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Lawman 0 posted:Could the central powers done anything after the capitulation of Russia in ww1 to change the outcome of the war? Short of "Russian Revolution breaks in a totally different direction and Russia flips entirely to the Central Powers" it's hard to see a huge difference aside from "Germany enters Versailles in a slightly stronger/weaker negotiating position." In terms of ultimate outcome, the path of least resistance to a significantly different WW1 aftermath is probably changing the people/philosophies going into Versailles.
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Apr 2, 2021 19:17
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Fangz posted:Well, there *was* a negotiated end to the war, though. Sort of. Each of the Central Powers knew they had lost (despite the Stab in the Back meme in the post-war), and the treaties essentially are the Allies dictating terms to the Central Powers. The peace conferences were more a negotiation between the victors than a negotiation with the defeated. Lawman 0 posted:I mean I was looking at the Battle of Caporetto and going "I guess they could have knocked out Italy?" Maybe, but it's unlikely. British and French troops had a whole other defensive line behind the Italian one that stopped the Austro-German offensive. And even if they do there's now a French army storming up through Serbia. And yeah the experience of trying to get stuff out of food massively shapes the German occupation during WW2. It gets talked about a bunch, though I don't actually remember many of the details.
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Apr 2, 2021 19:24
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Sort of. Each of the Central Powers knew they had lost (despite the Stab in the Back meme in the post-war), and the treaties essentially are the Allies dictating terms to the Central Powers. The peace conferences were more a negotiation between the victors than a negotiation with the defeated. Ok well I got my timeline mixed up then.
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Apr 2, 2021 19:27
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Nothingtoseehere posted:America joining the war is the big "what if" for WW1. Without the guarantee of American manpower, lots of stuff changes. I tend to find the most fun what if is what happens to the world if the Ottoman Empire ends up sitting out the war.
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Apr 2, 2021 19:31
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WW1 ended in a negotiated peace in the sense that diplomats from the US, UK and France sat in a room together and negotiated what the peace would look like.
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Apr 2, 2021 19:32
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Tulip posted:Short of "Russian Revolution breaks in a totally different direction and Russia flips entirely to the Central Powers" Willy II renames Germany as Socialist Federation of Marxland and asks for all workers of the world to unite against British imperialism?
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Apr 2, 2021 20:05
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Thomamelas posted:I tend to find the most fun what if is what happens to the world if the Ottoman Empire ends up sitting out the war. Pondering as I follow up on material from my last post - is there any scenario in which they could have participated but actually been... well, competent, with any realistic means? Could be another fun angle but have my doubts from what I've gotten through of the previous recs.
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Apr 2, 2021 20:15
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Nenonen posted:Willy II renames Germany as Socialist Federation of Marxland and asks for all workers of the world to unite against British imperialism? If the Germans had been able to follow through on their first use of poison gas on the Western front, could they have broken through and ended the war with, if not necessarily a total crushing of France and British forces, a situation where they make enough gains to call it quits on their end? I have never been clear on that, but it seems like that is an under-examined counterfactual. On the other hand I may have done an undergraduate paper about chemical warfare 
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Apr 2, 2021 20:34
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bewbies posted:king also partied super hard and was pretty slutty, so he contained multitudes This surprises me because dude seemed angry all the time
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Apr 2, 2021 20:38
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Nenonen posted:Willy II renames Germany as Socialist Federation of Marxland and asks for all workers of the world to unite against British imperialism? I was thinking "Kornilov succeeds wildly and completely crushes everyone to the left of him, and then gets coup'd by somebody even further to the right of him" but your thing is equally improbable and a lot less depressing. Nebakenezzer posted:This surprises me because dude seemed angry all the time Some guys are just real good at compartmentalization.
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Apr 2, 2021 20:44
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bewbies posted:king also partied super hard and was pretty slutty, so he contained multitudes Mac Arthur's baton also saw a lot of action too, IIRC.
