Allied forces invade Germany during WWI

This is one I've often wondered about. By November 1918, the German Army was beaten but by no means routed. The withdrawal through Belgium and out of France was still fairly orderly.

History tells us that newly revolutionary societies can be both militarily aggressive and successful - look at France from 1792 onward and Bolshevik Russia in 1919. Both were able to withstand powerful internal and external counter-revolutionary forces and I suspect that had the alliers entered Germany, the newly republican Germans would have resisted fiercely.

Indeed, would not the Germans have in any case have seen a foreign army as an invader rather than a liberator? We know in 1944-45 there was fanatical resistance in both east and west by the Germans (much more so into 1945 in the east but look at the fight the allies had to secure Aachen and the Hurtigen Forest in late 1944).

So, let's imagine a lesser uprising with a more combative Imperial effort to put down the mutinies and disorder while at the some time continuing the war in the west.

November-December 1918 sees a patchwork of confused fighting within Germany as British, French and American forces advance slowly but steadily from the west encountering strong resistance in some areas but almost none in others.

Bavaria declares independence but soon fragments into internal conflict as does Austria and most of the regions of the former Habburg dominion.

The onset of winter further slows the allied advance but on December 11th 1918 the French reached the Rhine at Bonn, south of Cologne. Hastily-assembled German artillery barred the way to the east but the German Army was collapsing under internal tensions, food shortages and mass desertions.

By mid-January, reconnaissance showed German forces dissipating east of the Rhine. On January 15th, under an artillery barrage, French and British forces advanced across the Rhine bridges while American troops improvised a waterborne crossing near Oppenheim .

The French and British soon advanced east as the Germans collapsed in front of them. They found towns full of starving people desperate for food and fuel.

I think this is pretty realistic.

The peace will be harsher in some accounts - more territorial losses, Germany likely will be partitioned into several smaller entities, maybe the leadership is put to court, the whole fleet will go, military restrictions will be much harder. Considering reparations, I can imagine that it will be somewhat lighter: everybody by then knows that Germany cannot afford much, and the US influence will have grown massively during the later months of the war.
 

katchen

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Could American forces have built up and staged a landing on the German coast around November 1918 and gone for the coup de grace?

Maybe near Cuxhaven or in Schleschwig -Holstein to capture Hamburg and then drive to Berlin?

This has always been an American way of war, opening up another front when bogged down. Think Admiral Farragut at New Orleans. Or Winfield Scott at Veracruz. I'm sure American planners were THINKING about it. The German surface fleet was staying in port and U-Boats could be spotted by aircraft and engaged. And didn't the Americans have a few of their own submarines?
 
The problem with this thread is, that it lacks a clear POD. The situation might be vastly different depending on the German defeat occuring 1914,1916/17 or 1918/19.

If the Germans continued the fight and the Allies push beyond the Rhine into places like the Ruhr I think we will see the French get their dream of a new frontier in the Rhineland perhaps splitting the territory with Belgium.

Belgium would most probable have no interest in that. They are already a country with two nationalities, integration only 1 or 2 million Germans would have serious internal consequences. Actually, they were ready to negotiate getting rid of Eupen in the interwar-period, but Paris begged them not to.

b) an allied liner is sunk/captured and an allied diplomat is captured, along with the plans for the treaty of Versailles.

I am certain that the negotiations in Versailles would have been much shorter if such a plan existed by early 1918.

The peace will be harsher in some accounts - more territorial losses, Germany likely will be partitioned into several smaller entities, maybe the leadership is put to court, the whole fleet will go, military restrictions will be much harder. Considering reparations, I can imagine that it will be somewhat lighter: everybody by then knows that Germany cannot afford much, and the US influence will have grown massively during the later months of the war.

I think that additional territorial losses and the break-up of Germany cancel each other out. Either the one is seen necessary or the other.
The leadership going to court is also still difficult...you will have to extract them out of the neutral countries they probably will have fled to (Netherlands, Sweden).

Harder military restrictions? What else are you going to forbid the Germans from having? Firearms?

The grown US influence in a continued war will be interesting, I wonder how that will play out in the eventual peace conference ITTL and also considering how the war will be viewed later on in the US. How many casualties will the US suffer compared to the (relatively) low number OTL?

Could American forces have built up and staged a landing on the German coast around November 1918 and gone for the coup de grace?
Maybe near Cuxhaven or in Schleschwig -Holstein to capture Hamburg and then drive to Berlin?
This has always been an American way of war, opening up another front when bogged down. Think Admiral Farragut at New Orleans. Or Winfield Scott at Veracruz. I'm sure American planners were THINKING about it. The German surface fleet was staying in port and U-Boats could be spotted by aircraft and engaged. And didn't the Americans have a few of their own submarines?

I think the German North Sea coast, with its marshes, it not exactly inviting for such an endeavour.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadden_Sea

Only if German resistance completely collapsed and the US Navy could basically sail into port, this would be feasible. Also, the HSF is still there. Its sailors weren't ready to be sent into doom while the armistice was already under negotiation. But the chances are high it would make a stand in the "Deutsche Bucht" against an invasion, if it is still able to do so.

I would be interested in how far weapon development would go if the war lasted into summer 1919:
-would the HMS Argus come into use?
-still prior to the end of the war, the Germans had brought the first ATG in the sense of a AT-rifle into service, this model was still very basic and had loads of disadvantages, but was a start... AFAIK, the development of ATG in the sense of specialized artileery had also started (3.7cm TaK by Rheinmetall), as well as the training of field-gun-crews in order to directly score against tanks.
-Would paratroopers actually used, as planned by the US Forces for 1919?
 
What if the Germans manage to advance deep into Russia, there's still revolution, but the Bolsheviks refuse to aknowledge Brest-Litovsk as Germany's western front collapses? Maybe the peace won't be that harsh then, what with the reds threatening the rest of Europe.
 
What if the Germans manage to advance deep into Russia, there's still revolution, but the Bolsheviks refuse to aknowledge Brest-Litovsk as Germany's western front collapses? Maybe the peace won't be that harsh then, what with the reds threatening the rest of Europe.

Germany was teetering the edge of revolution. They may have to come to the table if they keep from going over the cliff.
 
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