WI: Alternate German Chief of the General Staff?

I'm not sure; I like the point of departure being the French conscription law changes in 1912. This made France's active army and trained (ish) reserve pool enormous, and unlikely to be encircled or defeated in a sweeping campaign just due to their sheer numbers being able to plug holes in the line or hold shoulders of breakthroughs

They had very detailed intel on Russia's industrial capacity and it's weak political underpinnings, I wonder sometimes if Moltke the younger really considered the math and force to space ratio's instead of just seeing France as weak (which even if they were, they where certainly not weak enough to be defeated in 3 months by 5 armies)
 
Is it better than the German A-7? Not by much; but it is a good start point for an eventual tank.
I am afraid you are yardsticking against the wrong thing. The next closest thing the Entente has are either the Levasseur Project or Little Willie, both inferior to the Motorgeschütz. Basically, its a prototype and should be treated as such - thus you'd see some improvements during testing.
Also, the main point I was going for was/is that if mentality changes sufficiently for the adoption of the Motorgeschütz in the Experimentalbrigade this will lead to changes further on as attitudes change. For example, if the Entente fields its own tanks they will have significantly less impact, since the Central Powers are already familiar with the concept (and probably have developed some sort of counter-tactics). And so on, and so forth.
For example, if the Central Powers deploy 6 Motorgeschütz Mk II (built in 1913) during the Battle of the Marne, will the french line break? It was a close call OTL, so that could be the famous straw.
 
I am afraid you are yardsticking against the wrong thing. The next closest thing the Entente has are either the Levasseur Project or Little Willie, both inferior to the Motorgeschütz. Basically, its a prototype and should be treated as such - thus you'd see some improvements during testing.
Also, the main point I was going for was/is that if mentality changes sufficiently for the adoption of the Motorgeschütz in the Experimentalbrigade this will lead to changes further on as attitudes change. For example, if the Entente fields its own tanks they will have significantly less impact, since the Central Powers are already familiar with the concept (and probably have developed some sort of counter-tactics). And so on, and so forth.
For example, if the Central Powers deploy 6 Motorgeschütz Mk II (built in 1913) during the Battle of the Marne, will the french line break? It was a close call OTL, so that could be the famous straw.

1. The Levasseur project was an instant tip-over and nose-plow disaster even as a paper exercise. It eventually appears as the St Chaumont. That debacle was more an assault gun and not a proper tank.

2. Little Willie was actually built and tested repeatedly until the track linkages, plate geometry, and tensioning problems, all of which the American Holt tractor company had solved for a farming and construction machine but which the British found was not adequate for a machine envisaged for the WW I battlefield. Little Willie was properly a test demonstrator to solve those problems the British encountered and is thus historically important as the first prototype of an actual war machine intended to cross a battlefield, which its Holt antecedent was decidedly not ever intended to do. This is a factor overlooked in the development of the tank. In fact one can clearly see that the German A-7 leapfrogged this step by duplicating the British Land Cruiser Mark IV's track laying system.

As the Burstyn motor gun carriage was not even built as a test vehicle, I presume one might state that it is superior to the actual Little Willie that was built and debugged to evolve into the Mark I land cruiser. I however do not agree with this opinion as the Little Willie was never intended to be a tank, but instead work out what the problems the tank needed to overcome. I would describe it, the Little Willie, as a Wright Flyer Mark I as opposed to the Wright Flyer Mark IV to take the aviation example.

And as for comparators, the claim is made that the FT-17 (US nomenclature for the Renault assault tank Mlle 1917) is most similar to the Burstyn motor gun carriage. I would think Monsieur Renault...

First of all, the load arm booms are an unnecessary and over-complicated engineering solution to ditch crossing. The British used fascines and the French used a ditching horn, both simpler and far more effective.

Second of all, the machine is underpowered. Twice the wattage per tonne might have been ideal.

Third of all, 4 mm of plate over the engine? Against the 6.5 Navy Lee of 1892, this machine would have been swiss cheesed. Not even 8 mm was enough. 12 mm minimum front and 8 mm sides.

