Any WW1 TL with a more decisive Entente Victory? + need Bibliography

Perkeo

Banned
WI no Burgfriedenspolitik: The SPD and the unions openly oppose the war effort, which leads to an earlier revolution and to an earlier collapst of Germany. That has some very interesting implications on the political system of Germany.
 
WI no Burgfriedenspolitik: The SPD and the unions openly oppose the war effort, which leads to an earlier revolution and to an earlier collapst of Germany. That has some very interesting implications on the political system of Germany.

This feels ASB to me. These guys were proud to be Germans, they just didn't want to be ruled by incompetent generals that shot strikers.
 
Hello, everyone, like said in the title, I'm looking for TL with a more decisive victory of the Entente. After reading several of these, I'm quite wary of seeing TLs where Germany wins "because Germany was cool" (yep, forced germanization, racial anthropology, social darwinism, plans of ethnic cleansing -meaning massive population transferts- in Western Poland to settle Germans -Hindenburg's wet dreams- ; all of these were so cool...).

Oh, those plans (which were never formalized) only existed in Germany. Those evil Germans, tsc, tsc.

LMAO @ a retired figurehead like Hindenburg being portrayed as the prussian Hitler.
 
Oh, those plans (which were never formalized) only existed in Germany. Those evil Germans, tsc, tsc.

LMAO @ a retired figurehead like Hindenburg being portrayed as the prussian Hitler.
Of course they didn't only existed in Germany. Russia's policy against its muslim population was bad as well. But the alliance was nonetheless worse than the Entente. It's just that some people tend to forget that the Central Powers were very keen on social darwinism ( the CUP getting the gold medal btw). But's that not the point.
If you have asuggestion about a TL or bibliographical advices, you're welcome here.
 
Well it's not a timeline but there's Rich Rostrom's suggested point of divergence where von Moltke's representative Oberstleutnant Richard Hentsch accidentally stumbles into a British cavalry patrol whilst on the way from 2nd Army HQ to 1st Army HQ on the 9th September 1914 and is captured, von Kluck therefore not being informed of Bulow's agreement with Hentsch to withdraw his Army north and opening a gap between them. The Allies push forward as hard as possible and over the next several days 1st Army is effectively destroyed with 60,000 prisoners being taken. The Anglo-French attempt to turn the German right on several occasions but are blocked by their reserves who in turn try to counterattack and return the favour in a kind of reverse Race to the Sea with the front lines eventually settling down roughly 50-70 km east of our timeline's, thus seeing western Flanders and much more French territory remaining unoccupied. From there further changes occur.

Alternatively there's Deckhand's Rouleau Compresseur timeline where General Georgi Skalon the Governor-General of Warsaw and Commander-in-Chief of the Warsaw Military District is assassinated by a Polish nationalist on 12th March 1913. His deputy one General Aleksei Brusilov, who in our timeline transferred to the Kiev Military District at around this point in our timeline due to poor relations with Skalon and the toxic atmosphere he fostered, steps into the breech to secure the situation and is later confirmed as Commander-in-Chief. Brusilov continues the combat training reforms he carried out in our timeline, takes the opportunity to clean house and knock some heads together to make sure that commanders will cooperate with each other or be transferred out, and experiment with some new cavalry tactics he was considering which develop into a kind of proto-deep battle theory. The Germans have a much harder time on the Eastern Front being beaten back, a large part of XVII Corps is forced to surrender with the other troops either withdrawing to Koenigsberg which is invested or retreating behind the Vistula as planned in our timeline if things went wrong. This in turn causes knock-on effects elsewhere.

Other ideas include the always popular amphibious landing at Alexandretta, modern day Iskenderun, rather than at Gallipoli to cut the single railway line that was the logistical lifeline for the Ottoman forces in Palestine and Gaza that ran nearby. With their supplies cut a large well-equipped British push up from the Sinai and a parallel one along the Euphrates in Mesopotamia could potentially see a large part of the Ottoman forces captured, or at least force them to retreat to the Anatolian plateau which is ideal defensive territory. At that point the British, with a few token French units IIRC, would hold most of the Middle East with the Ottomans limited to territory roughly equivalent to the modern Turkish Republic. They might not want to negotiate to begin with but if things are going poorly for the other Central Powers they might decide better to write off the rest of the Empire and at least bow out with a mild peace keeping the ethnically Turkish areas.

