PC and WI: The Anglo/American - Kaiserreich war?

Imagine an alternate ww1 where the central powers preserve their strength a bit longer and/or Russia collapses quicker. The end result is that Central Power attacks against France and Italy in early 1918 are successfull and those countries are occupied. Some CP troops are redeployed in the Middle East to assist the Ottomans and maybe invade Egypt.
But te USA have allready entered the war! They just didn't have time to send enough troops to France to save it. Now the US and Commonwealth armies are sitting in England.
What happens next?
Is a peace negociated? in woho's favour? Or do the Anglo/Americans attempt to land in europe and conquer it?
 
Pretty sure this results in a full CP victory. The US may be fresh, but the Empire has been strained for 4 years now and will not like the prospect of a few more years of fighting ahead. Plus for France to have fallen means a significant amount of British troops will have been killed or captured. Either way expect them to say, 'Sorry France, we did our best.'
 
Calbear's TL worked because The Nazis were so intractable and crazy that they almost ensured that their enemies fought on until the very end rather then trying for a negotiated peace, there was also the St. Patricks day raid. These factors will not be present in this scenario, and so the US and UK will be far more likely to cut their losses and sue for peace.
 

yourworstnightmare

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Well, some kind of peace agreement would be hammered out, I think. Germany still can't beat Britain on the Seas, especially not with America helping the Brits. A return to status quo between Germany and Britain perhaps?
 
US participation in the war would be half-hearted at best. Britain would be exhausted after 4 years of war. The ideological differences between the allies and Germany, while significant, were nothing like the differences between the west and Nazi Germany in WW2.

There might be a general armistice in Europe but no all-encompassing treaty. I see series of armistices broken by eruptions of conlfict in marginal theatres. Britain would continue to fight in Africa and the Middle east to preserve its influence and eliminate Ottoman control. Britain might also attempt to occupy key French and Italian colonies to further isolate Germany, and Germany would not have the means or will to resist this. Japan would probably seek to expand its conquests in China beyond the German colnies it seized, possibly including Indochina. Depending on how seriously the US took the Zimmerman telegram (further US hijinks in Mexico might occur).
 
It is interesting to discuss what kind of peace could have been negotiated.
The problem for Germany is that now the Entente consists of members it thas decisively defeated, and members it hasä't defeated and can't really hurt in any meaningfull way. To what terms would this second group agree?

Britain: it's the most "accessible" foe. Germany might want it's colonies back, but Britain is unlikely to give them up, an as you said, could even grab some French and Italian colonies to prevent them from going to the Germans.
The Central Powers can try to harm the British empire by invading Egypt and North Africa, but how far can they push their luck? A defeat could weaken them, and if the war becomes unpopular they could face revolution at home.

The USA: Germany really can't do anything against them. The best they could hope for is a white peace, but I don't see the US agreeing to this. The best bet for germany is to pay compensations and agree to the terms demanded by the US. But what if they include giving up conquered terittories?

China & Japan: they are far away and out of reach. If Germany was at peace with everyone else, it could perhaps send a fleet to the Far East, but it would be risky (thik of the Rusians at Tsushima). And Japan is sitting on some German colonies that it's unlikely to give back.
Both China and Japan will want Tsingtao. Maybe this is an opening for Germany: it could play the Chinese against the Japanese. But can they really gain anything from it?
 
There is a flip side though. Neither the US or the UK have any way of really piercing German held Europe, as neither country as this point will be willing to pay a butcher's bill, the latter from exhaustion, and the former from having not exactly great morale at home. So, the war will probably just awkwardly continue for awhile, until some sort of peace is reached that both parties can stomach. The US can't stick in too long as the US has shown itself to be incapable of dealing with long term war exhaustion(which I view actually as a good thing, however that's a debate for another time.)
 

CalBear

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WW I & WW II were very different wars. Technology was farther advanced, the enemies were different and the reasons for fighting were different.

In this sort of scenario, Germany would not have set up an Atlantic Wall and repressed all of Europe. The end result would be 1870-71.
 

CalBear

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There is a flip side though. Neither the US or the UK have any way of really piercing German held Europe, as neither country as this point will be willing to pay a butcher's bill, the latter from exhaustion, and the former from having not exactly great morale at home. So, the war will probably just awkwardly continue for awhile, until some sort of peace is reached that both parties can stomach. The US can't stick in too long as the US has shown itself to be incapable of dealing with long term war exhaustion(which I view actually as a good thing, however that's a debate for another time.)

The U.S. has show itself to be willing to walk away, after seven or eight years of on-going occupation and failed efforts at nation-building. That was the case in Vietnam and in Iraq. Both of those wars were also greatly impacted by the media, especially television, presenting the wars as a story beamed into peoples homes daily. This simply wasn't the case in 1917-18.

The U.S. fought, during "isolationism" a series of wars in Central America that lasted, in total, well over 10 years. The differences were that there wasn't cable news or Uncle Walter sending color movies of dead American boys into every home nationwide.
 
I tend to see basically an armistice among the main surviving combatants, possibly resolving into a series of bilateral "white peace" treaties. No overall peace treaty would exist and there would be lots of unresolved issues leading to a host of minor conflicts and revolutions. Much more than OTL WW1, people would consider the peace as merely a pause a long term global power struggle that had yet to be resolved.

I think Germany would be absolutely pleased as punch to forgoe any claims on its former overseas colonies if Britain would be willing to accept Germany's ability to get whatever it wanted for itself and its allies from defeated France, Italy, and Russia. This would entail a lot of border realignments, annexations, reparations, "temporary occupations", made-up new nations to suite German interests, but probably no more radical than what the allies did to Germany and its allies. Germany would also have no ability to enforce peace terms outside of Europe, while Britain could still enfore the naval blockade. In this environment, Germany would be wise not to overreach. Of all the remainig powers still in the war (except the US), Britain is best situated to resume hostilities in a way that harms its enemy. In the scenario of this TL, you'd probably see an armistice between Britain and Germany, but political realities in both Germany and Britain might make negotiating a formal peace treaty with these terms a long time coming.

