Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

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ljadw
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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#31

Post by ljadw » 18 Jan 2016, 13:03

Several factual errors : The Germans did not invade France on 25 august but on 2 august : the first French casualty was on 2 august : Peugeot .

There were already German atrocities before 25 august in France :

10 august : Jarny

11 Bazailles

24 august : Rouvres .

German troops did NOT ENTER Luxembourg without resistance: they invaded Luxembourg and this was the start of the invasion of France .

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#32

Post by ljadw » 18 Jan 2016, 13:24

Heluja wrote:Is it true that the blockade continued for 8 months after the war was over?
NO : the blockade continued till june 1919,because the war did not end in november 1918 but in june 1919.


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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#33

Post by woneil » 18 Jan 2016, 21:38

Heluja wrote:Is it true that the blockade continued for 8 months after the war was over?
Somewhat. The Allies were naturally anxious that the Germans would use the armistice to rebuild their forces for a spring offensive. This was particularly true since in the existing situation there appeared to be little to stop them from drawing resources from the east. Thus they continued the embargoes and blockade.

The German authorities complained that their population was starving. (They were not truly starving but there certainly was a lot of privation, due in large measure to the earlier decisions to divert resources from food production to munitions manufacture and the Army. Supplies from the east were no more than a trickle due to the chaotic conditions in Russia.) There were food shortages in Allied Europe as well but the U.S. government said that the Germans could buy food there, FOB U.S. ports. (All available U.S. shipping was tied up supporting the AEF and the Allies.) But the Germans declined to send ships to America for fear that they would be seized by the blockade. With more ingenuity and determination on the German side a solution could certainly have been found but they sat on their hands and complained — it wasn't the children of the elite who were suffering, after all. That continued until food-laden American ships began to arrive early in the spring of 1919.

Of course it's always suited the Germans very well to claim that it was all the fault of the U.S. and the Allies, and I don't doubt that the usual spreaders of pro-German disinformation will jump in here.
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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#34

Post by Terry Duncan » 19 Jan 2016, 00:32

woneil wrote:Of course it's always suited the Germans very well to claim that it was all the fault of the U.S. and the Allies, and I don't doubt that the usual spreaders of pro-German disinformation will jump in here.
There are also reports from the Allied commission set up to look into food shortages that indicated the German army had quite a lot stockpiled in its own depots but refused to issue it. IIRC this is detailed in Avner Offer's 'The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation' but I could be wrong, but it is the book that contained most detail on the subject that I remember reading, so it is probably there.

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#35

Post by michael mills » 19 Jan 2016, 02:45

There are also reports from the Allied commission set up to look into food shortages that indicated the German army had quite a lot stockpiled in its own depots but refused to issue it. IIRC this is detailed in Avner Offer's 'The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation' but I could be wrong, but it is the book that contained most detail on the subject that I remember reading, so it is probably there.
What Offer's book actually states is that the Allies allowed Germany to import food during the period between the armistice and the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, but would not permit it to export to earn foreign exchange to pay for those imports. As a result Germany had to use up its remaining gold reserves to pay for the imports, which was the main cause of the hyperinflation that hit in 1923, since Germany did not have the gold to back its currency.

Furthermore, the Allies did not permit any German ship to leave post, not even fishing boats, so food imports purchased by Germany could only be carried by Allied ships, which the Allies delayed providing for several months. Contrary to the claim by Woneil, there is no way German merchant ships could have sailed to the United States without being seized, since Britain intended to claim the German merchant fleet as reparations in the peace settlement, and for that reason required all German vessels to remain in port.

As for the Germans not starving, there was widespread malnutrition, and an elevated mortality rate as a result. Conditions were however much worse in Austria.