Fourth of all, there is nothing in the patent drawings that suggests any thought was given to machine guns.

Fifth of all: the rearward facing driver is a bolo.

Sixth of all the track laying suspension is too short in length and appears too narrow in track width. Burstyn appears to not have considered ground floatation at all. Bog-tank it is, I think.

...probably without knowledge of the Burstyn motor gun carriage addressed most of the major concerns I saw with the Burstyn design. YMMV. To speculate about a P.o.D. is legitimate, but I wonder if those who evaluated the Burstyne design might have sent him back to the drawing board for the same reasons I would? (^^^). We simply cannot assume that the people who rejected his proposal were stupid. I sure am not that arrogant to claim that I am smarter than my betters. Just because it looks like something we recognize as a tank, does not mean that it would work. Look at how many changes to the suspension system the British made to Little Willie until they had a satisfactory combat tracklayer and then they still had to go through another kerfuffle to evolve a prototype Mark I to test in battle?
 
...probably without knowledge of the Burstyn motor gun carriage addressed most of the major concerns I saw with the Burstyn design. YMMV. To speculate about a P.o.D. is legitimate, but I wonder if those who evaluated the Burstyne design might have sent him back to the drawing board for the same reasons I would? (^^^). We simply cannot assume that the people who rejected his proposal were stupid.
Just this one, have to get up tomorrow. I got to read - abstracted, but still, the documents pending to the rejection. The carriage did not get sent back for technical reasons, it got rejected for budgetary and "traditional" (i.e. it would make cavalry obsolete, thus anger all the noble officers. They didn't write that last part, but it was rather...obvious). They actually used the fodder for horses argument in all seriousness. Also, again, the FT-17 is six years later and a great war in between. Stop seeing the Burstyn as an endpoint, and start seeing it as a start.
 
Just this one, have to get up tomorrow. I got to read - abstracted, but still, the documents pending to the rejection. The carriage did not get sent back for technical reasons, it got rejected for budgetary and "traditional" (i.e. it would make cavalry obsolete, thus anger all the noble officers. They didn't write that last part, but it was rather...obvious). They actually used the fodder for horses argument in all seriousness. Also, again, the FT-17 is six years later and a great war in between. Stop seeing the Burstyn as an endpoint, and start seeing it as a start.

1. I am still under the impression that this thing is a paper proposal, and unless I am mistaken, I would be entirely understanding that the officers who have to forage and provender for a cavalry that they know will work, under tight budgets, would reject a questionable paper proposal that probably will not work.

2. Let me give an example from another army with a very strong cavalry tradition, that was presented an actual working prototype.

Now what you will not hear about the Christie's rejection for US service is;

a. the suspension system intrudes into the fighting and engine compartments.
b. the suspension system is complex to make, difficult to repair and extraordinarily fragile under battlefield conditions.
c. the designer was too stubborn to adapt to end-user desires.

These are things that often are overlooked when someone reads about a gee whiz idea that seems like it should have immediately been adopted. Unless one really digs into the why an idea was not accepted, it looks like the decision makers were superficially stupid. In the caser of the Christie, when the suspension worked, it was a world beater. But when it broke down, it was a horror show to repair. It was very complex and expensive to make. Now for a nation that can fight near its logistics base, this is okay. But for a nation that has to send its war machines across the oceans, simplicity is a necessary virtue. The Christie works for Britain because they accepted the tradeoffs. The same could be said for Russia because a non-runner tank was a throwaway. But for the Americans, the tank has to be cheap, repairable in a hurry and robust enough to be useable anywhere. The people who rejected the Christie were thinking about fighting in the Philippines and in northern France. They were not ignorant. They made the right call for the right reasons.

I have to work within the historic mindset of the end-user evaluators who risked their nation's future on an unproven idea. Hence, to me, the budgetary reasons for horse cavalry provender might not be as far fetched as it sounds as a legitimate reason for 1908 caution.
 
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