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

Who wins the war?


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The Sixtus Affair is one of several indicators including as you point the much worse situation in AH and the fact the Germans kept extracting food from their ally, that suggest that no in fact the Dual-Monarchy was not capable of carrying on much longer than it did and was not so much being propped up as shackled to the German war effort.

NO - the Sixtus affair is the Result of Karl realizing that a lost war would mean of the Monarchy. So he tried to "save" the Monarchy.

He did not realize that Russia was in even more dire straits and on the brink of collapsing - So the Sixtus affiar is the result of an incomplete assessment of the overall situation.
 
NO - the Sixtus affair is the Result of Karl realizing that a lost war would mean of the Monarchy. So he tried to "save" the Monarchy.

He did not realize that Russia was in even more dire straits and on the brink of collapsing - So the Sixtus affiar is the result of an incomplete assessment of the overall situation.

It is an argument but I do not think the fall of Russia actually solved any of the problems Austria-Hungary was facing, Germany was still eating it alive in order to fuel its battle with Britain and France.
 

BooNZ

Banned

You stated the Germans were running out of rope by 1916. Verdun took place during 1916 and incidentally resulted in significantly more French than German casualties and ultimately contributed to the French mutiny in 1917. That said, 1916 was a decent year for the Entente with the successful Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern front and a couple of draws on the Western Front. By 1916 many of the major shortfalls of the blockade were being addressed and the blockade was starting to have some effect on the German war effort.
 
You stated the Germans were running out of rope by 1916. Verdun took place during 1916 and incidentally resulted in significantly more French than German casualties and ultimately contributed to the French mutiny in 1917. That said, 1916 was a decent year for the Entente with the successful Brusilov Offensive on the Eastern front and a couple of draws on the Western Front. By 1916 many of the major shortfalls of the blockade were being addressed and the blockade was starting to have some effect on the German war effort.

Well then show the length of rope you presume there to be.

According to you the most critical battle of the War, the Marne was a non-event but that is fine if this a discussion of the state of the German home front. Perhaps you would like to dazzle us with your knowledge of the domestic German situation?
 

BooNZ

Banned
Well then show the length of rope you presume there to be.

According to you the most critical battle of the War, the Marne was a non-event but that is fine if this a discussion of the state of the German home front. Perhaps you would like to dazzle us with your knowledge of the domestic German situation?

The length of rope is the line of credit (or lack thereof) between Britain and its would be US creditors.

I have never mentioned Marne? Why would it be critical? I believe Marne to be non-consequential, aside from keeping Joffre in power. Sorry, how is Marne relevant to these discussions?

OTL the blockade was hugely strengthened by the entry of the US and OTL the Germans survived until late 1918, so the Germans will last longer with both a weaker blockade and a weaker Entente war effort (no US belligerency and much less war material). I do not believe it is possible for the Entente to obtain significant unsecured credit after Russia is out, unless the US is in the war.
 
The length of rope is the line of credit (or lack thereof) between Britain and its would be US creditors.

Well having failed to demonstrate that the US would in fact cut off credit you have not even attempted to quantify the effect that would have on Entente purchases....do recall at least part of these were in cash earned from trade...and whether that effect would in fact be sufficient to allow a CP victory and to what extent.

I have never mentioned Marne? Why would it be critical? I believe Marne to be non-consequential, aside from keeping Joffre in power. Sorry, how is Marne relevant to these discussions?

But you don't restrict yourself to things I have mentioned and why should either of us do so? The aim surely is to do our utmost to inform and enlighten others. I would point out that all through 1916 no one foresaw the Entente collapsing and despite some angst the Entente powers did not collapse in 1917 either and nor did they in 1918. Now some subscribe all of this to the selfless munificence of the US but I have contended that the US was neither being selfless nor was it solely responsible for the capacities of the Entente many of which will remain even given various removals of US involvement.