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Apr 3, 2021 03:35
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sullat posted:Mac Arthur's bataan also saw a lot of action too, IIRC.
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Apr 3, 2021 08:18
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Nessus posted:If the Germans had been able to follow through on their first use of poison gas on the Western front, could they have broken through and ended the war with, if not necessarily a total crushing of France and British forces, a situation where they make enough gains to call it quits on their end? I have never been clear on that, but it seems like that is an under-examined counterfactual. On the other hand I may have done an undergraduate paper about chemical warfare The Second Battle of Ypres happened completely by accident. Both sides had experimented briefly with using tear gas in 1914 and it had proved to be an interesting sideshow and something that might maybe possibly be situationally useful in a real corner case, but it wasn't going to be a wonder weapon or anything like that. German planning was based on the idea that the best case scenario was going to be reducing the Ypres salient in possible preparation for a later attack, and disrupting the other side's preparations for renewed offensives in Artois and Champagne. They completely failed to appreciate how effective the initial attacks were, and it's the kind of weapon whose best effectiveness has an extremely short window, before the other side can get effective-if-rudimentary masks issued. Had they known for sure that for a week or so they were going to have an instant win button, it almost certainly would have been used somewhere near Noyon (the point at which the front stopped running broadly north/south and started running broadly east/west). There are two obvious strategic possibilities; drive south towards Paris and shock the French government into suing for peace (or collapsing then suing for peace), or west to Dieppe to cut off British access to the best Channel ports. Both of those things require adopting a completely different strategic attitude to the entire war to the one they in fact had, ("stand in France, attack Russia") and making easily-observable preparations, while not also having one's own faith in the ability to gain from an offensive dented by the easily-repulsed French attacks over the winter. They're probably not going to be achievable goals if opposed with fortitude; the only way I see the war being significantly affected is if they do somehow spook the French into withdrawing inland and giving up every port from Le Havre east, which may have tipped British thinking away from using the New Armies to enlarge the BEF, and towards sending them to Gallipoli/Salonika/Mesopotamia/Tanzania. Or, y'know, maybe it actually redoubles British desire to support the French more directly and the New Armies arrive in France sooner and start learning sooner. Maybe Louis Renault pulls his finger out in response, and we get the FT in mid-1916 instead of 1918.
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Apr 3, 2021 14:39
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Trin Tragula posted:Maybe Louis Renault pulls his finger out in response, and we get the FT in mid-1916 instead of 1918. What was going on with Louis Renault?
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Apr 4, 2021 19:08
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Nobody who's writing in English seems to know what's up with Renault. It just goes from, he has zero interest in developing armoured fighting vehicles in 1915, he explicitly tells the French Army's tank pioneers to gently caress off in December 1915 (which is why the first French tanks were built by Schneider and Saint-Chamond); and yet by July 1916 he's personally got his drawing board out to design the FT, for reasons unknown.
Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Apr 4, 2021 |
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Apr 4, 2021 20:11
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Mr. Cessna: would you agree that The Pentagon Papers are an 'oft-overlooked' source for research on Vietnam?
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Apr 4, 2021 20:37
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Trin Tragula posted:Nobody who's writing in English seems to know what's up with Renault. It just goes from, he has zero interest in developing armoured fighting vehicles in 1915, he explicitly tells the French Army's tank pioneers to gently caress off in December 1915 (which is why the first French tanks were built by Schneider and Saint-Chamond); and yet by July 1916 he's personally got his drawing board out to design the FT, for reasons unknown. Someone from the Deuxieme Bureau showed him a photo of the window where Jean Jaures got shot and asked "any questions?"
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Apr 4, 2021 21:05
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Trin Tragula posted:Nobody who's writing in English seems to know what's up with Renault. It just goes from, he has zero interest in developing armoured fighting vehicles in 1915, he explicitly tells the French Army's tank pioneers to gently caress off in December 1915 (which is why the first French tanks were built by Schneider and Saint-Chamond); and yet by July 1916 he's personally got his drawing board out to design the FT, for reasons unknown. Sounds like a time traveler told him what will happen if he doesn't get in front of that drawing board NOW.
