Germany does not sign versailles?

I've just started reading Weimar Germany by Eric D.Weitz and there was great shock at then terms of the treaty and may hot-headed speaches about not signing it... but as we know it was signed. What if those hot-heads prevail and the Constitional Convention refuse to sign? Obviously there is little ressistance to an Allied invasion... but what happens next?

Does an occupied Germany in 1919 develop a into a strong Democracy as it did after WWII?

Does Germany get partitioned?

What do you guys think?
 
I've just started reading Weimar Germany by Eric D.Weitz and there was great shock at then terms of the treaty and may hot-headed speaches about not signing it... but as we know it was signed. What if those hot-heads prevail and the Constitional Convention refuse to sign? Obviously there is little ressistance to an Allied invasion... but what happens next?

Does an occupied Germany in 1919 develop a into a strong Democracy as it did after WWII?

Does Germany get partitioned?

What do you guys think?

Apparently the German government did ask Hindenburg, after seeing the terms of the treaty, whether the army could resume the war. Hindenburg said it couldn't.
 
Apparently the German government did ask Hindenburg, after seeing the terms of the treaty, whether the army could resume the war. Hindenburg said it couldn't.
Yes... but even so;

Posadowsky-Wehner, sapeaker for the right-wing German National Perople's Party DNVP argued that the temporary evial of occupation was better than that of the longer evil of signing and even Philipp Scheidemann, the first Chancellor of the Constitional Convention, spoke out aginst it... what if they had said no and accepted occupation instead?
 
Perhaps (I am no expert on the subject) Germany could have refused the treaty and fought on until there were better terms?
 

General Zod

Banned
Yes... but even so;

Posadowsky-Wehner, sapeaker for the right-wing German National Perople's Party DNVP argued that the temporary evial of occupation was better than that of the longer evil of signing and even Philipp Scheidemann, the first Chancellor of the Constitional Convention, spoke out aginst it... what if they had said no and accepted occupation instead?

France and Poland would have carved big slices of Rhineland and Silesia for themselves, they were just icthing for an excuse. IOTL, Britain would not have anything of that, but if Germany refuses pace, who knows ?
 

General Zod

Banned
Perhaps (I am no expert on the subject) Germany could have refused the treaty and fought on until there were better terms?

Then Britain would just keep up the blockade and soon famine would sweep Germany. Rats would gnaw bones in the Reichstag.
 
I am not so sure that the British government would want the Pole and French to seize large chunks of Germany. Remember for most of the 18th and 19th century there had been the rivalry between France and Great Britain. Thus I doubt if the British would want to see the French replace the Germans as a threat.
 
I am not so sure that the British government would want the Pole and French to seize large chunks of Germany. Remember for most of the 18th and 19th century there had been the rivalry between France and Great Britain. Thus I doubt if the British would want to see the French replace the Germans as a threat.

Its often forgotten that nations are not single persons and are not entirely rational actors. British leaders will not want to let Poland and France take these areas, but if Germany refuses the British public will demand a harsher response, and British leaders themselves may be moved that way themselves.
 
The Germans accepted the Armistice terms because they expected the Americans under Wilson to keep their word about the 14 Points.
If the Germans hadn't trusted Wilson, the Rhine would have existed as a barrier, they would have kept their heavy artillary, they would have kept their rolling stock, their navy, and their munitions depots would have been shifted back to the other side of the Rhine.
No Versailles treaty because the Allied troops weren't going to keep fighting after an Armistice, whatever the politicians and the people back home wanted.
Germany has the Rhine as a western border. Possibly some naval problems before the British give up on trying to use a blockade to extort customs duties from Germany. The Germans agree not to send submarines out to lay mines on the British coast in return. Peace breaks out.
In Eastern Europe it's different. Perhaps the Poles, Serbs, Hungarians, Ukrainians, etc, stay part of Germany/Austria, perhaps they become a federation, perhaps they become independent countries. It could go any of three different ways.
 
If the Germans continue the fight their going to have to face the wrath of a fully mobilized America, a large powerful nation with massive reserves of men that the Germans in 1918 don't have. In fact the Germans are running low on everything the civilian population is straving and the Army is running out men, weapons, and ammuniton as well as the will to fight. The Germans are in for a far worse time if they fight on, so ok lets say they fight on flash forward to 1919 American men and guns are pouring in by the hundreds of thousands and they've begun to replace tired and worn our French and British units, at this point the Germans would be running low on ammunition, food, and soldiers and the home front would be racked by simmering revolts.

