No, actually. (1) It would still have to maintain its land forces- it shared borders to nations hostile to it.
Which is a tiny fraction of actually fighting on land fronts.
(2) Which OTL, Britain mounted, and still won. Germany lost.
Germany lost because it was fighting the US and SU as well as Britain.
(3) This is the After 1900 forum, so no, other countries would respond. Only in the ASB forum do other nations ignore their ships sunk and citizens killed, illegally I might add.
On the contrary, there were major neutralist political figures in the US during this timeframe, such as Robert Taft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Taft It is unlikely, but not impossible, that such a figure could have been the leader of the US during an Anglo-German war.
(4) It really isn't- 1913, Bulgaria had a larger standing army, and more modern than the US- who today would argue Bulgaria was the stronger one? The time frame is critical- the US could mobilize far more over 4 years, as Britain could as well- comparing, frex, the UK and German armies in 1913 is pointless, unless it is a 12 months or less war, since Britain could, and did, mobilize an army almost as big as Germany by 1916. People seem to forget we have OTL data of Germany enjoying a lead, but when war dictated Britain close the gap, they did.
????????????? Who said anything about comparing the size of the standing armies? What I said was the most accurate test of the relative economic/military strengths of Germany and Britain, (or any two countries), is to imagine them fighting a war with all other countries remaining completely neutral, not counting the size of their armed forces at the outset.
(5) The operation which gutted the German navy?
And succeeded in attaining its objective.
Again, here Germany cannot ignore the other 2 branches (army/ air force), since France and Poland are hostile towards it. And even if they decided to only build subs, they still need subs now to train on, and Britain will, as they did OTL, launch a crash building program of escorts.
Which was completely inadequate until the massive amounts of free stuff from the US came rolling in.
And German torpedoes are mostly useless (what, 40% dud rate?).
So 60% useful by your own guess? And the problem was eventually solved.
http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1599&context=etd
And that operation, along with Sickle Cut and Barbarossa, are not fixed points in time. They should have accomplished far less than they did. There are no certainties that without Danish air fields (or are they invading them too? Makes Poland and France mighty nervous, which means they order more weapons, so Germany has too as well- so less subs) the Germans succeed.
Countering increased Franco-Polish peacetime orders is still a tiny fraction of the effort needed to replace the losses which accrue from fighting on major land fronts. Also, for the WWII timeframe, Britain would need to divert resources in a similar manner to counter Japan.
Or, the Norwegians send out mobilization orders via radio and not by mail.
No reason to believe they would do so ITTL if they didn't in OTL.
And just skimming the article, those subs have 2 big issues- slow diving time and less maneuverable, means more time for planes to bomb, or destroyers to attack, and more likely within the area when depth charges arrive.
More than made up for by the ability to focus on production of submarines and the lack of US participation.
Submarine warfare was decisively defeated by the introduction of convoy in two world wars given Given Germanys location its very hard for them to wage submarine warfare against the U.K. Without widening the war by invading other countries . Furthermore the nature of submarine warfare tends to upset neutral nations bringing them into a war against Germany. Having your ships sunk and salors killed is worse than having your ships escorted into port ant their cargoes purchased.
The U-boats were not defeated by the "introduction of the convoy," they were defeated by Britain being kept in the war by enormous amounts of US assistance and then direct American entry. And I already acknowledged that the scenario of an Anglo-German war with other countries staying neutral is not particularly likely, it's a thought experiment designed to measure which of the two countries in isolation is stronger, if either.