What happens if the UK waits in WW1 to see what happens?

The problem is assuming the Germans think that one big empire would be eser to control then a bunch of smaller, weeker countrys would be, which has never been the case historically.
This is conventional and general wisdom, but I think AH after victory for the CP in a short Germano-French-Russian war would be a clear exception. This is not at all analogous to European powers trying to dominate the Ottoman Empire, or China--though I will note, the British were doing pretty well for themselves taking over the Chinese court via imposing the "right" to administer key things for the whole empire, in the mid-19th century.

But in these cases foreigners with zero sympathy for their victim and no respect for their culture and especially not the ruling elites are horning in where they are strangers. This is quite different! The German Empire just stood by the Austro-Hungarians when their case for landing an ultimatum on Serbia was pretty dubious and inconvenient, exposing Germany to heavy war with both France and Russia. The AH army would probably perform about as fecklessly against the Russians as OTL--but the German army mauled the Russians worse than the Russians mauled the Austro-Hungarian forces; here I presume that seeing France in collapse and themselves very much on the back foot and clearly about to face a Germany that can settle things with France and turn full force on Russia, even such an idiot as Nicholas II will see the writing on the wall and settle, at considerable cost, but with his regime intact for the moment. (All the conventional "of course AH is doomed" not taking into account my thesis that Germans will prop it up reasoning will then apply to the Russian Empire pretty strongly, but the various factors that brought them to revolution in 1917 OTL will not have had three years of brutal defeat to work--recall Russia already had another revolution after a much less costly defeat in 1905, which is why I think it will be Russia, as long as it remains under the Romanovs anyway, that will be shaky. Perhaps if Nicholas can be shuffled off somewhere, and someone with good sense (bearing in mind I am factoring for the whole Russian ruling class being pretty brutal) runs in effect a regency pending Nicholas's death which naturally would be many decades hence, they can stabilize it for the Tsarevich, who however was always at death's door due to hemophila--perhaps he can manage to sire an heir before he dies, and some grandchild of Nicholas's can be a real Tsar again. But more likely they will screw it up and Russia will be very volatile indeed, until something drastic happens).

So Germany pulls AH's chestnuts from the fire. It is militarily and economically in quite a position to gobble up the entire Habsburg empire whole--but I think they will hardly want to encumber themselves with direct responsibility for all that backward development and ethnic pots boiling over. That will be the Habsburg monarchy's job to manage, for which in effect the German Reich will pay them to do.
Pulse it's not like German leaders ever had much respect or really liked austrea-hungary, hell Wilhelm II sade that when austrea collapses the German unification would be complete right to franz josifes face in like 1907-08, not only dose this show how bad Wilhelm was at diplomacy but shows how dependent austrea Hungary was to Germany considering the aliance stade intact to ww1 (and also explains why austrea-hungary was so worried that Germany woulnt support them during the July crisis ) combine whith the prity bad performance during ww1 itself (to the point that high ranking Germany officers are saying they had been shackled to a corpse)
Germany's biggest liability in this juncture is Wilhelm II and his autocratic and arrogantly chauvinistic clique of course. Again and again Silly Willy exacerbated Germany's problems beyond all reason. A 1914 victory, even one delayed to say early 1916, is likely to give this reactionary clique quite a bad case of victory disease.

I am however speaking of Germany's rational interests and opportunities to get them met efficiently via propping up the southern Empire. Germany was dominated by Prussia, by Prussian interests and Prussian officials. But it was not all Prussia for one thing; other Germans might not entirely share the Hohenzollern contempt. Insofar as religious bigotry mattered still--that would be playing with fire considering how many Catholic subjects of the Reich there were, and how the federal nature of the empire meant Bavaria and other southern kingdoms were predominantly Catholic and run by Catholic dynasties and leaders. Plus more of them in the Prussian holdings particularly in the Rhineland. Indeed I gather this hatchet was largely buried by 1914, in part because Bismarck (the Kulturkampf being largely one of his lapses in statemanship, though I also think the Catholic side had more blame in provoking it than is usually noticed--still Bismarck handled the real issues pretty poorly) had passed on, in part because the Reich was integrating despite its self-Balkanization which de facto meant Prussian indirect rule anyway.

