WI Germany wins 1st battle of Marne?

Well, not lose, or maybe advancing to Paris?

I don't mean to be painful, but victory can come in many forms : perhaps it means the the Germans merely dont retreat or perhaps it means that the otl battle doesn't happen at all. The devil is in the details I'm afraid.
 
I don't mean to be painful, but victory can come in many forms : perhaps it means the the Germans merely dont retreat or perhaps it means that the otl battle doesn't happen at all. The devil is in the details I'm afraid.
You are right, but lets play along. The Germans win so decisively that the forces engaging them are brushed aside and need time to regroup before they Can take action again.
The alternative, the Germans hold their Line, but are stopped.
OP’s choice
 
And would the entente surrender(or make peace) ?


Almost certainly not.

The French won't abandon Paris w/o a fight, so they'll dig in and stand where they are. So you still get a line of trenches from Switzerland to the sea.

This line is of course much deeper inside France than OTL, passing through the suburbs of Paris and hitting the Channel (probably) somewhere between Abbeville and Dieppe. This weakening of the Entente could lead to an eventual German victory, but that would probably still take another year or two at least.

If you want a quick ko in the west, it needs to be in the Battles of the Frontiers, say if the BEF doesn't spot Kluck in time, advances to Soignies (as Sir John French intended to do) so that it and the French V Army get taken in flank. By the FBoTM, the chance had been missed.
 
This has been discussed rod death. Long story short: if by winning you mean wrecking the French ad moving on Paris, that is highly unlikely; but in that case Paris falls,end of the war on the western front.
More likely the Germans can perform better than otl l, which is not war-winning per se , but puts them in a far better position afterwards
 
I think the way for the Germans to win the Marne would be for the 2 Corps that were sent East after the fall of Namur, these would either be on 1st Army's flank and defend against the French attack, or fill the gap between 1st and 2nd Army to stop the advance into the gap by the allies.

In any event I think the Germans were at their culmination point and outnumbered by the French and British so the best they can hope for is to hold their positions rather than retreating to the Aisne, I don't think they can continue their advance.
 
When we used to play this out on the game boards any further advance simply stretched the ammunition supply past the point of practicality. The Germans can get to the gates of Paris, but their artillery can't be supplied with enough ammunition to fight. Conversely the French are in about the bet ammunition supply position they can expect. The German 1st, 2d, and 3rd Armies will be short everything else, but it would be cannon ammunition that counts.

A related problem is the heavy 20 to 40 cm cannon and mortars were to heavy to keep up. The entrenched or fortified zone around paris would have to attacked by infantry and artillery of 15cm caliber of smaller. The 1st and 2d Armies no longer have the advantage present at Liege. By the time the Germans restore railway traffic to 1st Army & the heavy cannon arrive the battle of Paris is liable to be over, with the French artillery dominating the poorly supported German infantry.
 
I think the way for the Germans to win the Marne would be for the 2 Corps that were sent East after the fall of Namur, these would either be on 1st Army's flank and defend against the French attack, or fill the gap between 1st and 2nd Army to stop the advance into the gap by the allies.

In any event I think the Germans were at their culmination point and outnumbered by the French and British so the best they can hope for is to hold their positions rather than retreating to the Aisne, I don't think they can continue their advance.


Exactly. Their chance for a quick win had been two weeks earlier, and they missed it. After that the only question was where the line of trenches was going to be.
 
Yes. As I understand it the BEF was also in considerable danger. And with those armies gone it's far from clear that the situation could have been retrieved.

On the 20th of August there was an opportunity for 1st, 2nd and 3rd German armies to encircle both the BEF and 5th French Army, but there was nobody in command to see and seize this opportunity.

I believe also on the 23/24 August there was an opportunity to drive into a gap between the French 4th and 5th Armies but again no commander to see it and make it happen.

These are the war-winners that Germany undertook the offensive through Belgium for. If they had been successful the right wing armies would have had a free pass for maybe a week until France scraped together an Army to replace the the 5th and even then they would only match the Germans rather than being able to outnumber them as they did at OTL Marne.
 
I love how everyone makes a German victory seem impossible once they failed in their envelopment manoeuvre. There is a little thing in warfare called morale. A German victory at the Marne, assuming this entails the destruction of an Allied army in the process, would likely lead to a general collapse of the fighting spirit of a good portion of the Allied line. War isn't always just x's and o's. As far as the logistics of a further German advance, the Germans seemed to overcome this problem efficiently enough on the Eastern front. Time and consolidation are also a component of war.
 
I love how everyone makes a German victory seem impossible once they failed in their envelopment manoeuvre. There is a little thing in warfare called morale. A German victory at the Marne, assuming this entails the destruction of an Allied army in the process, would likely lead to a general collapse of the fighting spirit of a good portion of the Allied line.

They had retreated all the way from Mons-Charleroi to Paris w/o a collapse of morale. Moltke himself noted how few prisoners the Germans were taking. Nor did the retreat to the Aisne cause German morale to collapse, nor a far bigger retreat in 1915 cause Russian morale to do so. Even in 1918, despite privations far surpassing anything four years before, German morale collapsed only after irreversible battlefield defeats. No reason for the Allied side to be different. Any victory in 1914 will have to be achieved by purely military means.


War isn't always just x's and o's. As far as the logistics of a further German advance, the Germans seemed to overcome this problem efficiently enough on the Eastern front. Time and consolidation are also a component of war.

Agreed. That factor (like the blockade later on) is probably overrated.
 
If we use the German corps sent east fill the gaps in the Marne scenario, the front line stabilizes:

The Germans can continue to hold:
Amiens
Rhiems

Likely the Germans can encircle Verdun and hold most of Northwestern France (north and west of the Somme). Perhaps Britain tries to hold a fortresses at Calais, the French at Boulougne for a while to keep them from being used by the Germans as naval bases. Much more French industry and mining lost.

With control of a good chunk of French industrial areas, and a shorter line to defend in the west, the Germans could just consider the battle of France "won" and focus on the east for the remainder of the war.

Germany diplomacy has to be better than OTL, and use this position of strength to secure a favorable peace, break up the Alliance against her, but not give terms so harsh the Allies have no real choice but to fight on for years.
 
The two corps sent east aren't nessesarry!
Just take 1 Army from the useless battle of Lorraine and you have more troups than you need.
 
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