Germany winning WW1 - best scenario for the 20th century?

Is Germany winning WW1 the most preferable outcome?

  • Yes. A German victory would have prevented the greatest horrors of the 20 century and saved millions

    Votes: 105 26.9%
  • No. A German victory would have made things as bad or worse than OTL

    Votes: 56 14.3%
  • Perhaps. Some things would have turned out better, some worse

    Votes: 245 62.7%

  • Total voters
    391
Right. And Germany's Ottoman and Habsburg allies were even worse, by a whole order of magnitude.

Mitteleuropa is going to be an authoritarian, dysfunctional, tightly puppetized mess stuck in some combination of ancien régime and fascistoid dictatorship (and at least one unabashed colony, more or less guaranteed to descend into mass violence). There's also the inevitable general war trauma on all sides and various economic problems.

All in all, conditions in CP victory Europe will not be conducive to healthy political development. Or to healthy development of...just about anything, really.

Agreed. If you want to "un-fuck" the 20th century, especially in Europe, you need the stars to align and avoid any sort of Great War altogether, and instead have every nation somehow manage to not start shooting each other over some damn thing in the Balkans.

It's a pretty tall order.
 
Let's see...

IOTL, we mostly had pissed-off Germany, destablized Russia/Middle East, and wary Japan after WWI. That led to Nazism, communism, Japanese militarist expansion, and perhaps Islamic extremism.

ITTL we have a pissed-off France, pissed-off Britain, pissed-off USA (if it was in the war), pissed-off Russia, pissed-off Japan, plus a probably not-so-stable victorious Germany with a festering multiethnic mess of A-H right to the southeast. What could go wrong?

To amend my thoughts a bit, yes I suppose that if you can pull off a glorious Kaiserreich that doesn't mistreat and reduce its eastern subjects to servitude, or buckle in the face of the massive tasks it must do, then perhaps you can have a power akin to the "United States of Europe" where Germany=the US, Russia=Mexico, and other nations are friendly to Germany the way that Canada is America's hat. That might be fine. The trouble is, can Germany pull it off?
 
Last edited:
Let's see...

IOTL, we mostly had pissed-off Germany, destablized Russia/Middle East, and wary Japan after WWI. That led to Nazism, communism, Japanese militarist expansion, and perhaps Islamic extremism.

ITTL we have a pissed-off France, pissed-off Britain, pissed-off USA (if it was in the war), pissed-off Russia, pissed-off Japan, plus a probably not-so-stable victorious Germany with a festering multiethnic mess of A-H right to the southeast. What could go wrong?

Odds are good that France at least develops some kind of alt-Fascism, probably monarchist in nature. And whoever comes out on top in Russia will want words with Germany...
 
Remember also that WWII led to a nuclear truce that has mostly prevented major countries going to war and led to the most stable and peaceful Europe in its history. Butterfly that away, and who knows what happens when nuclear weapons are invented.
 
Let's see...

IOTL, we mostly had pissed-off Germany, destablized Russia/Middle East, and wary Japan after WWI. That led to Nazism, communism, Japanese militarist expansion, and perhaps Islamic extremism.

ITTL we have a pissed-off France, pissed-off Britain, pissed-off USA (if it was in the war), pissed-off Russia, pissed-off Japan, plus a probably not-so-stable victorious Germany with a festering multiethnic mess of A-H right to the southeast. What could go wrong?

-France on its own is powerless, even more so without its colonies.
-Russia without Eastern Europe is a state of farmers and hunter-gatherers.
-Britain has no capacity to fight Germany on its own on land (and in future on sea as all those ships become obsolete, parts of the Empire go and air power becomes a thing).
-USA... why is it even there on the list? If it's mad it's mad at the UK for conning it into the war.
-Japan is a non-issue, it was a non issue in real life.

Britain, Russia and France part 2 wont become a thing because this time the Germans have all of Eastern Europe - Finns, Balts, Poles, Ukrainians, even people of the Caucasus as allies against Russia and can focus on France. The third time they wont leave it to its own devices afterwards, they'd occupy it all, beat the "revanchism" out of the population and reform it in their own vision.

