From what I remember from an earlier TL on this site, they wouldn't even need to go back to Leopold, because during the war the Belgians used a coercive coolie system to support their colonial forces that was so extreme it caused Congo Free State-level deaths all over again.
To the Victor, Go the Spoils (Redux): A Plausible Central Powers Victory
- Thread starter TheReformer
- Start date
From what I remember from an earlier TL on this site, they wouldn't even need to go back to Leopold, because during the war the Belgians used a coercive coolie system to support their colonial forces that was so extreme it caused Congo Free State-level deaths all over again.
Let’s not turn this thread into a flame war againI can't believe you wrote that with a straight face:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule
The five worst atrocities carried out by the British Empire will make you wonder why we're apparently proud of it
A YouGov poll found 43 per cent of Brits thought the British Empire was a good thing, while 44 per cent were proud of Britain's history of colonialismwww.independent.co.uk
There's still room for deescalation, considering there aren't any personal attacks as of yet. Unlike last time, where people were being accused of being kaiserboos for simply being interested in a more decisive German victory, which is naturally one of the more explored alternate WW1 timelines.
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Not going to engage, because I have a headache and lack of patience today.I can't believe you wrote that with a straight face:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule
The five worst atrocities carried out by the British Empire will make you wonder why we're apparently proud of it
A YouGov poll found 43 per cent of Brits thought the British Empire was a good thing, while 44 per cent were proud of Britain's history of colonialism
I will say I have never said the British Empire was not brutal and did not kill a tremendous amount of people in colonial wars. So don't put words in my mouth. I may respond more tomorrow, but probably not.
I can't believe you wrote that with a straight face:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule
The five worst atrocities carried out by the British Empire will make you wonder why we're apparently proud of it
A YouGov poll found 43 per cent of Brits thought the British Empire was a good thing, while 44 per cent were proud of Britain's history of colonialism
I wonder about this dialogue and what preceded it. Is it Ok on this forum to have such a memory about the famines in India and Bengal.?The Bengal famine can even document Churchill’s intent as he hate Indians and its their own fault for breeding like rabbits.
It would be quite problematic to have such an opinion on other historical famines committed for similar reasons.
You can find the quote here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a7612176.html?amp
I can't believe you wrote that with a straight face:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule
The five worst atrocities carried out by the British Empire will make you wonder why we're apparently proud of it
A YouGov poll found 43 per cent of Brits thought the British Empire was a good thing, while 44 per cent were proud of Britain's history of colonialism
I can't believe you guys wrote these with a straight face.
Just the day before yesterday I asked very politely this:
This is not a space to discuss the morality of various world empires. With hindsight, literally every empire on earth that has ever existed committed enormous crimes. It's virtually pointless debating which one was 'less evil'.
I've asked everyone to respect the fact I do not want discussion about it here for the simple reason that obviously people will never reach a conclusion on those arguments precisely because it's a totally subjective debate.
So, cease - and that goes for all parties involved in this discussion.
@tonycat77 @Gudestein
Personally I understand your annoyance with certain posters in this thread but well given the OP has asked to stop, my recommendation is to avoid mod action, just follow the OP’s instruction or put this thread on ignore, which can be surprisingly effective if you want. Or you can also put the certain user on ignore which would hide their posts.
Personally I understand your annoyance with certain posters in this thread but well given the OP has asked to stop, my recommendation is to avoid mod action, just follow the OP’s instruction or put this thread on ignore, which can be surprisingly effective if you want. Or you can also put the certain user on ignore which would hide their posts.
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The elections to the Reichstag already operated under universal suffrage, and a new election wouldn't do the SPD and the other reformists much good - it wasn't the franchise that was the issue, but rather that even having a reformist majority in the Reichstag (which has been present since 1912) won't do much good because the Kaiser can just appoint whoever he wants anyway.
They'd be much more served to demand something like the OTL October Reforms, imo, or at least a reformist chancellor as their first priority.
Also I wonder if the Reichstag would push for any future peace treaty with France and Britain to be approved by the legislature. That was a big sticking point for them which they wrote into the October Reforms, and would give them a tool to contain the annexationists in the OHL, DVLP and National Liberals. Iirc the OHL presented Brest-Litovsk for approval by the Reichstag, though only informally, so the precedent for the demand is there.
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Baden is the obvious choice but Solf is also very reasonable, and unjustly overlooked in alternate history where the German Empire survives (he was very influential, one of the few progressive State Secretaries in the government at that time and head of Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914). Payer is a bit too old (he refused an offer to become Reichskanzler in 1918) and I think it's a bit too early for an Ebert chancellorship.
