If Germany won WWI, could German be the lingua franca?

The biggest plus for a continuing German presence is that if German instead of English is the first language of science, engineering, and medicine many Americans who have no family connection to German will learn it at the secondary or university level. Because of the Spanish speaking proximity of South America Spanish will still be a useful language for many Americans, but German will be widely taught (still as it was prior to WWI) and probably the major second language of the USA. IMHO while by 3rd generation German speakers will probably have to learn their German in school, but you'll still see German newspapers, bilingual German/English schools, churches with services in German. Unlike many languages, like Polish, there will be a benefit to keeping ability in the "old" language, due to its international use.
 
It's amazing how the super advanced Germans were both poorer and less developed than the English-speaking nations in WW1. Presumably their hundreds of tanks were left in the garage in 1918.

Tanks in 1918 were not an efficent use of industrial resources at all, especially for the Germans who at the time had no access to the wider world economy. Its pretty hard to develop economically with little access to raw materials, no? The British had the advantage of thousands upon thousands of merchant ships to supply their industrial engine and the navy to protect them: the Germans, despite their higher productivity per worker and greater industrial output pre-war, lacked such things and so had an economy alot more vulnerable to the strain of extended warfare.

Anyways, Germany lacked the kind of global reach that the English speaking countries had. While it'd certainly be more prevalent than OTL, unless Germany's victory comes from a defeat of rather than merely a negotiated end to hostilities with Great Britian they former is unlikely to displace Anglophone businesses and diplomatic-colonial dominance to the extent that it becomes THE global language of choice. The British Empire and its territories continue to use English, as does business in the Western Hemisphere and parts of East Asia. German likely becomes an upper class, technical, and maybe even business language in Eastern Europe, but then its merely a regional/secondary tounge and not the lingua francais.

Of course, there are some knock-on effects, as a German victory also implies victory for the rest of the CP. If such a victory happens early enough and without too much British meddling in the Middle East, German MIGHT take on a more prominent role in the upper crust of the Islamic world as well, and Austria MIGHT be able to centeralize to the point of a further defusion of German throughout the Hapsburg Empire than IRL. But those are far more dependent on just how well German's allies preform.
 
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