August 1914

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Some actual evidence of the attitudes to which you attribute to the Imperial German government to back your little what-if. It's already been pointed out that Germany was in many ways no worse, and in some ways a little better, in their conduct as a colonial power in that time than their main rivals.

What do you mean exactly in their conduct? Let's just make sure we are thinking of the same terms. Maybe you two are misunderstanding each other's definitions? They weren't really a "significant" colonial power, but they were very hard-headed, militaristic, and aggressive, as many sources have also shown.

[Patrick Degan]

Some actual evidence of the attitudes to which you attribute to the Imperial German government to back your little what-if. It's already been pointed out that Germany was in many ways no worse, and in some ways a little better, in their conduct as a colonial power in that time than their main rivals.

What do you mean exactly in their conduct? Let's just make sure we are thinking of the same terms. Maybe you two are misunderstanding each other's definitions? They weren't really a "significant" colonial power, but they were very hard-headed, militaristic, and aggressive, as many sources have also shown.

The root of the "misunderstanding" seems to be Darkling's confusion of Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany while ignoring what Imperial Germany actually was and wasn't capable of, and how they actually treated colonial populations as well as persons in occupied territory in history.

[Stuart Mackey]

snip And as for Britain's resources, it had the whole of its empire to draw upon and would have gotten additional material aid from the United States had it come down to it. As, in point of fact, it actually did.
snip

I am not sure how much more Britian could have gotten from the Empire than it actually did, as the Empire's primary industrial unit was Britian itself, the rest seems to have been mainly dead weight economically and in terms of productivity.
In terms of manpower it was potetially formidible.

[Stuart Mackey]

Some actual evidence of the attitudes to which you attribute to the Imperial German government to back your little what-if. It's already been pointed out that Germany was in many ways no worse, and in some ways a little better, in their conduct as a colonial power in that time than their main rivals.

What do you mean exactly in their conduct? Let's just make sure we are thinking of the same terms. Maybe you two are misunderstanding each other's definitions? They weren't really a "significant" colonial power, but they were very hard-headed, militaristic, and aggressive, as many sources have also shown.

The root of the "misunderstanding" seems to be Darkling's confusion of Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany while ignoring what Imperial Germany actually was and wasn't capable of, and how they actually treated colonial populations as well as persons in occupied territory in history.

To be honest I am not sure that the Germans could have done more than they did in France 1914. IIRC they were at the very limits of their logistical abilities and simple human endurance, with the allies falling back on their own supply dumps.

[CJvR]

The ones mainly guilty for triggering the war would IMPO be:

The Serbian anarchists and goverment for the Sarajevo murders (The Black hand was even deeper into the Serbial goverment than A-Q was in the Talibans)
The Habsburgs for their ultimatum (A DoW really, but with the excuse that the war started when the other side shot back)
The Russian Generals for triggering mobilization (A sad comedy about accidentaly pulling the trigger out of sheer incompetense and blowing up half the world as a consequence)
The Serbian goverment for reversing their decission to accept the ultimatum (The Serbians did intend to accept when the promise of Russian support arrived, then the Serbians rejected what was probably the least objectionable point - mainly because an Austrian investigation in Serbia was likely to reveal that the Serbs were even deeper into the murders than the Austrians claimed and it could expose the PM to assassination since he had tried to warn the Habsburgs about the terrorist plan)
The German goverment for their unconditional support of Austria (Do whatever you wan't - we will back you...)
The German Generals for a mobilization plan that automaticaly triggered the war (Unlike all other nations the German war plan started on the first day of mobilization, indeed the German goverment and high command had little control once the mobilization machinery started to roll - they invaded Luxemburg without even realizing it)

There is more than enough blame for everyone to get their fair share. The greatest irony perhaps is that at the same time as the guns started firing along the Danube both London and Berlin presented two peace proposals that were practicaly identical...

Unlike WWII there was no evil mastermind working towards war, there was unfortunately very little mind in the goverments and civil services of pre-WWI Europe. The total chaos in well ordered Germany's goverment at the eve of war is amazing.

[TheDarkling]

Bullshit. Germany's vision encompassed Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland, with only Luxembourg being outright annexed, and the neutralisation of France and Russia. They had no plans to invade Switzerland (an unrealistic proposition given the natural obstacle of the Alps and Switzerland's own army which was quite capable of closing off the passes), Italy, (they'd have had to go through the Austro-Hungarian Empire first) or any of the Scandanavian countries. As it was, in 1914, their only real war aim was to roll-up the French army and capture Paris in what they hoped would be a quick victory just as they enjoyed in 1870. They might have gotten it if Von Molkte hadn't fucked up the Schlieffen Plan.

They played to annex Lux, the channel ports, cripple France for all time and maybe let Belgium survive.
They also made it clear that all of Europe would join a union which was in reality run from Germany for Germany and that methods would be sought to bring the Dutch closer to Germany.

The Germans were aiming for complete continental dominance and with no body around to stop them they would have achieved such.

Some actual evidence of the attitudes to which you attribute to the Imperial German government to back your little what-if. It's already been pointed out that Germany was in many ways no worse, and in some ways a little better, in their conduct as a colonial power in that time than their main rivals.

No it hasn't, what has happened is a justification of them.
They were worse in colonial matters than Britain and France (but not Belgium and possibly the Dutch), which means an increase in German colonial possession is a bad thing.
Yes they had universal male suffrage, for a severally weakened legislative body that had little control over what actually went on.
The idea that the house of Lords makes Britain's democracy worse than Germanys is laughable, Parliment in Britain was the engine of power and power existed mainly in the Commons (and totally by the war).

Germany was worse than the others except Russia which was a full out autocracy.

Nice way to duck the point.

I haven't noticed any point to your posts thus far.

And the historical evidence for Imperial death-camps and systematised genocidal slaughter exists where? Elsewise, you've just given us a nice little Golden Mean Fallacy.

This is a rather poor showing, you continue to strawman my position, I have made it very clear (although apparently not enough for you) that Imperial Germany was not as bad as Nazi Germany but they were bad and they will go on for longer if they win.

You tried floating this nonsensical bullshit with Perinquus several months ago and it's no more valid today than it was then.

Indeed it is exactly as valid now as then.

Imperial Germany was in no position to conquer the whole of Europe, and their fleet could be and actually was quite effectively blockaded simply by the British stationing their fleet at Scapa Flow. Nevermind the fact that Germany never quite got the concept of sea power as a strategic instrument and was reluctant to risk the destruction of its mighty battleships for the blow to German morale such a disaster would entail. And as for Britain's resources, it had the whole of its empire to draw upon and would have gotten additional material aid from the United States had it come down to it. As, in point of fact, it actually did.

And if somebody other than Wilson was in power, an Anglophobe perhaps?
And those resources are mainly raw materials and (here is the important point) are overseas, the Germans had a good go at starving us out before given a decade to build up I'm sure they would be upto the challenge (especially considering the exclusion from Europe is going to hurt the UK economy).

EDIT: The only "swift victory" Germany was aiming for was against France

And Belgium and Lux.

and not the whole bloody Continent. And as according to this little quote of yours:

Once France was beaten they intended to implement Mitteleuropa, which is German domination of Europe in fact whilst in theory all the nations remain independent and with no body to stop them I doubt they would have much compunction about forcing their views on uncooperative neighbours.

They also intended to create Vassal states in the East by carving huge amounts of Russia off.

it is you who is talking about Germany conquering Europe wholesale and stifling democracy for 60 years. You opened the door to attack on this point and it's far too late for you to try to close it now.

I know what I said but your take on it is completely twisting it, your intent is to strawman my position as saying Nazi Germany was near identical to imperial Germany. Such was not the case and I have not said so, in fact I have made it clear that is not my position three times now and people in this thread figured out all by themselves without having to walked through it slowly. You unfortunately have failed to do so.

[TheDarkling]

The root of the "misunderstanding" seems to be Darkling's confusion of Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany while ignoring what Imperial Germany actually was and wasn't capable of, and how they actually treated colonial populations as well as persons in occupied territory in history.

No my good chap the confusion is that you believe that is my position, as Boyish-Tigerlilly can quite clearly see it is not.

I will attempt to spell it out once again, Imperial Germany was racist, militant and undemocratic.
They had low regard for other European races (killing Belgians to quell descent) and even less regard for non whites.
They are likely to get even worse once there militant racially superior philosophy is validated my their triumph over Europe.
They would have been a blight upon the people of Europe and would have eventually sought to bring Britain to heel.

That is my position not, Imperial Germany will be throwing Jews into the oven for fun.

[CJvR]

I will attempt to spell it out once again, Imperial Germany was racist, militant and undemocratic.

Yes. yes and yes, but...
Racism was hardly an isolated German fenomenon, in the age of empire and nationalism it was the norm.
Militant, certanly. France however drafted a higher% of it's men into it's army, Russia had the largest army of all and in 1914 the Russian naval budget passed the German!
The undemocratic part is surely accurate at the very top, but a few more decades of reform would likely have installed the restraints needed, the German socialist party was the largest in the world.

They had low regard for other European races (killing Belgians to quell descent) and even less regard for non whites.

Did anyone have regard for non-whites in 1914?

They are likely to get even worse once there militant racially superior philosophy is validated my their triumph over Europe.

Or they might pull a Churchill after the war, just as likely IMPO. Throw the Kaiser a victory parade and then demand political reform. I think the Kaisers would have been very dissappointed in the fallout of their triumph.

They would have been a blight upon the people of Europe and would have eventually sought to bring Britain to heel.

Even a triumphant Wilhelmine Germany would have to put in some overtime to do worse to the world than the Commies and Nazis did.

[TheDarkling]

Yes. yes and yes, but...
Racism was hardly an isolated German fenomenon, in the age of empire and nationalism it was the norm.

Germans tended to see themselves as superior to all, British just regard themselves as superior to the various Wogs around the world.

Militant, certanly. France however drafted a higher% of it's men into it's army, Russia had the largest army of all and in 1914 the Russian naval budget passed the German!

That is military spending though, the US currently spends a rather large amount on its military but they aren't all that militant.
The Prussian ruling class was very militant, in that they liked marching up and down in parades and thought the military was the best thing since sliced bread (sliced bread being invented the previous winter ).

The Kiaser himself was instructed by his grandfather who liked nothing more than to arrange military parades, he was inducted in to the military and so on.

The entire German ruling class was centred around the military and the glory it could bring (even the smarter guys such as Bismarck constantly prattled on about Blood and Iron etc).
The other Europe nations weren't like this, Britain was a nation of shop keepers and toffs, Russia a land of decadent aristocrats and paupers, France a land of cultural elitists and A-H a hive of conflict racial groupings who liked the occasional dance.

The undemocratic part is surely accurate at the very top, but a few more decades of reform would likely have installed the restraints needed, the German socialist party was the largest in the world.

