Does the Entente win if the USA doesn't enter WW1?

Who wins the war?


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You forget the blockade. It may not be fatal to Germany, but it is crippling and certainly prevents any profitable gains from the war being realised by eliminating access to overseas markets.

If there's a ceasefire - formal or not - then the blockade remains.

But of course if the blockade continues then Germany will insist on continuing submarine warfare. Either the armistice extends to sea as well as land or it does not. It can't apply to one side and not the other. So the Entente is still getting hurt.

In any case, the blockade didn't get really watertight until after US entry into the war, which allowed exports to the Northern Neutrals (the main loophole in it) to be controlled at source. Absent this, the blockade will be a nuisance, but far from crippling.

Personally I find the concept of a peace of exhaustion to be unlikely, at least in the short term.

Agreed. Not very likely in the longer term either. In real life one side or the other will exhaust (its morale even if not its material resources) before the other - and then the other side wins.

While both sides can conserve strength by sitting on the defensive, if they both do this then there is less urgency to actually end the war, and both sides have so much invested in the war that agreeing terms would appear to be very difficult without strong internal pressure to do so, a la Russia and its revolutions.

How can both sides stand on the defensive? The CP can, if they don't face the prospect of huge numbers of American troops coming to join the Entente. But for the Entente to do so means giving up hope of dislodging the Germans from the lands they occupy, and eventually (since Germany isn't going to just spontaneously collapse in any conceivable time frame) going into a Conference at which the CP holds 90% of the bargaining chips. At some point the Entente must attack or else acknowledge defeat.
 
That, the Allies occupying Germany and pillaging farms as the first part of reparations and to feed themselves, and the maintenance of the blockade. All of the above made the starvation the worst AFTER the cease fire

Never hesitate to rewrite history eh?
But of course if the blockade continues then Germany will insist on continuing submarine warfare. Either the armistice extends to sea as well as land or it does not. It can't apply to one side and not the other. So the Entente is still getting hurt.

In any case, the blockade didn't get really watertight until after US entry into the war, which allowed exports to the Northern Neutrals (the main loophole in it) to be controlled at source. Absent this, the blockade will be a nuisance, but far from crippling.


Without unlimited rules the submarine campaign was ineffective, it was defeated even once it went to submarine rules. As to whether the blockade needed to be watertight to be effective we know full well it did not, hence Germany going to unlimited submarine warfare because it was losing. Defeating Russia did not solve Germany's blockade problem and the war had hollowed out the Dual-Monarchy without American involvement.

The idea of CP victory in the latter half of the war, especially on the scale envisaged here is the product not merely of a lack of factual knowledge but a refusal to engage with the facts at all.

https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Conditions_of_an_Armistice_with_Germany
https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Conditions_of_an_Armistice_with_Germany

10 November, 1918


Official release by the German Government, published in the Kreuz-Zeitung, November 11, 1918.


The following terms were set by the Allied powers for the Armistice.


1. Effective six hours after signing.


2. Immediate clearing of Belgium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, to be concluded within 14 days. Any troops remaining in these areas to be interned or taken as prisoners of war.


3. Surrender 5000 cannon (chiefly heavy), 30,000 machine guns, 3000 trench mortars, 2000 planes.


4. Evacuation of the left bank of the Rhine, Mayence, Coblence, Cologne, occupied by the enemy to a radius of 30 kilometers deep.


5. On the right bank of the Rhine a neutral zone from 30 to 40 kilometers deep, evacuation within 11 days.


6. Nothing to be removed from the territory on the left bank of the Rhine, all factories, railroads, etc. to be left intact.


7. Surrender of 5000 locomotives, 150,000 railway coaches, 10,000 trucks.


8. Maintenance of enemy occupation troops through Germany.


9. In the East all troops to withdraw behind the boundaries of August 1, 1914, fixed time not given.


10. Renunciation of the Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest.


11. Unconditional surrender of East Africa.


12. Return of the property of the Belgian Bank, Russian and Rumanian gold.


13. Return of prisoners of war without reciprocity.


14. Surrender of 160 U-boats, 8 light cruisers, 6 Dreadnoughts; the rest of the fleet to be disarmed and controlled by the Allies in neutral or Allied harbors.


