Zimmerman denies the telegram
- Thread starter Gnomepilled
- Start date
... as already said IIRC:
There WON'T be any 'military dictatorship'.
The moment the war ends the dynamic duo (which would have been a dynamic uno - Ludendorff - at worst as Hindenburg would have been happy to return every power for a hand-shake of his King ... and Kaiser) ends as Ludendorff without Hindenburg - see above - would return to a rather unwanted/unliked nonety
.period.
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Are you really trying to determine the financial fate of a victorious Germany by this one denominator ? ... demanding a one-time pay-off from looted coffins?
1. what you name - 146 billions - represents only - roughly - the nominal value of issued govermental war bonds. The actual overall 'debts of the Reichs as well as its memberstates - pls don't forget the Bismarckian Reich was a confederacy - amounted IOTL rather to to more than 200 billion marks
2. simplicistic understanding of the war finance of Germany with a todays anglo-american 'look' at such things.
We're talking of internal debts by the goverment with means and ways to be repaid controlled by ... the goverment ; contrary to debts made at foreign banks as made by the entente powers which were therwith subject to their control of means and ways.The goverment was therefore able at any point to change these conditions as :
turning them into different kinds of papers,
delaying/elongating repayments,
changing the amount of repayments at a given time,
etc., etc..
As a later example what such could effect: look at the MeFo- bonds of germany in WW2: due to such 'govermental' changes and given these 'state debts' some special ways for accounting at 8th May 1945 there were still 3/4 of these debts still held by the - mainly institutional - debtors well after their 'expiry dates' in 1939/1940 because it served their balance sheets much better.
And the vast majority of the german war bonds of WW1 were also held by institutional debtors ... 'malleable' to accept such financial shenanigans (so commonplace in todays financial operations).
This is after a WON war. Therewith the german goverment of whatever political color has every control over the finances as well.
Therefore ... the 'small'bonds holders likely would be preferrably payed and the public rather silenced and appeased.
At next the institutinal bond holders could be 'moved' to accept i.e. part(s) of 'kind' of the reparations like ...
railway rights,
certain monopolies on foreign aka former entente markets
etc., etc.
'Goods' for economists well worth some 'bonds' to be turned into instead of hard coined gold.So... you envision victorious Germany as a ruthless conqueror, enriching itself by wholesale plunder - rather like the Huns the Kaiser urged his troops to emulate. This practice would provoke resistance, but Germany had an answer for such insolence: schrecklichkeit! This of course would require the stationing of large numbers of German troops in occupation of conquered territory stretching from the Atlantic to Russia and the Balkans.
Thus Germany would remain a highly militarized society, led by men of of strongly dirigiste beliefs and authoritarian temper, and quite certain they are right about everything. Haven't they just won the Great War?
Democratization would not be happening. Any impulse Kaiser Wilhelm had in that direction would vanish the moment the elected legislature even threatened to vote against something he wanted.
Meanwhile, the regime (in the best interests of the country) would intensively regulate and manipulate the economy. Some of this intervention would have general benefits. But as seen again and again and again, the more the government does, the more it does for the friends of the governors: favored industries, favored labor groups, favored corporations, favored regions. And so the more distorted and inefficient the economy becomes. Also, the more mistakes government makes. In the absence of feedback, from markets or effective political opposition, the trend would continue until the system collapsed. (Even with Germans running it.)
Given the likely rigidity of the regime and its probable repressive reaction to discontent, that collapse could easily be violent. Its replacement would be led by its most radical foes - quite possibly the Communists. This is another scenario that has played out many times in history.
No ASBs required.
I do not say - and have never said - that such an outcome is inevitable, only that it is possible.
Also if the news leaks then there might be outrage.
For example after the genocide in Namibia was leaked there was outrage and Germany was forced to signed a new constitution. This is a weakened Germany with famine so there won't just be simple protests but riots.