It wasn't designed to be democratic though, Bismarck disliked democracy and designed a system that essentially allowed the Kiaser and Chancellor to rule the country (Bismarck infract ruled with the Prussia for 4 years because they wouldn't pass a budget).

I think a big military victory is only going to improve the standing of the Military/Kaiser's yes men (everybody but the socialists) and stifle any democratic reform (which the military wouldn't like anyway and they were running the show, both by manipulating the Kaiser and through their own power).

Did anyone have regard for non-whites in 1914?

Britain and France treated them rather well by the standards of the day (better than the US for the most part) whilst the Germans were already culling the herds in Africa (an entire tribe was exterminated because of their aggressive tendances).

As a side note, guess who was running affairs in German South West Africa at the time, a gentleman named Dr Heinrich Goering father of Hermann.
Like father like son I guess.

What is more the Germans were treating Europeans with a similar lack of civility (something Britain and France wouldn't have done), woe the Belgian who rallies for an independent state free from German oppression.

Or they might pull a Churchill after the war, just as likely IMPO. Throw the Kaiser a victory parade and then demand political reform. I think the Kaisers would have been very dissappointed in the fallout of their triumph.

I think more likely it would be seen as the military bringing grand benefits to the state and once again proving the military was the beacon of hope for Germany not politicans.

Even a triumphant Wilhelmine Germany would have to put in some overtime to do worse to the world than the Commies and Nazis did.

Over the short term yes, but Wilhelmine Germany will start their reign in 1914 and last for decades, the Nazi's were far later and shorter.

Russia is unlikely to improve all that much with a defeat (the place wasn't really setup for a democracy, if the Tzar goes we probably get a dictator of another stripe although they aren't going to cause the mass destruction the Communists caused).

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I want "TheDarkling" to back up his claims that Germany was undemocratic, with an elected body having little power. That is a ridiculous and specious argument which appears to have no grounding whatsoever--except in the propaganda fantasies of the enemies of the Second Reich--when it is a known fact (just read a copy of the Second Reich's constitution) that the Reichstag, the universally elected body of manhood suffrage, had the power to control fiscal appropriations.

[CJvR]

Germans tended to see themselves as superior to all, British just regard themselves as superior to the various Wogs around the world.

IIRC one of the British imperialists at that time stated "God must be an Englishman"...

That is military spending though, the US currently spends a rather large amount on its military but they aren't all that militant.

You don't think having vast military organisations helps to militarise a society? The lack of militancy in France and England is clearly evident in the sadness and despair with which the populations greeted the coming war... ;) Germany might have been very thoroughly militarised but again that was hardly an exclusive German feature.

It wasn't designed to be democratic though,

Obviously it wasn't designed to be democratic! It was the classical autocratic monarchy being dragged kicking and screaming into the future with the nobility fighting a desperate but losing rearguard action.

Britain and France treated them rather well by the standards of the day

Well you can treat your dog decently but it is still only a dog.

What is more the Germans were treating Europeans with a similar lack of civility (something Britain and France wouldn't have done), woe the Belgian who rallies for an independent state free from German oppression.

Well ask the Irish about British civility towards their fellow Europeans... Belgians rallying against occupation in the middle of a raging desperate war - what did you expect? A sharply worded letter from Willy?

I think more likely it would be seen as the military bringing grand benefits to the state and once again proving the military was the beacon of hope for Germany not politicans.

You speak of the military as if it was something compeletly isolated, the military are also the millions of troops that have just fought this war and they are the average German conscripts and there is nothing that says they are meekly going to accept a return to status quo. Indeed now that the great war is won the demand is just as likely to be shorter conscription, lower taxes and some real influence over the executive branch of the goverment.

Over the short term yes, but Wilhelmine Germany will start their reign in 1914 and last for decades

Actually Wilhelmine Germany started in 1871 and the world didn't come to an end over that, indeed the period after the forming of the German empire is the peak of European power and wealth, after the fall of the second reich it has been all downhill...

[CmdrWilkens]

The root of the "misunderstanding" seems to be Darkling's confusion of Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany while ignoring what Imperial Germany actually was and wasn't capable of, and how they actually treated colonial populations as well as persons in occupied territory in history.

To be honest I am not sure that the Germans could have done more than they did in France 1914. IIRC they were at the very limits of their logistical abilities and simple human endurance, with the allies falling back on their own supply dumps.

The question really centers on what would have been possible if Von Moltke had not transferred some 6 corps and withheld another 3 for service on the Eastern Front. Moreover the decision to attack (or rather "Pursue direction Epinal" IIRC) after France's own counterattack completely stalled might have altered things. In the later case it would have tied down a notable portion of the French reserve while allowing a tranfser of troops away from the defensive lines. Essentially the question is would the additional forces have allowed a continuing leapfrog attack that could have sustained a greater advance.

The point is a very debatable one comparing the ability of those extra corps to relieve in place other units and moving the whole force further forward (enough to encircle Paris as in 1870) or whether the overworked supply lines, rail supply terminated essentially at the Belgian border, simply could not maintain any more of an advance. Its been a while since I've looked at it but personally so long as fresh troops can keep moving forward I could and would keep pushing an army forward, in the end just coming within artillery range (normal artillery mind you) of Paris may have been enough to cause a capitulation and a settlement by the end of September or the beginning of October.

Assuming all that possible (and its about the only reasonable course that leads to German victory) Germany will not posses enough territory (nor will they have been able to effectively enough lock up the channel ports) to enforce a total domination of France. Rather they will have the leverage to take additional territory, gain a dmilitarized zone, and generally let the French stew in their defeat much as they had in 1870. Moreover a swift victory at this point would essentially keep Britain from being a major factor in negotiations. In other words France would certainly lose a bit but Britain (which to this point had only engaged the rather tiny BEF under French) would almost certainly have retained the empire and thus continued to stifle Germany from becmoing a world dominating power. As with any other era in history British control of the seas will leave them a dominant player and while Russia will have taken a beating from their advances they have virtually no real territorial loses. Though we might assume revolution it is important to note that the Bolsheviks were a tiny minority within the framework of the revolution and denied Lenin it is entirely plausible to believe that Russia would have emerged as a socialist democratic republic or retained its monarchy a while longer rather than fallen to the extreme of Leninism.

In general I am quite willing to trade the possibility that the Germans will rule with a degree of prejudice (and yet greater democracy an odd combination) larger swaths of Europe for the known horrors of Stalinism/Leninism/Maoism/Nazism that wracked the world with tens of millions of deaths over the course of the decades before and after WWII (or Part 2 of the Great European Civil War).

[TheDarkling]

IIRC one of the British imperialists at that time stated "God must be an Englishman"...

God is an Englishman.

That however doesn't mean all Englishmen are godlike, the Germans had other ideas, ideas that will be reinforced when the military brings home victory.

You don't think having vast military organisations helps to militarise a society? The lack of militancy in France and England is clearly evident in the sadness and despair with which the populations greeted the coming war... Germany might have been very thoroughly militarised but again that was hardly an exclusive German feature.

You are missing my point, militarism and exultation of the military was a very German (well Prussian but they essentially ran Germany anyway) phenomenon not duplicated in the other nations.

Obviously it wasn't designed to be democratic! It was the classical autocratic monarchy being dragged kicking and screaming into the future with the nobility fighting a desperate but losing rearguard action.

Actually it was Bismarck attempt at buying off the socialists (as was the welfare state), it worked because the socialists were happy to tinker with the domestic issues instead of getting involved in the real power.

Well you can treat your dog decently but it is still only a dog.

ok....

But the French didn't herd their "dogs" into the desert after they had deliberately poisoned all the water supplies in the area.

You are just being glib and dodging the point.

Well ask the Irish about British civility towards their fellow Europeans...

Go ahead.

Belgians rallying against occupation in the middle of a raging desperate war - what did you expect? A sharply worded letter from Willy?

Belgians got shot were there was no resistance, hell Belgians got shot because drunk German solders were firing their weapons off and the Belgians were getting the blame (as one German officer noted in a report).
Do you honestly think elderly women and children were resistance fighters?

You speak of the military as if it was something compeletly isolated, the military are also the millions of troops that have just fought this war and they are the average German conscripts and there is nothing that says they are meekly going to accept a return to status quo. Indeed now that the great war is won the demand is just as likely to be shorter conscription, lower taxes and some real influence over the executive branch of the goverment.

The military is the Prussian officer class, who just brought glory to the Reich.

Actually Wilhelmine Germany started in 1871 and the world didn't come to an end over that, indeed the period after the forming of the German empire is the peak of European power and wealth, after the fall of the second reich it has been all downhill...

I would have thought what I was saying was obvious, their reign over the continent as opposed to the Nazi's reign over the continent, I can't believe you missed that or that you dodged yet another point.

[TheDarkling]

I want "TheDarkling" to back up his claims that Germany was undemocratic, with an elected body having little power. That is a ridiculous and specious argument which appears to have no grounding whatsoever--except in the propaganda fantasies of the enemies of the Second Reich--when it is a known fact (just read a copy of the Second Reich's constitution) that the Reichstag, the universally elected body of manhood suffrage, had the power to control fiscal appropriations.

I am well aware that the Reichstag had the power of the purse however they had no control over foreign policy or the appointment of the executive which was down to the Kaiser and co.

Their power over the military was greatly limited (they could use the budget as a weapon but that is a risky business).

We also sure how weak the government was during the war when the military decided to more or less bypass it until they needed it to take the fall for them.

The Reichstag powers were essentially of the type where by they authored labour laws and set pensions (and that much the people with power were against and would have weakened given the chance) whilst the real affairs of state were decided elsewhere.

If the Reichstag didn't play ball with the executive they could be dismissed and a new one called, this didn't happen because the Reichstag was willing to compromise and the tax systems as it was allowed the Reichstag to be completely bypassed and the people taxed directly (as happened with the Prussian Diet in the 1860's).

The Reichstag power over foreign policy was nil, the democratic control over the executive was nil, their power over the budget was always compromised with the executive and could be by passed if needed (sent packing and a new group bought in), the Kaiser could veto laws and rule without the Reichstag if he so chose.
The Kaiser also appointed the ministers who proposed laws to the Reichstag putting further power in his hands.
The Reichstag wasn't even the sole power the states had to approve laws as well, these were dominated by the gentry and the Prussian state government weighted votes by money (during the War the chancellor told the Reichstag he would reform this, Wilhelm fired him and picked a new Chancellor).
They had the barest trapping of Democracy to keep people focused on the Reichstag not who was really setting the course for Germany, this is exactly how Bismarck created it and it is how it functioned up until the war.

Not to belabour the point but in Britain Parliament held the power (established by force of arms a few centuries back) and decided upon the course of Britain, the monarch was at best a glorified ambassador used to talk to.
In Germany however the Kaiser held the power and had (or his predecessor) devolved some powers to an elected body in order to keep the peons out of the important affairs of state.
At best the Reichstag was an obstacle to be overcome by those in power rather than the source of power.

