1913 what if: Europe vs USA

[wautd]

1913. There's been a military buildup for years and tensions between the european powers are high. However, for the sake of argument, lets assume that all the european factions realize it would be suicide to start an all-out war against eachother. Instead, they look towards the USA, a vast, young nation with numerous recources. They decide to invade and split the cake between the various nations afterwards. Canada will follow the crown and can be used as a bridgehead.


Will the USA fall or will the war drag on endlessly untill everyone is dead or tired.

[K. A. Pital]

Will the USA fall

Yes.

I hope that people realize - the powers of the Tripatite Pact and the Entente are more than enough to wipe out the US as a sovereign nations and partition it between the European powers.

At the very least, the US would not emerge as a naval power, ever.

The fleet competition between US and British Empire in the 1920-1930s has not yet started (and even if it did, the US only became so powerful as to be capable of dealing with the Navies of Europe combined by late 1944-1945)...

The US is stomped, badly. Yes, the war will probably drag on, with rebellions and constant conflict, partisanship and so forth which will eventually cause some European powers to bulk out of the adventure I think. But the US will never be a great power again.

[Surlethe]

The US economic mobilization for World War I was relatively unplanned and the execution was even worse. As I recall, up until the very end of the war, the American forces sent to Europe were using British-made rifles. The only reason the US was able to mobilize so effectively for World War II was because during the 1920s and '30s, military planners had looked back at World War I, learned from their mistakes, and developed an effective plan of nationalizing the economy and upping war production.

So in this scenario, America won't be able to bring its economic potential to bear on the problem nearly as effectively as it did in World War II, whereas I'd expect the European nations to be able to mobilize their economies far more easily, since they'd been fighting wars with each other for centuries.

[Zed Snardbody]

The whole second ammendment thing will be a right pain in the arse.

Assuming a landing on the eastern seaboard...wait no...still fucked.

I wonder if we would generate our own home grown sucide bombers. Without trenches to overcome we might not see the advent of armoured warfare for a bit.

[K. A. Pital]

Not only would America experience difficulties with war industry mobilization, but it will be effectively unshielded for a very long time.

It's pretty simple really. Fleet building is a very lengthy task that takes years. Once you start a war when you don't have a Navy and your opponent(s) do have powerful Navies, you doomed yourself to complete failure on seas - because there will not be any "years" to build ships, and your shipyards (I mean the most major U.S. shipyards) are exactly vulnerable to your enemy, who (if we include Britain) can strike from both Atlantic and Pacific. Atlantic coast is especially vulnerable, with major industrial centers in coastal cities and shipyards also there.

The question is only how effectively the European powers can wage war on U.S. territory and how long it will take them to cripple the US and take over a major portion of it's land and natural resource.

[Surlethe]

I'm interested in the strategy the European powers follow to take down the US. I'd guess that Britain would do most of the fighting, since Canada is theirs and at this point they still have naval superiority.

I do foresee two problems for Europe, though: first, how much raw material were they getting from the US that they no longer have access to? I seem to recall that Germany and the UK were America's biggest pre-World War I trading partners. Second, the diplomatic posturing and economic and military preparation for an intercontinental war would take years, which translates into years for America to prepare for this war, right? So while economic mobilization would still be poor, it wouldn't be nonexistent, and even if the US can't wage war offensively across the seas, they should be able to make it very difficult for the European powers to invade, especially if the US counter-invades Canada early on.

[K. A. Pital]

Second, the diplomatic posturing and economic and military preparation for an intercontinental war would take years, which translates into years for America to prepare for this war, right?

Why? The tensions period before hostilities takes months, a year at best. There's nothing America can technically do aside from small arms and some entrenching. No Navy still. And counter-invading Canada means future assraping for sure.

[Surlethe]

Second, the diplomatic posturing and economic and military preparation for an intercontinental war would take years, which translates into years for America to prepare for this war, right?

Why? The tensions period before hostilities takes months, a year at best. There's nothing America can technically do aside from small arms and some entrenching. No Navy still. And counter-invading Canada means future assraping for sure.

Several months to a year? Going from perfectly good relations with, say, the UK, to sour enough for a war to start? I mean, weren't tensions between Japan and the US high and increasing from 1938 until 1941 before war started?

[MKSheppard]

Looking at the numbers it appears that the USN is simply screwed:

USN:

80 x 12" Rifles on 8 dreadnoughts in 1913.
80 x 12" Rifles, and 20 x 14" Rifles for a total of 100 heavy guns on 10 dreadnoughts in 1914.