So where does that leave A-H?
if it goes on it goes on, it has a pretty high population, usable natural resources and a good enough education system, it will be a valuable ally to Germany and eclipe France if it's just left to develop.
If it separates Germany gets the juicy parts (Austria, Istria, Bohemia) and a German alligned greater Hungary existing at the mercy of Germany due to having less than 50 % Hungarians.
The balcans nations fall into German economic orbit anyway, this is pretty much unavoidable, they'd have to pull Stalinism to keep it from happening.

Both outcomes are good in the eyes of Germany because the population of the lands making up A-H end up working towards Germanies goal, either as an ally or as part of Germany + smaller ally.

OTL after losing the war Germany was stable enough to avoid anti-democratic revolution and military coups, in this scenario the army is not disbanded, the country is not under starvation blockade until the 1920s, the country is not looted and disgraced.
 
But Russia and Germany don´t have a common border ITTL ;-)

Yes, but Russia has a common border with Mitteleuropa. In a future war, a revanchist Russian regime could see about getting its backyard back while France tackles Germany at home. I foresee a rather horrible air war between the two...

-France on its own is powerless, even more so without its colonies.

I disagree. France OTL only suffered the defeat it did thanks to the incompetence of generals. ITTL, with a clean sweep of the generals who would have lost in the war, and with time to prepare and a revanchist inclination...they could hammer the bejeezus out of Germany.

-Russia without Eastern Europe is a state of farmers and hunter-gatherers.

Skating over the slightly worrisome sound of that...it also has manpower. A lot of manpower.

-Japan is a non-issue, it was a non issue in real life.

One of two things could happen:

1) Germany ponces Indochina from France post-WWI. To weaken Germany, Britain secretly gives Japan a blank cheque to go after German territory in Asia in the late 30s or early 40s - win-win for them, either Japan gets weakened or Germany does. In this case, I'd say that Japan would quickly beat Germany out of the gate - any Asian territory they hold would be too far from Europe for them to fight effectively without allies.

2) France still has Indochina. Japan sides with Germany and nabs it and French Polynesia.

Britain, Russia and France part 2 wont become a thing because this time the Germans have all of Eastern Europe - Finns, Balts, Poles, Ukrainians, even people of the Caucasus as allies against Russia and can focus on France. The third time they wont leave it to its own devices afterwards, they'd occupy it all, beat the "revanchism" out of the population and reform it in their own vision.

...or, after being bled out by partisans in Eastern Europe (depending on how badly they treat the Slavs), Germany's forces in their satellites get steamrolled by Russian manpower while French bombers pound their cities.

Britain might side with Germany this time around, of course, fearing Franco-Russian domination of the Continent.
 
If WW1 comes on schedule, the best scenario is Germany winning early: Paris falls and the war is over by end of 1914. Even better if the UK stays out for whatever reason. The peace treaties would be probably lenient (with the likely exception of Serbia, which gets the shit end of the stick). There are still three potential problems in the making (A-H, Russia and the Ottoman empire), but it would be a much better basis on which to build a long-term stability in Europe. A very quick victory of the Entente (say no later than the end of 1915) would also be good but it is very difficult to manage (Bulgaria enters the war early and the Dardanelles gambit works, and Russia performs somehow better. IMHO if Bulgaria enters the war, Greece would do the same)

By contrast the worst possible scenario is a peace-by-exhaustion in 1919, closely followed by a CP late win (unlikely but theoretically possible). OTL outcome is still better than a late CP victory, but not a lot better.
 
Last edited:
-France on its own is powerless, even more so without its colonies.
-Russia without Eastern Europe is a state of farmers and hunter-gatherers.
-Britain has no capacity to fight Germany on its own on land (and in future on sea as all those ships become obsolete, parts of the Empire go and air power becomes a thing).
-USA... why is it even there on the list? If it's mad it's mad at the UK for conning it into the war.
-Japan is a non-issue, it was a non issue in real life.

Britain, Russia and France part 2 wont become a thing because this time the Germans have all of Eastern Europe - Finns, Balts, Poles, Ukrainians, even people of the Caucasus as allies against Russia and can focus on France. The third time they wont leave it to its own devices afterwards, they'd occupy it all, beat the "revanchism" out of the population and reform it in their own vision.