Even a relatively easy war would still be no walk in the park and German citizens would have been heavily taxed in every way. German industrialists would profit more than suffer of course, but I am counting on them gaining more influence--not via democratic channels as I would prefer, but via inside connections to the General Staff. Zeppelin Company is one I have read up on quite a bit; war time demands greatly accelerated the advance of Zeppelin design, and greatly expanded their scale of operations; the company was in quite intimate relations with the German navy in particular. Surely the other big names we can easily rattle off in more central industries--Krupp, IG Farben, etc--are going to command a lot of respect and attention by a lot of well placed high officers of respectable noble blood. Both will see eye to eye about needing to keep the democratic rabble in line, and it will be tricky because the German commoners, including quite notably the vast majority of Social Democrats and Jews, answered the call and served honorably. It will be difficult to just slam the door in their faces; preventing them from driving home revolutionary demands will be best accomplished by as George W Bush so charcteristically with revealing malaprops said, "making the pie higher." Meaning not what his outcome predictably was in the 2000s USA, putting it farther out of reach, but what he presumably consciously intended to say...make the pie bigger. Germany must profit from victory, and the way to do that is to expand economically into southeast Europe.

You say, rather formulaically, that "upstart empires dismantle their imperial victims, they don't conquer them wholesale." Here though is an unusual opportunity. Putting Wilhelm and his trash talk into the same zoo Nicholas II belongs in, a suitably astute Reich government would ostensibly and officially just be continuing and deepening a cordial alliance with a staunch if ailing ally. It would be private German citizens who would do the work, via investment and development, of de facto conquering Austria Hungary piecemeal, and the AH royalty and nobility getting their cut, with local issues handled ad hoc, the imperial structure gives cover for this de facto incorporation of Austria-Hungary into the German system. Why should the Germans chauvinistically eat up just the northwestern parts as being German, except of course for the huge salient of Slavic Czechs and Moravians in Bohemia, and exacerbate the northern Reich's papered over Protestant-Catholic split by swallowing up enough southern German and Slavic Catholics to make the expanded Reich quite overwhelmingly Catholic demographically, at just the time conservative Catholic subjects of the northern Reich had been finding their political footing as a counterweight to the Social Democrats? Leaving these people formally under another flag and emperor would hold a lot of headaches at bay, but meanwhile the larger German system in fact sweeps up rulership of essentially all the Germans in Europe--note that quite a few cities and towns far to the south and east in Hungarian lands were in fact German ethnically. Why cut those Germans loose? Leaving them under the AH crown gathers them into the system too, as overlords in fact of the non-German majorities generally, except Hungarians in Hungary. But the German influence will tend to turn any asset the larger empire has into de facto a German asset, bolstering the cultural hegemony of Austrian Germans by association.
I see it more likely that Germany would gust let austrea Hungary rip itself apart, anex the German and check lands as religion issues have been giting less and less important in Europe sence 1866 and play the new countrys left agenst each other.

Why relinquish the claim on the whole AH empire, when sock-puppeting the southern monarchy would leave the headaches of the less important parts for the subsidized southern rulers to deal with to earn their keep, while Germans move in on a private basis to monopolize control of the profitable parts? We can't draw a border that includes just "proftable former Austria-Hungary" while throwing the rest harmlessly (to German interests) to the wolves; items of interest to German capitalists would be scattered all through the empire, islands of opportunity in a sea of liability--let the Austrians and Hungarians do the scut work of taking responsibility for the down side, and pay them to be able to keep their heads above water on that basis, while Germans skim the cream. Withal, no nasty little wars, no pogroms and massacres and ethnic cleansing to form half-assed Westphalian nation states.