Furthermore (to put things in context) after the supposed takeover of Europe orders would be coming from the kaiser to the various vassal states and satellites not from his accountants (that is if the Kaiser and friends didn't use the war to put the Reichstag in their place by picking a fight and reaffirming who was in charge).

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

I will attempt to spell it out once again, Imperial Germany was racist, militant and undemocratic.

I agree here. Germany was a massively military organized power wtih pragmatic concerns for domination. They were racist, and they diskliked many minoriites. THis however, is not unique to them, but many powers. Germany, however, according to many sources, was worse with certain groups.

They had low regard for other European races (killing Belgians to quell descent) and even less regard for non whites.

Even during and prior to WW1, they strongly disliked jews and other groups, but agian, so did many other nations.


They would have been a blight upon the people of Europe and would have eventually sought to bring Britain to heel.

I don't believe they would have been a blight, but rather a miliatristic power who wouldn't know when to stop. Expansion by war is maintained by war. I doubt they would just stop. That is hardly the case in history. People keep chugging along untill they get out of hand. I believe Germany would not have been as bad as they were in the 40's and 30's, but they still would have sucked .

I say this not because I think they could have pulled off the plan of "mitteleurope," but because of their mentality. THey tried to do it as was pointed out. That was their intention. Domination, subservience, and spread of their own culture at the expense of others. IF they had the power to defeat the allies, they would surely have acted upon those believes to the best of their ability, and that would most likely not have been good.

That is my position not, Imperial Germany will be throwing Jews into the oven for fun.

I don't think he, or anyone else is saying they would be throwing Jews into the oven, but they would try to enforce german laws, customs, ideals, and economic policy over the defeated parties, and that would not be good for those nations. It might even cause problems later on.

I am well aware that the Reichstag had the power of the purse however they had no control over foreign policy or the appointment of the executive which was down to the Kaiser and co.

Their power over the military was greatly limited (they could use the budget as a weapon but that is a risky business).

According to most history books and professors, during ww1 and prior, the Reichstag didn't have ministerial responsibility and it didn't control foreign policy. The military/Kaiser did.

Actually it was Bismarck attempt at buying off the socialists (as was the welfare state), it worked because the socialists were happy to tinker with the domestic issues instead of getting involved in the real power.

Wasn't he a follower of Realpolitik? He did what was necessary to shut the people up.

Belgians rallying against occupation in the middle of a raging desperate war - what did you expect? A sharply worded letter from Willy?

Should they have been occupying the country in the first place. I am reading now that Belgium was neutral, and that the German's declared the neutrality slip as nothing more than "a mere slip of paper."

Actually Wilhelmine Germany started in 1871 and the world didn't come to an end over that, indeed the period after the forming of the German empire is the peak of European power and wealth, after the fall of the second reich it has been all downhill...

The reign of peace was due to Bismark's system of alliances which, again, were pragmatic for getting what was wanted at the time. They themselves created much more tension when they collapsed.

An important thing to remember during the time of peace after the formation of the Wihelmine German Empire, was that it didn't control europe, it hadn't crushed France beyond repair, and it didn't have the power it would have had after ww1.

If it controls the economy, punishes France (like France would punish Germany later), and won if it won the war, the world would be a different place, and it would have to be different from the world of the a1870's and 1880's. Germany wasn't supreme.
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In the end, the Second Empire would probably not be a qasi-nazi state, and it wouldn't be worse. It would just be plain bad if one takes into account their mentality and goals. Could they have accomplished their goals? They probably could have accomplished some or many, but probably not all, depending on their level of punishment over their enemies like France and others who opposed them. If the US stayed out of the war, they most likely would have defeated many and sued for pace with those remaining. Since germany was doing well in the war, I would think the peace would be in their favour. With the US in the war, I really think there was no chance.

The war probably could never realistically have been prevented, because there are too many factors, but if germany were treated differently (which was nearly impossible), and if people had a different mentality after WW1 ended, the Nazis wouldn't have risen to power. If they won, there also would have been no Nazis, but then you would just have a lesser evil. It's impossible to judge what modern society would be like had there been a massive German Empire dominating the early twentith century.

But i still don't think anyone is arguing that Second Empire = Nazis. It's more a case of, Nazis suck, Second Empire in full control would suck, how would that effect me in the long run?

It would have been better had the allies quickly won, and germany not have gotten pissed and angry. However....what would have happened during the great depression? Might the Nazi's not have come out of the woodwork anyway using scapegoats for problems?

[TheDarkling]

I don't believe they would have been a blight, but rather a miliatristic power who wouldn't know when to stop. Expansion by war is maintained by war. I doubt they would just stop. That is hardly the case in history. People keep chugging along untill they get out of hand. I believe Germany would not have been as bad as they were in the 40's and 30's, but they still would have sucked .

Which is my point,we both agree that the Germans were worse than the other powers in their attitudes.
It was precisely this mixture of military worship and racial superiority that led to Imperial Germany committing atrocities and then later Nazi Germany taking it up a notch or two, the events in South West Africa clearly demonstrate a continuation from Imperial Germany to Nazi Germany, the difference is Imperial Germany was exterminating Africans in Africa whilst Nazi Germany was exterminating Jews in Europe.
Nazi Germany was Imperial Germany unleashed, whilst I doubt a successful Imperial Germany would go to the depths the Nazi's did it is clear that, that darkness was already with them and confirmation of the superiority of the German people and the military will only see it grow (along with as you point out, an expansionist policy).

This is because as has already been said in this thread, there were more racist than the other nations, they were far more militaristic (to the point where civil life was seen as a tool of the military not the other way around), they exulted the state above the people and they were far more expansionist that the other nations (who already had their share). This was a dangerous cocktail which lead to atrocities before WW1, during WW1 and then again in WW2.

I say this not because I think they could have pulled off the plan of "mitteleurope," but because of their mentality. THey tried to do it as was pointed out. That was their intention. Domination, subservience, and spread of their own culture at the expense of others. IF they had the power to defeat the allies, they would surely have acted upon those believes to the best of their ability, and that would most likely not have been good.

Agreed, however for not being able to achieve their plan that is the result of an early french collapse in 1914 (As the Marne was happening the plan was published so it isn't like that was an accurate portrayal of the German mindset at the time).

I don't think he, or anyone else is saying they would be throwing Jews into the oven, but they would try to enforce german laws, customs, ideals, and economic policy over the defeated parties, and that would not be good for those nations. It might even cause problems later on.

He is alleging I am saying that Imperial Germany = Nazi Germany which I am not, as you yourself realise.

According to most history books and professors, during ww1 and prior, the Reichstag didn't have ministerial responsibility and it didn't control foreign policy. The military/Kaiser did.

Isn't hat what I just said.

Wasn't he a follower of Realpolitik? He did what was necessary to shut the people up.

Exactly, he disliked democracy so did what he could to ensure the Kaiser could run the show (or himself as the Kaisers right hand man).

Should they have been occupying the country in the first place. I am reading now that Belgium was neutral, and that the German's declared the neutrality slip as nothing more than "a mere slip of paper."

That was the problem with the German war plan.

France could mobilise and seat in her border, as could A-H and Russia but the German war plan required troops to be immediately sent into Belgium.
Everybody else could mobilise and still talk peace but once the Germans begun mobilisation war was inevitable.

As for Belgium being neutral, yes they were and it was this fact (Britain, France and Prussia had signed a treaty guaranteeing that neutrality) that got the British public and government onside for the war, a brave charge to save innocent Belgium from the Hun.

In reality Britain has always gone to war against any great power trying to control the entire channel coast, we have fought just about every European power over the issue over the past half millennia and the fact that the German planners couldn't grasp this simple fact is very telling.
One could board a plane, travel to deepest Africa, find a monkey and say "What is the number one British strategic concern?" to which the monkey would answer "that great power would control all the channel ports", it was really that obvious.

An important thing to remember during the time of peace after the formation of the Wihelmine German Empire, was that it didn't control europe, it hadn't crushed France beyond repair, and it didn't have the power it would have had after ww1.

Not to mention Bismarck was far more interested in Mega Prussia (i.e Germany) than he was with a place in the sun and imperial conquest. Kaiser Bill on the other hand had an inferiority complex to deal with.

If it controls the economy, punishes France (like France would punish Germany later), and won if it won the war, the world would be a different place, and it would have to be different from the world of the a1870's and 1880's. Germany wasn't supreme.

They would punish France far more than France did to Germany because the Germans would make sure they got their money whilst the French eventually backed down.

Since germany was doing well in the war, I would think the peace would be in their favour. With the US in the war, I really think there was no chance.

The idea this conversation spun off of was a Germany victory in 1914, so the fact that they couldn't really manage it is neither here nor there.

But i still don't think anyone is arguing that Second Empire = Nazis. It's more a case of, Nazis suck, Second Empire in full control would suck, how would that effect me in the long run?

Exactly my point, which some seem to be overlooking.

It would have been better had the allies quickly won, and germany not have gotten pissed and angry. However....what would have happened during the great depression? Might the Nazi's not have come out of the woodwork anyway using scapegoats for problems?

A quick allied victory would mean no great depression in which case all would be goo in Europe until Russia got strong enough to assert its control, then we would see round two.
With that said I am not sure a society like the German one could have taken getting militarily beaten, this is why the myth of the back stabbing socialist Jew arose, it was inconceivable that inferior races could triumph over the German military machine which meant somebody must have betrayed the German people.
If enough allied troops march up and down in Konigsburg and Berlin following a very public surrender by the top German generals then the point would possibly get across but it would take a large amount of societal change to bring it about.

[Patrick Degan]

The root of the "misunderstanding" seems to be Darkling's confusion of Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany while ignoring what Imperial Germany actually was and wasn't capable of, and how they actually treated colonial populations as well as persons in occupied territory in history.

No my good chap the confusion is that you believe that is my position, as Boyish-Tigerlilly can quite clearly see it is not.

Then why do you characterise Imperial Germany in much the same manner as Nazi Germany, despite the fact that the former did not and was not about to practise atrocities anywhere near the same scale as the latter, nor was about to or even had the capacity to conquer the whole of Europe?

I will attempt to spell it out once again, Imperial Germany was racist, militant

I hate to have to tell you this, but so were all the colonial powers at that time.

and undemocratic.

An elected parliament, universal (male) sufferage, and clear limitations on the power of the throne. Sorry, but that is hardly "undemocratic" by any definition, and the Reichtag was not the rubber-stamp body that it was under the Nazis.

They had low regard for other European races (killing Belgians to quell descent) and even less regard for non whites.

Their actions in Belgium had nothing to do with racism but putting down resistance to the occupation, and everybody had less regard for nonwhites. Or shall we review Britain's history in India and Africa for a comparison?

They are likely to get even worse once there militant racially superior philosophy is validated my their triumph over Europe.

For which you have provided exactly zero evidence as a support. They believed in the triumph of German nationalism, not in the theory of the Master Race. That's Nazism's trademark.

