The Central Powers do their best if the Great War starts in...?

I'm at a loss, I have no idea how to find how much electrical energy Germany produced during these years, or how much nitrate they consumed, in peace time or in a hypothetic war.


Maxwell,

There's no need to research how many megawatts Germany produced or how many kilotons of nitrates it required in peace or war. You can look at the question on a "ratio" or "black box" level.

Take a hypothetical item, i.e widgets, that our nation requires. Next examine two processes which can create widgets for us. Process A a certain amount of inputs in the form of resources and energy to produce a given amount of widgets. Process B requires a larger amount of inputs in the form of resources and energy to produce the same amount of widgets.

Everything else being equal, which process is better for us to employ?

The Birkeland-Eyde process requires large amounts of electricity, something that was not trivial for industrial nations to produce in the time period. The Birkeland-Eyde process was being used on an industrial scale by 1903, but only in a few locales where large amounts of cheap electricity was available. Given the great demand for nitrates in industry and agriculture, widespread research in nitrogen fixing continued because the Birkeland-Eyde process wasn't good enough.

In 1909 Haber demonstrated his process in the lab, it was industrialized within four years, and the technology exported worldwide five years after that. By the 1920s, Haber's process meant nitrates were no longer mined on the huge scale seen only a decade before. The Birkeland-Eyde process never accomplished what the Haber process did, namely making an entire industry obsolete by providing the classic cheaper/faster/better way of providing what the now obsolete industry provided.

There's another problem with Germany adopting the Birkeland-Eyde process wholesale before 1914; it means Germany would somehow be prescient.

Before the Great War, no one ever imagined the vast amounts of ammunition "modern" warfare would require. Before the Great War, Germany didn't really face up to the fact that she may find herself blockaded and thus failed to stockpile strategic resources in substantial amounts. No one knew nitrogen fixing would be so critical.

Putting it another way, the 1909 Haber Process solved a critical problem in 1915 that no one in 1914 even knew existed. Haber developed his process for peacetime economic reasons and not to solve a wartime problem critical to national survival.


Bill
 
Bill, if you posit your "windpipe" ATL, or even just a repetition of the nitrate seizure at Antwerp, do you believe that the time allowed would allow for a successful CP prosecution of the war with a start in 1908?


Amerigo,

You really know how to ask the tough ones, don't you? ;)

Let me answer with a qualified yes.

Assuming the previously stated 1908 "start date", the Central Powers - in particular Germany - are in a much better position relative to the Entente Powers - meaning France and Russia. While I'm always hesitant to stack the historical deck in favor of one course of action, I believe that Germany could have plausibly provoked and won a "pre-emptive" Great War in 1908 if she had followed the examples provided by Bismarck between 1864 and 1871.

Now I'll have to explain. :eek:

When you examine Bismarck's three wars with the single Wilhelmine war, you are immediately struck by the contrast of the painstaking pragmatic preparation/analytic nature of the former compared with the willy-nilly, muddle along, let's see what happens nature of the latter. Unlike Wilhelmine Germany, Bismarckian Germany would have never gone to war without a list of clearheaded war aims, yet Wilhelmine Germany did just that. Bismarckian Germany wouldn't have been stampeded into a war like Wilhelmine Germany was either.

Unlike the cabal of boobs managing Wilhelmine Germany, Bismarck actually understood and applied the Clausewitz maxim of war being a "continuation of politics by other means." Bismarck used the wars he was given to further certain domestic and foreign political policies, something Wilhelmine Germany was either wholly ignorant of or incapable of accomplishing.

Let me say now that I do not believe Bismarck was some Machiavellian heavyweight effortlessly arranging wars and treaties to reach some distant goal that only he could discern. You'll notice I wrote about the wars Bismarck was "given" and not the wars he "created".

What Bismarck was a master of was, in his own words, "Listening for the footsteps of God and catching hold of His hem as He swept by." Bismarck was lucky in the Napoleon's description of the word; Bismarck's many preparations often met opportunities as they arose and that allowed him to use opportunities to a greater effect than many of his peers.

Bismarck knew "a" Second Schleswig War war in the offing, so he endeavored the ensure the kind of war it would be was favorable to his policy goals and that the results of the war would be favorable too. As with his first war, Bismarck later knew "a" war with Austria and, later yet, "a" war with France were in the offing too. Again he took pains to manage those wars and their results with the ""continuation of politics" firmly in mind.

While the results of his efforts always varied, the fact that Bismarck made those efforts was a constant.

Unlike the Wilhelmine boobs of 1914, Bismarck never would have woke to find himself at war with three great powers, he would have attempted to manage the Sarajevo crisis, and he would have attempted to call the tune and would not have danced along. Bismarck would have been proactive and not reactive. He may not have succeeded, but he would have tried.

Assuming that the cabal managing Wilhelmine Germany bothered to pay attention to the political legacy of their empire's actual founder, a pre-emptive war provoked in 1908 would be fascinating.


Bill
 
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