15. Assurance of free trade through the Cattegat Sound; clearance of mine fields and occupation of all forts and batteries, through which transit could be hindered.


16. The blockade remains in effect. All German ships to be captured.


17. All limitations by Germany on neutral shipping to be removed.


18. Armistice lasts 30 days.

The key claim by Wiking most likely rests on clause 4 however there are a couple of issues, one is that the civilian population becomes the responsibility of the occupying authority to feed and the second would be that the main German farmlands were in the east and thus unoccupied...thus the population of the west of the Rhine is no longer under blockade and the 'starving' portion is the bit with the biggest farms.

Now it can be seen that with the US on board the terms of the Armistice were spectacularly one sided but and here is the point, the Entente could in fact have given up a fair number of those terms and still seen Germany on the back foot. World War 1 in OTL was not a narrow German defeat just because of the Americans. The leadership of Germany had known they were headed for defeat since at least 1916.
 
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The First World War ended with a whimper not a bang precisely because the Entente had the blockade in place. Germany could not stand on the defensive, the Entente might well waste time and blood trying to win by military offensive but even should they be stalemated the blockade continues to bite.
It may bite but would have never been a death blow in of itself, without American manpower the entente, France in particular is running out of manpower and the will to fight and the British won't be able to push the Germans back on their own.
The war would effectively Grind down to a stalemate, the Germans not having the necessary materiel to go on the offensive and the entente lacking the men and will to do so but such a situation favours the Germans because they are sitting in french land.
the French have damn near bled themselves white in this war.
 
It may bite but would have never been a death blow in of itself, without American manpower the entente, France in particular is running out of manpower and the will to fight and the British won't be able to push the Germans back on their own.

This is the pop myth of World War 1....here is a suggestion compare the French Mutiny of 1917 with the German Mutinies of 1918 and get back to me. You may be able to spot the key difference yourself or if not I will point it out to you but at least brief yourself on the chain of events for each crisis.


The war would effectively Grind down to a stalemate, the Germans not having the necessary materiel to go on the offensive and the entente lacking the men and will to do so but such a situation favours the Germans because they are sitting in french land.
the French have damn near bled themselves white in this war.

Stalemate was what you saw in 1916 and the Germans calculated they were losing because of the blockade. Stalemate will still mean fighting at the front and the expense of armies in the field and not in the factories and shops. Germany is less able to pay for this in the long run than Britain and France and the Dual-Monarchy is in an even worse state.
 
It may bite but would have never been a death blow in of itself, without American manpower the entente, France in particular is running out of manpower and the will to fight and the British won't be able to push the Germans back on their own.
The war would effectively Grind down to a stalemate, the Germans not having the necessary materiel to go on the offensive and the entente lacking the men and will to do so but such a situation favours the Germans because they are sitting in french land.
the French have damn near bled themselves white in this war.

My understanding is that the war was ended by the Hundred Days offensive, and that was predominantly a British attack. So, while there was of course help from the French and the Americans, the British did sort of push the Germans back on their own. The critical American contributions were financial and industrial, not manpower, while the French paid their own price in blood over the previous years.

Re. blockades. Yes, if the U-boats are hurting then lifting blockade in exchange for lifting blockade is a viable swap and is probably the best route to end the war quickly. However, the problem is to do with the need to keep the US out - meaning no USW - and preventing Britain from implementing convoys. While my knowledge is fuzzy here, the former might be possible - I think USW only sank a few "additional" ships (?) - but I don't see a way of achieving the latter without a major defeat of the Grand Fleet which gives it absolute priority on destroyers.
 
While my knowledge is fuzzy here, the former might be possible - I think USW only sank a few "additional" ships (?) - but I don't see a way of achieving the latter without a major defeat of the Grand Fleet which gives it absolute priority on destroyers.