They would have been a blight upon the people of Europe and would have eventually sought to bring Britain to heel.

For which you again provide zero evidence beyond your continual assertions that it must be so. Doubly so the proposition that Imperial Germany was gunning for Britain.

That is my position not, Imperial Germany will be throwing Jews into the oven for fun.

No, you just pretend that Imperial Germany will be as bad a conquering, racist power reducing whole national populations to serfdom (despite the fact that they had neither the ambition nor the capacity to accomplish this) as Nazi Germany was.

[TheDarkling]

Then why do you characterise Imperial Germany in much the same manner as Nazi Germany, despite the fact that the former did not and was not about to practise atrocities anywhere near the same scale as the latter, nor was about to or even had the capacity to conquer the whole of Europe?

They did exterminate 80% of a racial group in camps set up by a man named Goering and they did brutalise resisting (and non resisting) peoples in Europe, the difference is one of scale, I think the scale will increase with German power (although not up to Nazi levels) and will continue for longer, things in Africa are going to get alot worse.

As for ruling all of Europe, those were German terms at the time of the Marne which was their theoretical victory point being discussed.

I hate to have to tell you this, but so were all the colonial powers at that time.

Britain wasn't militant nor particularly racist with regard to other Europeans, the German state was a function of the military whereas in the other European countries it was the other way around.

An elected parliament, universal (male) sufferage, and clear limitations on the power of the throne. Sorry, but that is hardly "undemocratic" by any definition, and the Reichtag was not the rubber-stamp body that it was under the Nazis.

There was no constraints placed upon the throne, his right to dismiss and even disband the Reichstag was right there.
He had veto power over all legislation, he appointed those who proposed legislation and he could dismiss the legislature on a whim and that legislature had virtually no control over the military and non over foreign affairs.

The Reichstag had very little power indeed and even a passing glance at the setup would reveal that fact.

Their actions in Belgium had nothing to do with racism but putting down resistance to the occupation, and everybody had less regard for nonwhites. Or shall we review Britain's history in India and Africa for a comparison?

Britain never deliberately committed genocide like Imperial Germany did and it wasn't about putting down rebellion it was about putting fear into the population, something that wasn't done amongst civilised powers.

For which you have provided exactly zero evidence as a support. They believed in the triumph of German nationalism, not in the theory of the Master Race. That's Nazism's trademark.

Silly notions of racial superiority were already floating about and finding fertile ground however seeing themselves as the chosen nation makes little difference because it also means they see non German citizens as inferior.

For which you again provide zero evidence beyond your continual assertions that it must be so. Doubly so the proposition that Imperial Germany was gunning for Britain.

Germany would have ruled all of Europe, why allow Britain to remain outside their control when they wouldn't allow Russia or France to do so.

No, you just pretend that Imperial Germany will be as bad a conquering, racist power reducing whole national populations to serfdom (despite the fact that they had neither the ambition nor the capacity to accomplish this) as Nazi Germany was.

You certainly could scare many a crow with your construction abilities.
I don't believe the people of Europe will be reduced to serfs but they will no longer be able to control the destiny of their nations and their economic fortunes will be subverted for German interest.

As for their inability to conquer Europe, with France beaten who will prevent it, answer me that question which you seem to continually overlook.

[Patrick Degan]

Bullshit. Germany's vision encompassed Belgium, Luxembourg, and Holland, with only Luxembourg being outright annexed, and the neutralisation of France and Russia. They had no plans to invade Switzerland (an unrealistic proposition given the natural obstacle of the Alps and Switzerland's own army which was quite capable of closing off the passes), Italy, (they'd have had to go through the Austro-Hungarian Empire first) or any of the Scandanavian countries. As it was, in 1914, their only real war aim was to roll-up the French army and capture Paris in what they hoped would be a quick victory just as they enjoyed in 1870. They might have gotten it if Von Molkte hadn't fucked up the Schlieffen Plan.

They played to annex Lux, the channel ports, cripple France for all time and maybe let Belgium survive.

They weren't at all planning to annex the Channel ports! Where are you getting this bullshit from, because I've never read it in any history of Imperial Germany or the Great War.

They also made it clear that all of Europe would join a union which was in reality run from Germany for Germany and that methods would be sought to bring the Dutch closer to Germany.

Which you've automatically interpreted to be military conquest of the Continent. Sorry, but personal interpretation is not evidence no matter how much you believe it is.

The Germans were aiming for complete continental dominance and with no body around to stop them they would have achieved such.

An alleged theory which the Great War disproved very bloodily and which showed the limits of German capability. I'm sorry if fact doesn't suit you, and even your own source contradicts your thesis in this area:

German war guilt?
In the 1960s a German historian, Fritz Fischer, argued that Germany had to bear the main responsibility for the outbreak of the war. Fischer's three main theses were: 1) that the German government under the Kaiser's direction deemed a European war inevitable since 1911/12, prepared for war, and decided to seize the next opportunity to start it. Fischer points out the expansive aims of the industry and Junkers; 2) that the German government and general staff precipitated an escalation of the Austro-Serb crisis in order to launch what they considered a preventive strike against Russia and France. If war did not come about, Germany at least hoped to weaken the Entente and win a moral victory that would increase the prestige and stability of Germany and the Habsburg Empire. Bethmann embraced a calculated risk of escalation; 3) that a long-term continuity existed in German aims for expansion, leading right up to the Second World War: an eastern empire, predominance over Belgium and France.

Argument 2) is widely accepted, although it would be wrong to exculpate Austria-Hungary and Russia. Argument 1) lacks proof with regard to war preparations and 3) needs a lot of specification because it makes too much of superficial similarities between German war aims in the two world wars (the racial agenda, for instance, played no significant role in 1914-1918). In any case, the German government, as all others, did not expect a war of attrition. Domestic calculations, occasionally mentioned by Fischer, played a limited role: Bethmann tried to draw Russia into the war as the aggressor in order to overcome the SPD's antiwar feeling, but no immediate domestic crisis existed from which he would have had to escape. More severe domestic crises existed in Russia, Austria, and even in Britain.

Some actual evidence of the attitudes to which you attribute to the Imperial German government to back your little what-if. It's already been pointed out that Germany was in many ways no worse, and in some ways a little better, in their conduct as a colonial power in that time than their main rivals.

No it hasn't, what has happened is a justification of them.

In a word, bullshit.

They were worse in colonial matters than Britain and France (but not Belgium and possibly the Dutch), which means an increase in German colonial possession is a bad thing.

You've already disproven your own argument at its base by admitting that Belgium and Holland treated their colonial populations worse than the Germans did, and offer no scrap of proof for the proposition that Germany would have gotten worse with time beyond your continual assertion that it would.

Yes they had universal male suffrage, for a severally weakened legislative body that had little control over what actually went on.

Then how do you explain the passage here that contradicts your thesis:

Conclusions:
The Wilhelmine Empire on the eve of the First World War appears as both a modern and conservative society. It had a thriving industry, a flourishing intellectual and artistic life, and probably the best universities and schools of the world. On the other hand, access to education and upper-level jobs was restricted to men of middle and upper-class background, many of the new approaches in the arts were rejected by the state authorities (which often made them more notable), and there was some discrimination. The landed nobility of the regions east of the Elbe River held privileged positions in the army and the state apparatus and enjoyed a degree of political power incommensurate with its numerical and economic importance. Elections to the diet of the single states privileged property owners, and the democratically elected Reichstag had little power. But there was much talk of suffrage reform above all in Prussia, and the Reichstag became more vocal and influential after 1890 by making better use of its powers. In an age of millions of industrial workers and mass armies it was probably impossible to maintain a semi-autocratic government system in the long run. But how would change have come about? Could the Second Empire have become more constitutional and democratic through peaceful reform, as the moderate SPD members and the liberals hoped? Or was a violent clash inevitable, as the more radical socialists and some conservatives believed? Historians still disagree. The Empire was reformed in October 1918, but democratic concessions were made under the threat of military defeat and revolution.

Compared to other states around 1914, however, living conditions in Germany were safe and stable. There was rather little repression, and the Wilhelmine Empire seemed a livable place for the vast majority of the population. Diplomatically, Germany was not in an enviable position (having no strong allies), and politically it became clear that at some point a reform of the system would be hard to postpone. Many conservative critics were alarmed at the new trends in the arts, in thinking, and in the development of the socialist and the women's movements. But to see Wilhelmine Germany as a state in severe crisis intent on "escaping" into war, as some historians have done, would probably have seemed strange to most contemporaries.

The idea that the house of Lords makes Britain's democracy worse than Germany's is laughable, Parliment in Britain was the engine of power and power existed mainly in the Commons (and totally by the war).

The Lords could still veto legislation passed by the Commons in 1914.

Germany was worse than the others except Russia which was a full out autocracy.

Um, ahem:

Compared to other states around 1914, however, living conditions in Germany were safe and stable. There was rather little repression, and the Wilhelmine Empire seemed a livable place for the vast majority of the population. Diplomatically, Germany was not in an enviable position (having no strong allies), and politically it became clear that at some point a reform of the system would be hard to postpone.

Nice way to duck the point.

I haven't noticed any point to your posts thus far.

Denial does not a rebuttal make.

And the historical evidence for Imperial death-camps and systematised genocidal slaughter exists where? Elsewise, you've just given us a nice little Golden Mean Fallacy.

This is a rather poor showing

Then you should try putting up a better argument.

you continue to strawman my position, I have made it very clear (although apparently not enough for you) that Imperial Germany was not as bad as Nazi Germany but they were bad and they will go on for longer if they win.

No, you just keep asserting that it would with no scrap of proof to back your assertions. As for "strawmaning your position", it is you who keeps putting up a ludicrous portrait of Imperial Germany which does not in any way, shape, or form matches with the known historical facts of the Wilhelmine Empire but assumes a straight line progression to the logical extreme of your position: Nazi Germany. How does one strawman a strawman?

You tried floating this nonsensical bullshit with Perinquus several months ago and it's no more valid today than it was then.

Indeed it is exactly as valid now as then.

Yes, it is:

The third option, fleet building without any commitment to Britain, involved a high risk. Historians have argued that fleet building against Britain made the encirclement of Germany and Austria by the other great powers a logical development. Probably it was not only fleet building itself, but the anti-British propaganda used by the German admirals, that made German naval buildup poisonous for the relations between London and Berlin. For a long time it seemed possible that the Royal Navy would destroy the German fleet within the five to ten years it needed to become strong enough to defend itself. Such British action would have represented an act of international piracy, but that did not prevent it from being discussed by high officials of the Royal Navy. Something like a precedent for such an action existed: in a surprise coup in 1807 the British had captured the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in order to prevent the French from taking it over. Denmark at the time was a neutral country but was about to be forced into the French orbit. Fears of a new "Copenhagen" were widespread among German leaders from 1904 to 1910. Some of them therefore repeatedly hoped to bargain naval limitations for a political rapprochement with London, thus to switch over to the second option. But alienation between Germany and Britain and British agreements with Germany's antagonists soon prevented this alternative.

