Germany wins in 1914. What's next?

BlondieBC

Banned
The French had already stated that they'd continue to fight. In an almost Churchillian way.

Don't put too much weight on that. If you look at nations that surrender, they are saying the same thing weeks, days, or hours before giving up. And for a simple reason, if leader talk about giving up and the war is lost, soldier just go home. A good example is Syria in either the 1967 or 1973 war. It went out over the radio that the War would be over in a few 10's of hours, so the troops/officers stop fighting.

So do a study of big curb stompings. Germany October 1918. Japan in July 1945. Germany Spring 1945. The Tsar a few weeks before his overthrow. They are all talking about giving up. And I find the Tsar to be a good illustration. His government has already fallen days before the Tsar realizes on the train that he is no longer in power.

So if one looks at all cases, it is pretty clear that what the leaders are saying has little to do with predicting when a nation will take unfavorable peace terms.
 

Vuu

Banned
Seriously, Clemenceau said: "The Germans may take Paris, but that will not prevent me from going on with the war. We will fight on the Loire, we will fight on the Garonne, we will fight even in the Pyrenees. And if at last we are driven off the Pyrenees, we will continue the war at sea."

Difficult to pull a Serbia and evacuate literally everything when you have nowhere to go
 

GarethC

Donor
Britain is not really in favour of Germany getting much of the French overseas empire. Germany has an awfully big economy and a colonial empire is a perfectly good justification for having a navy to police it which would be even bigger than the HSF that began the war. With the humbling of France and Russia, Germany is able to divert army funding to further Kaiserliche Marine expansion. Perhaps there could be some kind of treaty regulating naval construction? Maybe Washington would be a suitable venue?

Japan will cordially suggest that should Kaiser Wilhelm wish to pursue his claims to sovereignty over the Tsingtao concesssion and the Bismarck Archipelago, he is welcome to come and have a go if he thinks the Hochseeflotte is hard enough.

Except it can't steam that far... unless he can get resupply from the British, French, and Russians, which wouldn't be risky in any way...

And isn't designed for operations more than a day away from the Jade. And really isn't designed for tropical operations at all.

And the last time a fleet sailed from the Baltic, refuelled in Cape Town and Cam Ranh Bay, and then engaged the IJN was a decade ago. It didn't really go so well for the European side, and that fact will be quite high on the list of important points to consider in everybody's thinking.
 

Vuu

Banned
Britain is not really in favour of Germany getting much of the French overseas empire. Germany has an awfully big economy and a colonial empire is a perfectly good justification for having a navy to police it which would be even bigger than the HSF that began the war. With the humbling of France and Russia, Germany is able to divert army funding to further Kaiserliche Marine expansion. Perhaps there could be some kind of treaty regulating naval construction? Maybe Washington would be a suitable venue?

Japan will cordially suggest that should Kaiser Wilhelm wish to pursue his claims to sovereignty over the Tsingtao concesssion and the Bismarck Archipelago, he is welcome to come and have a go if he thinks the Hochseeflotte is hard enough.

Except it can't steam that far... unless he can get resupply from the British, French, and Russians, which wouldn't be risky in any way...

And isn't designed for operations more than a day away from the Jade. And really isn't designed for tropical operations at all.

And the last time a fleet sailed from the Baltic, refuelled in Cape Town and Cam Ranh Bay, and then engaged the IJN was a decade ago. It didn't really go so well for the European side, and that fact will be quite high on the list of important points to consider in everybody's thinking.

Germany already has Namibia, all they need is something further east for another stop - maybe the Andaman? Plus, there are 2 very big states that are opposed to the Japanese - Russia and China, and it's possible that America gets coaxed into opposing Japan.

Overall the Japanese have a short-term advantage, but it's enemies can wait all they want to arm beyond what the Japanese can chew
 
Seriously, Clemenceau said: "The Germans may take Paris, but that will not prevent me from going on with the war. We will fight on the Loire, we will fight on the Garonne, we will fight even in the Pyrenees. And if at last we are driven off the Pyrenees, we will continue the war at sea."


Clemenceau was not in power in 1914.

More to the point, the US was not in the war, nor likely to be. It might have made some sense in 1918 to flee to Algiers and hope that GB and US might find a way to liberate France proper, but in 1914 the fall of Paris would be effectively game over, as that would be almost all of French industry gone.
 
Shrug its all we have to work with and its out of the Chancellors office. Any series debate on what German victory terms in 1914 might have looked like need to start with that document. Nothing says they would get them but it or something like it would be the starting point.

Michael

Nope ...

The "September'-program was NEVER official politics of no-one in the german goverment.
It was a collection made maybe on request of Bethmann-Hollweg most likely by his close secretary Kurt Riezler of what was going around in the german public discussion of that time before the outcome of the 1st battle of the Marne while the german armies were
  • storming across nothern France
  • two russian armies seemed crushed by a force seeming less than half of its adversaries
It was meant as a kind of 'discussion'-/remembrance-help for the chancellor in the already mentioned more or less public discussion, which - btw - was officially forbidden and censored.

If you read it carefully you would also find a lot of "could", "might", "maybe" in the text, nothing was 'fix', everything open to discussion - in possible negotiation talks with the enemies.
Bethmann-Hollweg would most and very likely not have realized it as it was written down/collected by Riezler (or whoever did the smallworks of recherche).
 
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