It all depends on the definition of 'few'. What does happen is there is a clear drop from the peak due to the ever increasing implementation of convoys.

uboats-ships-hit.gif


Of course in World War II submarines had to struggle against both earlier convoys and more effective escorts and air power.

tonnage_sunk_copy.jpg


Now what is not clear from either chart was that the big surge in 1916 was aimed against shipping in the Mediterranean while outside those waters the number of sinking was much lower. Even in the Med though convoys made a big difference.
 

BooNZ

Banned
BooNZ offered an opinion without supporting documentation I merely added further supporting documentation to my interpretation no one has presented documentation supporting a contrary opinion but instead you seem to argue that I must further investigate and document the activities of individual investors when in fact there is no direct evidence that they would have ceased purchasing Entente bonds. I could point out that there were concerns among the Entente officials over the matter but events moved so fast in their favour as to render the question rather moot, even so I note you do not even seem to have tried looking for the correspondence or other documents relating to such concerns.

The 'supporting documentation' you provided related to the early debate in the US on whether commercial transactions between the Entente and private US entities represented a breach of US neutrality. Ultimately commercial pragmatism prevailed. This is scarcely the same thing as the US government effectively bankrolling the Entente war effort and guaranteeing Entente debt as you are suggesting is compatible with neutrality. The Federal Reserve statement of 27 November 2016 merely highlighed the risk associated with unsecured Entente debt and effectively stated anyone that accepted thoses risks did so on their own account. The credit available to the Entente dropped away dramatically after that statement for private commercial reasons.
 
The 'supporting documentation' you provided related to the early debate in the US on whether commercial transactions between the Entente and private US entities represented a breach of US neutrality. Ultimately commercial pragmatism prevailed. This is scarcely the same thing as the US government effectively bankrolling the Entente war effort and guaranteeing Entente debt as you are suggesting is compatible with neutrality. The Federal Reserve statement of 27 November 2016 merely highlighed the risk associated with unsecured Entente debt and effectively stated anyone that accepted thoses risks did so on their own account. The credit available to the Entente dropped away dramatically after that statement for private commercial reasons.

The US though are not effectively bankrolling the Entente, the US are selling under commercial terms to the Entente. Also it is not clear at all that there was a decrease in commercial lending as it followed a prior bond offering on the US markets and the sums raised had not been spent until about April. Without US entry into the War April or May would likely have been the test of the impact of the November 27th Statement.
 
My understanding is that the war was ended by the Hundred Days offensive, and that was predominantly a British attack. So, while there was of course help from the French and the Americans, the British did sort of push the Germans back on their own. The critical American contributions were financial and industrial, not manpower, while the French paid their own price in blood over the previous years.

Re. blockades. Yes, if the U-boats are hurting then lifting blockade in exchange for lifting blockade is a viable swap and is probably the best route to end the war quickly. However, the problem is to do with the need to keep the US out - meaning no USW - and preventing Britain from implementing convoys. While my knowledge is fuzzy here, the former might be possible - I think USW only sank a few "additional" ships (?) - but I don't see a way of achieving the latter without a major defeat of the Grand Fleet which gives it absolute priority on destroyers.
If I remember correctly the french suffered nearly as many casualties in the 100 days offensive as the British and the value of American manpower was mostly in the form of morale and at this point in the if the Americans don't enter it really comes down to who blinks first.
 
This is the pop myth of World War 1....here is a suggestion compare the French Mutiny of 1917 with the German Mutinies of 1918 and get back to me. You may be able to spot the key difference yourself or if not I will point it out to you but at least brief yourself on the chain of events for each crisis.




Stalemate was what you saw in 1916 and the Germans calculated they were losing because of the blockade. Stalemate will still mean fighting at the front and the expense of armies in the field and not in the factories and shops. Germany is less able to pay for this in the long run than Britain and France and the Dual-Monarchy is in an even worse state.
The entire year of 1918 is non applicable to the conversation because the Americans had join the war at that point and that isn't happening here, as a result that entire year of the war is nearly worthless to this discussion, we have to go back to before they joined and extrapolate from there.
So here's a suggestion loose the attitude and use some logic champ ;)
 
The entire year of 1918 is non applicable to the conversation because the Americans had join the war at that point and that isn't happening here, as a result that entire year of the war is worthless to this discussion, we have to go back to before they joined and extrapolate from there.
So here's a suggestion loose the attitude and use some logic champion ;)

Nice dodge petty insult...the difference however is very simple in the case of the Germans the troops and the sailors in most cases simply went home and never returned to the colours while the French remained with their regiments. The French will power to fight is not, going by the available evidence, any less than the Germans, a case could actually be made that it was higher.
 