Tirpitz's commitment to battleships:
As mentioned before, fleet building was a delicate issue in German domestic politics, too. Until 1897, when Tirpitz was appointed naval minister, Wilhelm II and his advisors had tried to have the Reichstag approve money for as many ships as possible (the Reichstag still had yearly budgetary power over the navy; the army budget was determined only every fifth year). These efforts to enlargen the fleet all lacked success since the German navy had no convincing strategic concept for a role beyond coastal defense and because the army was considered the mainstay of German defense.

Tirpitz, however, had a long-term concept. First, he wanted to invest heavily in one form of vessel: the heavy battleship. Coal still being the essential ship fuel, shipbuilders had two options: they could build cruisers with large coal bunkers but fewer guns and thin armament. These cruisers could travel far without having to recoal. They were fast and mobile but vulnerable in a big sea battle. The other option was to concentrate on heavy battleships. With small coal bunkers but heavy armament and the most powerful guns, these vessels could destroy cruisers, but due to their limited range they had to remain near the home waters or coaling stations overseas. Tirpitz claimed that Germany, having few naval bases overseas, was best advised to concentrate battleships in the North Sea and the Baltic.

This decision was crucial because it created a concentration of sea power that, according to historian Paul Kennedy, would put a sharp knife right at Britain's throat. Although Tirpitz was reluctant to admit it in public, he made it clear in private that the German battle fleet should be a lever for colonial concessions by the British Empire and a deterrent for a British attack. To those critics who argued that Tirpitz's battle fleet could neither defend Germany's overseas commerce nor its colonies Tirpitz replied that the mere existence of a strong battle fleet indirectly shielded German colonies and trade all over the world despite the battleships' narrow range of operation.

Battleship building relied on two strategic assumptions widely shared at the time: first, that a modern sea war would lead to an all-out battle in an early phase of war. This would allow the victorious power to sweep the enemy from the seas and thus gain a decisive advantage in any war. Second, the Germans and most others expected that the British, in case of war, would establish a blockade near the German coast. A powerful battle fleet would thus give the Germans enough opportunity to attack the enemy piecemeal and slowly reduce his superiority. The expected all-out battle, moreover, would take place near the German bases, which would give the Germans strategic advantages.

The navy laws:
Unlike his predecessors, Tirpitz decided to organize naval buildup by law. He thought that only a law establishing the size of the German fleet by class of vessels and the number of ships to be built within the next years would ensure continuous and consistent fleet building and avoid the need to barter the money for each ship against other requests by the parties in the Reichstag. A long-term plan, moreover, could convince the Reichstag deputies that Wilhelm II did not simply want more ships because he was fond of them ("luxury fleet"). Rather, Tirpitz suggested a systematic plan.

The first naval law, presented to the Reichstag in late 1897, succeeded and showed that Tirpitz was a highly effective politician. He assembled around him a "brain trust" for all strategic questions, and he staffed a bureau for public relations with clever experts who started a propaganda campaign for the navy law. Unlike most other German politicians of his time, Tirpitz took the Reichstag and the public seriously. In long discussions with Reichstag members he won the support of a majority of the deputies, who were impressed with his competent, rational argumentation and his charisma. The first navy law passed the Reichstag against the votes of the Social Democrats and the left liberals in March 1898. The decisive factor in this success was the backing of the Catholic Center Party.

The combination of massive propaganda and intensive negotiations with Reichstag members remained successful. In 1900 Tirpitz made use of widespread anti-English feeling in Germany provoked by the Boer War to demand further naval increases. Under public pressure, the Reichstag passed a second navy law which prescribed a doubling of the German fleet by 1907. It was the Second Navy Law which started to worry Britain. In 1905 the British introduced a new, heavier battleship, the "Dreadnought," and embarked on ambitious fleet building programs themselves. Tirpitz reacted by convincing the Reichstag to vote for further increases of the German navy in 1906, 1908, and 1912. He limited the service of his ships to 20 years, so he could replace the older ships by the new Dreadnought types.

Tirpitz' goal was a fleet of sixty-one capital ships (battleships and large cruisers) to be built by 1920. Given the replacement age of twenty years, three capital ships would be built every year. The navy would thus keep up its strength and become independent of the Reichstag's budgetary rights. By building a navy through law Tirpitz hoped to take direct control over shipbuilding away from the Reichstag. Historian Volker Berghahn argues that this was an assault on parliamentary rights in general and that Tirpitz wanted to stabilize the semi-authoritarian political system against the challenge of socialists and democrats, whereas critics of Berghahn have argued that Tirpitz merely wanted to achieve for the navy what the army had always taken for granted since Bismarck's days: relative independence from parliamentary constellations.

Tirpitz's strategic program:
Three terms are crucial for the strategic part of the Tirpitz plan: 'risk theory', 'alliance value', and 'danger zone.'

* 'Risk theory:' Tirpitz oriented his naval strategy toward the major sea power of his period, Britain. He expected that Germany would not need to outbuild the Royal Navy in order to pose a threat to Britain, since British sea power was committed worldwide. If the Royal Navy accepted a battle with a numerically inferior but modern German fleet, it would probably win, but it would suffer such heavy losses that another sea power -- presumably an ally of Germany or a rival of Britain -- would then be able to destroy the victorious British fleet. Thus Britain would run a risk if it went to war with Germany, and its diplomacy would have to take a more supportive attitude toward German colonial aims. A comparatively small but efficient German battle fleet concentrated in the North Sea would represent a diplomatic lever and deterrent. Tirpitz assumed that the German ships would be superior to the British vessels and that their crews would be better trained.

* The 'alliance value' of the fleet posited that a strong German fleet would make Germany an attractive ally for other rivals of Britain. Even if Germany's fleet-building program did not win new allies, Britain itself, for safety's sake, would maybe ask for an agreement with Germany. Tirpitz was sure that Britain would not be able to keep pace with Germany in a naval arms race. He believed that the strong influence of Parliament in London and, as he saw it, the selfish 'shop-keeper mentality' of the British people would refuse the great national sacrifice necessary to preserve naval hegemony. Thus fleet building would either win new allies for Germany or bring Britain around.

* The 'danger zone' meant the period during which the German fleet would not yet be strong enough to make an attack by the British fleet a significant risk (Copenhagen). Tirpitz advocated cautious diplomacy toward Britain, but he was in a quandary because his naval building program drew much popular support and a plausible justification from anti-English sentiment.

* No doubt, the fleet-building program was pointedly anti-English. Tirpitz was convinced that Germany could achieve world power only through rivalry with the British Empire. Since Germany had not many colonies and hardly any coaling stations cruiser warfare did not make sense. Germans could achieve world power only by concentrating a great battle fleet at a short distance from the strongest sea power.

The domestic goals of the Tirpitz Plan:
Berghahn sees the Tirpitz Plan as a deliberate strategy to divert demands for democratic reform and to counteract the rise of Social Democracy. The boom of heavy industry should enable employers to satisfy trade union demands without too much disadvantage, and fleet building might create a wave of national pride that would woo at least some workers away from socialism. I am not sure how much Tirpitz himself believed in this goal. He mentioned it often enough, but it is possible that he just expressed it to win the support of the Conservatives, who initially disliked fleet building because it strengthened industry and drew resources away from the army.

More important than the anti-Socialist bias of the navy laws was their effect on the alliance of iron and rye, which had been badly shaken in the Caprivi years. In the course of the debates about the two navy laws Tirpitz helped to restore the alignment of the Prussian agrarian nobility with the parties of the upper bourgeoisie and the industrialists as well as the Center Party. The government, with the help of Tirpitz and Bülow, won the Conservatives over by reintroducing protective agricultural tariffs. The first and second navy laws indeed helped the creation of a long-lasting governmental bloc in the Reichstag and thus enhanced political stability in Germany.

The failure of the Tirpitz Plan:
In the long run, the Tirpitz Plan reached almost none of its declared goals. If the risk theory had made sense in 1897, it became questionable as Britain concluded agreements with one rival sea power after the other (1902: treaty with Japan; 1904: Entente Cordiale with France; 1907: agreement with Russia). It was hard to imagine which fleet would now have an interest in destroying the remainders of the Royal Navy after its battle with the Germans. German fleet-building was an important factor in bringing about Germany's diplomatic isolation. British governments took up negotiations with Germany in 1908 and 1912, but they just wanted to stop the naval arms race and were not willing to conclude an alliance.

The idea to use the German fleet as a lever to receive colonial concessions from Britain also failed, since the British succeeded to preserve and even increase their naval superiority between 1904 and 1914. The German fleet never even became strong enough to leave behind the 'danger zone.' The British alliances, moreover, allowed the Royal Navy to concentrate most of its ships in home waters, and it became likely by 1911 that Britain would establish a far blockade instead of a narrow one. The German admiralty could not even take for granted that the British fleet would attack and seek the decisive battle in the first days or weeks of war. Thus not even a battle on conditions favorable to the German fleet seemed likely any more.

In its domestic aims the Tirpitz Plan was hardly more successful. The Social Democrats increased their vote in the elections of 1898 and 1903. In 1907 they were beaten after an electoral campaign which had centered on extreme nationalism and imperial expansion, but their loss was due more to their revived radicalism in the wake of the Russian revolution of 1905 than to nationalist propaganda. In 1912, however, the SPD reached its best result (with about a third of the vote) and became the largest party in the Reichstag. The Socialist trade unions grew even more in the period of fleet-building.

]But the most serious threat to domestic stability arose from the cost explosion in ship building. Tirpitz broke all his estimates, and fleet-building could not be financed any more from tax revenues after 1902. The government resorted to loans and tolerated a disturbing increase of the state deficit, particularly after Germany began to build Dreadnoughts in 1906. By 1911 the naval program threatened the pro-governmental alliance it had helped to bring about. It was clear that new taxes had to be introduced, but the tax question opened rifts among the parties which had supported fleet-building. Industrialists did not want to augment the tax load of the workers because that measure would have given additional fuel to Social Democratic propaganda. Moreover, the Conservatives and large groups within the other center to right parties felt that too many resources were diverted to the fleet at the expense of the army. To get a majority for the supplementary naval bill of 1912, Tirpitz for the first time had to make substantial concessions.

All in all, the Tirpitz Plan did not reach its declared aims and partly produced the opposite effects. When in December 1912 the German leadership began considering to wage a war at the next international crisis, Tirpitz had to admit that the fleet would not be ready for a war with Britain in the near future. Although he knew that British superiority would increase in the following years, he did not push for a start of war as soon as possible. It became clear to Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff, that German war plans for the immediate future had to disregard the fleet, and Tirpitz lost much of his prestige within the German leadership. When war broke out in August 1914 little more than half of the commissioned German ships were ready for combat. Although Tirpitz felt that the war was coming too early, he did not do anything to prevent it, which he could have tried, given the good information he had about the diplomatic negotiations.

