WW1 the Germans fight on...

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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Deleted member 1487

That is assuming that the colonies would agree. The willingly provided manpower, but fiercly resisted conscription. I don't think that that will provide a source for manpower in the end. Besides, the British could not force the dominion to send men. And the colonies were another story...


Actually not quite, provided US raw materials are still available.

OTL, by the end of the war, Germans had mobilised classes 1918, 1919 and 1920 ( ie 16 year old ), France had mobilised classes 1918 and 1919 and Uk only class 1918.

So manpowerwise, the entente had a little more reserves than Germany.

Considering food production, the crisis that Germany had OTL will not go away and has no equivalent on the entente.

So, yes, it's bad for the entente if US manpower is not known to be available soon ( esp on a morale level, unless an alternative is found, see below ), but the situation is not as bad as it is for Germany.

Finally, there's a ressource the entente didn't fully tap OTL but which they may have to if US is not seen as coming. the colonies. The entente never introced full conscription in the colonies ( commonwealth excluded ). Even a partial conscription would have given enough manpower reserve to equal anything the US did OTL. Of course, there would be a sharp political price to pay after the war. But after the war is after the war.
 
the australians and canadians had taken some awful losses in 1917... they might turn positively hostile if they see britain uneccessarily extending the war or forcing conscription harder on them... france and uk had taken far too many losses to expect to beat the german frontier forts on their own even with armor the metz forts where the real deal i mean look at what they did to patton 30 years later
 

Deleted member 1487

Be careful about that. The French had 520mm rail guns ready to deal with those forts. What really matter is if the Germans defend them hard and it turns into another Verdun, this time the Germans are defending their fortified region. I don't think the French would have the will to fight another Verdun. This is the terrain that tore them up so badly in 1914.

Really, only subsidiary offensives are going to be launched there. I would expect the British to bear the brunt in the realtively flat ground to the north in Belgium. If the Germans fight rear guard ops all the way back to the Rhine, much like they did in the Hundred Days, they could take out another 400,000 Brits, which I doubt Llyod George would be willing to stomach. Remember, his government can fall and he was very much concerned by legacy.
 
Gentlemen, the premise is that Germany returns to fighting once advised that any peace will not be based on Wilson's 14 points, so American entry into the war, the defeat of Germany's final offensive and the collapse of all of Germany's allies is already passed.

The POD starts from October-November 1918, by which time Germany is collapsing, out of spare manpower and facing several brand new fronts. By that point Germany had not only lost virtually all French soil but threw away 150,000 men just to slow the Allies long enough for the bulk of the German forces to retreat. Already demoralized the Germans will now be fighting without the defenses they spent years building and had better find at least half a million men to block the Allies soon to arrive through what was once Austria-Hungary.
 
That's incorrect I'm afraid. The French were on the verge of throwing in the towel as MrP states correctly. Following the spring offensive, both the French AND British were severely depleted, and their lines were becoming increasingly thin. They absolutely could not have launched any kind of sustained offensive against Germany. It would have been a bloodbath.

You're underestimating the vital strategic asset that millions of American bodies provided to the allies during the Hundred Days Offensive. To say that the allies would have been fine without this is quite naive, no offense of course. You discount important battles such as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive which were only possible thanks to American manpower.

Yes, the British Commanders were good, but they were about out of men to command in 1918, and without American manpower, they wouldn't have been able to launch that crucial offensive that won them the war.
about 50,000 actually. unless that statement was deliberately hyperbolic.
 
Actually not quite, provided US raw materials are still available.

OTL, by the end of the war, Germans had mobilised classes 1918, 1919 and 1920 ( ie 16 year old ), France had mobilised classes 1918 and 1919 and Uk only class 1918.

So manpowerwise, the entente had a little more reserves than Germany.

Manpower-wise, France was running on fumes by this time. They began double-dipping into the conscription pool 2 years before when the class of 1917 was called early. The class of 1919 began entering the trenches in April 18, the class of 1920* was already in boot camp by the time of the Armistice, and Pétain had plans ready to call up the class of 1921 should the war last into january-february 1919. This wasn't enough, though, and front-line strength declined throughout 1918. The main contribution of the Americans was to allow the French to progressively shorten their own lines and concentrate their forces. Were the Americans to drop out and fighting resume, only the Brits (and the Dominions) still have the manpower reserves to press the attack into Germany, but it's not likely to get very far. The couple hundred thousand troops released from the fronts in the Balkans and the Middle East will need months of retraining, and the terrain east of the OTL Armistice line gets progressively better suited for the defending force.

*I don't know if this was true in Germany, but in France at that time, I'm pretty sure that the conscription age was actually 20, not 18 like in the UK.
 
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