BooNZ

Banned
The US though are not effectively bankrolling the Entente, the US are selling under commercial terms to the Entente. Also it is not clear at all that there was a decrease in commercial lending as it followed a prior bond offering on the US markets and the sums raised had not been spent until about April. Without US entry into the War April or May would likely have been the test of the impact of the November 27th Statement.

Nope - try again:

On
27 November 1916, four days before J. P. Morgan planned to launch the Anglo-French bond issue, the Federal Reserve Board issued instructions to all member banks.
...
At the same time the British Government was forced to suspend support for French purchasing. The Entente's entire financing effort was in jeopardy.

The Deluge: Adam Tooze
 

BooNZ

Banned
It may bite but would have never been a death blow in of itself, without American manpower the entente, France in particular is running out of manpower and the will to fight and the British won't be able to push the Germans back on their own.
In late 1916 the British were also projecting severe manpower shortages by mid 1917 unless drastic measures were taken. One of those drastic measures recommended was extending the conscription age to 50.
 
Nope - try again:

On
27 November 1916, four days before J. P. Morgan planned to launch the Anglo-French bond issue, the Federal Reserve Board issued instructions to all member banks.
...
At the same time the British Government was forced to suspend support for French purchasing. The Entente's entire financing effort was in jeopardy.

The Deluge: Adam Tooze

So let us see first I am accused thus
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.

Then I present a statement that shows exactly that level of agency at work

What the Fed actually said:

From statements which have been published from time to time, both in the American
and foreign press, there appears to be a misunderstanding of the attitude of the Federal
Reserve Board with respect to investments in foreign loans in the United States. On more
than one occasion the Board has endeavored to remove this misunderstanding. So far from
objecting to the placing of foreign loans in the American market, it regards them as a very
important, natural, and proper means of settling the balances created in our favor by our
large export trade. There are times when such loans should be encouraged as an essential
means of maintaining and protecting our foreign trade.



Source Federal Reserve Bulletin April 1917 p239 Foreign Loans

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/FRB/1910s/frb_041917.pdf


Now I get you were confused, so were a lot of people so they felt they needed to set the record straight because they needed to loans to be made so people would go on buying US.

You might also want to look at the disparity in exports to South America versus those to the Entente.

To which you object...on possibly completely different grounds but if so I am not sure what those grounds are, still I demonstrate that the Fed was not showing new thinking.

I'll keep on looking for the reference to French habits which is from the minutes of the British committee responsible for handling combined war finance.



However while I agree that USW was the key ingredient that brought the US into the shooting war I would also wish to submit evidence that the US Government recognised the value of loans to the Entente to its own economy before that.



https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/U.S._Policy_on_War_Loans_to_Belligerents
Now if you look at the early submissions of Bryan (also included in the above link) when he was Secretary of State he was very much against the allowance of loans but the course of policy which was merely, I would contend, reaffirmed by the Federal Bulletin of April 1917 following on the note of March 1917 to the same effect was actually begun much earlier.

Now you argue going by Tooze that the Bond issue was jeopardised, my understanding was that it was not and in fact the argument between the British and the French was a separate matter...I think over control of French gold but I shall need to reread and check.

There was indeed a bond issue authorised in on the 27th per this: Unpublished War History Vol 1 also it details a British loan for £50,000,000 announced on the 18 January and and the issue of 1 and 2 year bonds in New York on the 1st of February. The US breaks off diplomatic relations with Germany on the 3rd of February.

It is not clear however, though I agree I have come across plenty of commentary recounting extreme jitters, that British commercial credit in the US was in fact severely compromised.
 
Stalemate was what you saw in 1916 and the Germans calculated they were losing because of the blockade.