---------------------------

Kaiserlichmarine:

86 x 11" Rifles and 98 x 12" Rifles for a total of 184 heavy guns on 17 dreadnoughts in 1913.
86 x 11" Rifles and 116 x 12" Rifles for a total of 202 heavy guns on 19 dreadnoughts in 1914.

-------------------

Royal Navy:

66 x 12" Rifles, and 104 x 13.5" rifles for a total of 170 heavy guns in 1913 on 26 dreadnoughts
66 x 12" Rifles and 152 x 13.5" rifles for a total of 218 heavy guns in 1914 on 31 dreadnoughts

------------

Looks grim doesn't it?

But the german dreadnoughts can effectively be discounted from the kind of long range operations needed for the invasion of North America. For one, they're north sea boats; cramped, et al, and not exactly designed for the kind of weather you'd find out in the north atlantic. They'd probably be used as an european patrol line to protect against american commerce raiders.

The Royal Navy's the real threat here, and the USN has the advantage of interior lines of communications, as the majority of the Royal Navy will until the signing of a treaty with Germany in 1913, be concentrated in the Home Fleet to defend against a hostile germany. So; the Royal Navy will have to steam across the atlantic to either Halifax in Canada up north or the Bermudas in the South, and then revictual there. Also, at this stage in time, most battleships are coal powered; which means short ranges, long and back breaking refuelling times, etc.

So, the primary SLOCs will be these:



RED is which routes the British will take; while BLUE is american counters.

In order for an invasion from Canada (much less anything else but a curbstomping of Canada); Crown forces in Canada must be massively increased, and this means that the Royal Navy will need to escort several convoys of troopships to Canada. So it's likely that the first SERIOUS naval battle will be on the Grand Banks (excepting random encounters between ships at sea)

[K. A. Pital]

Several months to a year? Going from perfectly good relations with, say, the UK, to sour enough for a war to start?

I thought that the OP said they already made the political decision to go to war, so from there onwards there are only minor constraints and formalities.

The Royal Navy's the real threat here, and the USN has the advantage of interior lines of communications, as the majority of the Royal Navy will until the signing of a treaty with Germany in 1913, be concentrated in the Home Fleet to defend against a hostile germany.

How is Germany hostile when the OP has the European powers already decided between themselves that they don't wage war between themselves and stomp America instead? A formal treaty after such a decision is also a matter of a month at mot.

[MKSheppard]

How is Germany hostile when the OP has the European powers already decided between themselves that they don't wage war between themselves and stomp America instead? A formal treaty after such a decision is also a matter of a month at mot.

Well, you got to understand that such a treaty takes time to prep up, and up to the formal signing, and some time afterwards, Germany will be the primary concern for the Royal Navy's battle planning....what if the Krauts welch out on the deal? What if they back out at the last minute? etc.

[K. A. Pital]

Well, you got to understand that such a treaty takes time to prep up, and up to the formal signing, and some time afterwards, Germany will be the primary concern for the Royal Navy's battle planning...

That is true, but if Germany doesn't weasel out (and we know that it doesn't), in a year or so the RN could bring it's full force against the US homeland. Germany's own naval forces also can't be discounted as it's potent enough to build up an Oceanic Navy still at this point.

[PeZook]

How is Germany hostile when the OP has the European powers already decided between themselves that they don't wage war between themselves and stomp America instead? A formal treaty after such a decision is also a matter of a month at mot.

Well, you got to understand that such a treaty takes time to prep up, and up to the formal signing, and some time afterwards, Germany will be the primary concern for the Royal Navy's battle planning....what if the Krauts welch out on the deal? What if they back out at the last minute? etc.

The USN won't be able to do anything to the Home Fleet for the exact same reasons why the Brits will have it very difficult fighting the USN at their own shores, so this angle is meaningless. By the time the Brits start preparing for an invasion, they will already have their fleet reorganized for the new angle.

What I find daunting for this whole thing is the sheer size of the US. Large countries are notoriously hard to secure. Defeating the US is another matter, it can be done and a peace treaty signed, but the OP states the european powers want to secure US resources for themselves. Which means they are going to have to deal with stretched supply lines, a hostile (and large) population, bad terrain and partisans.