IIRC most of the faults with the Grand Fleet were either known about before the war, the faulty shells or not very large amounts of gunnery practice time available for certain units, or could possibly be averted if a key person or two were appointed to other posts or fell down a flight of stairs and broke a leg at certain points during the war. I'm not one of the Battleship Brothers though so I'll leave that area to others.
 
Well it's not a timeline but there's Rich Rostrom's suggested point of divergence where von Moltke's representative Oberstleutnant Richard Hentsch accidentally stumbles into a British cavalry patrol whilst on the way from 2nd Army HQ to 1st Army HQ on the 9th September 1914 and is captured, von Kluck therefore not being informed of Bulow's agreement with Hentsch to withdraw his Army north and opening a gap between them. The Allies push forward as hard as possible and over the next several days 1st Army is effectively destroyed with 60,000 prisoners being taken. The Anglo-French attempt to turn the German right on several occasions but are blocked by their reserves who in turn try to counterattack and return the favour in a kind of reverse Race to the Sea with the front lines eventually settling down roughly 50-70 km east of our timeline's, thus seeing western Flanders and much more French territory remaining unoccupied. From there further changes occur.

Alternatively there's Deckhand's Rouleau Compresseur timeline where General Georgi Skalon the Governor-General of Warsaw and Commander-in-Chief of the Warsaw Military District is assassinated by a Polish nationalist on 12th March 1913. His deputy one General Aleksei Brusilov, who in our timeline transferred to the Kiev Military District at around this point in our timeline due to poor relations with Skalon and the toxic atmosphere he fostered, steps into the breech to secure the situation and is later confirmed as Commander-in-Chief. Brusilov continues the combat training reforms he carried out in our timeline, takes the opportunity to clean house and knock some heads together to make sure that commanders will cooperate with each other or be transferred out, and experiment with some new cavalry tactics he was considering which develop into a kind of proto-deep battle theory. The Germans have a much harder time on the Eastern Front being beaten back, a large part of XVII Corps is forced to surrender with the other troops either withdrawing to Koenigsberg which is invested or retreating behind the Vistula as planned in our timeline if things went wrong. This in turn causes knock-on effects elsewhere.

Other ideas include the always popular amphibious landing at Alexandretta, modern day Iskenderun, rather than at Gallipoli to cut the single railway line that was the logistical lifeline for the Ottoman forces in Palestine and Gaza that ran nearby. With their supplies cut a large well-equipped British push up from the Sinai and a parallel one along the Euphrates in Mesopotamia could potentially see a large part of the Ottoman forces captured, or at least force them to retreat to the Anatolian plateau which is ideal defensive territory. At that point the British, with a few token French units IIRC, would hold most of the Middle East with the Ottomans limited to territory roughly equivalent to the modern Turkish Republic. They might not want to negotiate to begin with but if things are going poorly for the other Central Powers they might decide better to write off the rest of the Empire and at least bow out with a mild peace keeping the ethnically Turkish areas.

IIRC most of the faults with the Grand Fleet were either known about before the war, the faulty shells or not very large amounts of gunnery practice time available for certain units, or could possibly be averted if a key person or two were appointed to other posts or fell down a flight of stairs and broke a leg at certain points during the war. I'm not one of the Battleship Brothers though so I'll leave that area to others.
I thank you for our detailed answer and I will surely read these threads. :)
PS: I won't have internet during the next week so I apologize in advance for those who would post on this thread without any answer from my part.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
If VM had given a bone to the "offensive at the utmost" lunatics, his plan -albeit modified- would have been accepted: Joffre in 1911 was not against using french reserves at the frontline per se, in fact, he said "why not?" at the condition of using officers from the active to command them ( basically as a way to quicken the promotion of officers). Even Grandmaison (leader of the "offensive at the utmost" group) didn't attacked VM plan because it was defensive but because it concentrated all the forces in the North while he feared an offensive in the East
IOTL, the German 6th and 7th armies were deployed to defend potential French offensives into A-L. They only attacked after defeating initial French assaults.

No, they even called the defensive nature of the plan as smt like ''a danger to the state''.

Any kind of defensive doctrine would be better than Joffre's banzai offensives where infantry outrunning artillery support. When you stay in trenches and wait, all you have to do is to machine gun the Germans down.
 
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