Was Britain Right to Enter WWI?

Was Britain Right to Enter WWI?

  • Yes

    Votes: 266 56.1%

  • No

    Votes: 223 47.0%
  • Total voters
    474
Athelstane

Athelstane

stodge said:
Indeed it's quite possible to argue that of all the European powers the status quo ante bellum worked most to Britain's advantage. I'd argue it was in Britain's interests to maintain the armed peace and Grey should have intervened directly in the early stages of the crisis (proposing a great power conference in London to resolve "the Serbian Question" perhaps on the basis, as someone would claim later, jaw-jaw was better than war-war).
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Which, in fact, Grey had done a little over a year previously, to resolve a previous Balkan crisis.

But given how sensitive this crisis was for one of the great powers, he obviously decided it was better to hang back.

Had he understood that the powers in Vienna had decided to use the crisis to completely crush the Serbian state, one would think he would have taken a much more assertive role. It *would* have been risky, of course, because both Britain and Russia would have to threaten war right up front to bring Austria (and Germany) to the negotiating table, and as you say, there were plenty of interests (mostly not in Britain) who preferred war. "We'll give you a generous mandate to punish the guilty parties - even in Belgrade - but the destruction of the Serbian state is going to be a bridge too far." That might not be an easy sell, but at least the major players would understand the stakes up front.

Obviously, the risk is that even if Grey did sell it, the risk was that it might just delay the explosion by another year or three.
 
Nyegosh

Nyegosh

I'm generally a "might makes right" kinda guy. So they had every "right" to involve themselves.

In retrospect, was it wise? Probably not. Literally depleted themselves on it.

If Russia held out and avoided revolution for a few more weeks, their fortunes would have turned and the Germans would be immediately overextended since the massive Russian army was on the cusp of having it's supply and therefore low morale issues fixed. In that case, I think Britain could have gotten away with involving themselves.
 

Riain

Banned
Nyegosh said:
I'm generally a "might makes right" kinda guy. So they had every "right" to involve themselves.

In retrospect, was it wise? Probably not. Literally depleted themselves on it.

If Russia held out and avoided revolution for a few more weeks, their fortunes would have turned and the Germans would be immediately overextended since the massive Russian army was on the cusp of having it's supply and therefore low morale issues fixed. In that case, I think Britain could have gotten away with involving themselves.
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Britain made a lot of tactical and operational mistakes and had a lot of setbacks on their way to victory, if some of these could be avoided or minimised their participation wouldn't look so bad.
 
Athelstane

Athelstane

Riain said:
Britain made a lot of tactical and operational mistakes and had a lot of setbacks on their way to victory, if some of these could be avoided or minimised their participation wouldn't look so bad.
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Everyone had a steep learning curve in the Great War and the technology so heavily favored the defensive. The Brits basically had to rebuild not only the BEF but their entire industrial economy in 1915 to tool up the logistics. I just don't see how they can engage fully on the Western Front and not receive casualties deep into 7 figures before the final bell sounds.
 

Belisarius II

Nyegosh said:
I'm generally a "might makes right" kinda guy. So they had every "right" to involve themselves.

In retrospect, was it wise? Probably not. Literally depleted themselves on it.

If Russia held out and avoided revolution for a few more weeks, their fortunes would have turned and the Germans would be immediately overextended since the massive Russian army was on the cusp of having it's supply and therefore low morale issues fixed. In that case, I think Britain could have gotten away with involving themselves.
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Could you elaborate on the Russians fixing their supply problems in the Spring of 1917?
 
Nyegosh

Nyegosh

Belisarius II said:
Could you elaborate on the Russians fixing their supply problems in the Spring of 1917?
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There was some sort of production problem - they couldn't make enough guns and proper uniforms and all. The high command didn't really consider that they were losing. They even made the (in)famous Budenovka for the victory celebrations, lmao.

By the time they did, however, it was too late - and all those guns and equipment conveniently sat in warehouses, surrounded by angry workers and soldiers. The October revolution was bad enough, but a fluke of weather and miscommunication led to the February revolution and they got fucked.
 

