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

[GePap]

The Germans made the biggest "breaktrough" wioth their stormtropper tactics in 1918, in tersm fo new infantry tactics to break the stalemate.

The German issues with the original Schlieffen plan were various. Beyond it being quetionable that German soldiers could march that long and still fight, politically the plan demanded that the Germans leave other fronts undermanned, which would mean enemy penetrations into Germany. Germany's political leaders were not willing to do so.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by GePap
The Germans made the biggest "breaktrough" wioth their stormtropper tactics in 1918, in tersm fo new infantry tactics to break the stalemate.

This was an improvement in the tactic of assaulting infantry, but it proved to be less effective than expected for two reasons : stormtroopers are specialized troops hence in limited number, and their use was made in assaults aiming to break through the front, that is the method used from the beginning of the trench war without success. But the 1918 German offensive was interrupted when the stormtroopers were evaporated. The real tactical improvement was the concept of assaults limited to the first line, which were almost always successful at a limited cost, obliging the enemy to bring reinforcements to fight the assault nevertheless possible against the second and third lines, then assaulting the first line on a second point, etc. The stormtroopers, although an improvement for limited assaults, did not change the issue of the war, whereas the assault limited to the first line caused the success of the final offensive and the end of the war.

[Lancer]

Huttier tactics.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Lancer
Huttier tactics.

Hutier.
Stormtroopers were successful in limited operations (Est front in september 17 and Caporetto in october 17), but failed in 1918 in an enormous offensive.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
According to the book '1918', the US did make a difference. They introduced the novel concept of tactics to the allied effort, rather than just throwing troops into machine gun fire.

I think that book also noted that the German advances in 1918 ultimately demoralized their own troops, as captured allied positions revealed far better supplies and equipment than they themselves had by that point. 'How can we win when they still have all this?' was the feeling, IIRC.

Written by a Yank?

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I'll have to find that damned book and the specific battle (and it wasn't a trench slugathon but the taking of a village, I think).

I'm not saying that the US researched up the tech tree to 'Tactics' before anyone else, nor am I saying that the US didn't suffer mass casualties but I think the book was arguing that the typical senior British Army Officer was not, shall we say, the sharpest tool in the box, and that the US army was able to inject some dynamic thinking in specific circumstances.

Anyway, it's unusual to be able to get so many people from 'over there' insisting that the Brits had nothing to learn from their cousins.

The realisation of the value of the brilliance of the British 'officer class' did not begin with the Yanks.

Have a gander at the evolution of the Canadian Army and in particular, Vimy.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by DAVOUT


Hutier.
Stormtroopers were successful in limited operations (Est front in september 17 and Caporetto in october 17), but failed in 1918 in an enormous offensive.

I thought it these tactics were a success in the west but that success couldn't be exploited due to the condition of the terrain after years of war.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Lancer


I thought it these tactics were a success in the west but that success couldn't be exploited due to the condition of the terrain after years of war.

I suppose that the conditions of the terrain in 1918, after three years in the trenches, were not discovered during the assault, and therefore if the assault was decided they cannot be an explanation to the failure. The explanation has to be found in simple reasons : after taking the first line and the second in some places, they were out of steam for the third, and to resist to the counter attacks. They were also so exhausted that they were of no help to stop the final allied offensive which started a few months later.

[Lancer]

There was no road to run a truck up. Iirc the Germans achieved their goals but couldn't bring up the reinforcements needed to roll up the lines, to exploit the penetration. So, gaps were closed, the effort negated.

[molly bloom]

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

Originally posted by Wycoff


I think that you have an exaggerated view of Kaiser Wilhelm.

No, really I don't. He was subject to massive moodswings, what would most likely be called a bi-polar disorder now, and had serious psycho-sexual hang-ups relating to both his own mother and close male friends. Oh, and that defective arm too.

" It is likely that the future Kaiser was hypoxic (hyposia is a reduction in oxygen) for 8 to 10 minutes, possibly even longer, sufficient to produce what we now call 'minimal brain damage' "

It was this damage that 'set the background' for Wilhelm's 'hyperactivity and motional lability [instability] .'

William B. Ober, 'Obstetrical Events That Shaped European History', The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 65, publ. 1992

Letter to his mother:

I have again dreamt about you, this time I was alone with you in your library, when you stretched forth your arms & pulled me lower to your chair so that my head rested on your left arm. Then you took off your gloves...& laid your hand gently on my lips, for me to kiss it... I instantly seized your hand & kissed it; then you gave me a warm embrace & putting your right arm round my neck got up & walked about the rooms with me.

In 8 days we will come to Berlin & then what I dreamt about we will do in reality when we are alone in your rooms without any witnesses. This is the second SECRET for you....

Call me old-fashioned, but that's the kind of thing you might write to your girlfriend, wife or mistress, not your Mutti.