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#36

Post by woneil » 19 Jan 2016, 04:54

michael mills wrote:
There are also reports from the Allied commission set up to look into food shortages that indicated the German army had quite a lot stockpiled in its own depots but refused to issue it. IIRC this is detailed in Avner Offer's 'The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation' but I could be wrong, but it is the book that contained most detail on the subject that I remember reading, so it is probably there.
What Offer's book actually states is that the Allies allowed Germany to import food during the period between the armistice and the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles, but would not permit it to export to earn foreign exchange to pay for those imports. As a result Germany had to use up its remaining gold reserves to pay for the imports, which was the main cause of the hyperinflation that hit in 1923, since Germany did not have the gold to back its currency.

Furthermore, the Allies did not permit any German ship to leave post, not even fishing boats, so food imports purchased by Germany could only be carried by Allied ships, which the Allies delayed providing for several months. Contrary to the claim by Woneil, there is no way German merchant ships could have sailed to the United States without being seized, since Britain intended to claim the German merchant fleet as reparations in the peace settlement, and for that reason required all German vessels to remain in port.

As for the Germans not starving, there was widespread malnutrition, and an elevated mortality rate as a result. Conditions were however much worse in Austria.
According to Sally Marks, The Illusion of Peace: International Relations in Europe, 1918-1933 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 8, fn:
The persistent myth of deliberate Allied starvation of Germany is demonstrably
untrue. Germans were undernourished and hungry, but not afflicted with the
starvation conditions prevalent in many areas of victor states. FRUS PPC, 11, 139-42,
xil, 115; PRO, FO 371/2776, passim. The related tale of the Allied blockade is
equally mythical. True, under the Armistice terms Allied warships remained in
place to prevent a resumption of hostilities, but the Allies, who were short of
merchant shipping and who had all Europe to feed, told the Germans to send out
their ships to be filled with Allied food. This the Germans refused to do. In the end,
Allied food was provided in Allied ships, the first deliveries arriving at the end of
March 1919, well before German supplies were exhausted. Erich Eyck, A History of
the Weimar Republic (Cambridge, MA, 1962) I, pp. 88-9; Admiralty to FO, 19 Apr
1919, m. 10630, FO 371/3776. See also the treatments by Elisabeth Glaser, ‘The
Making of the Economic Peace’, in Boemeke et al., pp. 388-92; and Klaus Schwabe,
Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany, and Peacemaking, 1918-1919, tr. Robert and
Rita Kimber (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), pp. 191-208.
Distinguished as Offer may be in economic history he is no competition for Marks in the political history of the period.

I have yet to go back to check in Offer's book, but if he truly entertains fantasies that the supposed exhaustion of German monetary gold reserves somehow caused the hyperinflation then he is the only prominent economic historian I know of to do so. (Although, come to think of it, Ferguson might join him if it somehow served his political agenda.)
William D. O'Neil
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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#37

Post by michael mills » 19 Jan 2016, 08:48

Germans were undernourished and hungry, but not afflicted with the
starvation conditions prevalent in many areas of victor states.
There was excess mortality of around 70,000 among inmates of mental hospitals in Germany due to malnutrition. The rations supplied to the inmates were at bare subsistence level, sufficient to keep bed-ridden patients alive indefinitely but not those who were active.

There is quite possibly a relationship between that excess mortality of 70,000 during the First World War and the quota of 70,000 set at the outbreak of war in 1939 for the Adult Euthanasia Program.

But as I wrote, conditions were much worse in Austria than in Germany.

The quoted passage from the book by Sally Marks gives the impression that the Allies were prepared to give food to Germany, but that is untrue. The Allies were prepared to let Germany import food, but it had to be paid for. If Allied ships filled with food arrived at German ports in March 1919, to use Marks' rather expansive phraseology, it was food that Germany had purchased with its gold reserves.

Anyway, what is Ferguson's political agenda? So far as I can see, it seems to be that Muslims are naughty boys.

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#38

Post by woneil » 19 Jan 2016, 09:01

michael mills wrote:
Germans were undernourished and hungry, but not afflicted with the
starvation conditions prevalent in many areas of victor states.
There was excess mortality of around 70,000 among inmates of mental hospitals in Germany due to malnutrition. The rations supplied to the inmates were at bare subsistence level, sufficient to keep bed-ridden patients alive indefinitely but not those who were active.