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Apr 5, 2021 03:48
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Comstar posted:Sounds like a time traveler told him what will happen if he doesn't get in front of that drawing board NOW. Either that or his accountant told him what they were paying for them.
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Apr 5, 2021 05:39
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Comstar posted:Sounds like a time traveler told him what will happen if he doesn't get in front of that drawing board NOW.
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Apr 5, 2021 07:04
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Medium Tank T20 Plus an original this time: TOG 1 and 2 Queue: Medium Tank T23, Myths of Soviet tank building, GMC M10, Tiger II predecessors, Pz.Kpfw.IV Ausf.H-J,IS-6, SU-101/SU-102/Uralmash-1, Centurion Mk.I, SU-100 front line impressions, IS-2 front line impressions, Myths of Soviet tank building: early Great Patriotic War, Influence of the T-34 on German tank building, Medium Tank T25, Heavy Tank T26/T26E1/T26E3, Career of Harry Knox, GMC M36, Geschützwagen Tiger für 17cm K72 (Sf), Early Early Soviet tank development (MS-1, AN Teplokhod), Career of Semyon Aleksandrovich Ginzburg, AT-1, Object 140, SU-76 frontline impressions, Creation of the IS-3, IS-6, SU-5, Myths of Soviet tank building: 1943-44, IS-2 post-war modifications, Myths of Soviet tank building: end of the Great Patriotic War, Medium Tank T6, RPG-1, Lahti L-39, American tank building plans post-war, German tanks for 1946, HMC M7 Priest, GMC M12, GMC M40/M43, ISU-152, AMR 35 ZT, Soviet post-war tank building plans, T-100Y and SU-14-1, Object 430, Pz.Kpfw.35(t), T-60 tanks in combat, SU-76M modernizations, Panhard 178, 15 cm sFH 13/1 (Sf), 43M Zrínyi, Medium Tank M46, Modernization of the M48 to the M60 standard, German tank building trends at the end of WW2, Pz.Kpfw.III/IV, E-50 and E-75 development, Pre-war and early war British tank building, BT-7M/A-8 trials, Jagdtiger suspension, Light Tank T37, Light Tank T41, T-26-6 (SU-26), Voroshilovets tractor trials. Available for request (others' articles):  Shashmurin's career T-55 underwater driving equipment T-64's composite armour  Oerlikon and Solothurn anti-tank rifles Evolution of German tank observation devices
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Apr 5, 2021 14:04
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Weka posted:I think this thread has mentioned the Gulf War being the beginning of American intolerance of American military casualties. Afterwards success like that became expected. The beginning of the US intolerance for military casualties was 58,000 dead in Vietnam. The Gulf War was the first big war fought after that. Nebakenezzer posted:I can't find the comment right now that somebody made about going from Gulf War I to 2 was kinda baffling considering there was a really obvious model for succsess, but you have to remember Rumsfeld et al were not interested in the past; they had contempt for "old fashioned war." They thought that they had the formula for the new cheap free-market imperialism, and the state they were going to set up in Iraq was going to be year zero of the perfect state. In fairness, the Gulf War and the Iraq war had completely different goals. Gulf War: Kick Iraq out of Kuwait. Iraq War: Occupy Iraq and turn it into a stable ally. The first was realistic, the second was not. Nebakenezzer posted:Mr. Cessna: would you agree that The Pentagon Papers are an 'oft-overlooked' source for research on Vietnam? It depends on who you're talking about If you're looking into Vietnam in the way that it is studied in popular culture - that is, watching the movie Platoon and maybe reading a book or two by Keith Nolan or Bowden's book on Hue, yes, it's overlooked. If you're taking a college course on Vietnam - upper division, but not grad school - you will have heard of it and will have read excerpts. If you're in grad school, let alone working as a researcher, you will have read it (the Sheehan book version) cover to cover at least once. It's well known by Historians. It was big news when it was released, at minimum it was the Wikileaks of its day.
