Why did the Allies win WWI?

Why did the Allies win WWI?


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1) Slavic units defecting is well document. Also, I started out saying Conrad was the person most responsible for losing the war, and now you are trying to argue that the Hapsburgs made errors. This is getting a bit circular.

2) You are flat wrong on #2. You are confusing WW1 and WW2. In WW1, the USA would have NEVER entered a war solely based on the desire to stop German domination of central Europe. Wilson is not FDR. Wilhelm is not Hitler.

1) No, I'm saying that Conrad blamed his errors on his Slavic soldiers instead of taking responsibility like a general should for his own mistakes.

2) The USA always had a greater animosity to the CP than to the Allies. It should be remembered that TR and company were continuing to stir up animosity against the Germans and that the USA viewed its security then as reliant on European divisions.
 
'Murrica. :p
Actually, that does have a lot of merit to it. The allies would not have been able to fight as effectively as they did if they did not have the Americans bankrolling and supplying them for the years before the official intervention. While Germany would still have the supply problems that dogged them OTL if the Americans hadn't been supplying the Allies, its questionable if the Allies could supply the war effort that they did.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
2) The USA always had a greater animosity to the CP than to the Allies. It should be remembered that TR and company were continuing to stir up animosity against the Germans and that the USA viewed its security then as reliant on European divisions.

Yes, it TR was anti German, but the first bit editorial in the New York times is post Lusitania. But Wilson, not TR, is who matters. Wilson was pro-entente but would not have went to war with Germany if Germany would have stayed reasonably close to cruiser rules.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Actually, that does have a lot of merit to it. The allies would not have been able to fight as effectively as they did if they did not have the Americans bankrolling and supplying them for the years before the official intervention. While Germany would still have the supply problems that dogged them OTL if the Americans hadn't been supplying the Allies, its questionable if the Allies could supply the war effort that they did.

It is actually pretty clear what the supplies situation would have been like. The UK paid for goods with hard currency or secured loans up until about March 1917, so up until then, the supply situation would have been about the same with or without USA bankrolling. After about March 1917, there would have been about a 25% reduction in war material available to France/UK. By summer of 1917, the Entente would have had trouble launch offensives, and if it did launch the offensives of OTL or something similar, they would have turned out much worse due to lesser supplies.

Combine the lessen supplies for the Entente with more troops for the Germans, and the Spring Offensive would have been much more successful than OTL. And the 100 day offensive either would not have occurred or been a shadow of the offensive in OTL.

Unless you are talking about the USA not selling to anyone, which is very, very hard to see based on USA policies of the time.
 
The US bankrolling and arming the entente was the critical factor. Without their loans and arms, they collapse by the end of 1916 at the latest, but given their unbelievable shell shortages perhaps even earlier

USW was stupid in any honest cost benefit review as at least the US populace wanted no part of the war

Subtract the US and Germany has a good shot of forcing the entente to the bargaining table from a considerable position of strength
 
My short apprasal may be;

1. Weather during the opening phases of Verdun

2. General Foch countering the 1918 offensive at the 2nd Marne

3. The sinking of the Lusitania giving the casisus belli for an American intervention that Imperial Germany couldn't handle.

These three things went 'wrong' for the Germans and ended up with their defeat. The variability of each point is high meaning each of these could not be forseen with hindsight.

It is my opinion that the Great War could have been won by either side fairly easily had certain events turned out differently. Therefore I totally discredit the idea that the Allies had anything 'special' going for them. (Other than the Tank...that was a good piece of invention)
 
The naval superiority of Britain which ensued a deadlock and blockade and the entrance of the US into the war which resulted in collapse of German morale
 
All of the above: Manpower, money and the blockade all contributed to Germany's demise in the war. Of course some idiotic German decisions like unrestricted submarine warfare (yeah, it's like they invited the Americans) also contributed.