There is quite possibly a relationship between that excess mortality of 70,000 during the First World War and the quota of 70,000 set at the outbreak of war in 1939 for the Adult Euthanasia Program.

But as I wrote, conditions were much worse in Austria than in Germany.

The quoted passage from the book by Sally Marks gives the impression that the Allies were prepared to give food to Germany, but that is untrue. The Allies were prepared to let Germany import food, but it had to be paid for. If Allied ships filled with food arrived at German ports in March 1919, to use Marks' rather expansive phraseology, it was food that Germany had purchased with its gold reserves.

Anyway, what is Ferguson's political agenda? So far as I can see, it seems to be that Muslims are naughty boys.
I'd be better inclined to pay some attention to your assertions if presented on some authority beside your own, great and wondrous though that may be.

Ferguson is a stanch tory and like many such holds doctrine in higher regard than evidence. Not quite a proper Scot.
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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#39

Post by michael mills » 19 Jan 2016, 09:16

Ferguson is a stanch tory
If that is so, then he is hardly likely to be sympathetic to Germany in the First World War. One would expect him to be very pro-British and anti-German, but in his book "The Pity of War" he is not; in fact, it seemed to me that in that book he was trying hard to be impartial.
I'd be better inclined to pay some attention to your assertions if presented on some authority beside your own, great and wondrous though that may be.
Are you asking about the source for the excess mortality from malnutrition of around 70,000 in German mental institutions during the First World War?

I got that information from these books, particularly the former:

1. Dick de Mildt," "In the Name of the People : Perpetrators of Genocide in the Reflection of their Post-War Prosecution in West Germany : The 'Euthanasia' and 'Aktion Reinhard' Trial Cases".

2. Michael Burleigh, "Death and Deliverance : "Euthanasia" in Germany c. 1900-1945".

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#40

Post by ljadw » 19 Jan 2016, 10:31

The number of excess deaths in Germany caused by the Allied blockade was very small, very small .

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#41

Post by ljadw » 19 Jan 2016, 10:49

Civilian excess deaths in Germany (compared to 1913)

1914 : 42.369

1915 : 8871

1916 : 11751

1917 : 68598

1918 : 271.047

1919 : 71.149

Source = Die Einwerkung des Krieges auf Bevölkerungsbewegung,Einkommen und Lebenshaltung in Deutschland(Dr Rudolf Meerwarth) cited on P 166 of The social and political consequences of the Allied Food Blockade of Germany 1918/1919 (N.P. Howard ).

Most of the 1918/1919 excess deaths were caused by the Influenza .

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#42

Post by Michate » 19 Jan 2016, 11:45

True, under the Armistice terms Allied warships remained in
place to prevent a resumption of hostilities,...
Rather unclear. Are we to take it that the blocakde eseentially stayed in place, but ships loaded with food should be allowed to sail through, after each corner had been searched for non-food goods?

One also has to ask as how justified the fears of a "reseumption of hostilities" were in light of the harsh cease-fire conditions (surrender of large amounts of weapons and other military systems, in particular most of the high-sea fleet and all submarines, withdrawal of the German army behind the Rhine, occupation of the area West of the Rhine and bridgeheads of the Rhine by the Allied armies) and the subsequent demobilisation of the German army. Which left Germany utterly defenseless.
The quoted passage from the book by Sally Marks gives the impression that the Allies were prepared to give food to Germany, but that is untrue. The Allies were prepared to let Germany import food, but it had to be paid for. If Allied ships filled with food arrived at German ports in March 1919, to use Marks' rather expansive phraseology, it was food that Germany had purchased with its gold reserves.
The German-American communities in the US collected money to pay for some of the foods delivered from the US to Germany. A case of ethnic solidarity beyond national borders.

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#43

Post by woneil » 20 Jan 2016, 00:23

Ah yes, just as I thought.