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Apr 5, 2021 15:56
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Cessna posted:The first was realistic, the second was not. Fair point. quote:It depends on who you're talking about It was a comment dropped in by the author of Technowar in Vietnam which raised an eyebrow for me. It could be Gibson means the first sense, but I knew that the Pentagon papers were big news in their day, and the US government's official publishing of it was a best-seller.
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Apr 5, 2021 16:06
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Nebakenezzer posted:It was a comment dropped in by the author of Technowar in Vietnam which raised an eyebrow for me. It could be Gibson means the first sense, but I knew that the Pentagon papers were big news in their day, and the US government's official publishing of it was a best-seller. I think it's fair to say that they've faded from popular consciousness. Like I said, if your take on Vietnam comes from movies and a couple of popular history books, sure, you'll miss their importance. But they were, as you say, big news in their time and are still crucial to researchers.
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Apr 5, 2021 16:25
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I'm reading the Schiffer book catalog. They have a book called "Making Bows with Children." Brutal.
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Apr 5, 2021 18:42
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm reading the Schiffer book catalog. They have a book called "Making Bows with Children." Brutal. Young sinew is snappier, but the bone is softer.
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Apr 5, 2021 18:54
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Nebakenezzer posted:I'm reading the Schiffer book catalog. They have a book called "Making Bows with Children." Brutal. Tom Holt must be writing for them now.
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Apr 5, 2021 19:00
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Lawman 0 posted:Could the central powers done anything after the capitulation of Russia in ww1 to change the outcome of the war? no
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Apr 6, 2021 14:52
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Yeah, 1917 is a bit late to affect the outcome of a war going from 1914-1918. It's like asking "What could Hitler done differently to win WW2 after shooting himself in the head?"
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Apr 6, 2021 15:27
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In that case, what's the latest point to pull things around, so to speak?
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Apr 6, 2021 15:49
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SkyeAuroline posted:In that case, what's the latest point to pull things around, so to speak? 1914
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Apr 6, 2021 15:57
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Arguably the only thing Germany can do differently that might effect the outcome of the war is put much harsher controls on U-Boats far earlier. Castles of Steel makes the observation that when the war started, the British blockade of Germany actually inflamed tensions between the US and the UK, and it's possible this could have lead to a breakdown of relations further down the line. But the U-Boat campaign and the early sinking of Lusitania quickly changed the calculus—as many noted at the time, the British blockade threatened American rights and property, but the U-Boats threatened American lives. The threat of the US joining the war on the side of the Allies is what kept Germany from fully letting loose the U-Boats for so long, and when they did finally begin an unrestricted campaign, it (Along with the greatest diplomatic self-own in recorded history) swiftly brought the US into the war against Germany. So if Germany can hold off on deploying the U-Boats, there is a slight chance that the US grows frustrated enough with the British blockade to begin limiting exports to the Allies, which would badly hurt Britain and France. It's truly impossible to say whether this would actually change the outcome of the war even if it did happen, though, so really, the answer to the question is: edit: Libluini posted:Yeah, 1917 is a bit late to affect the outcome of a war going from 1914-1918. More specifically, Russia's surrender came after the American entry into the war, which was the true point of no return for an inevitable German loss.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:22
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SkyeAuroline posted:In that case, what's the latest point to pull things around, so to speak? January 1917, Woodrow Wilson is calling for 'Peace Without Victory,' getting a strong minority of public support in favor in France and the UK. At this point, the Entente powers are becoming totally dependent on the US for war financing; the UK has about two months of funds left and Wilson is prepared to at the very least publicly warn Americans off of investing in any further Entente bonds. There's a credible offer from the US to force everyone to the table, but Germany at the same time is convinced this is insincere and instead commits to unrestricted submarine warfare, forcing the issue. Admittedly, it's hard to imagine what form a settlement would even look like, given that the Entente's initial response to Wilson was 'return Lorraine and Belgium, self-determination for the parts of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires,' and the corresponding German demands at least include the opposite in Lorraine and stricter neutrality in Belgium.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:26
