Do you know how far the Germans got into France? They didnt really “occupy” france, they had a tiny toehold, a couple days walk in.
Per Wikipedia, they occupied a bit less than 4% of France (the 4% that included much of the country’s industrial base). The equivalent for the US would be occupying New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Delaware (actually, that’s lowballing it a little by area (those states together are a little less than 3% of the total US area)
Good. Now that people understand the statement, we can go back to where I started.
(1) Like everything else, the idea that America won WWI for the allies is arguable.
(2) Every country that was involved has a similar belief.
(3) The colonial/commonwealth forces that spearheaded the Western Front breakthroughs that triggered the armistice weren’t exhausted or defeated or broken or near collapse.
(4) The strategic significance of the American involvement was that they didn’t come in on the German side.
No doubt at all that the Arrival of the Americans on the French side had a strong effect on the moral of the French and the moral of the Germans. Of course, it wasn’t the vast French or vast English conscript armies that spearheaded the Western Front breakthroughs, And in the event, the German army did /not/ collapse: they suffered military defeat.
The Germans considered the entry of the US into the war a game changer. Not just in terms of fresh troops but with supplies being sent to Europe on US ships with naval protection.
The whole point of the German Spring Offensive was to deliver a knockout blow before the US could make a direct impact on the war.
It failed. They lost experienced troops they couldn’t replace. The result was the collapse during the ensuing Hundred Days Offensive.
Sure, the number of US troops that actually fought in the war was small. But there’s a lot more to warfare than that. No person knowledgeable about war would dismiss this.
If the Germans had not done the Spring Offensive and just waited it out a bit they could have negotiated a more favorable peace treaty when the internal issues got out of hand. It was the US entry that derailed this.
This seems to me like an attempt to rewrite your position in this debate.
There was also another big factor: money. Wars have to be paid for. When the United States entered the war, it immediately added a substantial new supply of money to the Allied side.
Amateurs talk tactics, professionals logistics. Having said that, I acknowledge the Allies had endured four years of agony, the US eighteen months, and a considerable part of that was spent ramping up.
Yes, the United States was ramping up. The United States did not single-handedly win the war. But they were getting ready to launch major offensives. And Germany realized it no longer had the resources to withstand those offenses. So Germany asked for an armistice.
If the United States had remained neutral, France, Britain, and the other allied powers no longer had the resources after four years of fighting to threaten to launch the same kind of offense that America could have launched. So without the United States, the stalemate on the battlefield would have dragged on and Germany probably could have held on for another year or two.
I still think Germany would have lost in the end, even without American intervention. Due to the naval blockade, Germany’s economy was in worse shape than Britain’s or France’s. So I think the German economy would have collapsed first.
Likely, but it would have been nasty.
The USA was basically “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
I think it’s more like the bale of hay that broke the camel’s back.
I see no mention of the material support made by the US, whilst the engaged manpower may well have been a minority on the front, the material support was almost certainly a deciding factor, hard to see how Germany could have continued in the face of such resource supply.
You’re comparing apples and oranges there. The surrender and post-war treatment of Germany was MUCH milder than Versailles- the Allies rebuilt the Germanies for the most part, rebuilt their economies, and reintegrated them into the world community (more or less; the Russians weren’t so nice with East Germany). It’s you know, like we learned a lesson from the Treaty of Versailles or something.
What you’re doing is confusing the effects of the war and the demand for unconditional surrender with the post-war treatment of the country, and they’re two very different things.
But the Franco-Prussian war treaty was from decades before under a completely different set of leadership, while treaty of Brest-Livstok was considered reasonable by the exact same people who got the Treaty of Versailles. I’ll say it again, Versailles was significantly more mild than the major treaty that Germany’s OWN GOVERNMENT during WWI considered perfectly reasonable to push on a defeated enemy. All of the postwar whining and blame shifting doesn’t change that simple fact.
“You know who invented Astroturf? The Jews!” - George Costanza, pretending (not very well) to be a Nazi
Why is it called moral collapse, and not morale collapse?
I disagree. I think Lemur866 gave a good explanation of how the post-WWII treaty was significantly harsher than the post-WWI treaty.
Yes, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk was pretty harsh. But it didnt really matter, Russia had collapsed anyway.
However, this whole justification of the Greedy and ill advised treaty of versailles is part of a reaction to the fact that Historians have woken up and many are now saying that the Great War wasn’t Germany’s fault- any more than it was the fault of the other greedy Imperialistic powers that came in at the start.