First, the "excess deaths." Anyone who's ever taken an elementary course in demography or read a book on the subject must recognize at once that all of the figures put forth are absurdities with no validity at all: too many uncertainties and not enough solid data to resolve them. The related problem of excess deaths due to the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 has been studied intensively and yet it is generally conceded that the actual number of excess deaths cannot be known to within better than a few hundred thousand at best. The number of excess deaths due to nutritional deficiency, if any, is much smaller than this and simply cannot be known on the basis of existing data. All of the numbers people bat about were developed to make some point or another, usually for propaganda purposes, and no one with any sense takes them seriously.

One recent article touching on this is Mary Elisabeth Cox, “Hunger Games: Or How the Allied Blockade in the First World War Deprived German Children of Nutrition, and Allied Food Aid Subsequently Saved Them,” Economic History Review 68, no. 2 (May 2015): 600-31. It's very clear that Cox would like very much to convict the wicked Allies of starving the poor German children and is very willing to bend some facts regarding how the blockade actually worked in order to do so (by choosing to rely on weak and biased sources), but wishes to avoid excessive damage to her academic standing in the process. The best she's able to muster is
No one contests that Germany was deeply vulnerable to the ban on imports. Yet
debates about the impact of the blockade on German civilians have erupted
sporadically for a century, with metrics playing a key role. German statistics were
deemed to be suspect. Critics claimed that the statistics were inflated. In the
resultant ruckus it has been impossible even to reach agreement on German
civilian death tolls during the blockade.
Cox has found a "source of anthropometric observations of nearly 600,000 schoolchildren from across Germany between 1914 and 1924," which she analyzes statistically to show that the children from the poorer households suffered quite serious nutritional deficits in the last years of the war and that these were made good in 1919 as Allied food aid arrived. But as Ferguson has noted (and Cox acknowledges) British children also suffered, and the existing data do not allow direct comparison of how much British and German children suffered in relative terms. (It does appear that there was less class difference in Britain.)

The post-armistice blockade. No, the German military did not disarm in Nov 1918, nor for some months thereafter. We now know that it was in no condition to resume fighting and probably could not have been made ready without provoking revolution, but the Allies did not have certain knowledge of this. Therefore, they wished to avert any possibility of resumed hostilities, especially given how tenuous their military advantage was. It's worthwhile to recall that in offering an armistice in Oct 1918 Ludendorff and his pals had explicitly talked among themselves about using the respite for regrouping in readiness for a spring offensive if the terms for peace were not to their liking.

Ferguson & toryism. It's important not to conflate the tories of 1914 with those of today. A great deal has changed.

Ferguson has lately come to American shores and so we are treated to a stream of his views in the press.
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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#44

Post by michael mills » 20 Jan 2016, 01:31

The German-American communities in the US collected money to pay for some of the foods delivered from the US to Germany. A case of ethnic solidarity beyond national borders.
What proportion of German food imports from the US between the armistice and the end of the blockade was paid for by those collections?

Offer's book (which I do not have to hand at the moment) quoted a rather large amount of German gold reserves used to pay for those imports.

I would think that with the best will in the world, the German-American community would not have been able to collect enough to cover more than a small proportion of the cost of the German food imports. German-Americans were not particularly wealthy, after all.

Also, bear in mind that once the US joined the war against Germany in April 1917, German-Americans came under a huge amount of pressure to prove their loyalty by disowning any connection to their country of origin. German identity and culture, which had been quite vibrant in the United States until that time, basically withered away, to the extent that Americans of German origin today have very little sense of germanness, by contrast with some other prominent ethnic groups in the US, such as the Irish for example.

Thus, it is likely that in 1918 few German-Americans would have wished to draw attention to themselves by donating to a cause designed to help the hated Huns.

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Re: Would Germany have won World War I with both Britain and the U.S. remaining neutral?

#45

Post by Terry Duncan » 20 Jan 2016, 02:05

woneil wrote:Ferguson has lately come to American shores and so we are treated to a stream of his views in the press.
My condolences, the man is nothing more than a sensationalist with little regard for facts.

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