As German intelligence reports had foretold, the Royal Navy remained in home waters and established a distant blockade in the Channel and the North Sea between Norway and Scotland. It was too dangerous for the German fleet to provoke a battle far from its bases, and the British, on their side, saw no advantage in risking battle by sending all their ships near the German coast.

Tirpitz almost had a nervous breakdown in the first weeks of the war. While it looked as if the army was on its way to a decisive victory, the fleet lay inactive in its ports. The irrelevance of the German fleet in this short war, he thought, would make it impossible for him to get funding for ships after the war.

A Germany which could not win a naval race with Britain, said race based upon strategic assumptions which became outmoded by 1910, and in the long run could not be sustained financially. That, I'd say, sinks your theadbare navy argument right there.

Imperial Germany was in no position to conquer the whole of Europe, and their fleet could be and actually was quite effectively blockaded simply by the British stationing their fleet at Scapa Flow. Nevermind the fact that Germany never quite got the concept of sea power as a strategic instrument and was reluctant to risk the destruction of its mighty battleships for the blow to German morale such a disaster would entail. And as for Britain's resources, it had the whole of its empire to draw upon and would have gotten additional material aid from the United States had it come down to it. As, in point of fact, it actually did.

And if somebody other than Wilson was in power, an Anglophobe perhaps?
And those resources are mainly raw materials and (here is the important point) are overseas, the Germans had a good go at starving us out before given a decade to build up I'm sure they would be upto the challenge (especially considering the exclusion from Europe is going to hurt the UK economy).

And the British had a better go at starving Germany out. Again, history demonstrates that you have no argument.

EDIT: The only "swift victory" Germany was aiming for was against France

And Belgium and Lux.

Wrong again:

The German war plans urged a fast knockout of the French army and then a turn to the eastern front. But to win quickly in the west the German armies needed to surround the French, which they could only do by marching through Belgium. The German government therefore tried to receive permission from Belgium to march through its territory, which the Belgians rejected. The Germans then sent an ultimatum to Belgium and invaded the country after Belgium rejected it.

This is not laying blame upon Belgium for not accomodating Germany, but demonstrating that an invasion was a secondary option, and one which did not involve invading Luxembourg as well —an option ultimately withdrawn from the Schlieffen Plan.

and not the whole bloody Continent. And as according to this little quote of yours:

Once France was beaten they intended to implement Mitteleuropa, which is German domination of Europe in fact whilst in theory all the nations remain independent and with no body to stop them I doubt they would have much compunction about forcing their views on uncooperative neighbours.

They also intended to create Vassal states in the East by carving huge amounts of Russia off.

A goal which manifested only after the beginning of the war and became realisable only because Russia collapsed into revolutionary chaos:

War aims:
War aims played a role in making a compromise peace impossible. We therefore need to examine the German plans for a post-war order. Unlike Fritz Fischer claims, Germany seems not to have entered the war in order to conquer specific territories. The Kaiser and his government were primarily concerned about preserving German and Austro-Hungarian great power status and, in the long run, about remaining competitive with the first-rate powers of the near future, Britain, Russia, and the United States. In the first months of the war, with German troops advancing toward Paris and defeating the first Russian armies, however, victory seemed within reach, and immediately politicians and economic interest groups started thinking about the terms of peace.

In early September 1914, while the German armies still seemed victorious, Bethmann drafted a list of war aims. He invited interest organizations and the military to voice their demands, and what came out of this was a long "shopping list" of expansive goals. Industrialists, in particular, wanted to annex parts of Belgium and Northern France for economic reasons. The French part of Lorraine and Belgium had coal and large iron ore mines. These regions formed an ideal economic unity with the huge coal fields and steel-producing areas in West Germany. Before the war German industry had imported much iron ore from Belgium and France to produce steel by using German coal. Many of the areas from which the industrialists in the Ruhr had imported their raw material now were occupied by German troops, and heavy industry wanted to keep them.

German Conservatives were more interested in Eastern expansion. They hoped to drive Russia back from the German border and to create a belt of buffer states in Eastern Europe. The army leaders, still in shock about the fast Russian advances into German territory in August 1914, supported these aims. The Conservatives also hoped to resettle Polish farmers further east in order to stop the growth of the Polish population in those parts of Poland that belonged to the German Empire. To the Conservatives an overwhelming victory with large annexations further promised to fan nationalism to such a degree that the existing social and political order could be stabilized.

Business circles, moreover, wanted to establish a huge customs union reaching from defeated France through Belgium and the Netherlands to Austria, Hungary, and the future Eastern European buffer states. Eager colonialist circles in the German administration also hoped to establish a large Central African empire under German control. In all these plans, France should be reduced to the status of a middle power, while Russia should be pushed far back into the east. This so-called September Program remained more or less unchanged throughout most of the war.

Its extreme expansionism has led historians to believe that Germans went to war in order to realize it, but there is little evidence for this. It rather seems as if the German power elites came to the conclusion that the outbreak of the war had shown how vulnerable their state was and that it needed extensive territorial guaranties to avoid being isolated and face strong enemies on two sides ever again. In the Darwinist thinking of the period, moreover, many Germans were afraid to lose out against the huge potential of the British overseas empire and Russia's vast land empire, not to speak about the still partly dormant potential of the United States.

Although the aggressiveness of this program is beyond dispute, several arguments must be considered. Since the military leaders kept information about the real situation to a minimum, those who advocated it had no realistic image of Germany's potential for winning the war. This is not an excuse for the character of the annexationist program, but it explains its lacking realism. Moreover, many Germans opposed such far-reaching war aims and preferred to end the war even if the result would not bring large expansion. The Social Democrats, the Left Liberals, and later in the war the Catholic Center Party challenged the aggressive war aims of the industrialists and the Right. The government, finally, never committed itself to anything. It had ordered the September Program as an informal hearing in order to learn about the opinion of the economic and military elites.

Bethmann for a while even repressed the public discussion of war aims through stricter censorship because it undermined the Burgfrieden and threatened to limit his latitude, should a real opportunity for negotiated peace arise. This caused widespread irritation in right-wing circles. Pan-Germans and conservatives were not used to seeing censorship applied to them rather than to the Left. From late 1914 on, the Right saw Bethmann as a weak leader who could not be trusted as an effective representative of conservative interest. Rightists repeatedly tried to induce Wilhelm II to dismiss him and appoint a more aggressive nationalist in his place (such as Tirpitz, Falkenhayn, or Ludendorff).

Finally, war aims existed on both sides and made a compromise peace nearly impossible for all sides. By the Germans and their enemies alike, the situation before August 1914 was regarded as highly unsatisfactory and as a cause of the war. Both sides needed victory to remove or even reduce the threats that had supposedly made life uncomfortable before the war. The Germans did not want to go back to diplomatic encirclement and to the threat of a two-front attack. The French did not want to back out of the war without having at least won Alsace-Lorraine and weakened Germany. The British remained concerned about the German fleet and would in any case have demanded complete restoration of Belgium. Russia had been promised huge areas in the Balkans and the right to occupy the Dardanelles. Italy wanted territory from Austria, some of which was not inhabited by Italians. Britain and France promised independence to almost all minorities of the Habsburg monarchy. After the Russian Revolution had broken out they promised a future Polish national state including German territory settled by Poles and some areas settled by Germans. The British and French also made arrangements for Jewish and Arab autonomy in Palestine, a Turkish province. None of these goals could be reached before the enemy was defeated.

War aims had a peculiar dynamic. Italy, for instance, negotiated with both sides before entering the war in 1915 and -- naturally -- decided to ally with those countries that could promise the maximum. In order to keep Russia fighting and in order to help stabilize the democratic system arising in the spring of 1917 against leftist revolutionaries, the western powers promised first the Tsar and later the democratic governments more and more territory at the expense of the Central Powers. The Entente's assurances to the Austro-Hungarian nationalities were a special case of war aims: they belonged to the same kind of revolutionizing strategy as the dispatch of Lenin to Russia by the German High Command or German support for Irish independence fighters. The longer the war lasted, the more national governments emphasized that the enemy would have to cover their own astronomic war expenses through reparations and territorial losses. "Le Boche payera tout," ("the Boche [derogatory term for German] will pay for everything") said the French, while the Germans wanted industrial and economic advantage to the same effect. These plans were short-sighted, however, because the enemy would be bankrupt in any case.

Needless to say, the military situation did not make the German plans for the domination of Continental Europe a realistic option. The victories in the east, however, enabled the German army in 1918 to build up a vast network of buffer states that claimed independence from the crumbling Russian Empire (such as Ukraine and the Baltic states). The Germans tried to secure badly needed supplies in those areas, and Ludendorff dreamt of a vast Germanic colonial empire in Eastern Europe that smacks of later plans by the Nazis. But nothing of the sort was realized, and it is doubtful whether Ludendorff would have found enough support for his extreme plans. It was also clear that Germany in the long run would have become the dominant power on the Balkans; the Austro-Hungarian army since 1914 fought with massive German help; if the war had ended with a draw in the west the Habsburg monarchy as well as most Balkan states might soon have become militarily and economically dependent of Germany.

Germany was in no position to win the war, and even if it had would have faced committments which would have burdened it with additional ruinous debt as well as bogging down its military forces simply to preserve a new status-quo.

it is you who is talking about Germany conquering Europe wholesale and stifling democracy for 60 years. You opened the door to attack on this point and it's far too late for you to try to close it now.

I know what I said but your take on it is completely twisting it, your intent is to strawman my position as saying Nazi Germany was near identical to imperial Germany. Such was not the case and I have not said so, in fact I have made it clear that is not my position three times now and people in this thread figured out all by themselves without having to walked through it slowly. You unfortunately have failed to do so.

Appeal to Popularity Fallacy: and it seems that those who have walked in have found far more fault with your own position than mine, which makes it even more comical. And as you've been putting up a caricature of Imperial Germany from the get-go, it's not really possible to strawman a strawman. Furthermore, the strawman is entirely your own: I said that you confuse the two states, not that the one was near-identical to the other. And finally, it seems you've a lot more reading to do on the lecture you tried to put up as backing for your crumbling position, because it was all to easy to find material in the body of the text to knock out its supports.

[Stuart Mackey]

The root of the "misunderstanding" seems to be Darkling's confusion of Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany while ignoring what Imperial Germany actually was and wasn't capable of, and how they actually treated colonial populations as well as persons in occupied territory in history.

To be honest I am not sure that the Germans could have done more than they did in France 1914. IIRC they were at the very limits of their logistical abilities and simple human endurance, with the allies falling back on their own supply dumps.