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I guess it comes down to what you consider an alteration to the outcome of the war. I could see an Imperial Germany that made better diplomatic moves keeping the US out of the war: * Atrocities in Belgium * Sinking of the Lusitania * Zimmermann Telegram * Unrestricted submarine warfare Those were all actions that if avoided might have delayed or prevented US involvement. Without US entry into the war and without unrestricted submarine warfare... Germany almost certainly still loses, though. They simply didn't have an effective answer to the sea blockade, and didn't have the land power to knock out France after their initial effort bogged down. Of course, if Imperial Germany was diplomatically savvy it probably wouldn't have ended up in the Great War anyway, so the question's kinda useless.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:29
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Gort posted:* Atrocities in Belgium Considering the atrocities perpetrated by colonial Belgium managed scandalize the world even by the standards of the day, I'm curious if the British government made a concerted effort to rehabilite that country in the eyes of the public as WWI loomed.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:43
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Chocolate fingers of light and darker colors remain a "delightful" little thing in Belgium to this day.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:48
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Gort posted:I guess it comes down to what you consider an alteration to the outcome of the war. I could see an Imperial Germany that made better diplomatic moves keeping the US out of the war: It's hard for me to imagine an Imperial Germany that doesn't do those things. There was a paranoid, chip on their shoulder attitude throughout the government and military. You see it from their view on encirclement (which leads to the Schlieffen plan), to trying to out navy Britain, to the Atrocities in Belgium to their attitude on neutrals. Unrestricted sub warfare was driven in part by that attitude as well, with a little "we have to show the people we're trying" in response to the crippling blockade. It's a black, gay Hitler, but with the Kaiser.
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Apr 6, 2021 16:58
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A counterfactual where Motlke knows how the war is going to pan out and instead opts for a passive strategy in the West and concentrating everything against Russia is interesting. No invasion of Belgium places the war faction in the UK in an awkward position, it's unclear that they get the vote. Then in France you have a simultaneously awkward situation where Plan XVII has a been a disaster to no avail, but Germany doesn't need to be forced off occupied territory and is saying as widely and as loudly as it can "look we don't want this war and we don't want anything from you, lets just agree status quo ante in the West?". Does a French government survive that kind of disaster? e: but yes, the actors did what they did because they were who they were.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:00
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Arbite posted:Considering the atrocities perpetrated by colonial Belgium managed scandalize the world even by the standards of the day, I'm curious if the British government made a concerted effort to rehabilite that country in the eyes of the public as WWI loomed. I doubt it. Scandals come and go, it was more on Leopold personally, and if bad things happening to black people actually mattered at the time then the US, UK and France would be international pariahs. Belgium wasn't viewed like ISIS in 1914 or anything.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:04
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wins32767 posted:It's hard for me to imagine an Imperial Germany that doesn't do those things. There was a paranoid, chip on their shoulder attitude throughout the government and military. You see it from their view on encirclement (which leads to the Schlieffen plan), to trying to out navy Britain, to the Atrocities in Belgium to their attitude on neutrals. Unrestricted sub warfare was driven in part by that attitude as well, with a little "we have to show the people we're trying" in response to the crippling blockade. It's a black, gay Hitler, but with the Kaiser. The Zimmermann Telegram is a good one though, like they really should have known better. Obviously mid-civil war Mexico isn't going to declare war on the US, and Zimmermann definitely shouldn't have admitted he sent it.
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Apr 6, 2021 17:22
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