The Best Case for Germany in 1918

[Homer]

Certainly the POD would determine the severity of the pro-CP treaty, but if it's the American involvement in 1917 there are not likely to be severe debts to the Allies. Germany had the means to take Paris in early/mid 1918, and Italy could easily suffer mild Communist revolts in the northern areas that throw Rome out of the fight altogether (fear of Red revolution is what helped get Mussolini in place by 1922). Again, Luxembourg becomes German, Venetia becomes Austrian, Bulgaria gains western Thrace and seacoast of Romania (perhaps the latter becomes a large German colony?), France loses Franche-Comte and the rest of Lorraine, and Russia loses Ukraine (independent), Poland, Baltic States (Poland and Lithuania become German, Estonia and Latvia become a satellite), and Causacus territories(Ottomans). Serbia becomes an Austrian possession and the thrid crown of the AHSerbian empire. UK may continue the fight for a while, but if Italy is KOed and France on the ropes or forced to move capitals without US assistance, the CP is in a strong negotiating position. They will want a quick conclusion though because of their tenuous home situations, and AH/S will want a return to peacetime though the victory might stall their collapse.

If the US stay out, Italy gets kicked out and increases fears of a red revolution AND the Germans defeat the French decisively by taking - and holding - Paris, then you're right.

But I doubt that the Germans were able to take Paris after 1914. When the final attack of the Germans on Paris started, and the Germans conwuered the Allied lines, they simply stopped to eat the conquered food and officers were not able to get them further. Germany was exhausted, they weren't really able to feed their soldiers, not to mention the people at home.

To overcome this shortage in supplies, I'd propose an earlier peace treaty in the East, maybe with a Menshevik government which destroyed the Bolsheviks and which might be of more help due to no civil war starting there. Then Russian and Ukrainian supplies and raw materials might flow in from the beginning of 1918, or even in 1917, and soldiers are free for the West at an earlier date.

Compared to the west, an earlier and more decisive victory in the East is by far more plausible, I'd say.

But even then I can't really see Wilhelm II. parading through Arc de Triumphe - not to mention that even if they could, that does not automatically mean that France is out of the war! 1870, the Germans had a similar victory, and the new Republic fought on, with Paris seized by superior German forces and the city itself under the rule of a commune. And no foreign help was on the way, whereas ITTL the British expeditionary corps would still fight on, and supply any French who wants to. So why would the Germans, exhausted and hungry as they were 1918, be able to finish a war that they couldn't finish the last four years?

The only thing the Germans could hope for is to start negotiations. OTL, the Allies imposed a peace treaty on Germany, ITTL, they might agree to negotiations to keep more or less the status quo in the West and more or less Brest-Litovsk in the East. Such an arrangement would lay the basis for German supremacy on the continent, since Russia is weakened decisively, France too, Germany wouldn#t have to pay as much as they had OTL, and as soon as AH falls apart, Germany would gain 15 Million people in the most industrialized areas of a former grand power, most of them Germans, and a huge influential sphere on the Balkans. Hence even without major territory gains in the West, a truly negotiated peace is the best for Germany.