Obviously it is all guesswork when considering an alternative timeline, although a favorite subject on Quora, but I would assess the situation in early 1918 as this:
the French and the British probably did not have the resources for a major offensive and would probably have engaged in a war of attrition, with small-scale “bite and hold” attacks such as Third Ypres was supposed to be. The French had a major problem with morale after the 1917 mutinies, but the problem was dealt with reasonably well and their army was stable in 1918. It also had better leadership under Foch. The British forces could also have come to mutiny if there had been another Third Ypres battle with heavy losses and little to show for it. Against that, they had the colonial troops, who had not been put through the meat grinder on the same scale. The Italians had held after Caporetto, and they got their shit together for the Vittorio Veneto offensive in 1918, which finally pushed Austria-Hungary over the brink. The Turks crumbled in 1918, and this would have freed more British and Imperial troops.
The big issue for the Germans was the naval blockade. They were short of resources despite plundering all they could. Austria-Hungary had even less industrial capacity than Italy, and suffered also from massive discontent among the non-Austrian contingents, and could not sustain the losses. Russia was out of the game, but Germany was not able to profit as it had hoped; logistics again.
It is said that the countries collapsed in the order of their unfreedom, to coin a word. This on top of their ability - or lack of - to wage an industrial war.
How much did the USA contribute? Money and materials, certainly. At the military level it only got going in the last months of the war, but the fact that the USA was coming in forced the Germans to make their last offensives in hopes of breaking the stalemate while they still had time, but they were unable to do so because the Allies held. Had the USA not come in, it is possible that there would have been civil unrest in Germany in the face of starvation, and mutinies among the troops sooner or later. I think the net result would have been even greater casualties on all sides. Of course, the big mistake was not pushing into Germany. Nothing says defeat better than a line of enemy soldiers marching down your street.
Does the fact that Russia had collapsed justify the treaty? I think not.
In many ways it was a repeat of what Prussia had done to France in 1871. What goes round goes round, huh?
Yes, the revisionist historians like to parcel out the blame and get Germany off the hook, but Germany and Austria-Hungary are the ones to blame. If Germany had not backed Austria-Hungary then Russia would not have mobilized - - note that at that stage it did not declare war - and the issue might just have been the Third Balkan War; nasty but local. But it developed into a chain of alliances, and Britain came in when Germany violated the neutrality of Belgium.
However, the instability of the Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Turkish empires was building up tensions in Europe, exacerbated by Kaiser Wilhelm’s desire to throw his weight and France desire to get back its lost territories. Bismark actually advised against taking Alsace-Lorraine, correctly predicting that they would fight to get it back one day, while they probably would have just shrugged off a bill for reparations.
The biggest mistake Germany made during the war was Brest-Litovsk.
They had a strategic plan. They knew Russia was collapsing and America was building up an army in Europe. But they had a window of opportunity; if they could transfer troops from the Eastern front to the Western front quickly enough, they could launch a war-winning offensive before the Americans had arrived in sufficient number.
And they screwed it up. Instead of offering Russia reasonable terms, they demanded the harshest possible terms (significantly harsher than the Versailles terms they would complain about). The terms were so harsh that the Bolshevik regime, which had already publicly committed itself to getting out of the war, refused to sign and tried to fight on. It ended up taking a new German offensive and several more weeks of fighting to get the Russians to sign. And only then could the troops be sent west to fight.
It was a huge strategic blunder. The Germans knew they were in a race; yet they threw away several weeks on a secondary issue like Russia. And Russia was already essentially out of the war while Britain and France still needed to be defeated; but Germany wasted troops and resources on another offensive in Russia. And finally, there was the impact of the treaty itself; the harsh terms Germany insisted upon stiffened the government in London and Paris to keep fighting on and silenced anyone who might have been willing to seek terms.
France and GB declared war on Germany first. Russia declared on AH first.
AH had a legit grievance vs Serbia. Russia only backed Serbia due to it’s need for Imperialism. France didnt need to declare on Germany.
How could it have led to the Third Balkan war? No matter what AH did, Serbia knew that Russia would defend it. The only military outcome of any AH military advance was Russia attacking AH, and Germany Backing AH.
GB didnt declare on Germany due to Germany’s invasion of Belgium, GB couldn’t care less. GB declared war vs Germany as Germany had the Termity to try to build a rival fleet.
Here is a interesting take on who is the blame: