No.

The Avalon Project : Franco-German Armistice : June 25, 1940

No territorial losses, full control of it's colonies, France maintained control of it's armed forces, even the french battlefleet remained untouched.

This is how a real, white peace looks.

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You're still just looking for (and understandably failing to find) ways to recreate our WWII after a German victory, rather than considering truly different scenarios.

We think of WWI as the conflict in which we all learned that "war is hell" rather than a glorious and profitable adventure, but in large part that's just because no one really won: lots and lots of people died and economies were destroyed, but in end it all seemed pointless.

Your counter factual, however, posits a victorious Germany that actually won something: a war that gave one nation continental dominance for the first time since Napoleon. Whereas the victorious English and French were impressed by the futility and misery of their rather hollow "victory," a victorious Germany would have exalted in their glorious triumph over ancient enemies and been able to enjoy the spoils of conquered foes.
Having had its militarism and its hyper-nationalism reinforced by victory in 1918, and being left in control of the European continent, Germany would have been in a prime position to extend hegemonic control over the other nations of Europe and to economically strangle the UK. I think its entirely conceivable that, sooner or later, the German hegemony, its belief in its own invincibility reinforced by 1918, would have come to blows with the Stalin, either over control of Eastern Europe or over oil.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world:
Without the effects of WWI, its an open question as to what course the US would have taken wrt extending its military presence into the Pacific, especially considering the potential presence of a Germany-supported Mexican government to the south. Looking across the Atlantic at a bloodied and defeated UK, I can easily envision the US becoming ever more pacifistic and devoted to isolationism. Such a shift would not only have short-circuited the explosive growth of the US global economy, but might well have left the Pacific world wide open to unhindered Japanese imperialism, a grim possibility if one reflects on the horrors the Japanese inflicted on the China.

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No what?

I was saying the 1940 terms imposed on France
were harsher than the 1918 terms imposed on Germany,
and that is true, accurate, and correct.




Alsace-Lorraine was lost, and all districts adjacent
to it were earmarked for annexation and settlement
by Germans.

I also consider the occupation of half the country
to be a form of territorial loss.

Finally, the Vichy government was intended as a
puppet and behaved as a puppet, neither of which
condition applied to post-1919 Germany.




Whose utility to Germany would have been negligible.




Which were limited to almost exactly the same number
that Germany was limited to in 1919.




The French fleet was to have been demobilized
excpet for a skeletal coast defence and colonial forces.

Most vessels escaped were either sunk by the UK or
at least did nothing to greatly hamper the efforts of
Germany's enemies.




That is how an unreal black peace looks.

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It was still not a foregone conclusion that the U.S. would enter the war. One could argue a justification for it, and Wilson ably and successfully did that. However, a different president, more inclined to stay out of the fight, might have succeeded also. This was not a Pearl Harbor situation; there was no way Roosevelt could have kept us out of WWII even if he'd wanted to (which he didn't), but Wilson could have kept us out of WWI.

Incidentally, and completely irrelevant to the discussion, there is no way that the U.S. would have lost as many lives staying out of the war as going into it. That's especially true if, as I believe and have been arguing here, staying out of WWI would have prevented WWII, and the 300,000 people we lost in that.

Defeated France, yes; forced a Dunkirk, no. At that point, the best they could hope for would be to break through the French lines, "win" a major battle in WWI terms, and sue for peace on good terms (from Germany's perspective). Certainly better terms than they got.

There is no way Germany could have in 1918 ended the war and continued to occupy Paris. The key to the 1940 victory was that it was quick and total. That might conceivably have happened in 1914 if the Schlieffen plan had worked, but it didn't. It was not going to happen in 1918.

Possible, considering what happened in 1940, but if so it would have been a naval and air war, ultimately a stand-off (since Germany would not have the French bases it did in 1940 from which to plan an invasion of Britain) and a peace a few years later at most, without either country giving much ground.

Now this is just silly. Germany would have been the most powerful state in Europe, granted, but she was exhausted, depleted of both manpower and capital. Germany did not want to go on conquering, she just wanted to end the war on acceptable terms. Also, this was royal Germany, not Nazi Germany. Actually, not even that -- by the end of the war, she was democratic Germany, the Kaiser had been deposed.