Riain

Banned
Athelstane said:
Everyone had a steep learning curve in the Great War and the technology so heavily favored the defensive. The Brits basically had to rebuild not only the BEF but their entire industrial economy in 1915 to tool up the logistics. I just don't see how they can engage fully on the Western Front and not receive casualties deep into 7 figures before the final bell sounds.
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I'm not talking about the Western Front as much as the likes of Gallipoli, Kut, Salonika. Britain/Entente strength and political and strategic, they were able to get every power onto their side, but wars are fought on the battlefield and the CP/German strength in tactics and operations made it very difficult for Britain to exercise its strategic strength until it gained enough tactical proficiency to do so.
 

Belisarius II

Nyegosh said:
There was some sort of production problem - they couldn't make enough guns and proper uniforms and all. The high command didn't really consider that they were losing. They even made the (in)famous Budenovka for the victory celebrations, lmao.

By the time they did, however, it was too late - and all those guns and equipment conveniently sat in warehouses, surrounded by angry workers and soldiers. The October revolution was bad enough, but a fluke of weather and miscommunication led to the February revolution and they got fucked.
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Thanks. It was my impression that the overthrow of the Czar was mostly caused by the failure to get food into the cities. The army in the field was actually doing better then is commonly thought. The Czar made a big mistake in establishing prohibition at the start of the war. The Russian State received almost 1/3 of it income from vodka sales, in which it had a State monopoly. In the long run it damaged national moral, and the lose of income was very serious. The start of a major war is a bad time to just give up 1/3 of your tax revenue.
 

Mikestone8

Short answer. On the basis of what they knew at the time, yes. It was a reasonable decision. Had they known in advance how horrendous the cost would be, maybe stilll yes, but far less certain.

Of course, had France fallen in 1914 as in OTL's 1940, everyone would be saying what idiots we were to blunder into the conflict. Hindsight is always 20/20.
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
Then Belgium (& Germany) would breach the Treaty of London. We had a long thread on this last year, which ended up, as most do, going round in circles.

My take was that Belgium would have to be pretty sure the Central Powers would win - and face whatever consequences that entailed - as a victorious Entente would probably wipe Belgium as an independent state from the map. After all, if a neutral nation allows an enemy to use its territory as a jumping-off point for an assault on you, how could you trust it abiding by neutrality in the future?
 

HexWargamer

Coulsdon Eagle said:
Then Belgium (& Germany) would breach the Treaty of London. We had a long thread on this last year, which ended up, as most do, going round in circles.

My take was that Belgium would have to be pretty sure the Central Powers would win - and face whatever consequences that entailed - as a victorious Entente would probably wipe Belgium as an independent state from the map. After all, if a neutral nation allows an enemy to use its territory as a jumping-off point for an assault on you, how could you trust it abiding by neutrality in the future?
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You wouldn't, although next time around they did their bit to help Hitler by making sure the BEF was stuck on the French / Belgium border (instead of crossing the Belgium / Germany border in late 39 and meeting the Panzers returning from Poland in Berlin by the spring of 1940 ... yes, I know neither the Brtish nor the French were prepared to do that, but they COULD have been ... OTL at the very least they could have spent 6 months preparing defences on the Belgium / German border (and Dutch / German border) instead of following some idiotic plan to 'rush forward' against an enemy that has conclusivly proven (in Poland) that they can move very very much faster than you can)

BUT I'm diverging from the topic == in 1914, if the British failed to declare when the Germans crossed the Belgium border, would they not be Treaty obligied to declare when the Germans attacked across the Belgium / French border (or otherwise attacked France) ???
 

Mikestone8

HexWargamer said:
BUT I'm diverging from the topic == in 1914, if the British failed to declare when the Germans crossed the Belgium border, would they not be Treaty obligied to declare when the Germans attacked across the Belgium / French border (or otherwise attacked France) ???
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No *obligation* to - but the independence of France was widely seen as an importat British interest, so a DoW would at least be highly likely.
 
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