Matthias Erzberger is also a good choice for Chancellor, he was one of the main instigators of the IFA and the Reichstag Peace Proposal and the main leader of the progressive Zentrum wing.
Yes, quite right. Aug and I discussed that prior to the update publication and I forgot to update
shall amend a little later.Germany is by no means an agrarian country at this point, it's one of the most industrialised in Europe.
Atm in OTL Zentrum is under the control of its left wing, especially Erzberger's clique and other influential people like Joseph Wirth, so I really can't see them working with the conservatives. They'd need to have a change of leadership, be it to Ludwig Kaas or Adam Stegerwald or someone else before they could consider cooperation with the Protestant conservative right - OTL it happened, but after Erzberger got assassinated and Wirth ended his political career after a failed chancellorship, both of which were very Weimar-specific events.
Besides, who knows how the Conservatives develop after the war. At this point the DkP is a dying force. They and the Junkers have been in opposition to the Kaiser and the government ever since the Mittelland Canal affair, so they have nothing but their electoral strongholds in eastern Prussia and indirect influence over the Agrarian League. Those strongholds are consistently shrinking because of changing demographics, the 1912 election was the worst for the Conservatives in history. OTL they renewed thanks to Weimar ruin and by unifying with basically everyone on the right into a big tent party, which then turned towards middle class reactionary populism (until the NSDAP stole their thunder of course), but idk if that would be repeated in TTL.
"Did you do it? Did you win?"
Chaos in Germany
The German Interfactional Committee Reorganises
October 1918
While Ludendorff had fallen from his role as effective military head of the state alongside Hindenburg much earlier in the year, he had slowly recovered from his stroke and by October was largely back on his feet - even if he was not fit for command. His aide and ally Max Bauer instead acted as his emissary to the OHL, while Hindenburg listened to both the Quartermaster Max Hoffmann and Ludendorff for advice.
The Kaiser, despite being firmly allied to the OHL, remained his own man and even in 1917 had considered peace with the allies that would have seen Alsace Lorraine returned in exchange for Luxembourg being annexed. This had failed though on account of British disinterest in a peace. Now though, Britain had effective naval supremacy and France had fallen - thus the two sides were at a stalemate neither could easily escape.
For the German people, and particularly the deputies in the Reichstag, this proved far too much to abide by. Peace was being negotiated in Brussels and Vienna, but upon highly expansionist lines Britain would no doubt reject, and ultimately it was Britain who now seemed motivated to continue a blockade - having begun to wrap up their war in Arabia. Essentially, Germany’s Parliamentary leaders, ignored for so long, now worried Germany was sleepwalking towards disaster.
This was not an unfounded concern. After the failure of the Hochseeflotte to sally and the threat of mutiny, the OHL essentially became rudderless. Unclear exactly what to do, but determined to achieve the maximum war aims for Germany, the clique chose to try and impose the harshest terms upon France they could get signed on paper, while aiming to feed the empire with French tribute supplies demanded in the coming treaty.
For Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann of the SPD, both growingly popular politicians, the OHL’s direction of the country was growingly difficult to tolerate.
Locked out of influence by the restrictive German electoral franchise and unable to force an election to take place, the SPD felt unable to influence the negotiations with the allies and unable to end the growing economic crisis triggered by the British blockade. The SPD too were concerned that the state may not just fall to revolution if the current policy was kept - but that it’d fall to bolshevik revolution. Particularly after mutineers of the Hochseeflotte pledged their support for the USPD - not the SPD. Exhausted from the conflict, the SPD was also buoyed by a growing confidence from their rising support among the German populace, which sat at least 40% of the country’s voters by late 1918.
The biggest party in Germany, and joined by a gang of other parties who also felt locked out of negotiations such as the Zentrum and FVP, the group ultimately decided that they needed to take action.
Demanding Power
On October 5th, just two days after the German fleet failed to deploy, delegates in Brussels announced that a draft resolution of terms had been agreed in principle by the German delegation.
This agreement would see Belgium lose half of its territory to Germany - while also becoming a ‘vassal’ of Germany, while a further strip of French land in the Alsace region would be annexed as a ‘military zone’, Luxembourg would be annexed and a large strip of French territory from Nancy along the Meuse to Charleville would be annexed, along with the port of Dunkirk.
This outraged the Reichstag, who saw it as an inevitable trigger for a prolonged conflict with Britain and thus economic collapse. Particularly as by the 5th, news of the mutiny had begun to spread among Parliamentary leaders even if it had largely been contained from the general public. Worse still the proposal, combined with the discovery that the Kaiserliche Marine had failed to sortie by the French Government, triggered the immediate collapse of France’s self-destructive Government under Joseph Caillaux and the return of Aristide Briand’s more self-assured Ministry.
