What if no German colonies?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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Deleted member 1487

What if leading up to WW1 Germany opts out of colonies due the good ones being taken? Realizing the cost is much greater than the required investment, Germany opts not to put any government money or troops into colonialism, but still builds their North Sea Fleet to challenge British domination of their access to world markets. What does Germany do with that extra money and resources not spent on colonies? Does it affect German politics to an appreciable degree?
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
Will they even want to challenge British naval dominance at all? I thought the reason for German naval buildup otl was the fact that they had colonies.
 
The Empire also put its foot into its mouth and threatend the German coast and commerce. So the much tooted German Arms Race had some Empire origin...

So a fleet is a must.

What the money would be used for? Choose your pick...
Imo more construction of merchants to get what is needed and maybe more for the army. At least for equipment, size was a hot toppic.
 

Driftless

Donor
The list of German Colonies - 1899

Africa
  • German East Africa (Tanganyika, Rwanda, Burundi, Wituland)
  • German SW Africa (Namibia)
  • German West Africa (Cameroon, Togo/Ghana)
Pacific
  • North Eastern New Guinea
  • Bismark Archipelago
  • Northern Solomon Islands
  • Bouganville
  • Nauru
  • Marshall Islands
  • Mariana Islands
  • Caroline Islands
  • Samoa
Not as big by British/French standards; but that's a chunk of territory.
 

Redhand

Banned
More colonies for Britain might seriously challenge even their imperial abilities. Maybe you see Belgium or Italy take an interest in the German areas of Africa. Tsingtao might be Japanese a lot earlier.
 

Deleted member 1487

Will they even want to challenge British naval dominance at all? I thought the reason for German naval buildup otl was the fact that they had colonies.

Yeah:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo–German_naval_arms_race
The German aim was to build a fleet that would be 2/3 the size of the British navy.[2] This plan was sparked by the threat of the British Foreign Office in March 1897, after the British invasion of Transvaal that started the Boer War, to blockade the German coast and thereby cripple the German economy, if Germany would intervene in the conflict in Transvaal.[3] From 1905 on the British navy developed plans for such a blockade that was a central part of British strategy.[4]

They needed to to be able to have an independent foreign policy otherwise it would simply be a British puppet.
 
Will they even want to challenge British naval dominance at all? I thought the reason for German naval buildup otl was the fact that they had colonies.

The Anglo-German Naval Race was just a continuation of the Anglo-French and Anglo-Russian naval races that took place thru out the 19th century. It was basically a means for the Admiralty to leverage Parliament for a larger share of the budget.
 
Out of all of the contemporary colonial powers, Germany's probably had the least net benefit.

The colonies were supposed to provide an outlet for German exports and supply Germany with raw materials. By 1913, less than 1% of the Reich's trade was with its colonies. Germany's trade was overwhelmingly with Europe. Raw materials such as cotton, coffee etc came overwhelmingly from the USA, South America and British India.

The colonies were supposed to provide an outlet for German emigration. However, emigration from Germany had peaked in the 1880s and by 1913 fewer than 25,000 Germans has settled in the colonies. In fact, by 1913 Germany was importing labour from Russian Poland, Lithuania, Austrian Galicia, and northern Italy.

Finally, the cost of development, administration and defense were a burden on the Reich Treasury. By 1913, Togoland alone had a balanced budget.

So in the end, Germany would have probably been better off without colonies. Germany's economic future lay more in Europe and working towards a European Economic Zone.
 
So in the end, Germany would have probably been better off without colonies. Germany's economic future lay more in Europe and working towards a European Economic Zone.

While I agree that Germany would most likely have been better off without the colonies, the idea that they would work toward an EEZ pre-WWI is borderline ASB. Even if Germany didn't go for colonies the other European powers did, and they preferred to trade with either their colonies or their allies or neutral powers. I can't see the French for one, lowering trade barriers to Germany. And given Britain's desire to keep a balance of power in Europe they'd probably see a proto-EEZ as Germany attempting to resurrect the Continental Systsem.
 

Driftless

Donor
If they got out of the colony biz because of the economic drain, would they retain any portion for naval or other military basing purpose? The answer is probably no, as there is no longer a colony to defend. However, they might have viewed remote bases as an asset for power leverage
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The Anglo-German Naval Race was just a continuation of the Anglo-French and Anglo-Russian naval races that took place thru out the 19th century. It was basically a means for the Admiralty to leverage Parliament for a larger share of the budget.

Lot of truth in this statement. Before the Anglo-German race was the best way to get extra funding, the Admirals wrote/endorsed trash fiction where the Russians took over the UK by landing 200K troops in the Midlands. And there are other books like that, but I don't remember the details.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
What if leading up to WW1 Germany opts out of colonies due the good ones being taken? Realizing the cost is much greater than the required investment, Germany opts not to put any government money or troops into colonialism, but still builds their North Sea Fleet to challenge British domination of their access to world markets. What does Germany do with that extra money and resources not spent on colonies? Does it affect German politics to an appreciable degree?

The funding most likely ends up in the social budgets, IMO. Limitations to funding the Heer had as much to do with Prussian officer class not wanting to share power as being voted down due to lack of possible tax revenue. Not to mention the desire for a reliable/rural/conservative army. I bet the peak budget for colonies never topped 10 million marks in any given year, if we don't count the navy.

If we avoid things like arguments with America over Samoa, we get better USA/Germany relations. Likewise, the Germans should see the USA open door policy in China as a good fit. I don't know we get warm USA/German relations, but we get a lot of aligning interests.
 

