DBWI: Great Britain joined the Great War
- Thread starter Jasen777
- Start date
Maybe the Lusitania is far more careful when going through Waters with no limit on U-Boat attacks and the US never enters the Great War.
For all good that it did with France being stripped of many of its colonies at the end of the war, the Americans were too little too late.
To answer the original question, this would probably give the Allies a better chance of coming out of the war with at least a stalemate if not a victory if they get lucky. The RN would give the Hochseeflotte a run for its money, if not beating them outright, and if Britian provided land troops this might slow down the CP push to Paris in the opening weeks of the war.
To little to late? We got the Krauts out of France did't we? Plus the Germans lost most of the colonies anyhow.
One of the major reasons for military intervention in the Great War was because of the German armament of the Mexican rebels under Pancho Villa, and the threat of the Zimmerman Telegram, which threatened the security of the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and the New Mexico Territory.
If Great Britain had interceded, it is most likely that the arms shipments that sparked the violence along the Rio Grande to the Pacific would have been prevented, or at the very least , alleviated....
If Great Britain had interceded, it is most likely that the arms shipments that sparked the violence along the Rio Grande to the Pacific would have been prevented, or at the very least , alleviated....
At the cost of independence for most of France's prewar colonies as they were too busy fighting for their lives for most of the war on the Continent. Germany was on a razor's edge at that point having been beaten back by the French after their initial gains, not to mention the resistance movements in the Low Countries played hell with the Germans logistics. Being stripped of its colonies was seen as the lesser of the evils that that they could have went with. Sure they lost the colonies, but they were able to keep their gains in the east.
We'd still be talking about the second Golden Age but it's likely that Berlin and Munich wouldn't have been incinerated.
Consider - Britain in 1914 was seriously challenged by the Americans in the West, the Germans in Europe/Africa and Russia in the East. Fortunately Britain had the economic advantage over the USA being a creditor nation, the Germans couldn't hope to match the Royal Navy whilst the Russians just couldn't seem to make government work for them which protected her interests until the outbreak of the Great War.
With Britain selling armaments to both sides at first for cash and then for colonial possessions, she emerged even better off then before whilst her rivals practically exhausted each other. And the USA sat in isolation. Britain continued to sent wannabe colonists to Africa, Australia and Canada in increasing numbers whilst the continued economic prosperity saw birth-rates soar to record levels year on year. When the challenge from a triumphant German/European hegemony finally came, nobody could forsee that the British had channelled their money into developing new weapons of war which saw the Germans collapse within 48 hours of declaration after Berlin and Munich were decimated.
Of course if the British entered the war in 1914, the whole matter would have been over by Christmas. British financial superiority coupled with the BEF battlehardened fighting the Boers a mere 10 years earlier would have swept aside the Germans in Belgium and pushed them back across the Rhine. The Ottomans would have been cowed into keeping the peace, not least because British troops from India would have stormed through Persia and stuck Asia Minor.
France would have regained Alsace-Lorraine but would have been beholden to Britain. Germany would have been carved up like a roast, returning to pre 1870 borders and forbidden to ever reunite. The Austro-Hungarian empire would have been occupied by Entente troops whilst the various local ethnic groups were given independence. Of course the USA would have taken advantage of Britain's momentary weakness and gone straight for the South American markets but I'm confident Britain would have been able to reassert themselves.