OTL the blockade was hugely strengthened by the entry of the US and OTL the Germans survived until late 1918, so the Germans will last longer with both a weaker blockade and a weaker Entente war effort (no US belligerency and much less war material). I do not believe it is possible for the Entente to obtain significant unsecured credit after Russia is out, unless the US is in the war.

Well that should be easy to demonstrate...you should after all have plenty of letters illustrating individual Germans satisfaction with their diet in 1916 and of course before and after German import figures for American entry into the blockade you must be absolutely dying to share with us.
 
Why can't the entente turn to internal inflation and financing the war the way Germany did?
Germany was not importing heavily from outside sources, thanks to the blockade they could not. The Entente was

The Entente could certainly do that to pay for expenses in their own countries, but not to pay for imports, without imports their war effort is weaker. What we are debating is how much their imports will reduce and how much that would effect the war effort, whether it be .1% or 25%
 
For all of my snark not one of you has actually offered a contemporary document outlining how the Entente who primarily consisting of countries like Britain and France have a history of at least trying to honour war debt, win, lost or draw and in Britain's case at this time an unblemished one might be considered a totally unacceptable risk. In fact when I pointed out that the private lenders of OTL did not actually lose money, they just did not make as much as they expected it provoked outrage.

Well, going by the Wiki, British public debt went from 650 million pounds in 1914 to 7.4 billion in 1919. Does a tenfold increase in debt sound like something that could be easily repaid? I'm sure it does, but I'll wait to hear it from you as to why. The scale of their obligations was significantly over a hundred percent of GDP, and not seen since the Napoleonic Wars.

Indeed what we have here is precisely BooNZ trying to sell me a used bridge without the documentation that demonstrates that he is a legal agent for the sale.

I may be mistaken, but if we're comparing accounts for how the rest of the war goes, and you're arguing that American investors will happily fork off unsecured loans (at zero percent interest, perhaps?), then the burden of evidence is now on you for that projection.

How badly do any of you envisage Britain and France losing with US credit?

Well, part of these scenarios involves the morale and manpower issues from a lack of an American DOW, which I'm not sure you addressed yet, but would be detrimental in Russia and France especially as far as maintaining political will goes. There's also the question of their overall strategy in the absence of American reinforcements, which you did address, presuming that they'd adopt an ahistorical strategy of assuming the blockade alone would win the war for them, despite a complete lack of historical precedent for such a strategy. And given that you abandoned that line of discussion when I pointed out that your chosen example (WWI, ironically), did have land victories and wasn't an example of a war won solely through blockade, I'm guessing you know as well as I do that it's unrealistic for the Entente to start fighting defensively when they never did that in the OTL war.

Seriously as it has been pointed out by scholars such as Ferguson that the Germans could have honoured their debts post-world war had they chosen and they lost.

I always take Niall Ferguson with a fistful of salt, but that's just me. As for this assertion, it's hardly a fair comparison, since however bad the Entente's fiscal situation could get, at least their obligations would be a fixed number. The Versailles Reparations, by contrast, were subject to change by the Reparations Committee, which could, post-1921, "modify the form of the payments", to quote Part VIII, Article 234. IOTL, that generally involved limiting the scale of the payments and postponing them in response to German economic weakness, but in general it gave the Entente the power to shift the goalposts as much as they wanted. The more Germany could pay, the more they would have to pay, and so they had the incentive to avoid looking solvent in order to reduce the scale of the obligations. So no, not quite the same situation at all, paying 7.4 billion pounds is infinitely easier than paying whatever can be paid/looted for twenty years, just on an ontological level.
 