France, emboldened by the British belief that Germany’s fleet had essentially been neutered, and with the backing of the US, rejected the proposal and issued an ultimatum demanding more lenient terms along the Wilsonian principles, even going so far as to promise a continued war if the Germans did not agree. This was echoed by the US and British Governments, who aimed to force Germany into agreeing to the independence of Belgium and limited border changes.
Finally, the SPD saw an opening and organised a meeting of the leaders of the Interfactional Committee under Frederich Ebert, Matthias Erzberger, Vice Chancellor Friedrich von Payer, and even radical socialist Hugo Hase of the USPD. Here the faction agreed, with the crucial backing of the FVP that would give them a majority in the Reichstag, to demand immediate new elections along the principles of universal suffrage or the resignation of the Government and it’s replacement with a Government with the confidence of the Reichstag.
Issuing their demand to the Kaiser on November 4th in the morning papers, the group warned that failure by the Kaiser’s Government to agree to these basic terms would lead to the advocation of an immediate general strike across Germany.
"Yes."
"What did it cost?"
"..."
"...Hello? Oh, I've seen you've collapsed as well."
At this rate I expect WW1 will be seen as an even more pointless war than it is in OTL
Simply putting "Everything" would fit well with what is happening, but I get the point of this.
The reformer, while you own the TL and what you write, you dont own the comments and the discussion. In this case I am calling out some questionable post and actually writing that maybe it shouldn’t be allowed here? It’s in the discussion. I actually agree with you that there is no point of this relativistic evaluation of OTL colonialism on this thread, but the posts I commented upon were on this TL and in my opinion should not stand undisputed.
I do understand your frustration about the sidetracking, but you also have the option of simply ignoring it. It’s not aimed at your writing. The threadmarks allows the readers to skip these comments as well.
I have no intention of leaving the TL, it’s an amazing effort and a great read.
Your just going to get mods involved if you continue. Leave it and move on so your not hurting the timeline, this is not a forum for these kind of discussions, if you thought it questionable than contact a mod yourself.
It affects me if the thread gets clamped down on by mod actions and/or locked.
The purpose of a thread is defined by it's creator, and is outlined in the OP. I'd rather not have massive, literally unreconcilable, often quite virulent debates on my thread. There's plenty of other places to discuss it, It's not actually much of an ask.
I find liberal use of the ignore function rather helpful.
On topic, It feels like all the parties involve might be somehow stummbling to an acceptable peace treaty for all sides.
On topic, It feels like all the parties involve might be somehow stummbling to an acceptable peace treaty for all sides.
I may have expressed myself somewhat awkwardly on this point, but what I meant to say was that at that time the majority of the German population still lived in rural areas. This population is traditionally more conservative than the urban population.
I also think that the decision of the SPD leadership, in combination with other events, risks damaging the party in the long run, especially considering that the SPD has lost influence due to the split from the USPD. How bad it is depends on many factors, one of which is how the emerging peace is viewed by the German population in the long term.
The Zentrum Party has already come under criticism from the Catholic Church for its collaboration with the "socialists" of the SPD. However, this cooperation was more or less accepted because of the existing necessity. Without this feeling of necessity, it may well be that this historical cooperation becomes politically unacceptable under the impression of the "Red Scare".
The future of the conservative camp also depends very much on how society develops and what the conservative parties position themselves for.
Not... really? In 1910, 60% of the population of Germany lived in towns and cities of over 2,000 inhabitants, and 21% lived in cities with 100 thousand inhabitants. Only 25% of the population were employed in agriculture:
Compare to France at 40% of the population employed in agriculture in 1914 and the US at almost 50%. Germany was, for all intents and purposes, an industrial state, at least by early 20th century standards - it wouldn't have almost 35% of the electorate voting for SPD in 1912 otherwise.
I'm not sure if the USPD would be a big factor, the bulk of their membership simply rejoined the SPD after the war - and the rift between SPD and USPD would likely be smaller, not greater, as SPD will likely not get the chance to massacre USPD activists with the help of Freikorps in this timeline.
Zentrum had been turning less and less ultramontanist ever since the end of Kulturkampf and the perception of the SPD had changed significantly after the war began, they were no longer seen as an anti-state force but as loyalists to the existing order. It wasn't going to stop smth like the Pan-German League from deriding SPD as the devil but not the left-wing Zentrum leaders who are currently in command of the party - who themselves are trade unionists and economically progressive, and were also trying to transform Zentrum away from the Catholic tower.
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With all due respect, your views on Germany include them using carriers in WW2 to destroy the Royal Navy, and it was disputed fruitlessly for hundreds of pages before the mods had to move your timeline to the Writer's Forum for lack of plausibility.