I foresee a long war, very mobile (an analogy can be made to 1920-1921 Polish-Russo war - only on a larger scale) with little trench warfare. Europeans will probably go for the industrial centers, and can take them provided the USN is completely defeated beforehand to ensure undisturbed flow of supplies. The end result will probably be something like this:

- East coast and northern urban centers (Chicago and all) in the hands of the Europeans, but devastated horribly after lots of urban fighting, barricades, heavy shelling etc.

- West Coast still American, having the advantage of the Rockies and horrible terrain in the north, a great position for strategic defence

- Midwest and such - contested, changing hands a lot during the war, with lots of partisan activity and supply lines ridiculously hard to maintain

I can't make judgements about the South without thinking about it some more

All in all, I agree with Stas - the US would never rise to the position of world power. THe next two or three decades pass in the shadow of this war, much like OTL, with european powers abandoning this venture one by one due to the impossibility of holding it all. Revolution in Russia may still happen, if they take part in this venture and suffer such horrible casualties. Japan probably allies with the US, though.

After the war, we'll be seeing the world divided completely between Europe and the US, and depending on post-war progress, maybe even a cold war.

Biggest advantage to Europe is, of course, that it's industries would still be completely intact, while the US will get it's heavy industry wrecked. Basically, the same thing that allowed the US to surpass everyone else during WWII will now go to Europe, and boy will it make a difference over decades.

[K. A. Pital]

Basically, the same thing that allowed the US to surpass everyone else during WWII will now go to Europe, and boy will it make a difference over decades.

Yeah. Talk about a major change of balance.

The US would be reduced to the status of a marginal player in world affairs, probably even less than immediate post-Revolutionary Russia.

The most likely even would be a high-tech Europe (and, if Russia/Soviet Russia is smart enough to make the needed agreements, high-tech Russia), and low-tech USA/East Asia about whom no one would give a fuck until at last Britain decides to stop colonialism (a long way to that without WWII)...

Without WWI in Europe, there may not even be a WWII in Europe, and likewise no WWII in the Pacific (US allying with Japan if the British Empire can't secure it's Japanese relations).

[Lonestar]

If the goal is securing America's resources, the European powers may have bitten off more than they can chew. The United States has all the advantages that Russia has…lots of land and a big population, with the added benefit of the two biggest moats in the world.

I do not think that the USA will stand idly by while war is declared and the process of moving British/French/German troops to Canada starts. The NG will be called up, and the precious regular offices will be dispersed to train draftees, but if the USA can bring a large enough force to bear early on(and there's no reason to doubt they can) they can isolate the Eastern part of Canada as a stopgap until the rest of the army is raised.

As the European powers begin mobilization, the USA will have to make some hard decisions. Japan is still allied with the UK, and can be expected to be bribed into the war with the promise of the Philippines. In any event, the regular soldiers in the Philippines(not to mention the Battalions in China protecting the American Legations) would be better served to hustle home to augment and train the new army.

Bottom line, I think that the USA could repel any European attack on North America, but all it's overseas holdings will have to be written off, as well as the USN(which will either be destroyed in battle or not used at all for fear of destruction)

[PeZook]

Supplies are a big question. It may as well be impossible to supply the millions of men, artillery etc. over the Atlantic, even with a perfectly free ocean. You have to ship all that stuff over the Atlantic, then load in into trains (Europe had an excellent railway system in place, and the distances were much, much shorter), then ship it a thousand miles to the ever-changing frontline. It's an incredibly daunting task even when there are no partisans blowing up the railways.

Also, I'm pretty sure we'd be seeing a lot of social change in Europe. There are some nations, especially in Central and Eastern europe that would be:

A) Needed as soldiers
and
B) In the rear of the fighting powers

That may jump onto the opportunity to try and grab their independence.

[K. A. Pital]

You're forgetting a major powergrab possibility.

If the US government capitulates instead of retreating to the West Coast, it's actually possible to run an occupation.

Of course, it would be riddled with large insurgencies and partisans almost everywhere.

[Glocksman]

The US economic mobilization for World War I was relatively unplanned and the execution was even worse. As I recall, up until the very end of the war, the American forces sent to Europe were using British-made rifles.

That'd be the British designed, but US produced P-17 Enfield.
This design was made by both Winchester and Remington as the P-14 in .303 British for the UK, and in .30-06 Springfield as the P-17 when the US couldn't tool up fast enough to make millions of 1903 Springfields (itself such close a copy of the Mauser action that the US paid a royalty to Mauser) for the new Army.