The question really centers on what would have been possible if Von Moltke had not transferred some 6 corps and withheld another 3 for service on the Eastern Front. Moreover the decision to attack (or rather "Pursue direction Epinal" IIRC) after France's own counterattack completely stalled might have altered things. In the later case it would have tied down a notable portion of the French reserve while allowing a tranfser of troops away from the defensive lines. Essentially the question is would the additional forces have allowed a continuing leapfrog attack that could have sustained a greater advance.

Or if they, the Germans, had limited themselves to more realistic goals from the start instead of the great right wing walkathon? Of cource that would have ment that that the planning of the General Staff woud need to be a bit more imaginative.

The point is a very debatable one comparing the ability of those extra corps to relieve in place other units and moving the whole force further forward (enough to encircle Paris as in 1870) or whether the overworked supply lines, rail supply terminated essentially at the Belgian border, simply could not maintain any more of an advance. Its been a while since I've looked at it but personally so long as fresh troops can keep moving forward I could and would keep pushing an army forward, in the end just coming within artillery range (normal artillery mind you) of Paris may have been enough to cause a capitulation and a settlement by the end of September or the beginning of October.

If they wanted to do that it would have ment slowing down the offensive to ensure extra troops can be supplied beyoned the point of the railheads. Slowing down the offensive would give Joffere time to react, and that would have been unnaceptable.

Assuming all that possible (and its about the only reasonable course that leads to German victory) Germany will not posses enough territory (nor will they have been able to effectively enough lock up the channel ports) to enforce a total domination of France. Rather they will have the leverage to take additional territory, gain a dmilitarized zone, and generally let the French stew in their defeat much as they had in 1870. Moreover a swift victory at this point would essentially keep Britain from being a major factor in negotiations. In other words France would certainly lose a bit but Britain (which to this point had only engaged the rather tiny BEF under French) would almost certainly have retained the empire and thus continued to stifle Germany from becmoing a world dominating power. As with any other era in history British control of the seas will leave them a dominant player and while Russia will have taken a beating from their advances they have virtually no real territorial loses. Though we might assume revolution it is important to note that the Bolsheviks were a tiny minority within the framework of the revolution and denied Lenin it is entirely plausible to believe that Russia would have emerged as a socialist democratic republic or retained its monarchy a while longer rather than fallen to the extreme of Leninism.

I think that any kind of dominance on the continant by one power will be opposed by Britian out of principle, and in this instance things would be a rehash of the preceeding how many hundreds of years?

In general I am quite willing to trade the possibility that the Germans will rule with a degree of prejudice (and yet greater democracy an odd combination) larger swaths of Europe for the known horrors of Stalinism/Leninism/Maoism/Nazism that wracked the world with tens of millions of deaths over the course of the decades before and after WWII (or Part 2 of the Great European Civil War).

I think you would just end up with a rehash of the Napolonic wars, as Britian will never tolerate one nation dominating Europe.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

ts extreme expansionism has led historians to believe that Germans went to war in order to realize it, but there is little evidence for this. It rather seems as if the German power elites came to the conclusion that the outbreak of the war had shown how vulnerable their state was and that it needed extensive territorial guaranties to avoid being isolated and face strong enemies on two sides ever again. In the Darwinist thinking of the period, moreover, many Germans were afraid to lose out against the huge potential of the British overseas empire and Russia's vast land empire, not to speak about the still partly dormant potential of the United States.

Wasn't I told earlier that Darwinism of the period had nothing to do with WW1?

[Patrick Degan]

Then why do you characterise Imperial Germany in much the same manner as Nazi Germany, despite the fact that the former did not and was not about to practise atrocities anywhere near the same scale as the latter, nor was about to or even had the capacity to conquer the whole of Europe?

They did exterminate 80% of a racial group in camps set up by a man named Goering and they did brutalise resisting (and non resisting) peoples in Europe, the difference is one of scale, I think the scale will increase with German power (although not up to Nazi levels) and will continue for longer, things in Africa are going to get alot worse.

And you claim you're not making this caricature?! YOU JUST PREFACED YOUR FUCKING STATEMENT RIGHT HERE BY BRINGING UP NAZI ATROCITIES as part of arguing how bad Imperial Germany MIGHT get according to your own half-assed assumptions.

EDIT ADDENDUM: Oh, and BTW, whatever Goering's role was in setting up the first concentration camps, the extermination programme and the management of the death camps during the implementation of the Final Solution was in the hands of the SS, run by a man called Himmler.

As for ruling all of Europe, those were German terms at the time of the Marne which was their theoretical victory point being discussed.

Nice. So because "some Germans" discussed a theory, this proves that this was actual Imperial policy, when this:

Although the aggressiveness of this program is beyond dispute, several arguments must be considered. Since the military leaders kept information about the real situation to a minimum, those who advocated it had no realistic image of Germany's potential for winning the war. This is not an excuse for the character of the annexationist program, but it explains its lacking realism. Moreover, many Germans opposed such far-reaching war aims and preferred to end the war even if the result would not bring large expansion. The Social Democrats, the Left Liberals, and later in the war the Catholic Center Party challenged the aggressive war aims of the industrialists and the Right. The government, finally, never committed itself to anything. It had ordered the September Program as an informal hearing in order to learn about the opinion of the economic and military elites.

(ADDENDUM)
Bethmann for a while even repressed the public discussion of war aims through stricter censorship because it undermined the Burgfrieden and threatened to limit his latitude, should a real opportunity for negotiated peace arise. This caused widespread irritation in right-wing circles. Pan-Germans and conservatives were not used to seeing censorship applied to them rather than to the Left. From late 1914 on, the Right saw Bethmann as a weak leader who could not be trusted as an effective representative of conservative interest. Rightists repeatedly tried to induce Wilhelm II to dismiss him and appoint a more aggressive nationalist in his place (such as Tirpitz, Falkenhayn, or Ludendorff).

—states directly that the Imperial Government was uncommitted to any particular set of war aims, and forbade public discussion of the so-called September Plan.

I hate to have to tell you this, but so were all the colonial powers at that time.

Britain wasn't militant nor particularly racist with regard to other Europeans, the German state was a function of the military whereas in the other European countries it was the other way around.

Oh really:

Second, nationalism in most countries became more aggressive and more antagonistic to members of other nations. It often blended with an arrogant racism. Many English people felt to belong to the supreme race in the world, so did many French, Germans, Russians, and Italians. This racism was imported into the political realm from biology and included Darwinist elements. The world appeared as a fighting ground of ruthless enemies, where only the fittest could survive. Compassion, morality, and forgiveness seemed inadequate forms of behavior between nations; instead readiness for war seemed the only appropriate attitude.

Are you sure that's your final answer?

An elected parliament, universal (male) sufferage, and clear limitations on the power of the throne. Sorry, but that is hardly "undemocratic" by any definition, and the Reichtag was not the rubber-stamp body that it was under the Nazis.

There was no constraints placed upon the throne, his right to dismiss and even disband the Reichstag was right there. He had veto power over all legislation, he appointed those who proposed legislation and he could dismiss the legislature on a whim and that legislature had virtually no control over the military and non over foreign affairs.

You're so full of bullshit it's flowing out of your ears. The only way Wilhelm could have disbanded the Reichstag was through a coup d'etat; he shared power with the Bundesrat, and as World War I dragged on, he was rendered increasingly impotent on the throne. That's fact, whether that suits you or not.

The Reichstag had very little power indeed and even a passing glance at the setup would reveal that fact.

And yet its laws were passed and remained in force, its influence grew even within the bounds of the Constitution of 1871, and it controlled the army budget quintennally and the navy budget annually.

Their actions in Belgium had nothing to do with racism but putting down resistance to the occupation, and everybody had less regard for nonwhites. Or shall we review Britain's history in India and Africa for a comparison?

Britain never deliberately committed genocide like Imperial Germany did and it wasn't about putting down rebellion it was about putting fear into the population, something that wasn't done amongst civilised powers.

And you insist you're not confusing Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany. Genocide now, is it? Perhaps you would care to cite a credible source which labels Imperial Germany's actions by that particular crime, because that's also something I've never read in any history of World War I. The figures I have indicate that the total military and civilian dead listed for Belgium was 50,000. Nor have I ever read that the German military carried out systemitised programmes of slaughter aimed specifically at reducing the Belgian population to a decimated remnant or outright extermination either.

For which you have provided exactly zero evidence as a support. They believed in the triumph of German nationalism, not in the theory of the Master Race. That's Nazism's trademark.

Silly notions of racial superiority were already floating about and finding fertile ground however seeing themselves as the chosen nation makes little difference because it also means they see non German citizens as inferior.

Hasty Generalisation Fallacy. A belief in Social Darwinism and nationalistic chauvanism is nowhere near the same as an overarching theory of the Master Race.

For which you again provide zero evidence beyond your continual assertions that it must be so. Doubly so the proposition that Imperial Germany was gunning for Britain.

Germany would have ruled all of Europe, why allow Britain to remain outside their control when they wouldn't allow Russia or France to do so.

As they were not even aiming at controlling Russia or France, and had no expectation of reducing Britain even at the extremes of the September Plan, you have no support for what is becoming an increasingly ludicruos argument. Furthermore, you still provide no evidence to back your idiotic assertions which seem to be repackaging Britain's idiotic anti-German propaganda of the period rather than having any basis in historical fact.

No, you just pretend that Imperial Germany will be as bad a conquering, racist power reducing whole national populations to serfdom (despite the fact that they had neither the ambition nor the capacity to accomplish this) as Nazi Germany was.

You certainly could scare many a crow with your construction abilities.

You can't strawman an argument which is already a strawman to begin with.

I don't believe the people of Europe will be reduced to serfs but they will no longer be able to control the destiny of their nations and their economic fortunes will be subverted for German interest.

Assuming such a fantasy was ever realisable in the first place, as events have demonstrated that it wasn't. Again, sorry if fact doesn't suit you.

As for their inability to conquer Europe, with France beaten who will prevent it, answer me that question which you seem to continually overlook.

Britain, for a start. The United States, whom the Germans were vary wary of —particularly of the possibility of an Anglo-American alliance. Again, we must review this:

Yet, the missing army corps weakened the German advance in France. In the second week of September the French army, supported by a quickly formed British expeditionary force, mounted a counterattack against the German right wing at the Marne River, some 35 miles northeast of Paris. Suffering from poor communications and exhaustion after long marches and hard fighting, the German armies had to stop their advance. The Schlieffen Plan had failed. Moltke, who had watered it down by narrowing the encirclement movement and by weakening the right wing on the western front, suffered a nervous breakdown and resigned.

Whatever its military merits, the Schlieffen Plan, whether in the original or revised version, had proven a disaster. The German generals had underestimated the speed of Russian mobilization but overestimated the fighting force of the Russian armies. While the Germans had shared gloomy visions of a Russian steam-roller crushing them, the huge Russian armies of the First World War proved ill-prepared for a modern war. Their equipment was scarce and outmoded, their organization and communications were bad. The overestimation of the Russian army in the First World War led to the equally fatal underestimation of the Soviet army in the Second. But one of the worst results of the Schlieffen Plan was that it drew Britain into the war. It may be doubtful whether Britain could have stood aside in any case, but the German invasion of neutral Belgium made British involvement unavoidable and loaded Germany with the odium of international crime. The rapid deployment of British forces to France helped the French avoid the encirclement of their troops.