So long as it is kept in mind that US intervention was an important factor in all three. It gave a potentially unlimited source of manpower and money (though they took longer to mobilise than many optimists-a assumed) and also cleared the way for a drastic tightening of the blockade. This was partly because removal of the biggest neutral meant that the protests of lesser ones could be ignored, and secondly because the neutrals on Germany's borders got most of their imports from the US, so that these could now be policed at source without the need for a conventional sea blockade.

These factors were no independent of each other or of the US involvement.
 
1) 2) The USA always had a greater animosity to the CP than to the Allies. It should be remembered that TR and company were continuing to stir up animosity against the Germans

Though that didn't necessarily increase the likelihood of war, and may even have reduced it. Wilson and TR absolutely loathed one another, and it would be the bitterest of pills for Wilson to accept (even by implication) that TR had been right about anything. TR's advocacy of war would harden Wilson's opposition to it.



and that the USA viewed its security then as reliant on European divisions.

With all due respect, this is just 20/20 hindsight.

Except for a few men in HM Treasury (who knew how bad Britain's financial situation was) hardly anyone in early 1917 was expecting a German victory. For Pete's sake, even the Germans weren't expecting it, which was why they gambled on USW and the Zimmermann Note. So there's no reason at all why President Wilson should have been worrying about what then still seemed a vanishingly remote contingency.

Indeed, this assumption took a while to shake even after US entry. First reports of Britain's financial plight were received with scepticism at the US Treasury (who suspected a ploy to unload British war costs onto America) and in May Admiral Sims was totally flabbergasted when Lord Jellicoe revealed to him how bad Allied shipping losses were. Had America still been neutral she would have been told even less about these matters, and even when he did learn, Wilson might well have suspected a bit of "disinformation" to manipulate him into entering the war - and any such suspicion would have brought out his stubborn streak in full force.

Also, Wilson had quite a capacity for believing what he wanted to believe. If he had it in his head that the Allies were winning, it could have taken a German occupation of Paris to convince him differently. And by then, whatever his sympathies, it would have been a bit late for intervention.<g>
 
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In my opinion, the reasons for the Entente victory in the First World War are primarily the following reasons, all on the German side:

1. Poor diplomacy. Antagonizing both Britain and Russia, who had been enemies for a long time? Failing to get even Italy and Romania on your side or at least neutral? Come on. Looking back, it's like German diplomats were trying to lose the war.

2. Poor war planning. So, (speaking from a German POV here) we have a short border in the west that can be easily defended, flanked by a neutral power (Belgium) which, if invaded by France, would ensure British neutrality. On the other hand, we have a long Russian border which is at its closest point some 200 miles from Berlin, and a relatively weak ally we can't trust to guide its own border. So, who do we choose to concentrate on? (Hint: it's not the obvious one). So, of course we outflank the French by a maneouvre through Belgium bringing Britain into the war and increasing anti-German sentiment worldwide, and bet all our chances on a risky plan that even the slightest delay could shred to pieces. Then, if that isn't enough, we make some silly changes to the plan while we're executing it, to ensure our own defeat.

3. All right, so despite the silliness of the Schlieffen plan and the risks it exposed the German and Austrian eastern border to, Germany survives and manages to defend a long frontline in France and Belgium while simultaneously pushing around the Russians when they're bored. Germany is actually doing fairly well for itself militarily - with the exception of the Italian front, the war has been carried into enemy territory everywhere. So subsequently, the Germans decide on unlimited submarine warfare... out of desperation? Had they delayed it a few months, Russia's collapse into revolution would have rendered this risk that pushed the USA over the edge and into the war unnecessary.

4. So, finally the Russians have been beaten and the Bolsheviks have been convinced to sign a peace favourable to Germany. Despite the Germans making so many stupid choices, their military advantage has still brought them to the situation where Russia is knocked out of the war and they can focus on the western front. Then, rather than supporting Austria to follow up Caporetto (which might have knocked Italy out of the war and thus significantly lowered Franco-British morale, as well as freeing up lots of troops) or having some clear targets in mind for the offensive in France (like the Channel ports) and focusing all their attention on that, the Germans went for some silly offensives that gained quite some ground but failed to yield a strategic advantage. A lot of human errors were made, but given the amount Germany had made already, it's ridiculous. And then, yeah, an Entente victory had become inevitable after Germany had exhausted itself and the American forces were coming in in much greater numbers. America (and Britain, and France) saved the day, but only because the Germans gave them the opportunity.
 