So where does that leave A-H?
if it goes on it goes on, it has a pretty high population, usable natural resources and a good enough education system, it will be a valuable ally to Germany and eclipe France if it's just left to develop.
If it separates Germany gets the juicy parts (Austria, Istria, Bohemia) and a German alligned greater Hungary existing at the mercy of Germany due to having less than 50 % Hungarians.
The balcans nations fall into German economic orbit anyway, this is pretty much unavoidable, they'd have to pull Stalinism to keep it from happening.

Both outcomes are good in the eyes of Germany because the population of the lands making up A-H end up working towards Germanies goal, either as an ally or as part of Germany + smaller ally.

OTL after losing the war Germany was stable enough to avoid anti-democratic revolution and military coups, in this scenario the army is not disbanded, the country is not under starvation blockade until the 1920s, the country is not looted and disgraced.

The problem with WW1 wasn't good and evil, it was a victory of a temporary coalition of weak(er) states over a strong state, that aberration if you will is what lead to WW2. If the strong state had won over the weaker stats who were only held together by weak bonds then a 'natural' post war world order will ensue where the strong isn't aggrieved and in the position to do something about it because of the innate imbalance of power.

As for the who proto-Nazi thing, I think that's bullshit. Imperial Germany is just as, if not more, likely to liberalise as 13 million soldiers demand their political reward for making the country safe. Things like lowering the voting age from 25 to 21 and maybe a few other tweaks in the immediate post war years to make a home fit for heroes.
 
Unless you're Armenian, Czech, Croatian, Irish, Polish, a Transylvanian Romanian, Slovakian, a Russian Jew etc.
Personally I think a 'Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg' Central Powers victory scenario is one of the best for Europe.
Been playing a lot of Kaiserreich lately, and I could get on board with this. But really how well that turns out relative to OTL is pretty massively variable. WW2 just started in my current game, and it looks like this may just be the abolition of capitalist and imperialist oppression or the end of the world as we know it. Fingers crossed!
 
The problem with WW1 wasn't good and evil, it was a victory of a temporary coalition of weak(er) states over a strong state, that aberration if you will is what lead to WW2. If the strong state had won over the weaker stats who were only held together by weak bonds then a 'natural' post war world order will ensue where the strong isn't aggrieved and in the position to do something about it because of the innate imbalance of power.

As for the who proto-Nazi thing, I think that's bullshit. Imperial Germany is just as, if not more, likely to liberalise as 13 million soldiers demand their political reward for making the country safe. Things like lowering the voting age from 25 to 21 and maybe a few other tweaks in the immediate post war years to make a home fit for heroes.


It's a very optimistic scenario...expecially if the war end late, the new territory in the east need to be pacified (Poland and Ukraine started to resent the new management), there is the question of the Ottoman Empire and A-H, nation that are basically on borrowed time without strong German support both in money and men, the people in general tired of war and the political repercussion of the veteran coming home and the following political fight (probably quite litteral).
Maybe they even liberalise, but this doesn't mean automatically happyness and sunshine, just that the political landscape it's greatly changed in a moment that the old guard had lost most of his legitimancy and this can litteraly open a can of worm of epic proportion, by this stage the fact that they have won it's just a step above being irrilevant as too much blood has been spilled.
Basically, sure Germany is a strong state...but she can't do everything or being everywhere and she had her own postwar internal problem
 

tenthring

Banned
Who knows. Too difficult a counter factual.

There's some value to counter-acting the Entente propaganda that Germany was some kind of proto-nazi state. However, at the end of the day they were all imperial powers with very similar structures and outlooks. They all wanted colonies. They all believed in some kind of eugenics/darwinism. They all believed in nationalism. The monarchs in Germany, AH, and Russia were all incompetents, but none of them would have survived the end of the war in a meaningful way win or lose.

I won't say that the people in WWI fought for nothing. I just don't think they were fighting for the grand causes in the propaganda. I think they fought because the fact of life is that you have to fight sometimes. The war started one way or another and it's better to win wars then lose them. Paying reparations or being occupied sucks. When Rome fought Carthage nobody claimed some lofty humanistic ideal like "democracy versus monarchy" or something like that. They just knew that winning was better then losing whatever the cause.
 
Odds are good that France at least develops some kind of alt-Fascism, probably monarchist in nature. And whoever comes out on top in Russia will want words with Germany...