To be sure, if we analyze the mistakes of the German General Staff we have to consider that general staffs in other countries made fateful mistakes, too. The French knew about the Schlieffen Plan but made no preparations to deploy troops to the Belgian border or into Belgium. The Russian army command made dramatic mistakes in East Prussia. But the gap between the assets and liabilities of the Schlieffen Plan in Moltke's version was particularly large. Given its failure and the fact of British hostility, to insiders the war seemed lost for Germany. There seemed to be no way to replace imports of raw materials and food, as the British closed off the passages to the North Sea.

And:

Meanwhile, the German submarines obviously had failed to reach their goal. Although they torpedoed almost exactly as many ships as the admirals had predicted for the first six months of unrestricted submarine warfare, Britain was not defeated at all. Americans and British together built many new ships and learned to protect their merchant navies by forming big convoys, so that unrestricted submarine warfare became inefficient by the end of 1917. While Russia was finally defeated, the supply situation in the Central Powers deteriorated further. The winter 1917-18 once again brought famine to many families. Workers grew restive; strikes broke out in such sensitive sectors as the munitions production. The success of the Bolsheviks boosted radical socialist propaganda in Germany and Austria. Many workers felt that the war should come to an end and that only the German capitalists wanted to continue it in order to secure the conquest of lucrative regions for themselves. Tensions heightened also between the German single states. Many Bavarians, for instance, held Prussia responsible for prolonging the war out of dynastic interests.

And, of course:

The failure of the Tirpitz Plan:
In the long run, the Tirpitz Plan reached almost none of its declared goals. If the risk theory had made sense in 1897, it became questionable as Britain concluded agreements with one rival sea power after the other (1902: treaty with Japan; 1904: Entente Cordiale with France; 1907: agreement with Russia). It was hard to imagine which fleet would now have an interest in destroying the remainders of the Royal Navy after its battle with the Germans. German fleet-building was an important factor in bringing about Germany's diplomatic isolation. British governments took up negotiations with Germany in 1908 and 1912, but they just wanted to stop the naval arms race and were not willing to conclude an alliance.

The idea to use the German fleet as a lever to receive colonial concessions from Britain also failed, since the British succeeded to preserve and even increase their naval superiority between 1904 and 1914. The German fleet never even became strong enough to leave behind the 'danger zone.' The British alliances, moreover, allowed the Royal Navy to concentrate most of its ships in home waters, and it became likely by 1911 that Britain would establish a far blockade instead of a narrow one. The German admiralty could not even take for granted that the British fleet would attack and seek the decisive battle in the first days or weeks of war. Thus not even a battle on conditions favorable to the German fleet seemed likely any more.

In its domestic aims the Tirpitz Plan was hardly more successful. The Social Democrats increased their vote in the elections of 1898 and 1903. In 1907 they were beaten after an electoral campaign which had centered on extreme nationalism and imperial expansion, but their loss was due more to their revived radicalism in the wake of the Russian revolution of 1905 than to nationalist propaganda. In 1912, however, the SPD reached its best result (with about a third of the vote) and became the largest party in the Reichstag. The Socialist trade unions grew even more in the period of fleet-building.

But the most serious threat to domestic stability arose from the cost explosion in ship building. Tirpitz broke all his estimates, and fleet-building could not be financed any more from tax revenues after 1902. The government resorted to loans and tolerated a disturbing increase of the state deficit, particularly after Germany began to build Dreadnoughts in 1906. By 1911 the naval program threatened the pro-governmental alliance it had helped to bring about. It was clear that new taxes had to be introduced, but the tax question opened rifts among the parties which had supported fleet-building. Industrialists did not want to augment the tax load of the workers because that measure would have given additional fuel to Social Democratic propaganda. Moreover, the Conservatives and large groups within the other center to right parties felt that too many resources were diverted to the fleet at the expense of the army. To get a majority for the supplementary naval bill of 1912, Tirpitz for the first time had to make substantial concessions.

All in all, the Tirpitz Plan did not reach its declared aims and partly produced the opposite effects. When in December 1912 the German leadership began considering to wage a war at the next international crisis, Tirpitz had to admit that the fleet would not be ready for a war with Britain in the near future. Although he knew that British superiority would increase in the following years, he did not push for a start of war as soon as possible. It became clear to Helmuth von Moltke, the Chief of the General Staff, that German war plans for the immediate future had to disregard the fleet, and Tirpitz lost much of his prestige within the German leadership. When war broke out in August 1914 little more than half of the commissioned German ships were ready for combat. Although Tirpitz felt that the war was coming too early, he did not do anything to prevent it, which he could have tried, given the good information he had about the diplomatic negotiations.

As German intelligence reports had foretold, the Royal Navy remained in home waters and established a distant blockade in the Channel and the North Sea between Norway and Scotland. It was too dangerous for the German fleet to provoke a battle far from its bases, and the British, on their side, saw no advantage in risking battle by sending all their ships near the German coast.

Tirpitz almost had a nervous breakdown in the first weeks of the war. While it looked as if the army was on its way to a decisive victory, the fleet lay inactive in its ports. The irrelevance of the German fleet in this short war, he thought, would make it impossible for him to get funding for ships after the war.

You see, you can just keep spewing bullshit and I'll just keep beating you up with the facts each and every time.

[Stuart Mackey]

The Lords could still veto legislation passed by the Commons in 1914.

Just a point..at this point in time, the power of the Lords to veto was tenuous at best, as the PM could, and would ask, the monarch, for the the creation of enough Peers to override that threat. That request was one that the Monarch was bound by constitional convention to grant.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Why is he using a source I was told earlier was bullshit and contradictory???

My sources came from colby.edu, and they were deemed "a mixed batch.."

[TheDarkling]

And you claim you're not making this caricature?! YOU JUST PREFACED YOUR FUCKING STATEMENT RIGHT HERE BY BRINGING UP NAZI ATROCITIES as part of arguing how bad Imperial Germany MIGHT get according to your own half-assed assumptions.

Actually I was talking about Imperial Germany, they exterminated 80% of an African tribe (65,000 people) in death camps run by Goerings father.

You getting the point yet chief?

I know that you will try and worm out of it but you yourself just confused the two because they carried out very similar actions just different in scale.

Your statement above badly discredits your argument but let us continue.

EDIT ADDENDUM: Oh, and BTW, whatever Goering's role was in setting up the first concentration camps, the extermination programme and the management of the death camps during the implementation of the Final Solution was in the hands of the SS, run by a man called Himmler.

I am well aware of that, read what I was actually saying.

—states directly that the Imperial Government was uncommitted to any particular set of war aims, and forbade public discussion of the so-called September Plan.

They remained unchanged throughout the war and when offered a return to the status quo in 1916 they refused, their action with regard to the Russians also bare out the idea that they were out for big gains.

You have nothing and I have historical fact.

Are you sure that's your final answer?

Yes, there is a difference between feeling culturally superior and thinking yourself close to being the master race.

British people weren't executing people in Belgium nor well they committing genocide in Africa.

You're so full of bullshit it's flowing out of your ears. The only way Wilhelm could have disbanded the Reichstag was through a coup d'etat; he shared power with the Bundesrat, and as World War I dragged on, he was rendered increasingly impotent on the throne. That's fact, whether that suits you or not.

It is in the constitution, your ignorance does not constitute a credible argument.

And yet its laws were passed and remained in force, its influence grew even within the bounds of the Constitution of 1871, and it controlled the army budget quintennally and the navy budget annually.

Control of the Army budget every five years when the executive is appointed by the Kiaser isn't a democracy.
The Reichstag was a very weak organ and everything in any text book will bare this out, the Kaiser was the power with the Reichstag as something which existed at his sufferance.

And you insist you're not confusing Imperial Germany with Nazi Germany. Genocide now, is it? Perhaps you would care to cite a credible source which labels Imperial Germany's actions by that particular crime, because that's also something I've never read in any history of World War I.

Indeed I will, and will you then admit I was not doing what you were accusing me of and that in fact you were wrong on this particular sub-issue.

I doubt it.

http://www.goacom.com/overseas-digest/C ... ro1904.htm

There is plenty more where that came from, it isn't like it is a secret.

The figures I have indicate that the total military and civilian dead listed for Belgium was 50,000. Nor have I ever read that the German military carried out systemitised programmes of slaughter aimed specifically at reducing the Belgian population to a decimated remnant or outright extermination either.

Nor did I say they did, I did not say they committed genocide in Belgium, in Belgium they just torched a few towns and put a few innocent people up against the wall.
It was in Africa that they went wild(that would be where the non-white part comes in, since Africa has a lot of them, just incase you couldn't follow that).

Hasty Generalisation Fallacy. A belief in Social Darwinism and nationalistic chauvanism is nowhere near the same as an overarching theory of the Master Race.

No but that was already being said in many German circles.

As they were not even aiming at controlling Russia or France, and had no expectation of reducing Britain even at the extremes of the September Plan, you have no support for what is becoming an increasingly ludicruos argument.

France was to be stripped of its military and key ports along with it's ore fields, they would also be forced in mitteleuropa, all of this amount to domination of France.

If you want to split hairs about Russia then go ahead.

Furthermore, you still provide no evidence to back your idiotic assertions which seem to be repackaging Britain's idiotic anti-German propaganda of the period rather than having any basis in historical fact.

Where have I done so?

You can't strawman an argument which is already a strawman to begin with.

It isn't, you have failed to prove it and have demonstrated an ignorance of history (I'm sure your comments at the beginning of the post must really hurt, what with not only showing you ignorance but you yourself finding Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany virtually indicating, must really hurt).

Assuming such a fantasy was ever realisable in the first place, as events have demonstrated that it wasn't. Again, sorry if fact doesn't suit you.

*Yawn*

The POD was set, you continue to run around ignoring this fact in a desperate effort to not admit you made a mistake.

Britain, for a start.

Britain couldn't fight a land war on its own, that was why we got involved in the first place. Try again.

The United States, whom the Germans were vary wary of —particularly of the possibility of an Anglo-American alliance.

The US was unreliable to say the least, you honestly think they will declare war on a Germany that has just been victorious in WW1 after only a year or so.

Snipped Yet more irrelevant Information put about in an effort to make you position seem sound

Get it through you head, the POD is a German victory in the Great War at Marne, that is what I am arguing is bad and what you are arguing against.

You see, you can just keep spewing bullshit and I'll just keep beating you up with the facts each and every time.

You will use facts, completely irrelevant ones mind but facts no the less sprinkled with a healthy does of ignorance and bias but still a fair attempt at attempting to look like you are correct even if it is clearly wrong.