Four very insightful comments (the kind I love best!)
Well this has been a interesting timeline to read. Keep the faith and see it through to the end please. My only nitpick is the debt default by the British. Having them default is acceptable for story purposes but the sabotage and what not is the deal breaker. Remember the British holdings are in the form of American companies securities and stocks run by Americans and employing Americans except for very small and rare positions that require specific knowledge that a non-American might have. I think a more reasonable line would have been that the Morgan bank got caught in a credit crunch with the default and had to sell the British collateral at fire sale prices that only covered 75% of the stated debt. In normal conditions they could have sold smaller positions that would have gotten full price but due to Morgan putting too much of the Entente stuff on his personal account and the size of the holdings had to sell fast or the bank would collapse. That would have also cover the need for the government to cover the loss less the collapse of Morgan bring about a general bank collapse and depression. The promise of the loan with out actually delivering it would have sufficed to prevent the fall of the bank but also create a feeling of ill will between Wall St and the government when it doesn't come through as what good is a lender of last resort if they don't deliver. Such is my thoughts but it is your timeline and I have a hard time translating what is in my head to written format so if you need further explanation send me a pm and I will try to clarify it. DMCorp.
You're likely right- let it be repeated that I'm no economist. I may retcon later on. Apologies for the brevity of this response; I'll elaborate later on.
I just had a thought: couldn't the "legitimate" French government negotiate with the German Empire and use it to attack the Socialist French Republic?
The Socialist French have used a smarmy loophole wherein they are using the German reluctance to recognize them as a way of having to avoid paying war reparations (I should add that I find it unrealistic that the German Empire which is now the hegemon of Europe would let this sort of thing go, especially towards an obviously hostile threat to its future security when it has a chance to snuff it out before it becomes a major problem and they have to fight the war all over again.) But that same obstinate refusal to recognize carries with it the implication that German-occupied France is the rightful clay of the French government based in Algeria and not the SFR.
An example of what I mean is that the French nationalists could just make an agreement with Germany saying that in exchange for an enlarged occupation zone from which they could exploit local resources, the German's could reduce the war reparation amount and have a legitimate cause for tangling with the Socialist French, in essence both sides kill two birds with one stone with the Socialist French being caught in the middle unless they'd taken the initiative and made a deal with the German Empire first.
This is quite interesting and actually more likely than it would appear on paper. The regime in Berlin despises Socialist France (which I still haven't got a proper name for!) and the only reason they didn't intervene to secure reparations from them is because that would entail expanding the occupation headaches we saw in chapter 40 to the whole bloody country (or else propping up a puppet regime). Ironically, the extortions on the French economy are so great right now that I doubt Germany could extract all the reparations they want even if they militarily occupied the whole country
a la OTL 1940-1944.
I doubt, though, that Georges Clemenceau would be okay with willingly trading away still more of France. While he isn't in a great negotiating position, I imagine the most he'd be willing to let Germany have is its current occupation zone+the stuff transferred to Belgium... and besides, this is
Clemenceau. He might not be arguing for the dismemberment of Germany ITTL, but he's still a fiery French nationalist.
But the basic idea of a German-Algiers alliance against Socialist France is spot-on.
The issue isn't that Germany wants to let it go, the issue is does Germany care to force it? Germany may have won the war, but Falkenhayen ensured that their casualties were brutal. And then there was Danubia. if I'm germany, I just don't feel like forcing the issue when we have what we really need (the occupation zone, which is now ours forever)
This is exactly right. Germany
could send von Hutier and the
Sturmtruppen across the border to destroy Sorel's regime... but that would cost money and lives. There was a passage in chapter 41 where I mentioned how Germans were tiring of the Danubian war because, while England and France were seen as existential allies, Mihaly Karolyi's Hungary wasn't. It's the same thing here: France remains broken and Sorel isn't gearing up to invade Germany... so the average German voter doesn't want his son or brother- or himself- putting his life on the line in France. Besides, the occupation zone, as we saw in chapter 40, is enough of a mess. No need to quadruple that.
Besides, there's the budget to consider. Germany's Great War debt, while not as astronomical as in our world, is still pretty high. Then you have to factor in naval expansion, the war in Danubia, running
Mittelafrika, keeping the Eastern states in line, and of course the Trans-Saharan Railway that wasn't. That, of course, comes
before domestic expenses (not least of which is payment to widows, orphans, and the disabled.) It's actually kind of a miracle that Ernst von Heydebrand and the Conservatives agreed to shell out for this much. Anything more, including an expensive invasion of Socialist France, is off the table.
I don't think we can really blame von Falkenhayn for his attritional strategies, because let's be honest, there's really no other way to win in WWI. Or even in WWII, for that matter. In our modern 21st Century of laser-targeted air strikes and satellite-guided cruise missiles, it's easy to assume wars could easily be won by surgically knocking out the junctions holding an enemy military together, but it's also easy to forget that in the past age of foot slogging infantry and horse-drawn artillery, the only way to win is to all but literally grind the enemy down. Granted, things will change as ways to regain tactical and operational mobility get developed, and warfare evolves into more recognizably-modern ways of fighting, but as shown by his victory offensive on the Western Front, von Falkenhayn wasn't an obstinate martinet like Cadorna or that idiot Gamelin from OTL WWII who couldn't adapt to the changing battlefield. He recognized the value of stormtroopers and infiltration tactics, and used them well to win quick and decisive victories at Amiens, Third Ypres, and Dunkirk.
I imagine quite a few people in-universe will still think of and see von Falkenhayn as an unimaginative butcher who broke France by bleeding them out at Verdun, but if so, then they're setting themselves up for unpleasant surprises. If anything, von Falkenhayn is Germany's Petain, a man who realized the true nature of industrialized warfare and grimly adapted to that realization to win as best he could.
This is an excellent analysis as always, Jaenera.
The one thing I'll say is that von Falkenhayn is recognised as the "great hero" of the Great War, analogous to how Joseph Joffre and Foch are traditionally viewed in France. Revisionists won't challenge this for some time.....