Would the southern royalty and nobility, as well as more bourgeois as well as working class leaders, be resentful? I daresay yes, it will be somewhat humiliating for them. But the beauty of the system is divide and rule; most people will vent their resentments at the Habsburg system and it will be the whipping boy of progressive minded people all over the world; indeed many might hail the Germans as the good cops and blame misery on the Austrian and Hungarian bad cops. This is exactly what an astute German-AH relationship negotiated cleverly would in effect pay them to do of course--keep a lid on dangerous talk of revolution, either nationalist or internationalist, do what it takes with carrots or with sticks to keep order, and where Germans see opportunity or resources they want, stand out of their way and follow their lofty advice for how to run things locally to these opportunities.

Knowing glumly the alternative is complete collapse and the evisceration of their pretensions, I think the southern formally elite nobility and royalty will in fact fall into line for their pay and tarnished glory, and knowing these people are doing the donkey work of imperial rule of what amounts to a European colonial empire, smart Germans will pay them in cheap coin of flattery and a reasonable cut of the proceeds of profits from controlling southeast Europe. This is much more sensible than short-sightedly grabbing just Bohemia and Austria and letting the rest go to the dogs where they might wind up becoming client allies of Germany's enemies.
 
Again, I believe the British would come in on the Entente side; if the Liberal Government split & fell, the Conservative & Unionist Party could replace them with enough old Liberal Imperialists to shore up numbers in the House of Commons.

I'd argue that it comes entirely down to how the war is going. If the British believe that France and Russia are going to lose then the question is would British intervention make a difference? If the answer is "no" to that question (which would presumably be asked as the Germans are flowing onto Paris) then it makes little sense to join the war on the Entente's side as it would destroy all credibility the British would have with the Germans, thus Britain is left isolated as it would be in the Boer Wars, without any gain. In other words, if the British join the Entente at the last second and France still falls, Britain put herself into a horrible position without any leverage.

No, the better play for Britain is to use her "neutral" position to her advantage. Instead, Britain would present herself as a moderating force, trying to calm down the euphoria of Germany victory hysteria, limiting the damage and radical change to the European and world order.
 
I never think this is the slam dunk people often assume. If we arrive at a POD of August 1914 with the British cabinet deciding "wait and see," by then Austria Hungary is indeed a mess.
But they are on the winning side of the war, a war they pretty much triggered. The real victor and hegemon is of course the German Empire.

But I think it is in the interest of interested factions of Germans to keep the Hapsburg empire in existence. Whatever face saving pomp and posturing a canny ministry in Berlin may allow Vienna to put out for public consumption, the Austrians know and the Germans know and the world knows that Austria-Hungary exists on German sufferance. Therefore, if the German ministers in charge maintain half the canniness of Bismarck, and avoid infuriating Austrian and Hungarian pride pointlessly, the southern empire's powers that be will defer to German interest and suggestions. From the northern point of view, the Great War (which might not seem so "Great" and have a different name) settles German predominance on the Continent, but Britain remains a Great Power, the USA is still sleeping but is definitely a giant, and Russia, perhaps much deranged and kicked back, must still remain as a potential problem too. The Germans can largely get their way in northern and western Europe, but being overbearing would start another war this time with Britain probably in it on the wrong side; the western European nations have their own domestic industry, often have colonies too, and are therefore difficult to batter to German whims. The obvious line of advance for German industrial investment, expansion, trade spheres, markets, and resources is south and east. Russia is in the direct east.

But Austria-Hungary sprawls from the southern and much of the eastern border of Germany most of the way to the Black Sea and all the way to the Mediterranean. The Balkan nations are definitely on a back foot despite Austria-Hungary's internal weaknesses, because they know Germany backs AH.