By the time Germany was ready to fight another war (which would have occurred about the time it actually did), her neighbors would also have been ready and nobody would have been "powerless." And, absent the Versailles treaty, the Weimar Republic would probably have worked and survived. So when Germany was ready to fight a war again, in terms of a new generation of soldiers growing up and the economy recovering, there is no reason to suppose she would have wanted to.

Oh, so Germany was the "aggressor" in World War I? This is the way the French and British painted things, but it is by no means obvious. Here's how the war began.

The heir to the Austrian throne was assassinated by Serbian terrorists. Austria demanded that Serbia take certain actions to punish the culprits; Serbia failed to do so, and Austria declared war on Serbia.

Russia, which had an alliance with Serbia, declared war on Austria. Germany, which had an alliance with Austria, declared war on Russia. France, which had an alliance with Russia, declared war on Germany. (Germany, knowing this would happen, had already mobilized her army to the west.) Britain, which had an alliance with France, also declared war on Germany.

Can you see a clear "aggressor" in that muddled mess? I cannot. I see a collection of idiots who had not learned the lesson provided by the American Civil War as to how horrible modern war actually is. (This showed up in their tactics as well.)

Impossible. None of them had at that point the stamina or the desire. They got the most draconian peace they could.

There is considerable doubt. Prove it.

And in any case, a failure or even a dereliction of diplomacy is not the same as "aggression." There were many aggressors in World War I and, except possibly for the Serbs, no innocent victims.

Would they? This posits a victory over France on the scale of 1940. I don't see the possibility of that. Germany was exhausted. The only reason she could have won was because her enemies were equally exhausted. It would have been a victory, yes, but not an overwhelming one. The failure of the Schlieffen Plan ensured that such a complete victory was not possible.

Well, the German Revolution occurred before the war was over, so we have to take into account the fact that it would be the Weimar Republic governing the nation, not the Kaiser. I don't doubt that it would have been a very powerful Germany, exerting economic and diplomatic control over much of the continent (rather the way Germany does today, only a bit more so). But there was no continental way to "economically strangle the UK," supported as she was by the British Empire and by trade with the U.S., Canada, China, and India. Germany would have had to build a fleet capable of challenging the Royal Navy to do that, and I honestly don't see the realistic possibility.

If Stalin proved anything in 1939-1941, it is that he did not want war with the west. It has always struck me as very strange that Adolf Hitler was perhaps the only man in his life that he ever trusted, and the one who least deserved that trust. Operation Barbarossa took him completely by surprise. The only answer to the riddle of why this man, suspicious of others to the point of paranoia, trusted Hitler of all people (!), is that he so desperately wanted peace that he deluded himself into believing what he wanted to believe, despite all the evidence available that Hitler was a completely unscrupulous badass who couldn't be trusted further than he could be thrown.

So Stalin would not have started this war. Would Germany? Nazi Germany did, but Weimar Germany was neither as racist nor as bloodthirsty nor as anti-Communist. I can see conflict, certainly, but not war.

Except, as I said, if Trotsky rather than Stalin had won the internal struggle. Trotsky with his focus on exporting revolution and turning the whole world socialist would probably have been more of a warmonger.

Ah, yes. That's a different story altogether.

Well, in fact the U.S. DID become pacifistic and isolationist. I suspect it became more so, not less, because of the experience of World War I. Also, our presence in the Pacific was gained before World War I, not afterward; the Philippines had become a U.S. colony and Hawaii a U.S. territory much earlier. So the potential for conflict was still there. But there is one possibility.

Roosevelt wanted to get us into World War II long before the people were willing to follow him. But how much of that was due to antipathy towards Nazi Germany? If Europe was quiet, and the only conflict were Japanese militarists doing nasty things to other slanty-eyed yellow-skinned Orientals (as most white Americans thought of them then), would he have been as interested in getting involved?

And if he did not, would he have taken the actions that led to the Pearl Harbor attack, especially the embargo on scrap iron and oil sold to the Japanese? If the Japanese could have continued buying raw materials from us, it's unlikely they would have gone to war with us to seize them for themselves; their main focus was to the west, not the east.

