George W. Bush breaks all records! 18% Approval Rating

[K. A. Pital]

I can't begin to wonder just how big a snowball that started rolling down the hill since I doubt very much the communists ever forgot or forgave us for that.

Techically you were just one of several intervent nations. But yea, we remember. Not to mention it competely fucked up US-Russian relations for the good part of early XX century and it was hard to establish a contact in the 1930s.

[MKSheppard]

The European powers exhaust each other on the battlefield until they finally decide to talk truce, only on far more even terms than Versailles.

Nah. With no endless torrent of fresh american troops filling the Western Front up; the Germans have a lot more options open to them. For one, the blockade of Germany by the Royal Navy will collapse in 1918-1919 as the food and raw materials of the Ukraine, etc start rolling in.

No American troops on the western front means that the Michael offensive has a much stronger chance to succeed. Germany forces a very insulting armistice agreement on France; Versailles is exactly what a German peace looks like when it's imposed on Germany instead of someone else.

World War II doesn't happen.

Sort of like how a decisive German victory in 1870 prevented World War I from happening?

[Thanas]

The European powers exhaust each other on the battlefield until they finally decide to talk truce, only on far more even terms than Versailles.

Nah. With no endless torrent of fresh american troops filling the Western Front up; the Germans have a lot more options open to them. For one, the blockade of Germany by the Royal Navy will collapse in 1918-1919 as the food and raw materials of the Ukraine, etc start rolling in.

And that somehow ends the blockade? It makes it somewhat inefficient, but does not end it.

No American troops on the western front means that the Michael offensive has a much stronger chance to succeed. Germany forces a very insulting armistice agreement on France; Versailles is exactly what a German peace looks like when it's imposed on Germany instead of someone else.

I somehow doubt that Germany would have achieved a victory with the Michel offensive. Territorial gains, yes, but I doubt there would be a german victory. A general exhaustion, stalemate and armistice is way more likely.

World War II doesn't happen.

Sort of like how a decisive German victory in 1870 prevented World War I from happening?

Well, Hitler and his master race/extermination program would not have been enacted upon. Maybe in France, but not on such a wide scale as in reality.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Whether WWII would happen if Germany won in unknowable; though it likely would, it might look far different than what we saw. After the war, Germany planned to crush those upstart Blosheviks and put another Romanov on the Russian throne as a puppet- and who knows what proto-fascist ideologies a tyrant with all the resources of Eastern Russia available to him might have done. Or the British Empire, for that matter.

[Thanas]

I'd be more afraid of France, since they were already very nationalistic and anti-semitic. They won't have the industrial power to do much harm, but they still can create a lot of trouble, especially when supported by the British Empire and the USA.

[Patrick Degan]

World War II doesn't happen.

Sort of like how a decisive German victory in 1870 prevented World War I from happening?

It didn't really become World War I until the United States stuck it's nose in. Up to that point, it was the Great European War with some side-action in Africa and the Middle East.

[Simplicius]

I somehow doubt that Germany would have achieved a victory with the Michel offensive. Territorial gains, yes, but I doubt there would be a german victory. A general exhaustion, stalemate and armistice is way more likely.

The Germans were already tired when Michel began, and it wouldn't have been a devastating victory anyway - it was a feint that happened to exceed expectations, and there weren't plans or reserves in place for a follow-up.

The 1918 revolution kicked in only a handful of months after Michel wound down anyway. Even if the offensive had been more successful, I don't think conditions on the domestic front would have been so much better that the sailors would have sailed instead of mutinied, or that the German public would have ignored rather than joined them. And while that didn't end the war, it was the revolutionary government, not the Kaiser's, that signed the truce.

[Adrian Laguna]

I find it most likely that no American involvement means Micheal doesn't happen in the first place. The Germans just sit on the Hindenburg Line and laugh as the Allied armies advance against it and break like waves washing on a rock cliff. The whole thing would then hinge on whether Germany can make it through the winter of 1918-19, which would be difficult but certainly possible.

[MKSheppard]

I find it most likely that no American involvement means Micheal doesn't happen in the first place.

That's a very good point, one I had totally forgotten. Now that I searched my memory, yeah; Michael was a last ditch offensive to knock out the Western Allies before american troops could become decisive. With no US troops, Michael doesn't happen.

[MKSheppard]

And that somehow ends the blockade? It makes it somewhat inefficient, but does not end it.

The blockade of Germany only works as a method of strangling german economic growth as long as Germany doesn't have access to the Ukraine's breadbasket, and raw materials; which she gets after the treaty of Brest-Litovosk.

A general exhaustion, stalemate and armistice is way more likely.

Actually, it's the Allies who are much more exhausted. They kept convincing themselves that the Germans were always one more offensive from collapsing if only they'd keep the pressure up, based on erroneous reading of casualty statistics. They assumed that the published german losses in newspapers were for the western front only when in reality, it was total losses on all fronts.

All Germany has to do is hang on through 1918; the food and raw materials of the Ukraine will roll in in the spring of 1919 and revive the german economy, and start feeding the german people like they were in 1914.

[Vympel]

Wasn't the supply of troops pretty much exhausted by 1918? Weren't they calling up boys by that point?

Aw, fuck it. WW1 is the biggest case of group national suicide in history. It's a miracle any nation got out of it intact.

[MKSheppard]

It didn't really become World War I until the United States stuck it's nose in. Up to that point, it was the Great European War with some side-action in Africa and the Middle East.

Actually, teh US was heavily involved in WWI right up to the moment Wilson declared war. It was US raw materials which kept the British and French (especially the french) munitions factories going, especially after France lost her prime industrial regions early on in WWI.

