If WW1 played out the same until US entry, except the Zimmerman Telegram is never sent and the Americans stay out of the war, who would end up winning in the end?
If WW1 played out the same until US entry, except the Zimmerman Telegram is never sent and the Americans stay out of the war, who would end up winning in the end?
However the key fly in the Central Powers ointment was the ailing state of Austria-Hungary and it is hard to see them going much beyond the OTL December 1918 deadline they communicated to Germany. Thus the odds are that a Germany that has not sought terms before when it has something of a reasonable negotiating strength seeks terms in 1919 at the latest.
So the real question is whether, with no AEF on the horizon, Germany still gambles everything on those offensives. If not, she can hold out more or less indefinitely , and shore up her allies as required, and so at worst get a highly favourable negotiated peace, and maybe (at least on the Continent) an outright victory.
It's the Turks who are likely still screwed, given how badly they were doing by the end of 1916.
The Entente is going to exhaust their collateral in the US in Spring of 1917, unless they decide to increase what they are offering up as collateral. This means no more secured loans and absent a US war declaration no wave of unsecured loans. So the Entente can no longer buy from the US in the quantity that they had done previously, let alone the vastly expanded quantity of OTL 1917-18. There is a small benefit in that they do not need to give the US all the equipment it needed, but this is outweighed by what the US sold to the Entente
The US produced half of the Entente total of smokeless powder in this period, as well as lots of cartridges and shells. AFAIK 80% of Entente oil came from the US, plus lots of other raw materials. Not to mention other things like draft animals, preserved food, cloth, vehicles etc.
Not to mention Russia only stayed in the war as long as it did due to the promise of rebuilding loans. Absent the US that is unlikely and Russia exits the war earlier, giving Austria-Hungary a much better outlook
The Central Power need a minimum of 3 PODS:
The US must screw over the US to the benefit of the Central Powers.
If WW1 played out the same until US entry, except the Zimmerman Telegram is never sent and the Americans stay out of the war, who would end up winning in the end?
Mikestone8
Austria-Hungary didn't fold until a week before Germany did, and the main reason for this was the collapse of the Balkan front
How's that again?
The US need to sell to someone, they do not since the 1890s at the latest have a sufficient large internal market to by all the goods US industry can produce. If the Entente stop buying then the US stop selling, if the US stop selling workers are laid off, investments are delayed or abandoned, mortgages defaulted on and so on. This is a bit like the 1931 portion of the Great Depression being brought forwards but easier to spot as this time the US know the Entente will stop buying.
how was the Entente set for food in general? I've read in a couple of places that when the US entered the war and first sat down to talk to the other Allied leaders, they were told that the Entente needed a lot of food rather badly, which caught Wilson by surprise, and the US had to drastically increase it's spring planting to get there. Any truth to this?Not to mention other things like draft animals, preserved food, cloth, vehicles etc.
US has no one else to sell to, save replacing peacetime Entente and CP exports to South America and Asia. It isn't screwing itself over, it is making sure it gets paid, by not loaning money to the Entente without assurances it will get paid back (OTL some were not in fact paid back), plus the wartime bubble would be over sooner or later, better for the democrats in power if it is now then say 1919 (when it happened OTL). The Treasury Department had already warned US investors against unsecured loans. Few banks are going to offer loans without a surety of being paid back. Entente got a total of $8 Billion in unsecured loans in 1917-18, (compared to $2 Billion of secured loans before then)Evidence that the US have someone else to sell to please...remember the people spending that Entente credit were US farmers and factory workers? Of course you might also want to look into how much credit the Entente actually needed as the French for example preferred to pay for American goods in gold. Then again there is the fact that this brings a worse case scenario of the Entente being forced on the defensive in the west but then they still have the blockade and absent USW the Central Powers have not and USW means US entry into the war. Yet far more likely is that the Entente do start to grind down the Germans on the Western Front albeit more slowly however since the blockade is still biting at the same rate German resistance is time limited in a way that the Entente's who remember control actual gold mines as well as other colonial goods the US was importing, is not.
The Central Power need a minimum of 3 PODS:
The US must screw over the US to the benefit of the Central Powers.
Unlimited Submarine Warfare must go ahead and go ahead more successfully than OTL but still with the POD above applying
The Germans must then fight better on the Western Front than their best.
I have not numbered the PODS because all must apply equally for a late war Central Powers victory...if you want the CP to do better you need to look earlier in the war.
That being the case, a lack of Entente purchasing power would lead to more attempts by Wilson to get them to relax their blockade, and open up some of those markets. The alternative of unsecured loans makes less and less sense the less well the Entente happens to be doing. They'd probably dry up completely if and when Russia throws in the towel.
But the pain hits straight away and the less the US does for the Entente the less leverage it has. Then again there is the fact that German manufactured goods unlike British manufactured goods competed directly for the same low cost markets...in other words you are again asking the US to screw itself over to help Germany rather than help the US manufacturers who actually benefit from the blockade.
So once again we are back to the US helping the CP for the sake of the CP and to the detriment of the US.
The Treasury Department had already warned US investors against unsecured loans. Few banks are going to offer loans without a surety of being paid back. Entente got a total of $8 Billion in unsecured loans in 1917-18, (compared to $2 Billion of secured loans before then)
That...weirdly ascribes way too much agency to the US in this situation, actually. Because you know what else is to the detriment of the US? Giving away goods for free, or handing out loans that won't be repaid. And yet you're framing a failure to do either of those as a choice to help out the Central Powers. I mean, I don't think you accept the premise that Entente foreign exchange was in that bad shape, but because you don't even discuss that assumption in your argument and just speed ahead to talk about other things, that's what it sounds like you're saying, which makes your posts seem rather silly.