They thought they were losing all right, but because they feared military defeat, pure and simple. Not particularly because of the blockade.

They had made heavy weather of 1916, and in 1917 the British Army would be more seasoned and the Russian Army better armed. The Russian Revolution and the French mutinies were still in the future. That's why they gambled on USW and thus brought America down on their heads - quite unnecessarily as it proved.
 
In late 1916 the British were also projecting severe manpower shortages by mid 1917 unless drastic measures were taken. One of those drastic measures recommended was extending the conscription age to 50.

And by the beginning of 1918 they were talking about extending Conscription to Ireland!!! Now that would really have been fun to watch - from a safe distance.
 

Deleted member 1487

Never hesitate to rewrite history eh?

The key claim by Wiking most likely rests on clause 4 however there are a couple of issues, one is that the civilian population becomes the responsibility of the occupying authority to feed and the second would be that the main German farmlands were in the east and thus unoccupied...thus the population of the west of the Rhine is no longer under blockade and the 'starving' portion is the bit with the biggest farms.

Now it can be seen that with the US on board the terms of the Armistice were spectacularly one sided but and here is the point, the Entente could in fact have given up a fair number of those terms and still seen Germany on the back foot. World War 1 in OTL was not a narrow German defeat just because of the Americans. The leadership of Germany had known they were headed for defeat since at least 1916.

http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/023/23-17/CMH_Pub_23-17.pdf
P.191 US army was sourcing food provisions from Germany during the occupation and it was only after food supplies were being brought in by agreement that US army provisions were sold to locals.

Holger Herwig "The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918" p.448 the Allies took the remaining gold stocks from which they were supposed to buy food, 2.2 million tons of merchant shipping (hard to import without ships or cash), 135,000 head of cattle, 130,000 agricultural machines, 50,000 horses, and thousands of locomotives and hundreds of thousands of cars of rolling stock. Plus until logistics were set up given the worn out rail systems in France and Germany and before barge traffic could be organized via the Netherlands, Allied occupation armies were sourcing food from Germany. Things changed after March 1919 to a degree due to the Allies allowing the import of food, and in April as the US army allowed the sale of food to the German civilians, but for the first months Germany was providing the food for the Allied occupation.
 

BooNZ

Banned
Now you argue going by Tooze that the Bond issue was jeopardised, my understanding was that it was not and in fact the argument between the British and the French was a separate matter...I think over control of French gold but I shall need to reread and check

In January, London had no option but to ask J.P.Morgan to start preparing to relaunch the bond issue that had been aborted in November.
 
http://www.history.army.mil/html/books/023/23-17/CMH_Pub_23-17.pdf
P.191 US army was sourcing food provisions from Germany during the occupation and it was only after food supplies were being brought in by agreement that US army provisions were sold to locals.

Holger Herwig "The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918" p.448 the Allies took the remaining gold stocks from which they were supposed to buy food, 2.2 million tons of merchant shipping (hard to import without ships or cash), 135,000 head of cattle, 130,000 agricultural machines, 50,000 horses, and thousands of locomotives and hundreds of thousands of cars of rolling stock. Plus until logistics were set up given the worn out rail systems in France and Germany and before barge traffic could be organized via the Netherlands, Allied occupation armies were sourcing food from Germany. Things changed after March 1919 to a degree due to the Allies allowing the import of food, and in April as the US army allowed the sale of food to the German civilians, but for the first months Germany was providing the food for the Allied occupation.

I think that the logistics depletion mostly looking at the loss of rail cars for internal transportation would have certainly acerbated the situation but I still think you underestimate the impact of the blockade which constantly preyed on German minds at every level of society.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
here is a suggestion compare the French Mutiny of 1917 with the German Mutinies of 1918 and get back to me.
Oh, I remember reading about this one!

The French mutiny involved the French agreeing to do anything except go on the attack, and they were quite polite about the whole thing (all things considered).

The German mutiny... did not.


And by the beginning of 1918 they were talking about extending Conscription to Ireland!!! Now that would really have been fun to watch - from a safe distance.
As far as I'm aware, things didn't really explode in Ireland until post-war - much like India in WW2.
 
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