3 Ludendorff what-ifs

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Let's start with three from Ludendorff:

# 1 Ludendorff's nerve fails in July, right after the drive to Paris is
clearly checked, instead of in September as in OTL. Erich tells the
govt its got to seek terms.


# 2 Ludendorff's nerves don't crack in September, but hold firm through
Christmas 1918. Where are the militaries by that point, and have
Germans begun to have a revolution WITHOUT permission from above. In
OTL they waited till the government practicaly gave permission by
seeking terms.


# 3 Not one step back: Ludendorff and Hindenburg just can't stomach
giving up lots of square miles of occupied France in early 1917. (They
did a strategic retrenchment that gave more depth between the
front-lines and the Channel and the front-lines and PAris). They try to
desperately keep the forward line in shape by calling up inductees
sooner, doing more unmanned obstacles and scrounging troops they can
from peripheral theaters, while at the same time, making no deliberate
retrenchments in those other theaters.
 
I reckon the Germans were screwed by this point, what happens is a matter of details. I do think it is odd though that H&L pulled back in 1917 and then pushed forward in 1918 to where they had vacated. I think they should have gone for Calais in March 1918 (and in Oct-Nov 1914 and June 1916 for that matter), but that's just me, obsessed by terrain as a flank gaurd.
 
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