Why should Berlin prefer to see Austria Hungary disintegrate into half a dozen or more quarreling local powers, when their back door into Hapsburg policy gives them one stop shopping for the whole vast region? One rule to pave the way for German investment and German directed development for German benefit; why throw that away? Also, as an integrated empire, Austria-Hungary is a naval power based on the Mediterranean. If under German hegemony with German support, the German-speaking ruling dynasty can keep it together, German empire ministers and industrialists and traders have a pretty free hand and can categorically exclude the intervention and alliance of rival great powers in the whole region.

Germany will prop up the monarchy and the Empire as much as they are able to. To argue in this context that the Empire must break up is to assume, I think, that the centrifugal desires of various subaltern nations under the Imperial crown were more powerful and more organized and much more determined than they actually were. Again, if the Germans avoid extreme bigotry they can probably help the Empire authorities coopt the best potential leaders of Czechia, Slovakia, Imperial Poland and the many nations that OTL merged into and then fissioned out of Yugoslavia.

To be sure these fissiparous tendencies are there, and the rival Great Powers will seek to exacerbate them. I've avoided even mentioning Hungarian dissents with Germanic hegemony and that is pretty serious in itself. And I have stressed the need for the Germans to be pretty astute; people like Kaiser Wilhelm and such diplomatic boors as Zimmerman remind me they often weren't. It is a question of whether the German industrialists and financiers will be able to rein in such bombast and not get caught up excessively in chauvinist jingoism and master-race arrogance themselves so as to keep an even keel on touchy matters of pride. But certainly it would be plain to would-be separatists that the Hapsburg regime itself might be tottering and weak but Imperial Germany is not, and crossing Berlin would tend to cost them a lot--if Berlin holds out olive branches they can cling to with some dignity intact, then I think the ramshackle old Empire can be kept in being, with the points where they need strength their feckless internal institutions cannot reinforce quietly propped up by German money and German troops. AH itself was in such a bad way that I suppose if say Bulgaria changed sides and attacked southeast Hungarian zones they could militarily prevail--but if the Bulgarian leaders know what they are doing at all, they would know this would just bring the Germans down on them, and that threat they cannot prevail over. So they stay in the Hohenzollern-Hapsburg tent pissing out, not step outside it to try pissing in and see what happens next.

And sooner or later, investment and development will tend to knit Austria Hungary together as a going concern internally. It will proceed on the assumption the Empire will last indefinitely, and so the various potential nations will be tied together with industrial and trade networks on that premise, and populations following the power lines to make the major urban and industrial centers multicultural and cosmopolitan. At least in terms of the various peoples of the Empire. Vienna will not be an exclusively German city, Budapest only dominated by Hungarians but sharing many urban quarters with others from all over, including Austrian Germans and expatriate northern Germans from the German Empire.

You maybe correct.
An economically prosperous AH would be more stable.
 
While I'm a big believer in the value of the BEF in the initial defence of France I think the biggest thing the British bought to the war in 1914-15 was hope. If Britain didn't join the war at the start the battlefield setbacks of 1914 look very different to France and Russia, who might be interested in armistice talks early on.

Indeed the BEF made a difference. The blockade of Germany also made a big difference.
 
I'd argue that it comes entirely down to how the war is going. If the British believe that France and Russia are going to lose then the question is would British intervention make a difference? If the answer is "no" to that question (which would presumably be asked as the Germans are flowing onto Paris) then it makes little sense to join the war on the Entente's side as it would destroy all credibility the British would have with the Germans, thus Britain is left isolated as it would be in the Boer Wars, without any gain. In other words, if the British join the Entente at the last second and France still falls, Britain put herself into a horrible position without any leverage.

No, the better play for Britain is to use her "neutral" position to herUK could help broker advantage. Instead, Britain would present herself as a moderating force, trying to calm down the euphoria of Germany victory hysteria, limiting the damage and radical change to the European and world order.

I agree.
UK could be brokers at peace conference and remain on friendly terms with CP.
Relations with France would be bad for the foreseeable future.
 
