Remember that the Central Powers were cut off from communication with the outside world thanks to the Brits cutting their Atlantic telegraph cable. They had a very hard time communicating with other countries, their embassies, or even getting current news as to developments in those countries. They only knew what could filter in over time even including talks with their ambassador in the US. The diplomatic cable the Wilson made available to the Germans, which IIRC was only in 1916, meant that they could only intermittently talk with Bernsdorff, rather than get regular updates from him in real time.
I wasn't referring to keeping up with day-to-day activities going on in each and every country. I meant just the kind of basic knowledge you could get from libraries, or reading the bloody front pages of newspapers! At the very least, they should have known that Mexico was in a civil war/revolution, and that the north of Mexico, where any presumed "invasion" of the USA would take place, has always been essentially lawless, not to mention Mexico being indefensible from the USA just geographically alone, while the reverse is not the case for an invading army coming into the USA from the south.
I mean, were the Germans so ignorant of North American history and geography that they actually thought such an impoverished and outnumbered country could accomplish anything? Offering them the American southwest!?
This would give even Skippy the Alien Space Bat a hernia!
WIKING said:
Part of that was political posturing in internal debates, part a problem of communication to realize how big the US industrial potential had grown thanks to Entente purchasing (the US didn't really have a military industrial base in 1914 (1)) and the limited army size meant that they had a very limited training apparatus, so that limited the rate of expansion much more for the US than even Britain in 1914-16. It took the British about two years to build an army and field it; we remember how the first day of the Somme turned out at the end of that 2 years.
I'm guessing Ludendorff thought the US would not be able to build enough equipment in two years to equip a necessary 2 million man army, nor train it. He was right there, because the US used French production and instructors to prepare their massive new army, which on their own they wouldn't have been able to do. As it was the US army was rushed into combat and really needed major help from its allies to become even as effective as it was in late 1918. The major contribution of the US army in 1918 was holding quiet sectors (2) to free up French and British troops, provide a major morale boost to their allies, and a major morale hit to the German army. (3) It was not really a combat effective force until 1919. (4)
1) If you mean strictly for the US Army and Marine Corps, I would agree. Not so for the US Navy.
2) Not quite. In 1918 the US Army had a very effective role early on. They were being used on a division-by-division basis, as fire brigades to blunt the worst effects of the German 1918 Spring Offensive, which was really the last bolt in their quiver.
The AEF by Armistice Day were not "in quiet sectors" but rather in the central part of the front running up against the hardest held points in the German lines. They were in full retreat almost everywhere else and needed to hold the center to allow the rest of the army to escape.
3) Good point that, and one I failed to address.
That fact was immortalized in "All Quiet on the Western Front", showing the open defeatism of the German veterans who, though they never faced any troops but the French, were just waiting for the armistice, fighting for months on end with no hope of victory.
4) Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the AEF have no tanks, and the French and British did? Tanks on a WWI battlefield are a great way to make you an "effective combat force."
wiking said:
Very true. Without that I think the French would have called it quits in 1917 even disregarding the US material support.
Don't tell them that.