I read your discussion and there's one big thing that bothers me and that You don't seem to consider: the CP just won the War! They would experience an unprecented (and short, but still unprecented) boom in popularity internally. There would be huge reforms of democratization in Germany, surely led by the SPD, but the Junkers and co could still keep political influnce because the victory in WWI showed they were essential for Germany's army. OTL, the Junkers still kept important tools to sway politics, but ITTL they have won, it would have been even better for them (yes, they would have lost much power during WWI, but it was a deep movement in every country at the time to see the aristocrats lose influence). And for god's sake, the Kaiserreich wasn't a direct prelude to Nazism. In fact, at the time Germany was in term of political functionning and institutions closer to Britain than any other members of the CP. IMO, a communist revolution ITTL would be very very unlikely but not ASB (I dislike the 'ASB' term, it restricts the OP's imaginations). As previously said, Germany could manage their loans because they were made domestically and not internationally (unlike France's and the UK's loans) so no economic collapse from that sole reason. My guess is that Germany would become a conservative, yet mostly democratic, Constitutional monarchy, with an important militaristic spirit (More or less like the current US of OTL).
It will as Kaiser promised and just like it happened in UK and US
All of the West in 19th century was run just like that. Don't you know about gilded age and yet absolutely none became communist
This isn't the Authoritarian Russia. Germany was a democratic constitutional monarchy
Only ASBs can make this happen
This is just impossible
Where one king was beheaded, another was expelled from the country, and a third spent most of his reign in a state of dementia.
Where there was a very bloody revolutionary war.
Hardly. There were many incidents of government intervention in that period, but the idea of a "corporate state", in which the government would manage everything "efficiently" came much later. It was quite popular among American "progressives", many of whom admired Germany for its "orderly" methods. Ironically, it reached its peak in America under Wilson during the war against Germany.
The democratizing trend of the late 1800s and early 1900s ran hard aground in OTL after WW I. Japan, Greece, Italy, Spain, Romania, Austria, and Hungary were all "constitutional democracies" which became dictatorships in this period.
With a grossly malapportioned legislature, to insure that no left party could ever gain a majority. And a monarch who had complete power to appoint and dismiss ministers. I find it had to imagine Wilhelm ever consenting to the permanent loss of any imperial prerogatives.
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Honestly it could go either way. It's not asb for Germany to become a brutal dictatorship, become a constitutional monarchy, or become a communist dictatorship.
Anything's possible really. Hell if you want to you could have the barbarian movement take over. What was the barbarian movement, basically civilization and Christianity is jewish and Germany must transform itself a tribal chieftain and wage war against the world. Ludendorff was in favor of that.
Isn't that list a little redundant? Because in general, on a Venn diagram, "brutal" includes "Communist".
But that's what I argued, and what someone insists is impossible.
That's a vestigial part that I forgot to delete. It was originally brutal revolution but I meant something like military dictatorship.
Not sure that they had to. And if they did not sure that it had to be the attack that they launched IOTL. Certainly the British and French wanted a Russian contribution to a simultaneous offensive. And with how dependent Russia was on British and French loans, that did make a difference. But the Russian Army was not going to be ready in time for that anyway. Initially the idea was a combined offensive in February. But the Russians could not be ready in time (possibly not the French or British either), so it was moved to April with the Russian attack coming a month later. And then the Russian attack kept slipping. Eventually to the very end of June. And even then it was launched when the Army was not ready to take pressure off the Western Front. If the fact that the Russian Army would not be ready in time was appreciated earlier, the choice would be between having a more limited attack on time, or a more substantial one too late to be of use. Which could change the calculus. It’s not perhaps, the most statistically likely option, but it seems possible.
It’s not necessarily required that all assaults cease, just that the French keep them limited. The British could still undertake offensives. This is largely the same as what happened IOTL.
By that standard there were no neutral nations in WW1. Every neutral nation protested the actions of both sides to limit trade to their adversaries. The 20 August Order in council that announced that all conditional contraband would be treated as absolute contraband was walked back due to American pressure, for example.
