Belgium allows Imperial German army through?

Realistically speaking the best that happens is that Belgium puts up a token resistance then retreats into the ports/behind their forts, more or less what Gemrany (foolishly) was expecting them.

If the Germans steer clear of Antwerp and the Channel then Britain is far less likely to intervene. Likewise if Belgium doesn't start smashing railways and bridges there's probably no rape of Belgium since the time table isn't held up as severely and the army moves through relatively smoothly.
 
Realistically speaking the best that happens is that Belgium puts up a token resistance then retreats into the ports/behind their forts, more or less what Gemrany (foolishly) was expecting them.

If the Germans steer clear of Antwerp and the Channel then Britain is far less likely to intervene. Likewise if Belgium doesn't start smashing railways and bridges there's probably no rape of Belgium since the time table isn't held up as severely and the army moves through relatively smoothly.

This is more or less what happened, with railway sabotage and 3 sorties from Antwerp.

The Germans only masked Antwerp with 4 divisions until October, they didn't try to reduce the fortresses until after the Marne/Aisne battles and Race to the Sea was well underway because the Siege Train was being used to reduce fortresses along the line of march until then. By then the British had been fighting for 6 weeks and made the decision to move the BEF from the Aisne north to Flanders to better protect British interests.
 
What could Germany offer Belgium?

Nothing. The Belgians can see the two endgame alternatives, which really aren't all that alternative to them:

- the Germans win, in which case they annex Belgium entirely, or parts of it turning the rest into a vassal state, or at least turn it all into a vassal state. End of Belgian independence.
- the French win, but they don't forget that Belgium sided with Germany; in other words, Belgian independence ends anyway, under another master.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
Again, in 1914 the average PM needs to explain himself to the average Englishman much less than today. He has to explain himself to the average MPs - who are much less in thrall to opinion polls than today and who know geopolitics.
There were more than enough anti-war MPs among the Liberals, Labour and IPP. Also Asquith, while being a Liberal Imperial, was not the kind of person who would destroy his own party to join with the Tories to bring Britain into the war. He was not Lloyd George (who without "poor little Belgium" would have remained anti-war) after all.
 
There were more than enough anti-war MPs among the Liberals, Labour and IPP. Also Asquith, while being a Liberal Imperial, was not the kind of person who would destroy his own party to join with the Tories to bring Britain into the war. He was not Lloyd George (who without "poor little Belgium" would have remained anti-war) after all.

We'll have to disagree, then. My reading of the events is that yes, until the German ultimatum to Belgium the British government was divided (more or less along party lines, which would therefore be reflected in parliament), but that the sea change wasn't the fact that Belgium was resisting the Germans. The change was in the fact in itself that Germany was going to violate Belgian neutrality - which would still be a fact even if the Belgians acquiesced to that.

Note how the British would have had barely time to be informed that King Albert I had turned down the German request. That happened on August 3, and I don't know whether the British government was informed on that date; the King went public with the refusal on the following day, in his parliament. On that same day the British ambassador was already delivering an ultimatum to Germany. Given this fast sequence, my opinion is that the British reacted to the mere intention of Germany to have troops move through Belgium - not even to the actual invasion (beginning on that same day, August 4), and not to the fact that Belgium was or would be resisting. Therefore the possibility that Belgium simply sided with Germany wouldn't change the British reaction.

Note the British ultimatum gave Germany some 6 hours to commit to a withdrawal of its vanguards from Belgium. Bethmann Hollweg met with the British ambassador and in their conversation, entirely correctly, concluded that Britain wanted war with Germany.
 
The timings are important to remember in our age of shit going viral on the Internet in hours. In 1914 phones were not common or reliable and governments relied on telegrams which by their nature are slow and require the use of expert operators. 6 hours to get a message from the British government to the recon units of the German army might well be physically impossible in the conditions of 1914.
 
The timings are important to remember in our age of shit going viral on the Internet in hours. In 1914 phones were not common or reliable and governments relied on telegrams which by their nature are slow and require the use of expert operators. 6 hours to get a message from the British government to the recon units of the German army might well be physically impossible in the conditions of 1914.

The timings are important and they factor in for my opinion that the British government reacted to the information that Germany was intentioned to violate Belgium, and not to the information that Belgium decided to resist that.