What i see :
1. Russia falls
2. USA not sending troops
3. Germans not under pressure to attack in the west
4. food shortage were worst in the 1916
5. Romania and Ukraine wheat flows in 1918 to CP
6. 20 number of German divisions allocated to Mac front -- Salonika front crumbles
7. 10 Div to Italy -- and anyone say Capareto 2nd === Italy falls away
8. Brit / French offensives fail growing rebellion concerned by Russia comm party -- Germans afraid of revolution
9. Treaty reached -- (like most Euro wars in limited balance ) --- AL goes to election in x years -- Germany navy reduced to % of Brits -- BL in place German col gone
10. German becomes more democratic as per Kaiser promises

On 1. Does the Kerensky government make peace before the Communist revolution or does revolution happen as in OTL??
On 3. Maybe. I can see the German's wanting to win quickly (before some revolution happens, see your #8) and attacking in the west still.
On 5. And even more could be expected in 1919
On 6. Maybe more than can be supplied. 4 good divisions might be able to lock down that front though.
On 7. Would Italy fall away or just stay in (being dependent on Britain economically) (even if in pathetic shape)
On 9. Likely. Britain gets its security, colonies and Palestine and Baghdad. If Britain happy everyone has to follow along.
On 10. With millions dead and a compromise peace there are going to be some changes



But barring a major offensive being succesful at dislodging the Germans from (parts of) France/Belgium or A-H from the Alps, they'll probably imagine the war unwinnable and act accordingly.

The only tricky part is that the Germans will always demand more in negotiation than their actual position dictates they can get away with (perhaps due to politics back home where the ruling classes better come home with a clear victory worth the cost). So I suspect a German offensive will happen sort of like OTL to force the British/French to agree to terms. Ultimately if the Germans can force themselves to agree to give up their colonies and evacuate most of Belgium and France and agree to naval limitations the British will be happy enough to make peace.
 
For all of his snark about how anything less than OTL American aid to the Entente is "America sending itself into depression to help out the CP's", he's sure adamant that American banks must gamble billions of dollars to help out Robert Lansing and the arms industry.


Iirc from Devlin, Lansing approved the Fed advice against unsecured loans. He was pro-Entente, but there were limits.
 
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As far as I'm aware, things didn't really explode in Ireland until post-war - much like India in WW2.

Perhaps not, but that doesn't mean it'll happen. If nothing else, if it did look like chaos would take place then they could easily pass Home Rule as a quid pro quo, citing the national emergency as a reason.

The discussion has moved on a bit but extending conscription to Ireland would have would have been disastrous for the British. The level of opposition to it in Ireland was such they would probably have been lucky to break even on manpower once the units used to enforce it were accounted for.

As it was the attempts to introduce it were essential in galvanising the nationalist movement behind Sinn Fein. Although the IPP walked out of parliament and returned to Ireland to oppose it, they were felt to have been insufficiently radical.

Your suggestion of tying it to Home Rule was tried and had the effect of outraging Unionists as well as nationalists. If it involves partition nationalists will be be further outraged and if it doesn't you're likely to see insurrection from northern Unionists.

Link for those interested:
http://www.waterfordmuseum.ie/exhib...ption_In_Ireland_During_WW1_Introduction.html

Edit: if you really want to see the depth of feeling this arose check the Hansard records for he 9th of April 1918.
 
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Why can't the entente turn to internal inflation and financing the war the way Germany did?

They could to an extent, Britain's economy grew by 7% while France's shrunk by 24% and Germany's by 27%, so Britain could do what other powers did and impoverish its own people.

However the course of the war meant they didn't have to, they could ramp up the debts and pay them off later. If the course of the war went differently, in particular if the war on land meant the Entente blockade was less effective and the German counter-blockade was more effective, then Britain would not have been able to pursue the economic course that it did.
 
On 3. Maybe. I can see the German's wanting to win quickly (before some revolution happens, see your #8) and attacking in the west still.
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But a failed offensive would practically guarantee revolution. And even Ludendorff culd surely see that Michaels chances of success were no more than 50/50 - if that
 
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The only tricky part is that the Germans will always demand more in negotiation than their actual position dictates they can get away with (perhaps due to politics back home where the ruling classes better come home with a clear victory worth the cost).

But even failed talks could be a problem for the Entente.

If they have agreed to open talks w/o a German commitment to pull out of France and Belgium, that will look like an admission that the war is unwinnable. What will that do to the morale of their troops when hostilities continue/resume?
 
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