Plauability and wi Kaiser's Germany digs for victory

Might a more capable leadership prior to WW1 have prepared for an effective British blockade by giving priority to Agriculture

IF Germany were less hungry might it have fought on longer and even kept Austria into 1919 or 20?
 

tenthring

Banned
Might a more capable leadership prior to WW1 have prepared for an effective British blockade by giving priority to Agriculture

IF Germany were less hungry might it have fought on longer and even kept Austria into 1919 or 20?

Anyone who thought the war would last past 1914 would not have started the war.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
Anyone who thought the war would last past 1914 would not have started the war.

Not sure about that, Germany was paranoid about the "narrow war window", i.e. they counted that they only had a couple of years before Russia had caught up, thus making a two front war impossibe to win (they considered two fronts being doable as long as Russia lagged a little behind, of course the strategies were built around knocking out France first. If Germany knew France wouldn't fall....) So in 1914 the German strategists were determined the war had to happen now, or be unbeatable.
 
No, they wouldn't have done that. The reason the Schlieffen Operation was endorsed by the Kaiser and the political leaders was that it promised a short war. Even if England joined in, the war would be over (France beaten and Russia bailing out) before any blockade could become effective.
Only if war hadn't started in 1914, Moltke would have been forced to shelf the Schlieffen Operation in 1915/16, because of the Russian arms build-up. With short war no longer an option, they might have started to think about such problems.
 

Deleted member 1487

The best thing they could have done would have been to avoid the Hindenburg Program that overheated the economy and created the Turnip Winter of 1916-17. Then avoid USW and they basically win.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Might a more capable leadership prior to WW1 have prepared for an effective British blockade by giving priority to Agriculture

IF Germany were less hungry might it have fought on longer and even kept Austria into 1919 or 20?
I actually suspect that's what the British thought would happen. That involves diverting effort away from purely military operations and into making up the food shortfall, which means that it weakens the front lines somewhere. (Maybe a division or two of landsers has to go back home to work on the farms?)
 
Tirpitz claimed in his memoirs Germany should have crash imported strategic materials like fertilizers and copper before the war started (for copper sulfate used as a fungicide to spray on potatoes). By early July a fight was going to be likely to happen and the Germans wasted a good solid 3 weeks they could have imported stuff, brought home merchants, sent stuff to colonies etc.

Using their 1870 experience the French had been beat quickly but the war continued for some time after, so even if a German victory takes Paris, blockade conditions might last for some time so preparation would be reasonable even if a quick victory was thought to happen.

Certainly strategic metals and rubber could have been stored for years as a strategic reserve for an eventual war (unsure how long you could store nitrates). The seven years war being so much a part of Prussian military lore that it would seem negligent for a country who had been through that not to store up for a similar such war.

But failing that, I agree with Wilking's comment above, that the Germans made things worse by their own economy screw ups and USW closed any remaining blockade loopholes. Those things were easily avoidable.
 
Not sure about that, Germany was paranoid about the "narrow war window", i.e. they counted that they only had a couple of years before Russia had caught up, thus making a two front war impossibe to win (they considered two fronts being doable as long as Russia lagged a little behind, of course the strategies were built around knocking out France first. If Germany knew France wouldn't fall....) So in 1914 the German strategists were determined the war had to happen now, or be unbeatable.

You're statement can't be more true. Unfortunately there is a large amounts of fatalism on this forum with people consigning millions of Europeans to die in an "inevitable" First World War.:mad: The ultimate irony is that it was this very train of thought that led to the German's calculating that a war was inevitable and therefore was worth fighting here and now, prompting the very outbreak of this entirely avoidable war.:(
 
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