That said, I think I did not explain myself thoroughly enough. The countdown (of 5, not 6 hours, I checked: the meeting took place at 7 pm) was not starting from the British government: the meeting was between the British ambassador in Berlin and the German Foreign Minister, so it started once the German government was apprised of the midnight deadline. Additionally, the British did not demand that, by that deadline, the German vanguards actually began withdrawing from Belgium; they only demanded that the German government issued a note of their intention to do so.

Of course this would still have required gathering the German ministers, the Kaiser, and, I guess, a bunch of generals. Then it would have required convincing the actual decision-makers from among the group to give up on everything: the Belgian invasion, their war plans, their mobilization, the golden opportunity (they believed it to be such), in sum, the whole war. And with it their credibility and future careers.
For some reason, Bethmann Hollweg dined with the British ambassador instead of trying to summon his cabinet, and spoke as if Britain were already at war with Germany.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
For some reason, Bethmann Hollweg dined with the British ambassador instead of trying to summon his cabinet, and spoke as if Britain were already at war with Germany.

Because Perfidious Albion was effectively at war already.

They wanted war prior to the infringement of Belgian neutrality, and as others have said, they would have hackneyed up another excuse one way or another.


Better to face the world as it is than waste time trying to change the inevitable.
 
For some reason, Bethmann Hollweg dined with the British ambassador instead of trying to summon his cabinet, and spoke as if Britain were already at war with Germany.

I suspect that given the position of the German government from December 1912 that Britain was to be assumed to be a combattant in the next war British actions merely confirmed to Bethmann that this assumption was correct.

While we bang on about German actions in Belgium and the mobilisation in Russia and Austria-Hungary the British had already mobilised their fleet and sent it to its war station on 31 July. Bethmann would know this and likely consider the back and forth concerning Belgium merely preliminary fluff before the British inevitably joined the war, as per German assumptions.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
With good strategic reasons, as mentioned.



Sure. There was lots of inevitability in Berlin too, of course.

And still this does nothing to shift the onus of futily trying to negotiate a peace between the UK and Germany.

Germany is simply prosecuting the war as is (seen at the time by all sides as being) necessary for any chance at winning. Whether or not this includes going through Belgium is irrelevant; the UK wanted Germany to lose, irrespective of control of the channel ports, and would make efforts to that end until their view on the strategic situation dictated that Germany losing was not in their best interests.

Peace with England was impossible because England had a stake in with the other side.
 
And still this does nothing to shift the onus of futily trying to negotiate a peace between the UK and Germany.

I think you might be misunderstanding me. I never said that Bethmann Hollweg should have tried to summon his cabinet and the Kaiser, convince everyone that they had to withdraw from Belgium, and informed the British government of said decision by midnight.
My remark was simply meant to state that he saw that inevitability.

the UK wanted Germany to lose, irrespective of control of the channel ports,

As mentioned upthread, Britain was already worried by the German challenge on the oceans. That's strike one.
Then, the side upsetting the status quo also by killing the canary in the mine, Belgium, is the side clearly wishing to achieve hegemony on the Continent. That's strike two.

Now, I agree that these two strikes are enough for Britain having sound strategic reasons for going to war with the power doing both things; but the Channel ports are not a third point, they are an integral part of strike two. Britain never guaranteed the neutrality of Switzerland, while it had chosen to guarantee that of Belgium; that is, among other things, also because the geographic position of Belgium includes some of those ports and makes it the entryway to a few more of those (in France). And Belgium also borders with a third neutral small state where further ports are sited (the Netherlands).
The status quo included not changing this situation, a situation that was extremely important, if not vital, to British interests.

So the British opposition to Germany was not "irrespective" of the control of the Continental coastline close to Britain.
 