The reason it was grudgingly accepted was that there was little they could do about it. The reason that British predations were eventually accepted more than German ones was that the British generally went out of their way to minimize the cost and annoyance to neutrals. Especially the US. When the British implemented the search and seizure provisions they would, when seizing an American Cargo, simply buy the whole thing at an agreed price, ensuring that American interests did not suffer much from the imposition. When American textile interests wanted to profit from selling to both sides, Britain worked out a deal whereby they would purchase all production at an increased rate. When the Entente wanted to limit the supply of goods supplied by local neutrals to Germany they would purchase goods at inflated rates in those countries, effectively outbidding the CP.
German predations didn’t do this. The mining of trade lanes at the outset of war (reciprocity for which allowed the British to establish the North Sea war zone) sank neutral vessels and their cargo and endangered their sailors with no way to gain compensation. Likewise when a ship was sunk by a submarine. Particularly when this was done without surfacing.
So, though all neutrals protested impositions on their trade by either party, the fact that British imposition, though annoying and possibly high-handed, tended not to cost them much, while German imposition was a loss, and possibly deadly, to those caught in it makes neutral opinion pretty understandable.
There is a difference between armed merchant vessels and Armed Merchant Cruisers (AMC’s). The first is a private merchant vessel employed in the business of trade, which is armed for the purposes of defence. The second is a naval auxiliary under the control and orders of a government body for the purpose of making war.
There was no legal restriction on merchant vessels being armed for the purpose of defence and still being employed in trade. As long as that armament is not to be employed in offence. Germany made the claim that all merchant ships so armed were immediately AMC’s and should be subject to the 24 hour rule but no neutral accepted that at face value. Nonetheless there was considerable debate in the US government on whether armed merchant vessels should be treated as ships of war for the purpose of port access. They eventually came down with the decision to allow merchants which were armed with up to two guns of less than 6” mounted aft. This question was complicated by the introduction of USW. Since defence against a submarine basically required that the merchant fire before combat was officially initiated or accept destruction, the US Neutrality Board accepted that a greater armament of 4 or less guns of under 6” would be acceptable without mounting location restriction.
This was an attempt to define how existing international law and custom would be interpreted in the face of new realities. Without a way to define new international law without an international conference impossible during wartime, the response to these issues is always going to be interpretive.
It should be noted that this ruling did not merely apply to the Entente. It applies to all merchant ships entering American ports. Had German merchant ships still been able to ply their trade to US ports it equally would have applied to them.
For an example of a similar defining of policy in the face of a legal grey zone created by new technology that benefited the Germans, there is the ruling on Merchant submarines. The US ruled that despite the fact that submarines could not be stopped and inspected they still were to be considered merchant ships and given the same rights and freedoms. The Entente nations could have equally built merchant submarines to take advantage of this, it just made little sense to do so.
I am not saying that these decisions were equally beneficial for both sides. They weren’t. But the fact that they were not equally beneficial does not mean that the decision of how to uphold neutrality in the face of changing war situations makes the deciding nation less neutral.
This was not illegal under international law. Passenger ships could carry war material as much as any other vessel. Under the laws as they stood if that vessel was stopped by an enemy warship, they could remove the war material as contraband, and either take the ship as a prize or sink it as long as they made provision for the survival of the crew and passengers.
Obviously this convention did not account for the existence of the submarine, hence the amount of angst and finger pointing regarding this stage of the war that you don’t see for WW2. However, the American government was under no legal or moral obligation as a neutral (or later as a belligerent) to avoid the transport of war material on passenger liners. It would be basically impossible to do so anyway. Any transport of the day could be used as a passenger ship to at least a limited number of people, or be converted into one. And every passenger liner also carried freight. So discriminating on what freight they were allowed to carry based on their status as a passenger liner had no legal impetus and no agreed or reasonable method of enforcement.
Ok, could you elaborate?