The only reason the US was able to mobilize so effectively for World War II was because during the 1920s and '30s, military planners had looked back at World War I, learned from their mistakes, and developed an effective plan of nationalizing the economy and upping war production.

Oh we had more than our share of screwups during WW2 as well.


As I've stated before, the USA and the world would have been better off in the end if we'd been genuinely neutral during the war.
Of course that would have meant putting someone other than Woodrow Wilson* or Teddy Roosevelt in the White House in 1912 and 1916.

*Possibly the worst US president ever and most definitely the worst one over the last hundred years, and given his current competition that's saying something.

[Deathstalker]

The Europeans might be able to exploit the differences in the US at the time. The US Civil War is only 60 years past. The US really comes together again for WW2. If the Europeans roll down from the north, invading the New England states and maybe making a stab at D.C. from the sea, then a seperate peace may be made with the Southeren states. A deal stating something like "Slavery is dead, but you can exploit blacks economically and still treat them like shit and you can remian independant, in return you don't invovle yourself in the fighting and we can use your ports for supplies and we maintain the option for a second front ."

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I'm going to assume for the moment a slightly more plausible scenario than this one, in which the following chain of events takes place:

Queen Victoria never comes to the throne of the United Kingdom, dying instead. Ernest Augustus becomes King of the United Kingdom and Hanover. Then, during the 1848 revolutions, when the King of Prussia refuses the crown of a united constitutional Germany, the Frankfurt government offers it to Ernest Augustus, who accepts. The Prussians and Austrians resist; Austria is saved by the Russian army, which the Germans are unwilling to fight. Prussia is defeated, however (their army performed terribly in the war with Denmark in 1848) and the German territories are integrated into the new German Empire, while the Polish territories and East Prussia are annexed by Russia, with Austria becoming a Russian client state. The Danes are decisively defeated by British military power and Schleswig-Holstein is also integrated into the new German Empire; which gives it essentially the same industrial power as the old one, just less agricultural production.

As a result, Denmark, which was very closely tied with its dynasty to the Russian Romanovs in this period, ultimately ends up in a personal union with Russia by some changes in marriages and deaths. The British annex Iceland, Greenland, and the Faeroes as well, along with the Virgin Islands.

Louis-Napoleon in France becomes the arbiter of the balance of power, and annexes most of Belgium (the rest, and Luxembourg, goes to the German Empire) in exchange for supporting the Anglo-German Empire against Russia over the Crimean; the Russians, faced with a massive war, back down rather than fighting. With Russian support, Italy is never unified but instead divided in influence between the Austrians and the French Empire, which never falls.

Fast forward to 1913. The Russians have now grown much closer to the Anglo-German Empire (which is really two separate nations in Dynastic Union, with their own separate governments, just like Russia and Denmark), sidelining the French, whose only allies other than Italian client states are Japan and the Ottomans, aside from minor states. The Russians, avoiding the Crimean War, never sold Alaska to the United States. Because of the gold rush in the Nome area and other mineral speculation, and the different boundaries between Russian Alaska and Canada, Whitehorse is also in Russian territory, so basically Russian Alaska is flooded with American prospectors, causing considerable amounts of tension from the gold rush. At the same time, the German government tried to seize the Philippines in the Spanish-American war, but failed, leaving that part of the Anglo-German Empire embittered with America.

Problems flair up over the tiny Dominican Republic when an Anglo-German fleet tries to occupy the nation for its defaulting on loans (this happened historically a few years earlier, damn near), in direct violation of the Monroe Doctrine, while nearly simultaneously the USA accuses the Anglo-German Empire of selling arms to Mexico, also in contravention of the Monroe Doctrine (again the Germans did this historically in 1914) The result is war, and the Russians join in for the chance to deal with the flood of American prospectors who are threatening to wrench Alaska out of their control and steal the freshly discovered mineral wealth there.

So essentially the industrial power and populations of the 1913 British Empire, German Empire (though divided between Russia and the a-historical German Empire), Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire (dutifully declaring war at Russian behest), Denmark, and Luxembourg, are concentrated against the United States.

But there isn't any concentrated buildup in Canada before the war; nor is there any concentrated buildup in the USA. Both sides have to mobilize.

So now that we've established a vaguely believable scenario, what happens?

[Surlethe]

Several months to a year? Going from perfectly good relations with, say, the UK, to sour enough for a war to start?

I thought that the OP said they already made the political decision to go to war, so from there onwards there are only minor constraints and formalities.