Even in OTL, France flirted with alt-Fascism. With a German victory (and the no doubt brutal peace treaty that would follow, no way would Germany "play nice") I can easily see France falling to some kind of hyper-Catholic, anti-semitic version of Fascism.
 
Even in OTL, France flirted with alt-Fascism. With a German victory (and the no doubt brutal peace treaty that would follow, no way would Germany "play nice") I can easily see France falling to some kind of hyper-Catholic, anti-semitic version of Fascism.

Exactly. Action Francaise and the Croix de Feu were already a thing OTL, ITTL groups like them would probably become the mainstream.

This could take one of a couple of forms, IMHO. One: a hyper-Catholic, hyper-traditionalist thing, involving the restoration of a King with a clique of generals and right-wing politicians/noblemen running the show. And using the Jews as a scapegoat for everything that's gone wrong with the nation. Such a thing would be more like an aggressive version of Franco's Spain than 'Fascist' - ultra-reactionary rather than revolutionary, looking back rather than forward. But still looking to rearm and provoke war.

Two: A Bonapartist restoration, using Napoleonic imagery to rally the people. Such a restoration would be more akin to 'Fascism' as we know it.

Either way: war with Germany. Most likely in concert with Russia, and possibly Italy depending on if A-H is in it or not. And bear in mind: OTL, Germany's military innovations were mostly the result of defeat. In a victory scenario, while they could still innovate...they may also fall victim to complacency and a hidebound officer corps as OTL France did. If that happens, and if France innovates militarily, it might take Britain siding with Germany this time around to let Germany win through.
 
Either way: war with Germany. Most likely in concert with Russia, and possibly Italy depending on if A-H is in it or not. And bear in mind: OTL, Germany's military innovations were mostly the result of defeat. In a victory scenario, while they could still innovate...they may also fall victim to complacency and a hidebound officer corps as OTL France did. If that happens, and if France innovates militarily, it might take Britain siding with Germany this time around to let Germany win through.

In such a scenario, it's highly probably Britain might just sit the whole thing out; a war between the Kaissereich (and friends!) and a *Fascist France/whatever the hell Russia ends up as (almost certainly nothing good) would be, from a British perspective, nothing that they'd want to get involved in. I'd imagine that, barring France going full Bonaparte 2: Electric Boogaloo, they'd be content to sit on the sidelines and let everyone smash each other to pieces against one another, unless it genuinely appeared that one side would end up dominating the continent.
 
In such a scenario, it's highly probably Britain might just sit the whole thing out; a war between the Kaissereich (and friends!) and a *Fascist France/whatever the hell Russia ends up as (almost certainly nothing good) would be, from a British perspective, nothing that they'd want to get involved in. I'd imagine that, barring France going full Bonaparte 2: Electric Boogaloo, they'd be content to sit on the sidelines and let everyone smash each other to pieces against one another, unless it genuinely appeared that one side would end up dominating the continent.

Oh, true. I'd only think that Britain would weigh in if one side looked like it'd get a quick, overwhelming victory. Otherwise...sit back, enjoy the show and focus on the Empire.

I think that they'd subtly encourage attempts to weaken Germany before the main show in Europe kicks off, though.
 

thorr97

Banned
A while back I remember being surprised at just how much land Germany acquired upon the Russian's agreeing to the Brest-Litovsk. Germany almost doubled its size and A-H did the same. This was also prime crop land and an enormous population gain to boot. Yes, those newly acquired subjects might well be a tad... restive... under the Kaiser's rule but they'd also be vastly better off than they were under the Tsar's tender mercies.

The scenario I envisioned was Germany's offering terms to the Entente in the Spring of 1918. They did so in OTL but the terms weren't smart enough and the offensives eventually petered out such that the Entente had no compelling reason to accept them. The POD here would be more generous terms and/or more success of those offensives which culminated in a peace that was too good to say no to for the Entente.

I don't think that would've taken much on Germany's part. The B-L treaty just got Germany a huge boon and largely obviated its need for overseas holdings or commerce to enrich itself. That land gained also "validated" the whole point of the Kaiser's taking the nation to war and would justly be seen as proof of victory. To make that peace offer more palatable - and much harder to resist - the Germans would offer up Alsace-Lorraine back to France. Gaining that territory was one of the key goals for the French in the war. And the offer of finally getting it back would knock the wind out of those in France who'd argue for continued fighting.

