[machpamb]

I'm going to list just a couple of points I'd like to make:
(1)"Winning" the eastern front wasn't that big of a boon to the Germans. The economy of the areas the occupied were shattered, the transportation network wasn't set up to flow towards Germany, and the revolution the Germans started in Russia rapidly spread to the occupied zones. The Germans were still forced to maintain a large occupation force, plus many of the troops on the Eastern front weren't fit to transfer to the Western front. Believe it or not conditions on the Eastern front were so much worse than on the Western front that many of the Eastern veterans simply had to be mustered out. Also even as the Eastern front resolved the situation on the Italian, Turkish and Balkan front worsened and the Austro-Hungarians were on the verge of toppling. On the Italian front the Italians were recovering from Caporetto and were beginning to grind the Germans and Austrians back to the Alps. In the Balkans the allies continued to build up a force in Greece and guerilla activity tied down many Central Powers troops. The fact is that the 1918 offensive removed troops needed to shore up these zones of conflict. Germany throwing her weight into Belgium meant that the Turks, Bulgarians and Austrians were doomed. Even if Yankee troops had not shown up in 1918 the Allies would have stabilized the Western Front, then in the fall when Germany had no troops to spare the Central Powers would still have fallen apart. Millions of Allied troops were deployed to southern Europe. When the Austrians were to run up the white flag Germany would have had nothing with which to contain the Italians, Serbs, French, Australian and British troops marching towards Bavaria. No, if Germany were to win WW1 it would have had to have been in 1914, not 1918.
(2) Remember that the casus belli of the war was Serbia. If the Central Powers won the war the first item on the agenda would have been Serbia. I don't know if they would have gotten away with outright annexation or if they would have settled for inserting "inspectors" into various branches of the Serbian government, which had been the original demand that started the war. The problem with taking Belgium is that it really wasn't France or Britain's to give. If Germany were to have taken too much it would have to deal with international resentment. Since Germany didn't have much of a foreign empire to serve as a captive trade market then the resistance of the world community might have been a major economic probelm for Germany, though I imagine that the South American nations probably would have remained open to them.

In summary: Germany could only have won the war within the first few months. The idea that anything could have spared them defeat by 1918 is not realistic. Had Germany won the war quickly it would not have gotten much out of it unless it was willing to deal with potentially crippling negative international relations.

[kertUtire]

With so many ifs a dog could stop to take a **** and catch the rabbit.

[fuslssdfaa]

Even if Germany had managed to defeat the french and english on the continent, and say, occupy France, why would England surrender to Germany, the english channel is in between, and the english have a better fleet, why would England give germany african colonies?

[XqrkN4a0]

Originally posted by Odin


Wow. I always had the idea that the east was pretty much a cakewalk for Germany. I think it was Ludendorff who was reluctant to free up troops in the East to serve in the West because he felt they had been overexposed to Bolshevism and 'Jewish traders'.

I'll try to find the exact quote.