[Adrian Laguna]

Wasn't the supply of troops pretty much exhausted by 1918? Weren't they calling up boys by that point?

No, for the Michael Offensive the Germans had on hand hundreds of thousands of hardened veterans from the Eastern Front, men who'd been wrestling with the Bear since 1914 and were very, very good at waging war. These are the men who who pioneered modern infantry tactics and proved to be a match for even forces employing tanks.

[MKSheppard]

No, for the Michael Offensive the Germans had on hand hundreds of thousands of hardened veterans from the Eastern Front, men who'd been wrestling with the Bear since 1914 and were very, very good at waging war.

That's another good point; with Russia knocked out of the war; the germans have all those guys who were fighting the russians now available on the West Front; while the Allies have nothing.

[Sea Skimmer]

The Germans transferred 60 divisions from east to west, which gave them about a 10% numerical superiority on the western front. Careful management of manpower and good deception efforts allowed them to turn that 10% advantage into an overwhelming advantage in the sectors chosen from the Michael Offensive.

However, even without American troops intervening the Michael Offensive wouldn’t have won the war outright. It was able to make big gains in the middle of the allied line (logistics would prevent those gains from growing much larger), but it totally failed in its objective of breaking the British Army. The lack of American would however make it difficult for the allies to counter attack against those gains, and it leaves the French and Brits with no real ability to launch the big 1918 united offensive push that historically split the Germans right apart. They’d have to keep picking away at the Germans with short grinding pushes.

[Patrick Degan]

It didn't really become World War I until the United States stuck it's nose in. Up to that point, it was the Great European War with some side-action in Africa and the Middle East.

Actually, teh US was heavily involved in WWI right up to the moment Wilson declared war. It was US raw materials which kept the British and French (especially the french) munitions factories going, especially after France lost her prime industrial regions early on in WWI.

Oh, I know very well what Wilson's "neutrality" really meant (another concept he pissed all over). But the fact remains that the U.S. was still not an active combatant in the Great War up until April of 1917.

[Elfdart]

Isn't the fact that Wilson wasn't neutral at all before the US entered the war more damning evidence of what an evil bastard he was?

Point: Wilson was an evil bastard for (among other things) getting the US into the Great War.

Counterpoint: But he sided with Britain and France and supplied them for a few years before that!

Conclusion: Shep is one dumb twat.

[Flagg]

Isn't the fact that Wilson wasn't neutral at all before the US entered the war more damning evidence of what an evil bastard he was?

Point: Wilson was an evil bastard for (among other things) getting the US into the Great War.

Counterpoint: But he sided with Britain and France and supplied them for a few years before that!

Conclusion: Shep is one dumb twat.

Weren't we on the wrong side of that one, too?

[MKSheppard]

Conclusion: Shep is one dumb twat.

It's not my fault you have poor reading comprehension, you little hyperencepaliptic dwarf.

The original point I was trying to make was that WWI was truly a global war well before the US "officially" tossed it's hat in the ring; you had:

1.) Hundred Mile Front Stretching from English Channel to Switzerland
2.) Thousand mile front in the East with the Russians/Germans
3.) Combat going along in the Italian Alps with Da ROMMEL.
4.) Sporadic combat going on in the middle east between the British and Ottomans, should I even include Gallipoli?
5.) Balkans Campaign
6.) Sporadic fighting in Africa
7.) Battle of Tsingtao in 1914 with Britain/Japan attacking German Outpost in China.
. Japanese seizure of German colonies in Pacific
9.) Von Spee's raider squadron
10) The entire U-Boat Campaign.

[Surlethe]

Shep, you're making the point it was a global war, and yet four of the ten pieces of supporting evidence you give are limited to Europe, while another four are very close to Europe, and the rest are simply land grabs and a single battle in China.

[Uraniun235]

Wasn't the supply of troops pretty much exhausted by 1918? Weren't they calling up boys by that point?

Aw, fuck it. WW1 is the biggest case of group national suicide in history. It's a miracle any nation got out of it intact.

There's an interesting possibility; what if the war had dragged on to the point where one or more nations had fought until they literally collapsed from total bankruptcy and lack of men? What would be the result of one of the (formerly) great powers of Europe disintegrating?

[Thanas]

And that somehow ends the blockade? It makes it somewhat inefficient, but does not end it.

The blockade of Germany only works as a method of strangling german economic growth as long as Germany doesn't have access to the Ukraine's breadbasket, and raw materials; which she gets after the treaty of Brest-Litovosk.

It also keeps the High fleet from breaking out.

[Thanas]

Ghetto Edit: High Sea Fleet, obviously.

[CmdrWilkens]

Shep, you're making the point it was a global war, and yet four of the ten pieces of supporting evidence you give are limited to Europe, while another four are very close to Europe, and the rest are simply land grabs and a single battle in China.

Part of it is that he failed to illustrate just how big the fighting in Africa was through at least the end of 1915 and possibly the begining of 1916. The German efforts to disrupt British positions in Africa led to one of the longest sustained gurellia campaings, or at least low intensity campagins, until the Chindin forces went into Japanese possesion in Burma during the next great upheaval. Moreover the Naval Campaign was truly worldwide and the fighting in both the Balck and Caspian seas regions (not to mention in the Middle East between the Ottoman's and Brits) certianly qualifies as an extension beyond Europe itself.

That said N and S America played essentially no part aside from Empire troops coming to British lines.

[Adrian Laguna]

The fighting in the Middle-East was hardly "sporadic" as Shep puts it, it was a constant conflict with the Ottoman Empire on one side, and Great Britain, Russia, and some screaming Arabs on the other.