Kaiser Bill's views on what's wrong with the Reich:


Letter to Lady Susan Townley, wife of the second secretary at the British Embassy:

The Jews are the curse of my country. They keep my people poor and in their clutches. In every small village in Germany sits a dirty Jew, like a spider drawing the people into the web of usury... The Jews are the parasites of my Empire. The Jewish question is one of the great problems I have to deal with.

Along with the Slav or Pole problem, of course; the Kaiser's marginal annotations to a report from the German ambassador in Vienna, von Tschirschky:

The Serbs must be disposed of, AND that right SOON! Goes without saying; nothing but truisms.

The Chinese were according to him, 'yellow beasts'. In this in his mind they had something in common with the Japanese, who were ' die Gelbe Gefahr'.

It took the "November Criminal" idea, the Spartacist 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.

Hmm, I don't think so: in the 1880s there was a growth in avowedly anti-semitic parties, the Antisemitische Deutschsoziale Partei, the Antisemitische Volkspartei, the Deutschsoziale Reformpartei, and so on.

Mostly these parties would attempt to appeal to a rural electorate, more often Roman Catholic than not. On a popular level, there were still mystery plays being performed annually with crude antisemitic elements.

German conservatives made this statement at the Tivoli Hall in Berlin in 1892:

"We combat the widely obtruding and decomposing Jewish influence on our popular life. We demand a Christian authority for the Christian people and Christian teachers for Christian pupils."

P. Pulzer, 'The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria'

There was also the respectable, cultural face of anti-semitism: Wagner ( 'Jewry in Music' publ. 1850) and in a lesser way, Otto Bockel.

Then there was the 'economic' justification for anti-semitism, epitomised by Otto Glagau's incendiary tracts in 'Gartenlaube' (aimed at the disaffected and newly impoverished middle classes), under the heading:

" The Social Question is the Jewish Question. "

And yet in World War One, both Germany and France fielded large numbers of patriotic Jewish soldiers against each other, as photographs in the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam and the Imperial War Museum in London show...

Men like Hindenburg and Hugenberg would have represented the far right, and, while Imperialists, they weren't Nazis or Fascists.

And imperialist men like Ludendorff thought like this:

" Kovno [modern day Kaunas] is a typical Russian town, with low mean wooden houses... on the further bank of the Niemen there stands the tower of an old German castle of the Teutonic Knights, a symbol of German civilization in the East...

...the population, made up as it is of such a mixture of races, has never produced a culture of its own, and left to itself, would succumb to Polish domination."

'My War Memories' publ. London 1919


It's not that all Junkers or all German aristocrats or all Germans were anti-semites or racists : they weren't.

But there was a paradoxical sense of Germanic cultural superiority (mostly expressed towards the Slavs, especially the Poles and Russians) and inferiority (Jewish 'mongrelization' of echt German culture, France as a symbol for European culture, Great Britain as setting the standards for 'high society') and a battle between the forces of modernism (the Kaiser loathed Strauss's music) and what was seen as philistine bourgeois Biedermeier culture, which had to be conquered or eradicated, either by Modernism in music, art and literature and architecture or by an appeal to a heavily romanticised notion of what was 'German' identity and culture.

General von Falkenhayn:

Even if it ends in vain, it was beautiful.

Well, that's one way to look at WWI...

[Lancer]

Kaiser Wilhelm destroyed Germany by alienating his cousins.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sandman
Let's not forget that Germany's allies - Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottomans - were in an even worse state than Germany.

The Germans had taken over fighting for Austria-Hungary against Rumania as I recall.

However, from 1916 onwards there had been serious social disturbances and strikes in Germany over food-shortages.

And the Brusilov offensive had chewed up Austrian forces in the east in June of that year too...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Lancer
Kaiser Wilhelm destroyed Germany by alienating his cousins.

If you look at European royal families of the time, you'd easily mistake them for 'Deliverance' style gathering of far too closely knit people...

[Lancer]

Of course Molly. However KW detested GB. He destroyed the association through his public speaking and drove GB into the alliance with the French, their natural enemies. All the disasters from WW1 on can be traced to the split between Germany and GB, founded in the bizarre animosity of KW.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Lancer
Of course Molly. However KW detested GB. He destroyed the association through his public speaking and drove GB into the alliance with the French, their natural enemies.

Britain has always wanted a balance of power on the continent. What made the British allies of France was the fact that Germany was the fastest-growing European power, far quicker than France, and a threat for Britain.

And even then, Britain waited almost one year before joining the war.

There was quite a bit of trash-talk between France and the UK before the alliance took place (the latest bout being the Fashoda incident of 1895, where jingoism ran wild on both sides). But a common rival sure does wonders to bridge big gaps.