Alternate history AKICOLJ

[philmophlegm]

Help me out with an alternate history scenario.

Alternate histories where Germany won the Second World War are pretty common - off the top of my head I can think of Robert Harris's 'Fatherland', Philip K. Dick's 'The Man in the High Castle' and that Star Trek episode with Joan Collins in it*. However, the scenario I need help with is one where Germany won the First World War.

What has happened is that the war of attrition of 1915 to 1917 dragged on into a stalemate. The United States stayed out of the war. The Russian Revolution happened as it had happened in our timeline. Germany was able to reduce British industrial capacity through Zeppelin raids. German U-Boats cut off the flow of raw materials from the British Empire. And slowly Germany was able to advance through France.

Britain and what is left of France and the rest of the allies surrender to Germany in 1934. Southern Britain is a lawless place with much of its infrastructure destroyed. Many people have fled to the north. The Royal Family has moved to Canada. Under the terms of the surrender, Ireland has been granted independence, guaranteed by Germany. Large parts of France have been carved off as vassal states of Germany, most notably Burgundy. The same has happened to Italy, with Lombardy now a separate kingdom subject to the German Kaiser.

That's about as far as I got. My question is: what does the world look like in 1935, with Germany the dominant European power?







* Well, ok that isn't actually set after a German victory, but it does show how the non-death of an American pacifist leads to German victory.

Comments

Austria-Hungary?

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

What happens to Austria-Hungary? Does it become part of the new pan-Germanic Reich?

I thought - may be entirely wrong - that the British/French calculations on a war of attrition in 1915-16 were that they would outlast the Germans. Remember also that attacking was much more destructive than defending.

Re: Austria-Hungary?

[(Anonymous)]

The French and British calculated they could bleed German manpower dry. The Germans calculated they could bleed the French dry before the British mobilised the manpower of the Empire. Britain calculated right, just. The other two got it wrong.

The collapse of the German army in 1918 and French in 1917 happened at roughly the same casualties suffered to adult population level in both countries. No one else reached those ratios. IIRC the Russian and A-H collapses also happened at similar levels to each other and the Italians were not far behind.

The only historical winners from WW2 were the USA and Japan. Britain probably got a draw. Everyone else lost though the French didnt realise it at the time.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

The calculations in 1916 were that attrition would favour the Allies, although I think that by 1917 Haig had changed to the opinion that the French were a mostly spent force and was wanting to wait until the Americans were ready in 1919.

It seems to have been thought that attacking let to a better attrition ratio that defending, although that often changed if the defender managed a decent counter-attack as that seems to have had the advantages of the attack without the disadvantages.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Was there then a Haig calculation that Britain could win prior to US intervention, or that the British should have done the minimum possible to exhaust French, German and possibly US resources?

I cannot see how attacking against machine guns could have been felt to have a better attrition ratio could be true, though am certainly willing to accept that this could have been promoted for propaganda reasons. I'm thinking in particular of the Somme.

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

The feeling seems to have been that once Russia was out of the war and the French army was incapable of the offensive (in Haig's view) the British army was insufficient to defeat Germany. Especially what with all these sideshows in Italy, Palestine, Salonika, etc that were uselessly draining resources from the only important theatre.

The idea about the attack was that you'd wound a lot of people with the artillery, and then if you'd neutralised the machine guns, cut the wire, and got a decent attack going you'd get a lot more prisoners along the way. It seemed to work a lot, though when it went wrong it could go wrong quite badly. It's why the Germans moved to having the front line only lightly held, with the main defences further back: a heavily-held front line would just leave more prisoners for the initial attack. Tanks helped, of course.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

How was the approach to artillery, machine guns and cutting the wire different from the Somme? Was it a creeping barrage idea? Was it that trenches further back were not as deep?

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure :-) Artillery control was a lot more flexible, especially as air spotting took off, and proximity fuses were at least supposed to make it better at cutting wire. Tanks helped a lot with machine-gun posts and getting through wire, and appreciating enemy doctrine made it easier to, for example, predict where a counter-attack would be forming up and send in a few rounds prophylactic.