I think such a move - particularly if the proposal was made before the Spring Offensives had started and thus their threat couldn't be disproved by any battlefield failures - would be compelling indeed. With the sacred soil of Alsace-Lorraine once again part of France the rational to continue the war simply wouldn't be there for the French. With Germany offering to end the slaughter before it got any worse, there'd be less rationale for the UK to remain in the fight as well. Also, no reparations. So, no brutal peace with tribute being exacted from the downtrodden.

No, such an agreement would NOT be in the Entente's long term interest as it would leave Imperial Germany the dominant power on the Continent and that would surely make for hell to pay later on. But, that "later on" would be off in the far, far distance and hard to discern amongst the charnel house that was the battlefields of western Europe. Popular sentiment to "end the war now" would be pretty overwhelming within the Entente. And if that stuck, then Europe - and the world - would be a very different place.

With that peace agreed to, a truce more actually, there'd be no long term success of Communism in Russia. Germany's focus would be eastward. For one, it's newly acquired territory is to the east. For another, it would have no desire to risk renewing conflict with either France or Britain by trying to further encroach into their existing imperial holdings. Also, the militarists clearly recognized the pestilence they'd loosed in Russia in their efforts to knock it out of the war and they clearly intended to set that right. So, they'd be gunning to overthrow and destroy the Bolshevik regime in Russia once they'd secured the peace with the Entente in the west. Again, they'd likely either ally themselves with the Whites against the Red's threat or orchestrate their "being invited" to deal with those Communists. Either way, Communism in Russia would not be long for this Earth once World War I had ended. That alone is worth twenty to forty million lives spared directly. And counting the genocidal frenzy of the Communist regimes the Soviets spawned, that's at least 100,000,000 in total otherwise spared.

On the western end, there would be immediate hell to pay for the various powers that be in the Entente. Yes, they'd just achieved an end to the war and they'd even pried loose that sacred soil of Alsace-Lorraine. There's no way the peoples of the UK and France could view that as having been worth the six million or so who died in the war. And they'd take that out on the politicians and political parties that got them involved in it to start with. So there'd be huge changes within the body politic of the UK and France. And Italy too.

But, life would go on. At war's end both Britain and France would still have their respective empires. And in this ATL there'd be no revolutionary ideology in power in a sovereign nation state to spread its toxins against them. The imperialist and colonialist systems would have remained intact. Germany's colonial ambitions would've been blunted and its focus for the next decade - at the least - would be entirely eastward. First, to assimilate its new found territory and then to deal with the vermin it had loosed in Russia. So Germany could afford the luxury of ignoring the Great Game while it sorted all that out. Britain and France would be occupied with recovering from the war and tending to their empires. The US would most likely sour on any further foreign interventions and look quite dimly on trying to get rich again via war material sales to Britain or France.

I think for the 1920s that would mean a much "calmer" and more "introspective" time in Europe and that would continue into the 1930s. There'd be neither the mass murdering absolutist ideology of Communism threatening the world's order from the east nor would there be the mass murdering absolutist ideology of National Socialism being in power in Europe either. Sure, there'd be militants and extremists and fanatics in every country but in this ATL, I just can't see any of them coming to power sufficiently to implement their fanaticism to the same degree as they did in OTL.
 
Unless you're Armenian, Czech, Croatian, Irish, Polish, a Transylvanian Romanian, Slovakian, a Russian Jew etc.
Personally I think a 'Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg' Central Powers victory scenario is one of the best for Europe.

Unless the Totalists take over the Internationale and Wrangel takes over Russia ofc!

Actually with that said, it's hard to see Germany winning causing a better or worse world. It depends on what liberalization methods are taken by mittleeuropa and how A-H sorts out it's problems. UK and France going totalitarian is also a big issue
 
Nazi-germany,Italy,Japan and the Soviet Union were very much pro-conquest long after imperial germany was dead. Thats a lot of big and important countries.
What happens in Italy? Presumably they've also been defeated by the CPs. A victorious Austria-Hungary will be looking to dominate the region.

And what's happened to the Americans? How were they defeated in 1917-1918? If they're crushed and sent home, we may never see another interventionist president.
 
Top