Now its late 1919 and the Germans have been fully pushed from France and Belgium, at a great allied cost but the Americans take the brunt of the fighting and are able to replace any loses with ease while the Germans now struggle to find enough men to man defenses on the German border, the Germans at this point are running dangerously low on artillery and other heavy weapons seeing as most of it was lost during the retreat through France and Belgium, the East is awash with revolution so the Germans are surrounded on both sides to the West the Americans backed by French and British forces are preparing themselves to strike into Germany proper and to the East the Poles, Russians, and other various waring factions are doing there thing and in Germany its self the people are starving in the streets and on the verge of revolt.

The Germans are going to have to surrender, they have no choice they can't stop an allied advance into the Empire due to the lack of men, equipment, and supplies. The people don't have the will or ability to fight on, their broken and beaten. This post war Germany will be much harder hit and suffer even worse punishment at the hands of the Entetent this time around.

It would be intersting to see triumphant American, French, and British troops marching through Berlin in early 1920 from the eyes of a young German. I know its kinda ASB but I still think it would have the potential to be a telling tale.
 
Its June 1919, the German army has distintegrated, the country has seen revolution and is still extremely unstable, German units are engaged in the Baltics and facing off against the Poles, and the economy is broken

There is a GOOD reason why Hindenburg told them not to restart the war - what he said exactly was he reckoned that yes, the German army was strong enough to fight off the Poles, but no, they could not hold the Western frontier

There were still MANY MANY mobilised Allied soldiers in the West, and their units retained their cohesion. If given the order they WOULD march, and the German defences would collapse

So, yes, what you would get is occupation, and probably partition since even in OTL the French supported separatist attempts to set up a puppet Republic of the Rhineland.

Britain is not about to fight its allies, whether it likes what they are doing or not - for proof of this look at 1923 when the British government was dead against French and Belgian occupation of German territory but could do nothing more than convene conferences asking them to sort things out and please leave, if they didn't perhaps mind ?

Best Regards
 

Deleted member 1487

The home front was weak in Germany, but if enough rage can be worked up it COULD happen, but extremely unlikely. It is also likely that the Americans won't help, in which case the Allies are screwed. Pershing and Wilson felt betrayed by the harsh allied terms and stated IOTL that they would not help a war of conquest. In fact the US did not sign the treaty of versailles either, they signed a seperate treaty in the 1920's. So if the Western Allies want to fight on, good luck. Germany is having serious troubles on the home front including revolution, starvation, and many units deserting from the army. But even with all this going on, the famous 100 days that culminated in the armistace still inflicted nearly 1 million casualties on the Allies! There were enough Germans willing to keep fighting that if France and Britain wanted to keep fighting, they would have a serious time forcing their troops to fight for a harsh peace, despite the sentiment at home and with the politicians.

However, the big deal was that the Germans now had their prime industrial region occupied, so it is going to be hard going. The only hope is that the Americans would be willing to step in to negotiate. As it was the French are willing to keep fighting, the Brits, who knows?
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
There was this idea of the entire Government resigning, so that the allies would be left without a political leader in Germany to sign the treaty.
But they would have found somebody to do it.
If necessarry a USPD Chancellor or a reinstated monarch.

No anarchy in Germany!
 
Perhaps one of the cards that the US could have played to get a reasonable peaceterms would be to call in all of the loans made by the US to the allies. The British and the French would have collapsed as they lacked the ability to pay.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Germany wouldn't be able to fight back even if they tried. France and Poland would annex like maniacs. Germany would collapse completely, and Communism would become a serious threat. Civil War??
 
i know the plan before the Germany Revolution and 11/11 if the Germans didn't give in was to move in and split it up into the 4 kingdoms maybe brake Prussia up into more parts


something like that still could happen, any way an Allied invasion will help the Spartacist uprising, the Bavarian Soviet Republic might live, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht wouldn't be murdered, the Freikorps would be busy fighting the Allies (and getting their asses kicked in)
 
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