DBWI: Schlieffen Plan wasn't successful

Yesterday, I was talking with my cousin from Mittelafrika about the first Weltkrieg. Then this idea crossed our mind.

So what do you guys think, that would have happened if the Schlieffen Plan wasn't successful?

Would Germany still win the war? What would the world be like after?
 
I'm not sure. Apprently, in a book I read while in occupied Serbia during the summer, the French almost managed to scrounge up the weapons to stop the Germans, with taxis. However, for some reason, the taxi service failed to comply, so when the Germans went into Paris, they pretty much crushed most french resistance.

I think if Nicholas II had been more competent we may have seen a faster mobilization of Russia, but it is Russia, after all.
 
If the plan fails, Germany may have trouble given that it has to turn to meet Russia - however lumbering it is, it is there. And so by the point it can turn back to the West the opportunity for a quick end to the war may be over.

Not sure I'd be as confident in Germany winning a long war - Britain's pockets are pretty deep, which has tended to be an advantage in its previous major wars.

Hard to call this one.
 
I think Germany would loose. The Royal Navy would smash them in the North Sea thanks to weight of numbers. From then on, it's only a matter of time.
 
How does smashing the Germany navy lead to (the other side doing so) winning WWI? It has to be won on land.

Might help any attempts to blockade Germany to smash the High Seas Fleet, but...blockades alone won't do.
 
How does smashing the Germany navy lead to (the other side doing so) winning WWI? It has to be won on land.

Might help any attempts to blockade Germany to smash the High Seas Fleet, but...blockades alone won't do.

Yeah, Germany could just sit out the rest of the war when it has control over Europe, then white peace Britain when they realize that they can't win the war through blockades just like what happened in OTL :rolleyes:.

The question is would France still fall if the plan failed?
 
I think France being forced to accept a peace on Germany terms is more likely than France being outright conquered. France would resist annexation bitterly, and its not really worth it for Germany.
 
Actually, success of the plan OTL, albeit modified (I'd prefer to call it Schlieffen-Moltke Plan), was a lucky bet. There was plenty of things that cound have gone wrong there.
However, France was not outright conquered at that point. Well, Germans made it little more than a puppet state, but only when that failed some years later, Ludendorff decided for Incorporation. And this also was challenged by many in Berlin. The Kaiser, of course, was happy to play Charlemagne.
Germany needed a quick victory though. In a time when tanks were not developed, massive infantry could oppose a formidable resistance and the French could make a war of attrition as long as they the British support.

Edit: OOC: I'm trying to follow the previous comments, but maybe it woul be better to scratch this.
 
I don't think Germany could have won the Great European War had its 'Blitzing' offensive into France failed (World War 1 / First Weltkrieg is always so pretentious sounding to me... especially taking into account the REAL
World War :rolleyes:).

France got caught off guard and hampered by bad logistics and strategy on the national level. The French generals and politicians failed France in that war (as usual :(), not the French soldiers whose professionalism and courage has stood since Napoleon.

Without France, Britain has no purchase onto the mainland of Europe save Russia and we all know the debacle the BEF got into on the Russian Front or at Gallipoli during the Anglo-Ottoman War. But if France can hold on for the British to get their stuff together Germany is now facing Britain, France AND Russia, the three largest empires on earth at the time with only an Austria Hungary that is wracked with ethnic division and of a generally poorer quality army.

With France in the fight Britain has a much greater case to make for blockading Germany to the Big neutral powers like Japan and the US or whipping up anti-German sentiment which the notoriously racist and Anglophile Woodrow Wilson would have been glad to use rather than what happened, namely the German American community successfully swaying public opinion for 'fair, equal and open trade'. Certainly glad the prick got booted in 1916 by Hughes.

Although it would be interesting to see what the world would have been like without the quick victory over France and the Czar packing it in in 1916 when things became incredibly obvious that victory was not in the cards. There certainly wouldn't be a Mittleafrika succeeding from the ashes of the 'Congo Free State' and the existing German colonies.

(ooc: I'm going to try and fix the whole 'France annexed by Germany' bit)

I think the Kaiserreich would also have lasted a LOT longer win or lose due to Wilhelm not going off the deep end and trying to 'annex' France. In the history of Incredibly Obvious Bad Ideas trying to annex 40 million people who mostly hate your guts in the West while you're also trying to annex 40 million people who mostly hate your guts in the East (Breast-Litovsk)... well... the only thing that tops that was the Pacific War insanity with Japan vs the World. Germany would have walked off a cliff had the Reichstag Revolt not happened.
 
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