Last edited:
The likely result of this is:

France stops the Germans before Paris, but Likely Reims, Verdun, and all of North Eastern France, East and North of the Somme are occupied by Germany in August-October 1914. This puts France in a serious economic disadvantage as a lot of her industrial regions are gone. At some point the Germans probably go on the defensive in the west but it make take them a while before their offensives spin out and threat from the east grows bigger, probably November 1914.

Eastern Front probably goes the same as OTL in 1914, by 1915 goes better for the Germans, as Italy is still Neutral, and Germany+Austria can commit greater reserves, and can commit a large part of her fleet. Supply and logistics considerations limit the German victory, but I could see the Germans taking Riga, some Baltic islands, and maybe Minsk. Serbia is crushed end of 1915 with no evacuation.

Peace settlement happens then. Germans take Briery+Longwy basins, Belfort (perhaps these areas are not annexed but occupied), and colonial adjustments. Poland+Lithuania are "independent", but German-Austrian dominated and occupied. Serbia is an Austrian vassal.

While the victory is German favorable, Germany isn't going to out build Britain navally OTL or in this time line, and the war and the management and occupation of the new places for Germany are going to cost a lot and keep Germany busy for a while. Russia will recover just the same and always be a potential threat for Germany. Lots of British lives saved and much treasure saved.

The nightmare scenario for Britain is that victorious Germany then leads leads some European coalition to war against an isolated Britain, I just don't see that happening.
 
Damage done by British intervention in wwi.
In Ireland it hit the Anglican community in the south of Ireland very hard.
Many of the young men in that small community were killed and many of the women left to go to England to find husbands.
This broke the back of the unionist community in the south of Ireland.
In colonies like Kenya where the colonist community was small losses had a similar effect.
In Britain some profession were hit harder than others.
When I studied horticulture I was told that wwi killed most of the young apprentices in the horticultural business especial the big gardens.
Many of the Great gardens of Britain never recovered due to the loss of trained garden staff , financial problems and loss of the sons of the great estates who paid for the great gardens.
Coal mining was also damaged as the best coal was mined very quickly in the war of in a way that damaged the mines.
After the war Brtian was flooded with cheap German coal to pay war reparations, this lead to a collapse in the price of coal and strikes in the mines.
In Turkey the landing by the British at Gallipoli landings hit Turkey very hard.
A student from Turkey told me many of the Turkish soldiers were University students.
This hit the profession classes hard as many of the young men who would have become doctors and engineers etc were killed.
He told me it took Turkey 20 years to recover from this.

Although Britain was ultimately victorious, the effects of war would be felt for many years to come. Foreign trade, a key part of the British economy, had been badly damaged by the war. Countries cut off from the supply of British goods had been forced to build up their own industries so were no longer reliant on Britain, instead directly competing with her. In 1920/21, Britain would experience the deepest recession in its history.
World War One was a significant moment in the decline of Britain as a world power. It would be gradual, but by the mid-20th century the United States would usurp Britain as the leading global economic power.
Today, nearly £2 billion worth of bonds are circulating in the market. War bonds originally paid an interest rate of 5% but in 1932, as the government battled against a budgetary crisis, the then Chancellor Neville Chamberlain changed the terms of those bonds. He appealed to holders to do their patriotic duty and voluntarily accept a cut in the interest rate to 3.5%. All but a small minority agreed the terms – and that wasn’t their only sacrifice.
War bond holders also agreed in effect to accept that they might never get their investment back. Whereas the original bonds had been due to be repaid in full in 1947, Chamberlain converted them to “perpetuals”, giving the government the right not to pay back the loans if they so wished, as long as they continued paying the 3.5% interest.
Surprise, surprise – no government since the 1930s has chosen to repay these bonds. There are believed to be about 125,000 holders – some of whom might have inherited them from parents or relatives who bought them during World War One.
The continued existence of the war bond debt is possibly the most graphic illustration of the lasting shadow cast by World War One.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zqhxvcw#zy4gjxs
 
Last edited:
Top