WWI; France And Russia Collapse, First Year.

Not sure how likely this is, but what if the Initial advance crushes Russia and France completely, in a sort of Blitzkrieg? The governments fall, and the Central Powers now control both their war industries, does the Entente still have a shot at victory?
 

Cook

Banned
Russia, it they lost battles and whole armies, would simply fall back and trade land for time while they rebuilt.

France however, if they had lost the battle of the Marne, could have been defeated. Other than the Russians, the French committed the greatest number of troops to the allied (entente) war effort. It would depend on what terms the Germany offered I suppose to France and Britain and whether Asquith would consider it wiser to accept them or to somehow fight on.

This would in effect be the war that everyone had always imagined it would be: short, sharp, decisive and over before the leaves fell from the trees.
 
Russia, it they lost battles and whole armies, would simply fall back and trade land for time while they rebuilt.

France however, if they had lost the battle of the Marne, could have been defeated. Other than the Russians, the French committed the greatest number of troops to the allied (entente) war effort. It would depend on what terms the Germany offered I suppose to France and Britain and whether Asquith would consider it wiser to accept them or to somehow fight on.

This would in effect be the war that everyone had always imagined it would be: short, sharp, decisive and over before the leaves fell from the trees.

Could the Prussians have marched all the way to Moscow?
 

Cook

Banned
Could the Prussians have marched all the way to Moscow?
Unnecessary: St. Petersburg was the capital at the time, and the centre of Russian industry.

It is a thousand kilometres from Kaliningrad to St Petersburg; not a small undertaking, especially given that the Russian rail network was built to a different gauge to Germany’s specifically to make an invasion more difficult.

Could the Prussians have marched all the way to Moscow?
Germans, not Prussians.
 
If France was beaten so decisively again it's likely they would be forced to surrender or risk a large advance into french territory. Should this occur France fights a uphill battle and Russia would simply need to lose battles more often than in OTL and the same result occurs I believe.
 
Russia suffering a total political collapse isn't impossible; the society was vulnerable and pissed off as it was.

Perhaps the Schlieffen/Moltke revision plan is nixed by a new OHL chief in the years leading up to the war (1911 is a great place for this divergence); when France goes insane with their conscription policies and opts for the gigantically expensive standing army it is decided that they can't be defeated quickly and that it would be more economical to simply hold them with their well constructed frontier forts.

This would be coupled with an in depth study on how weak and unstable Russia truly was politically and the striking power of the German army would be concentrated in the east. Given the dramatic fuckups in Russian mobilization and the superior speed and firepower concentration of the german mobilization it's quite likely Russia would get the snot punched out of it 3 or 4 times worse in 1914 than they did in otl if they were facing the core of the german army. Immediate utter and catestrophic defeath coupled with invasion might turn the people against the government early
 
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