https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... cy/394616/
So, Yeah, let's say that the Anglo-French are unable to get unsecured loans from the US, are thus incapable of sustaining their war effort to the same level as before, and thus negotiate a status quo ante bellum peace with Germany in the West in exchange for a German free hand in the East. Also, let's say that afterwards Germany decides to overthrow the Bolsheviks in Russia and, to reward itself for its efforts, decides to also conquer a land bridge from Ukraine to Central Asia (independent Don Cossack as well as Kalmyk states can be created there, I suppose--perhaps with some German princelings as their new rulers)--as well as conquering Central Asia itself. Afterwards, let's say that Germany decides to build a railroad from Germany to China exclusively through the territory of Germany and German satellite states. Is such a project actually feasible, and what happens afterwards? For instance, could such a railroad subsequently be extended from Central Asia to Xinjiang all of the way to China's east coast--at least once the situation in China will stabilize--thus significantly helping China develop and making China a German ally?By the summer of 1917, the Western Allies had exhausted their credit in U.S. financial markets. Without direct U.S. government-to-government aid, they could not have afforded any more offensives in the West. The exhausted Allies would have had to negotiate some kind of settlement with Central Power forces occupying almost all of what is now Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic republics in the east; most of Romania and Yugoslavia in Southern Europe, as well as a bit of Italy; and almost all of Belgium and most of northeast France. Even if the Germans had traded concessions in the West to preserve their gains in the East, the kaiser’s Germany would have emerged from such an outcome as the dominant power on the continent of Europe. The United States would have found itself after such a negotiated peace confronting the same outcome as it faced in 1946: a Europe divided between East and West, with the battered West looking to the United States for protection. As in 1946, the East would have been dominated by an authoritarian regime that looked upon the liberal and democratic Anglo-American West not just as a geopolitical antagonist, but as an ideological threat.
But unlike in 1946, when the line was drawn on the Elbe and the West included the wealthiest and most developed regions of Europe, this imaginary 1919 line would have been drawn on the Rhine, if not the Scheldt and the Meuse, with the greatest concentration of European industry on the Eastern side. Unlike in 1946, the newly dominant power in Eastern Europe would not have been Europe’s most backward major nation (Russia), but its most scientifically and technologically advanced nation (Germany). In other words, the United States would have gotten an early start on the Cold War, and maybe a second hot war, supported by fewer and weaker allies against a richer and more dangerous opponent—and one quite likely to have developed the atomic bomb and the intercontinental ballistic missile first.
Any thoughts on this?