In this scenario, the US would have essentially been a combatant against the Central Powers in name only. This would be the easiest "white peace" in Europe to acheive. No US troops would have been engaged in France or captured. Losses on both sides (US and German) resulting from US entry in the war would be minimal and most likely involve naval action associated with the submarine campaign. I think the US would simply take the "woops, things have changed, not our fight anymore" tack and sign a quick armistice with the Central powers based largely on a return to peace between Germany and the US, and some nice sounding and enforceable claptrap about Germany renouncing unrestricted submarine warfare. The US would quickly forget Wilsons 14 points. The US might ask for some recompense for US ships sunk in the brief period of US involvement, and Germany might just agree to do this. Probably an actual bilateral peace treaty follows fairly shortly.

As noted in other posts, Germany has neither the ability or probably the overriding desire, to enforce terms on Japan or China. Since Germany had already considered making some backdoor deals with Japan against the USA in the event of US entry into WW1, they might see both China and Japan more as potential future allies against a resurgent Anglo-American alliance than as enemies. I would imagine immediate armistices and "white treaties' based on the ground conditions in Asia, return of the few Japanese naval units in the Mediterranean to Japan, return of any Chinese forces that might be in Europe (were there any?), followed by some serious discussions in Potstam and the Reichstag regarding which of the two mutually hostile Asian nations Germany should ally itself with.
 
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True, except did those require the consent of the US populace to carry out?

Again, keep in mind, I don't view this as a bad trait per say, it shows the US populace won't tolerate pointless conflicts too long.

But besides that, the problem is huge sections of the US populace didn't support World War 1, and continued to not do so. If it drags on too long, it's going to make it harder and harder to get the US populace to support the conflict, even without modern media.
 
Britain could still enfore the naval blockade.
That's a good technical question: If continental Europe is either controlled by th CP or neutral, can Britain still blocade all of it?

return of any Chinese forces that might be in Europe (were there any?)
The Chinese sent lots of workers to europe. I don't know anything about military units.
 
Germany's biggest problem after such a victory might be its crumbling Allies. AH and the Ottoman Empire were creaky before the war, I doubt either of them is going to be in great shape even after this type of CP victory, and I don't see the Germans fighting on to reclaim lost Ottoman territory.
They've also go the problem of controlling that big area of Russia they've acquired, I can see it being like Japan in China in the 30s/40s.
Simply put Germany might not get a lot of joy out of their victory.
 
Germany's biggest problem after such a victory might be its crumbling Allies. AH and the Ottoman Empire were creaky before the war, I doubt either of them is going to be in great shape even after this type of CP victory, and I don't see the Germans fighting on to reclaim lost Ottoman territory.
They've also go the problem of controlling that big area of Russia they've acquired, I can see it being like Japan in China in the 30s/40s.
Simply put Germany might not get a lot of joy out of their victory.

Excellent points, especially regarding possible "peacekeeping" obligations in territories formerly under Austro-Hungarian and Ottomon control. Regarding areas carved out of western Russia, I believe German intentions were to create a series of independent states under varying degrees of German control (Poland, Finland, Ukraine, etc). Also, the Germans, their allies, and new puppets, will be probably facing a host of communist revolutions to put down. All the more reason to doubt that Germany would seek to occupy France as well.
 
Germany's biggest problem after such a victory might be its crumbling Allies. AH and the Ottoman Empire were creaky before the war, I doubt either of them is going to be in great shape even after this type of CP victory, and I don't see the Germans fighting on to reclaim lost Ottoman territory.
They've also go the problem of controlling that big area of Russia they've acquired, I can see it being like Japan in China in the 30s/40s.
Simply put Germany might not get a lot of joy out of their victory.

Excellent points, especially regarding possible "peacekeeping" obligations in territories formerly under Austro-Hungarian and Ottomon control. Regarding areas carved out of western Russia, I believe German intentions were to create a series of independent states under varying degrees of German control (Poland, Finland, Ukraine, etc). Also, the Germans, their allies, and new puppets, will be probably facing a host of communist revolutions to put down. All the more reason to doubt that Germany would seek to occupy France as well.


Germany directly controls much of Europe, with Scandinavia and Iberia as German-leaning neutrals. Spain and Portugal keep their colonies (they're 'neutral', but Germany has her colonies seized by Britain, and France's are run by the 'Free French'/'Government in Exile' - Allied puppets.

Germany thinks she's won, because she now controls much of Eurasia. However, propping up Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans and holding France down is a continuous bleeding ulcer of men and money. Over the next couple of decades, Germany is exhausted and finally gives up, pulling almost all of her troops home, leaving behind a total mess everywhere south of Austria.

The Soviet Union forms on schedule, and is mostly left alone, due to German overextension, and Allied preoccupation with the rest of the world. Probably Finland and the Baltics are German allied independent nations. Possibly the Ukraine and/or Belarus is. Japan may hold Vladivostok and Manchuria.

The British Empire is massively in debt and indebted to the US. Their alliance slowly grows into US dominance as US economic power continues to far out pace Britain's.

The White Dominions by the mid-30s become junior members of this new alliance structure, and there is a lot of debate about what to do about India, let alone any African colonies. While the US isn't happy with British Imperialism, they don't really want to concede equality to blacks, and are unsure about brown people.

Germans interfere in South America and the Soviets in India and Africa.

don't know where it goes from there.
 
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