#43
Post
by Sid Guttridge » 24 Jul 2017, 14:09
Hi Blackadder2000,
You write, "I think the majority of scholars would argue that without American intervention, the Central Powers would have won, and Germany would have been the dominant power in Europe." Where do you get this idea from? Germany tried to win the war in March 1918 before the US Army got heavily involved. It failed. This implies that, at best, Germany could look forward to some form of compromise peace, which it was unlikely to concede while its armies almost everywhere still stood on foreign soil. In the meanwhile its failing allies would probably have continued to collapse.
You write, "First, there would not have been a Second World War because France did not have the power to even attempt to overturn a German victory." and "There would have been no call to abrogate a “Treaty of Versailles”. The way to avoid a second world war was to win the first properly by occupying Germany, so that the illusion of Versailles cheating them out of an undefeated stalemate war could not take hold. WWII didn't happen because Germany didn't win WWI, it happened because the opportunity was not taken to make Germany face the reality of defeat in 1919, rather than 1945.
You write, "Second, while there was an anti-Semitic component to German society, the conservative nature of a Wilhemine government would never have allowed Nazi thugs to assume power." True, but this overlooks the fact that Nazi racial policies were heavily informed by those developed in the "holocaust" against the Hereros in South West Africa under the Wilhelmine government.
You write, "Lastly, the Germans, after the war in the West ended, would have crushed the Bolsheviks in Russia and some sort of “White” regime would have emerged victorious, and Russia would have avoided the pain and suffering of Soviet rule............." The solution to Communism proved to be liberal democracy.
You write, "In the early 20th century, the Allied powers, especially Great Britain, participated in WWI to prevent German domination of Europe. It is arguable that Europe and the world would have been better off had Germany been the victor in WWI." Nope. Europe and the world is better off because Liberal Democracy saw of competing authoritarian and totalitarian competitors. Pre-WWI Wilhelmine Germany had the potential to develop along those lines, but a militarized, authoritarian, victorious 1919 version seems rather less likely to have evolved that way.
You write, "The irony of history is that at the end of the 20th century, Germany had emerged as the dominant power in Europe and the leader of the European Union , essentially a customs union similar to that conceived by the Germans in their war aims during WWI." Yup, but even more ironically, while Germany may be in that position, it isn't doing Germans much good, with their low fertility, declining native population, need for immigrants, low home ownership levels, etc., etc.
Cheers,
Sid.