Even if they make the political decision in 1913, it's not going to be a snappy 180 degree about-face from the international situation in 1912; that's why I'm saying the US is going to feel the tension building beforehand, like in Duchess' scenario, and so it won't be caught immediately off-guard. And we have to keep in mind that the European powers also have to mobilize their forces to invade the US once the political decision's been made; they can't just snap their fingers and have an intercontinental invasion force magically appear.

[Frank Hipper]

British coaling stations on the east coast of North America, from the Bahamas to Canada, would be highly, highly vulnerable before arrival of the British Home Fleet; this being 1913, mobilising an invading army to cross the Atlantic is going to take considrerable time. Perhaps months...

Time to massively complicate things for Europe. Fatally, perhaps.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Incidentally, in this scenario the best thing for the USA to do is to fortify strongpoints in Upper Michigan and around Detroit (turn the city into an improvised fortress, like Petersburg or Vicksburg) to keep the European armies from entering the industrial heartland out of Canada, while using the railroads to concentrate our own offensive forces for a strike on Winnipeg, which is the central railroad hub of western Canada through which all the lines west travel. If we can seize Winnipeg before the European armies have fully mobilized we can effectively cut Canada in two, and rail-lines to the important Minneapolis-St. Paul junction already exist, so we can easily supply it if we take it. Since there's virtually no Canadian troops in the area to respond to such a threat, I'd suggest a couple of armoured trains using troops drawn from the frontier garrison posts, which are still largely intact, striking rapidly across the border with a week or two of hostilities being declared.

Since the Aroostook area of Maine is shit-for-all in terms of infrastructure and basically a massive forest, no easy advance will take place there for logistical reasons. Upper Michigan also presents considerable obstacles in a similar fashion, and is quite narrow before opening up into Wisconsin, so even advancing it would be a slow slog forward. So the two main avenues of European advance left would be to seize Detroit, and thereby break out and occupy Michigan while threatening the rest of the industrial heartland of the USA, while the second line of advance would be a popular one for the British, straight down from Montreal along the shores of Lake Champlain, with the goal of seizing the Hudson valley, including Albany and ultimately New York City, bringing the war into the eastern heartland and threatening industrial production in Upstate New York.

Both breaking through the defensive lines around Detroit and advancing down the shores of Lake Champlain will be exceptionally difficult, while pushing the US forces out of Winnipeg would also be difficult due to the immense logistical challenges posed.

[K. A. Pital]

And we have to keep in mind that the European powers also have to mobilize their forces to invade the US once the political decision's been made; they can't just snap their fingers and have an intercontinental invasion force magically appear.

They can't of course. But covert concentration of the mobilizing forces is possible. It has been done in history. Of course the US will feel the heat so to say. But I doubt that 1913 would leave it much time to act upon those feelings. Better securing the deep industrial centers might be a good idea.

[Surlethe]

That'd be the British designed, but US produced P-17 Enfield.
This design was made by both Winchester and Remington as the P-14 in .303 British for the UK, and in .30-06 Springfield as the P-17 when the US couldn't tool up fast enough to make millions of 1903 Springfields (itself such close a copy of the Mauser action that the US paid a royalty to Mauser) for the new Army.

Ahh. Thanks for the info; it was just a snippet of memory from a book I read last summer.

The only reason the US was able to mobilize so effectively for World War II was because during the 1920s and '30s, military planners had looked back at World War I, learned from their mistakes, and developed an effective plan of nationalizing the economy and upping war production.

Oh we had more than our share of screwups during WW2 as well.

I'm not saying we didn't; but at least there was a mobilization plan in place after the first world war that hadn't been there. Of course, at the same time, you shouldn't underestimate American economic muscle if it's given time to come into play: World War I ended within a year after we'd gotten involved, and so mobilization, fuckups and all, hadn't really had a chance to swing into gear. I'll see if I can find some numbers for World War I US mobilization later this afternoon.

As I've stated before, the USA and the world would have been better off in the end if we'd been genuinely neutral during the war.
Of course that would have meant putting someone other than Woodrow Wilson* or Teddy Roosevelt in the White House in 1912 and 1916.

*Possibly the worst US president ever and most definitely the worst one over the last hundred years, and given his current competition that's saying something.

God yes, Wilson should have kept us out of that European pissing match. You can build mild case that World War II wouldn't have happened, at least not in its real form, if the US hadn't flooded Western France with soldiers and forced Germany to capitulate instead of Germany and the Allies signing a cease-fire.