How did the American incentives (actually loans) induce the Russians to remain in ways that British and French loans (at this point France had over twice the amount of the Russian wartime debt that the US would gain and Britain had 6 times as much) would not ITTL. Certainly the addition of direct American finance was a relief to the other governments as any help maintaining Russia was welcome. But considering the other nations were still extending the Provisional government more credit after the American entry, I don’t think it can be argued that American entry was the only thing that maintained Russia in the war. Not without some information giving evidence to such a direct link at least.
The Provisional government was in favour of continuing the war. And even the Petrograd Soviet, not yet dominated by the Bolsheviks, was not in favour of capitulation. For the Russians to drop out of the war entirely either the Germans would need to offer some very good terms or the Russians are going to need to accept the loss of a large amount of their most productive land.
The post you were responding to was talking about more troops as an established reality in OTL, not as a potential for the future. In Winter 1916 Germany had about 150 divisions facing 190 divisions. That is besides troops deployed to other theatres. It also ignores that at this point a British division is 33% larger than its German equivalent.
As to troops for the future, yes India exists and greater effort could perhaps have been made there. About 60% of all troops recruited during the war came from Punjab, with basically all other provinces barely being tapped. However, Britain was already expanding the Indian army considerably. It was still growing into 1919 in fact as recruits from earlier years completed training and took over roles in the Middle East. In 1917 the Indian government had committed to raise 24 new battalions and another 91 in 1918. 327,000 Indian men enlisted in 1918 alone. And this while Bengal, with a population of 23 million (about the same as Punjab), had only a single active battalion that saw no front line service.
However, there are other sources of manpower closer to home. The War Office maintained over a million men on the payroll in Britain right to the end of the war. Part of this was due to fears of German amphibious invasion that were basically impossible by this point. Some of it was due to the training establishment. But a fair bit of it was because the War Office didn’t know what to do with most Second Line territorial formations. Throughout the war the British War Office was reluctant to trust formations outside of the pre-war regulars. They had it with the Territorials in 1914-15, and with the New Army formations in 1915-16. The Second Line Territorials didn’t have anyone pushing them the way Kitchener had the New Army and never was thrown in by necessity quite like the First Line Territorials were in 1914. This meant they basically stayed as coastal guards right through the manpower crisis of 1918. This was recognized as a failing by the War Office after the fact and contributed to a focus on making sure as many available formations as possible were sent to France in 1939.
Besides this, the British system of qualification was, by the standards of what the Germans and French were using, ridiculously picky. Most men ranked B and C by the British Army (suitable for rear area work in France and suitable for garrison duty at home, respectively) would have been put into a frontline French or German unit with little hesitation.
Likewise, most of the empire either never implemented conscription or did so very late in the war.
Yes, they did fight a Rich Man’s War. Because they could. And yes, they would face choices they didn’t like. But not the ones you think they would. Until late 1916 the British government was run by Asquiths Liberal party. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was Reginald McKenna. Both men were staples of the Gladstonian Liberal ideal. Specifically they believed in volunteerism and small government. The idea of involuntary conscription of either men or capital was abhorrent to the Liberal ideology of the day. And Asquith and his Cabinet fought a rear guard action against any such imposition throughout their tenure. When most people talk about the British running out of funds they are thinking of a Cabinet minute by McKenna. However, what McKenna is effectively saying is that there are few more American denominated securities to be used as collateral for loans in the US under current policy, which was about as interventionist as the Liberal ideology could stand. A couple months later Asquith was ousted by the Conservatives with Lloyd George as their token Liberal leader. Conscription was increased and sequestration of American denominated securities began. Of the 4.5 Billion dollars in such securities in the UK prior to war, about 2 Billion had so far been gathered. With sequestration another 1.5 billion would be found over the rest of the war.
So the choices that needed to be faced (and were in fact faced) were if they would continue to cling to the ideology of volunteerism alone or whether they would take a more interventionist stance. With the change in government they chose intervention. And then the US entry into the war made it even easier for them. But the choice had already been made.
Remaining in their trenches and waiting for the Entente to come to them was exactly what the Germans did do in 1917. They began the year by pulling back to more defensible positions on the Hindenburg line. Then they held in the West and hoped to be able to defeat Russia while they did.
