be able to hold Toul Epinal line. But I doubt it will mean a quick German victory.

[Sandman]

Had the US not entered the war, the Western Allies would still have won. The final German offensives were thrown back before large numbers of American troops arrived.

[Colon™]

... and Germany was teethering on the edge of collapse. The spring offensive of 1918 was something of a bluff, and from the moment it began to stall it was game over.