World War I

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Jericho941
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Re: World War I

Post by Jericho941 »

Netpackrat wrote:Honestly if Stalin had run essentially unopposed across Europe in the 1940s, I am not sure how the end result would have been any worse than what they are doing to themselves today.
That's a bit much. Ever compared East and West Germany?

In any case, I've yet to hear of anyone being given the "secret brand" by the EU.
But I can't really see that happening, given that a negotiated peace would have left Germany (along with the other nations) with essentially intact armies, and the Red Army that attacked the west would not have been the same one that steamrollered Germany in the latter half of WWII... It would have been the incompetent version that attacked Finland in the Winter War. They would have been absolutely creamed by a united Western Europe.
Well, they also wouldn't have been propped up by Lend-Lease and the US teaching them how to run a tank factory.
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Netpackrat
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Re: World War I

Post by Netpackrat »

We have not yet seen the end result of what Europe is doing to itself today.
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Jericho941
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Re: World War I

Post by Jericho941 »

Netpackrat wrote:We have not yet seen the end result of what Europe is doing to itself today.
True, but this is like saying a house with old, no-longer-to-code wiring is just as bad to live in as one with a psychopath setting fire to it, having already violated and hogtied the occupants.
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Netpackrat
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Re: World War I

Post by Netpackrat »

I can always count on you to provide an analogy that makes no sense. ;)
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MiddleAgedKen
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Re: World War I

Post by MiddleAgedKen »

Greg wrote:The terrible isolationism of the 20's that had the military nearly perish from lack of funds was mostly a reaction to Wilson and his excesses. He really was a foul, evil bastard. The bad joke about Wilson being the first fascist dictator of the 20th Century is too close to true to be funny.

I would suggest that, without the lingering bad odor of Wilson to overcome leading to knee-jerk isolationism, our response to global security threats in the 30's wouldn't have been so dangerously close to too late.

In fact we knew as early as the end of WWI that war with Japan was essentially inevitable, and without (as I already mentioned) the lingering odor of Wilson we might have taken a more realistic approach to that threat in the *20's*, which would have done us a world of good.
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Vonz90
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Re: World War I

Post by Vonz90 »

Johnnyreb wrote:WWI was not our business and Wilson made it our business against the people's will. But on the other hand, if we had stayed out of WWI... that would not have stopped the revolution in Russia, it would not have stopped Lenin or Stalin though a negotiated peace would certainly have prevented Hitler.

But had the Nazis never happened, a Weimar Republic sure as hell could not have stopped Stalin from taking all of Europe like he planned to start doing in 1943, except for Hitler pre-empting him.

And had we stayed out of WWI, our Army might well have continued to be more of a frontier constabulary of less than 100,000 troops, half or more of whom stayed in the Phillipines, with no gathering greater than 800 men in the US, than a bonafide military with a staff college and so forth.

And then, later, when Stalin was taking all of Europe, there would have been no US Army, and no Arsenal of Democracy, and likely no Atom Bomb standing in his way and persuading him not to just go for it once Hitler was dead.
If we did not get involved, the Kaiser is probably still the leader of Germany after the war, although most likely with less direct power (he was actually already constitutionally bound, which is something people tend to forget). The reason Wilson wanted to go to war when he did was that both the Brits and French were about at the end of their rope. Of course so were the Germans - it was more or less set up for a compromise peace and both the Germans and allies were talking about it. So what would that have looked like?

Of course we don't know for sure, but at least looking at what was contemplated by both sides, probably the Germans loose most or all of their overseas colonies to the French/British; western Europe probably stays more or less status quo ante bellum . The big looser would have been Russia, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was more or less in the books, the French/Brits probably would have pushed for Polish independence and probably gotten it although it would have been a bit of a rump state. Ukrainian independence was already covered but would have been ratified by the allies, most likely the Germans go ahead and annexed the Baltics as a condition for formally giving up most/all of their overseas colonies and recognizing Poland.

The Austro-Hungarian confederation still falls apart, but the Austrians probably still hold on to Bohemia and Moravia and possibly Croatia as well. Turkey is still screwed and probably does not end up much different than they did loosing all of their Arabian possessions. The Serbs end up loosing some territory at least because everyone hated them except the Russians and the Russians would be in no position to do anything about it.

So in the "new" 1919 Europe, Britain and France both gain net/net, German gains locally but looses overseas for probably a small net gain, Austro-Hungary is a slight looser but since they fall apart net/net weaker than before. The big looser is Russia which looses a bunch of very valuable territory and population.

No doubt the details would be different, but something along these lines. Russia still goes communist, but they would be "contained" by the Central Powers and do not have the same working relationship with France that they had going into WW1 (which is glossed over, but led to WW1 at least to close to as much as what the Germans and Austrians did).

So the question is would this be better or worse than what we got? This is obviously a value judgement, but I am going to say better because it is very unlikely the Nazis (or Communists) take a hold of Germany or anywhere else in Western Europe and thus a WW2 scenario becomes very unlikely.

As for the US, I actually think a lot of the fault lines that impact us today started with Wilson's WW1 power grab and it is much less likely that any of that happens. We still have the race issues coming down the pike, but of course Wilson made that worse too (segregating the civil service, etc...)
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Jericho941
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Re: World War I

Post by Jericho941 »

Netpackrat wrote:I can always count on you to provide an analogy that makes no sense. ;)
It's really hard to convey just how completely beyond the pale Stalin's brutality was, and how long-lasting the consequences of living under such a regime are.
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Re: World War I

Post by BDK »

Austria would have stayed under the aristocrats, may have been able to act as more of a counterweight to Hitler
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Netpackrat
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Re: World War I

Post by Netpackrat »

Jericho941 wrote: It's really hard to convey just how completely beyond the pale Stalin's brutality was, and how long-lasting the consequences of living under such a regime are.
Yes, but I doubt if Stalin would have lived any longer in the alternate reality than he did in this one. So figure he has 10 years to brutalize all of Europe post-conquest (which is doubtful given the way he'd purged his officer corps), and then is replaced by Khruschev or somebody else more moderate. After a few decades, communism once again runs out of other people's money, and collapses under its own weight. Probably all of Europe at that point is about as tolerant of socialism and unchecked islamic immigration as the former Warsaw Pact nations are today.

Are you still sure that our present reality isn't the one gone horribly wrong?
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Windy Wilson
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Re: World War I

Post by Windy Wilson »

Greg wrote:In fact we knew as early as the end of WWI that war with Japan was essentially inevitable[.]
Famously, the journalist/author Hector Bywater wrote "The Great Pacific War in IIRC 1926, about a war between Japan and America starting with a surprise attack on the Philippines and Hawaii, with fleet operations in the Pacific that eerily paralleled the actions of the US Navy in WW2.
Jericho941 wrote:It's really hard to convey just how completely beyond the pale Stalin's brutality was, and how long-lasting the consequences of living under such a regime are.
I recently read "The Forsaken" by Tim Tsoulakis, about Americans who went to the USSR in the depth of the Depression, and after a brief honeymoon, found they were deemed Soviet Citizens and were sent to the Gulags where many, of course, died. The extent of Stalin's brutality was unimagined even by the people who made up the propaganda about how evil the German soldiers were in WW1 and WW2,
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