Esopo

Banned
It was the sum of a huge number of factors, but we can say: because the entente after the usa joined was too strong to be defeated.
 
To me, it was tanks, tanks, tanks.

After all, before tank doctrine, nobody was going anywhere on the Western Front (or Gallipoli) ... hmm.. until the tank was figured. After that, steady progress was made on the Western Front. And, it makes sense, because lets advances happen armored against machine guns without massively dying. Though, I came by the idea by reading Churchill, a tank patron himself.

Then the blockade, and Wilhemine Germany foreign dumbs in almost forcing us in between the Zimm Telegram and and their sub war against everybody.

Attrition was IMHO probably failish, because we Entente were generally better at sending people dumb to be slaughtered dumb for most of the war.
 
US entry and thus bad diplomacy

Essentially it gave the allies

  1. Unlimited money where they had been running out
  2. Unlimited raw materials for their war machine because of that money, without the US they would have to cut back on purchases and buy somewhere else at worse prices/quality and further away
  3. A morale boost at a critical time
  4. Fuel and extra ships to tighten the blockade even more, without the US it would be a bit looser
  5. Half a million to a million or so warm bodies who would otherwise have had to be replaced from somewhere


Tanks didn't really do all that much that could not be achieved with proper tactics and infantry, which took almost all of the war to figure out
 
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All of the above: Manpower, money and the blockade all contributed to Germany's demise in the war. Of course some idiotic German decisions like unrestricted submarine warfare (yeah, it's like they invited the Americans) also contributed.


Actually, I wonder if, with a bit more finesse, they might even have gotten away with USW.

Rodney Carlisle's article at

http://cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol17/tnm_17_3_41-66.pdf

shows that several American ships were sunk by u-boats without generating a response from President Wilson. Not until the Vigilancia was attacked without warning on March 18, and fifteen Americans killed, did he decide that Germany had committed an "overt act" of war against the US.

Interestingly, according to the site at

http://www.usmm.org/ww1merchant.html

such attacks weren't all that common. There were a couple more, the Healdton and Aztec, over the next few days, but thereafter none of comparable seriousnessuntil April 28, three weeks after the declaration of war . The majority of attacks on US ships were by "cruiser rules". This suggests to me that had the Germans discreetly instructed their subs to refrain from USW-type attacks on American vessels (without publicly acknowleging that they were doing so) they still had a chance of avoiding war with the US. Even now, Wilson wasn't eager for it.

Even if this resulted in one or two merchantmen per month getting away, it would surely have been worth it [1] - but this was evidently too subtle for the Kaiser.


[1] especially as the unused torpedoes would presumably not be wasted, but employed against a ship of some other flag.
 
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Grimbald

Monthly Donor
US intervention

US $'s were more important in WW1 than US troops.

If the US had been completely neutral the British and French would have run out of virtually everything in 1917.

No ASW, no US, the world is very different
 
Poor German diplomacy, poor German planning, having A-H as an ally, and the USA.

True, US troops didn't see much heavy combat until near the end of the war, but if the war had gone into 1919 believe you would have seen much more. In November 1918 the troops were gathering and training, the logistics infrastructure was pretty good and heavy US weaponry was starting to trickle across the Atlantic. Believe 1919 would have seen the Allies heading for Berlin. The Germans realized this, which is why they agreed to an Armistice. Better an Armistice for the Germans than the Allies in Berlin, which is where I think Pershing wanted to go.
 
Of course, for the Allies to "head for Berlin" it is necessary for the Germans to continue the war after the fighting front has reached their border, and their OTL behaviour makes it clear that this wouldn't happen. Whether in 1918 or 1919, they would throw in the towel rather than be invaded, and the Allies, pretty worn out by this time, would certainly agree to an armistice rather than fight on for the sake of silly victory parades down the Unter den Linden.
 
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