Deleted member 1487

While I agree that Germany would most likely have been better off without the colonies, the idea that they would work toward an EEZ pre-WWI is borderline ASB. Even if Germany didn't go for colonies the other European powers did, and they preferred to trade with either their colonies or their allies or neutral powers. I can't see the French for one, lowering trade barriers to Germany. And given Britain's desire to keep a balance of power in Europe they'd probably see a proto-EEZ as Germany attempting to resurrect the Continental Systsem.

Well in 1913 the US cut tariffs, so without WW1 its very likely that German-US trade would have picked up; it was the war and the GOP raising of tariffs in the 1920s that really prevented it from having a major effect.
 

Deleted member 1487

The funding most likely ends up in the social budgets, IMO. Limitations to funding the Heer had as much to do with Prussian officer class not wanting to share power as being voted down due to lack of possible tax revenue. Not to mention the desire for a reliable/rural/conservative army. I bet the peak budget for colonies never topped 10 million marks in any given year, if we don't count the navy.

The army it turns out was over expanded by 1914, as they really didn't have any extra horses to field any more divisions, let alone corps after their move to a 25 corps structure that was not yet completely equipped in 1914. They really couldn't have taken on any more men to expand the army until they bought lots of trucks and then needed a stable source of oil to make that feasible and the A-H sources are drying up, while Romania is not friendly by 1914 and Russia is becoming Germany's main rival. Access to imported US oil was not guaranteed in wartime if Britain was to get involved. So restricting the size of the military wasn't just to do with Junkers not wanting to modernize or having a conservative rural political character, as the health of the more liberal urban population wasn't that great at the time, but one of practical realities of logistics.
 
Well in 1913 the US cut tariffs, so without WW1 its very likely that German-US trade would have picked up; it was the war and the GOP raising of tariffs in the 1920s that really prevented it from having a major effect.

I wasn't saying Gernany couldn't have liberalized its trading at all or increased its foreign trade. I simply said that Germany forming a proto-EEZ prior to WWI is incredibly implausible. A trade pact like that requires at least a certain aligning of mutual interests, which was unlikely given the amount of distrust and outright hostility between the powers in Europe at the time.

That being said, without WWI you're right, U.S.-German trade would have grown considerably.
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
Another question, if Germany had no colonies, and had no desire for any, would the First and Second Moroccan Crisis have gone the same way or at all? That seems to be when Britain started to see Germany as the enemy and actively work with France and the Entente to contain Germany.
 
While I agree that Germany would most likely have been better off without the colonies, the idea that they would work toward an EEZ pre-WWI is borderline ASB. Even if Germany didn't go for colonies the other European powers did, and they preferred to trade with either their colonies or their allies or neutral powers. I can't see the French for one, lowering trade barriers to Germany. And given Britain's desire to keep a balance of power in Europe they'd probably see a proto-EEZ as Germany attempting to resurrect the Continental Systsem.

I'm not sure where you got this idea that countries directed their trade towards allies. Trade was relatively free before WWI, and companies imported goods from where it made sense. Governments had little say, and tariffs were on their way down.

As you can see below, Germany was France's 2nd trading partner. By 1913 they were close to the UK in supplying France with goods. France's trade with Russia was less than 1/3 of that. What's more telling is that Germany exported far more to France than it imported, by 1913 France was importing 1,068,800,000 Francs worth of goods from Imperial Germany, Britain was still #1 with 1,113,100,000, but Franco-German trade was growing at a faster rate. If we look at Germany's trade, we can see that the volume of trade between Germany, Britain and Russia was more than that of its allies (Austria-Hungary and Italy).

As for Russia, Germany was its largest trading partner, Russo-German trade was double its #2 partner, the UK. In fact France only ranked as Russia's fourth largest trading partner.

In 1913 French Trade in Francs
Total Trade 15,301,500,000
UK 2,556,900,000
Germany 1,935,500,000
Belgium 1,664,600,000
USA 1,317,300,000
Algeria 883,300,000
Argentina 568,400,000
Italy 546,200,000
Russia 544,400,000
Switzerland 541,300,000
Spain 432,700,000
Brazil 260,500,000
Austria-Hungary 147,200,000

GERMAN TRADE in Marks (1913)
Total German Trade 23,090,700
USA 2,424,700,000
UK 2,314,300,000
Russia 2,304,600,000
Austria-Hungary 1,932,100,000
France 1,374,100,000
Netherlands 1,026,500,000
Belgium 895,600,00
Argentina 760,400,000
Italy 711,200,000
British India 692,500,000
Brazil 447,700,000

As for imperial trade, most countries traded with their closest neighbours and the US, Brazil, Argentina and India supplied most of the world's raw materials. Even the British Empire only accounted for 27% of Britain's overall trade.

Imperial Trade as a % of overall trade in 1913
United Kingdom 27%
Netherlands 10%
Portugal 10%
France 8%
Japan 7%
Belgium 6%
Italy 1%
Germany 0.3%
 

Deleted member 1487

Another question, if Germany had no colonies, and had no desire for any, would the First and Second Moroccan Crisis have gone the same way or at all? That seems to be when Britain started to see Germany as the enemy and actively work with France and the Entente to contain Germany.

Potentially no WW1 without colonies...
 
*Snip proving why I should have looked up the data before I commented*

Admittedly, pre-WWII European economic history is a weak subject of mine, let alone pre-WWI European economic history. I mostly spoke from what I knew of the increasing geopolitical tensions around that time. I commented from my phone and didn't bother to look up the data. So, mea culpa.

I mostly just thought an early EEZ like the other commenter mentioned to be a bit too out there from what I knew. Thank you for the info though, its what I like about this site, I learn something new all the time.
 
Could Germany still have purchased Helgioland from Britain? My understanding is that they wanted it due to it strategic position in front of the German coast which would make defending the coast easier.
Would Britain have sold it for a good price? Perhaps that is were some of the saved money ends up.
 
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