DougM

Donor
Yes Britain was worried and the government may want to go to war, but they still need to get the people of Great Britain to buy into the war. And that was pretty hard to get done in original timeline. In a timeline we’re Belg welcomes Germany attempting to use Germanys entry into Belgium as an excuse for war is going to fall very hollowly on the ears of the common man. And will probably result in protests, resistance to the war, less voluntary enlistment, less support for the war in general, and the voters voting against those that supported the war. To name but a handful.
And I don’t want to think what the rest of the empire is going to do and think about this. “You want us to send money and troops to support a war because Germany sent troops through Belgium and this is such a non issue to Belgium that they didn’t bother to send troops to try and protect themselves? Are you NUTS? “
Keep in mind that this is not a war like Britain has been fighting before in saw South Africa, Those wars used relatively few troops and required relatively little in the way of support compared to what WW1 would need. In effect the government could run those wars with minimal buy in from the masses. And even in those wars the Government tried to find reasons that would convince the masses the war was necessary. So the Government will need some excuse to sell to the public,

And arguably the bigger issue (admittedly unknown to the British Government at the start of the war) is that they will need to excuse to form the base of the Propaganda campaign in the US. Because if that goes wrong ultimately bad things can happen to Britain and France.

If you look at it in context of previous US wars and actions Britain did a LOT of things that would have been expected to create tensions with the US. Ranging from cutting communication to Europe to the Blockade. If this is handled badly then it is not impossible to see the US NEVER enter the way. Possible enforce the neutrality laws and cash and carry. And if things go completely against Britain to just not sell Britain and her allies anything.
Heck if things go right for Germany in this case then we could see Britain trying to enforce the blockade and accidentally getting the US to go to war on Germany’s side. Not very likely but the butterflies COULD fall that way (in a Britain screws up by the numbers and Germany gets as lucky as they can get kind of way).

So yes the value of Belgium standing up to Germany is actually VERY important to the war as we know it. As it is the cornerstone of the whole Alies Good Germany Bad Propaganda that shaped the Perception of the way in France Britain, the Empire and of course the US.
It set the tone right from the start and thus everything that Germany did from day one was viewed in a bad way because they very first thing they did was bad. Meanwhile everything Britain did was viewed as good because Britain was only in the war that save poor little Belgium and other minor countries. Thus that pesky catty of the cable or the annoying blockade was not something Britain WANTED to do but something it HAD to do in order to fight those evil Huns that had forced the war to start with and who were committing EVIL acts in Belgium (and presumably elsewhere).

In major wars you have to get the people behind the war or at least not against it. Case in point the US did not have the people behind the Korean War and they had a very vocal group of folks AGAINST the war in Vietnam and in neither case did that go well for them.

So without a good cause the war is going to be a lot harder for Britain and her Empire.
 
Exactly how much convincing do the British need to go to war? The basic hope was that the war would be over by christmas and in any case Britain had a small army that was constantly on active service around the world. I doubt that many British people guessed they were voting for/supporting 70 divisions and unprecedented casualties, I suspect they were thinking of something much smaller perhaps even like the Boer war.
 
Case in point the US did not have the people behind the Korean War and they had a very vocal group of folks AGAINST the war in Vietnam and in neither case did that go well for them.

Vietnam is an especially good example. In that you should see that the mass media had grown much more sophisticated and important, public opinion was much more relevant, and the general outlook of the population was greatly different (the patriotic reaction you got in 1914 when you said "your country needs you" was exceedingly less automatic in the 1960s). Vietnam also came after, as you mention, the unpopular Korean War and the costly and long WWII and WWI.

That said, are you sure the war did not go well in Vietnam because it was unpopular at home? Some seem to think that the fact that the USA couldn't hit/occupy all of the enemy targets (many key ones were in China) had some more relevance than moods in the US campuses.
 
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If the British peopke supported the Boerwar, which was a blatant Brirish landgrab against a country that posed no threat at all, they would support a war against Germany.
 
In hindsight, what did Belgium get from resisting Germany? Approximately 124 000 to 144 000 additional deaths, or 1,67 to 1,95 % of the population. Plus of course the major reconstruction effort, the internal divisions due to co-operation with occupiers etc. Why would an agreement with Germany, with perhaps trade advantages and colonies, be worse? Belgian participation, outside perhaps some coastal defences and railway co-operation, would not be required. There's no even major threat of air raids. It's not Soviet or Nazi occupation, it's 1914, not 1940's.

IMHO, from hindsight Belgium shot herself in the foot, or to be more exact, abdomen. Even if the expectation is a short war of 1870's style it's probably better move to not to resist or even actively co-operate with Germany rather than try to resist with no hope of resisting.
 
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