Redbeard
Banned
All the resources in the world don't help if you can't deliver them where you need to. Hence the importance of the railway systems.[1] .
Exactly, which is why the attacker will be in much bigger trouble.
BTW even if the BEF manages to pull back behind the Somme (imho far from certain) it's still worse off logistically. Previously, half of it was supplied via Dunkirk, Calais and Boulogne, the other half via Rouen, Le Havre and Dieppe. If it pulls back as it hoped to, it has to write off the first three of those ports. That means that totally reequipping it is going to be an even harder job.
Huh?
I didn't know it was a "legend" that Ludendorff was a somewhat second-rate commander. I had always understood that to be a reasonably well-established fact.
[1] Horses were also important, but a high proportion of these were imported from the US, so in a "No US" situation the Entente will also have fewer of them than OTL.
Same comment as above, the attacking army will be in worse logistic condition.
I take you next question my phrase "Dolkenstosslegende" (Stab in the back legend). That has nothing specifically to do with Ludendorf, but refers to a very popular legend in the interwar years in Germany basically saying that the German army was perfectly fine by November 1918, but that a conspiracy from inside had it collapse. Hitler very much used this legend to gain support for his quest for resurrecting German pride, but since 1945 huge loads of serious historic research has showed that the German army was a spent ball very short into the spring offensive of 1918 and that Germany by that time fast was closing on a disaster - people were starving as food production declined due to no fertilisers. horses or people to work the land.
But back to the origin of this discussion: the significance of US actions on WWI.
We will probably not agree, and why should we, but basically my claim still is:
The US intervention was not significant in the Entente stopping the German Spring offensive of 1918 and thus eliminating the last (if any) chance of a CP victory.
The loans and supplies going from USA to the Entente would have been flowing in some form anyway, perhaps at a higher price, but no matter the rethorics no US Government would allow the Entente to collapse. Likewise Alanbrooke wasn't significant in WWII for not strangling Churchill even though he often was very annoyed with him
Put in another way - WWI would in most "reruns" be won by the Entente even if USA doesn't get militarily involved, as long as USA just follow its basic political interests. That can't be said about WWII, here US military intervention was indeed significant.