The internal production already existed. In almost every production metric, the Entente was out producing the CP by between 50 and 75%. Without the contribution of the US.
Due to the German economy shrinking by 60% and the British economy growing over the course of the war the British economy alone was now larger than Germany’s despite Germany have a 50% larger population.
Even without the US, the CP could no longer compete.
(P.S I can’t for the life of me remember the that this was in anymore. I used to have a hard copy which I lost in a move and I think I lost the link with my last computer. If anyone else recognizes them, please let me know. In any case it’s not my work).
I wasn’t suggesting that the Entente wait the Germans out. I was suggesting that the Russians might be better served with a more limited offensive while they stabilize politically after the February Revolution, and that the French may do as OTL and allow the British to shoulder the brunt of the offensives while they rebuild their confidence for 1918.
Ok. Any examples?
His protest after the sinking of the Lusitania seems in keeping with diplomatic norms (accepting Wilson’s own moralistic style):
He did protest the British orders in council. That’s why they were walked back.
Lusitania was not an auxiliary cruiser. She was not employed by the RN at the time of sinking and never had been. She was part of the program whereby ships could be built in a way that facilitates conversion to Auxiliary Cruiser in exchange for funding. As was basically every passenger liner on either side. But she was activated for all of a few weeks in 1914 and never used before being returned to Cunard for continued use as a passenger liner. . Nor, as mentioned above, does her carrying of war material make her a legitimate target as this was perfectly legal. By the laws of the day she was a legitimate target for stop and seizure but not for attack without warning. And it was this to which Wilson was protesting.
Q-ships were not illegal. They were considered a legitimate ruse de guerre. A warship is permitted to sail under false colours as long as it raises its true colours before firing. As long as the Q-ships would raise the white ensign before opening fire it was legal by the rules of the day. The same law applied to German vessels and was used by the Emden to enter Penang harbour and bombard it. Even the original Q-ship was a captured German submarine tender that was converted to look like a Norwegian freighter. When the British captured it they kept it as is and used it to lure in submarines.
Nor was the flying of neutral flags illegal. This was permitted and done by all parties in both WW1 and WW2.
The resort to attack by stealth by the submarines was completely logical given the confusion caused by false flags and Q-ships. It was still a legally problematic one though, given that submarines were a new technology without an existing legal basis while false flags had a longstanding legal foundation. And while the response is understandable it does not make the false flag laws invalid.
I wasn’t trying to imply offense. Just surprise.
It should be noted that the CP lost almost 30,000 men to collect a relatively small amount of food. And resistance to allowing them to seize it led to less than 35% of the arable land in Ukraine to under cultivation. Its not a great example of a successful raid for resources on the conquered is what I am saying.
Anyway, there is my explosion of pedantry for today. Hope it is at least useful to somebody.
Figured out where they come from. It was “Race to the Front” by Kevin Stubbs. The preview is no longer available online and, as mentioned I can’t find my copy. So I just have a few screenshots left.
It was a relatively small amount of food only the because harvest didn't come yet
By November? Ukraine was (and is actually) fairly famous for winter wheat. It formed a fair amount of the crop and is harvested in July and August. Spring wheat is generally harvested from late August to early October.
The main reason so little was gathered was that the farmers (already having shifted to a more rural autarky set up with Russian price controls) often burned their wheat rather than let the Germans essentially steal it and formed armed militias to keep it out of German hands. Ukraine was already almost without central authority above village council level. Pissing off those councils by taking their crop by force didn’t make anyone eager to grow it.
The German occupation forces effectively tried to use the occupied areas as sources of plunder. As was found in Belgium and by Nazi occupation forces years later, this strategy has very quickly diminishing returns. It also takes a considerable and sustained military presence to ensure. Thus it is not cheap for a nation recovering from essentially canibalizing its economy.
Incidentally, the strategy used in Romania was marginally more sustainable but the essentially enforced hyperinflation did catch up with them and messed up the economy for the next two decades or so.