It's very much a question of how principled FDR was, and how much he could overcome the racism so prevalent in his people. I don't know the answer to that. If he could and did, then the Pacific theater of World War II would almost surely still have happened, but without the European theater to pull men and resources away from it, we would probably have won the war faster.

And there's another question: without World War II, would there have been an atomic bomb?

Clearly Austria started the war, by declaring war on Serbia.
So the Axis forces were the aggressors.
Germany had already mobilized their forces in the west.

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PART 1 OF REPLY



The quesion is not whether war was a forgone conclusion,
it is whether the US had good reason to enter the war.




This argument could be applied to the WW2 US case
even after 12/7/41. The US would have lost less killed
by simply letting Japan have what it wanted in the Pacific
and Asia, and by responding to the German declaration
of war by cutting off aid to the UK and USSR and capitulalting
to any other German demands.




You do not have a firm grasp of the dynamics of modern war.

The rupture of a continuous front at any point causes the the entire
sector to collapse. The other sectors must then retreat and reform
or be cut off. In France in 1940 half the Allied front caved completely
in because of an initial German breakthrough less than 20 miles wide.
A German breakthrough in 1918 could easily have had the same result.




Germany would never have "sued for peace" after WINNING a battle!




Under my more realistic scenario Germany would in 1918
have had everything in France that it had in 1940. With Russia
out of the war and with Turkey allied its relative strength
would have in 1918 been very much greater.




There is nothing silly about it. Germany would have
been euphoric rather than exhausted after victory
both East and West in 1918. Every year it had 100s k
young men reaching military age. It would certainly
have gone on conquering until Italy and Greece had
been forced to surrender. With all Europe less Russia
under its hegemony supply and finance would have
been a snap.




Sorry, but you are not allowed to jump from one German
regime to another as it suits your pitiful attempts at argument.
It is the pre-Armistice Germany with which you say peace
should have been made in 1918, and that Germany was
not Democratic.




Germany would have been ready to keep fighting in 1918,
as I have outlined above.




Ready or not Germany was superior to all its neighbors
combined and proved so 1939-41. (the USSR was not
a neighbor at the start of the war).

And what makes you think a peace without reparations
or other penalties in 1918 would have improved the
neighbors' relative strength? Germany would not have
had to rearm almost from scratrch beginning in 1933,
and might then by 1939 have had double or more tanks,
aircraft, and naval vessels.




A new and thoroughly compelling line of argument
has just occurred to me.

I don't see how I missed it to begin with.

It deserves a separate post. I will follow up later.




Yes, Germany was the aggressor, and I will take your measure
every step of the way.




Here is the text of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia:

The Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Serbia (English translation) - World War I Document Archive

Note demand #6:

(Serbia must) begin a judicial inquiry against the accessories to the plot of June 28th who are on Serbian territory, with organs delegated by the Austro-Hungarian government participating in the investigation.

Demand #6 means that Austian courts were to operate
within Serbia.

You have throughout this threat imputed guilt to the
1918 victors for the harshness of their terms.

Well, those terms did not go as far as the Austrian terms
to Serbia of 1914. The Allies did not demand to take part
in court proceedings in Germany to pass judgement on
German citizens.

You are therefore compelled as a matter of simple logic
to condemn Austria for its actions prior to war with Serbia.

Austria was encouraged to do what it did by Germany,
which had full knowledge that war would almost inevitable
result. There is no possibility Austria would have done
what it did without German backing.

Simple logic therefore compels you to condemn Germany
even more than Austria.




I need a break from the action at this point. More to follow.

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From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord, deliver us.

There was plenty of gung-ho warmongering all around. Austria declared war on Serbia, yes, but that didn't automatically involve Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, Japan, or the United States. Each nation was responsible for its own behavior, and as best I can see they all went whacko. Germany must bear her share of the blame, but so must France, Britain, and Russia. As for German mobilization, this was done in anticipation of a French declaration of war, which the French duly provided. There are a number of unpleasant things one can say about German behavior during the war, such as violation of Belgian neutrality and the execution of innocent hostages after sabotage or guerrilla attacks, but it's going too far to accuse any one nation of "starting the war."

A good book on the subject is Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August. The description of French attitudes alone is revealing. The French were thirsting for revenge for 1870. A common graffitum in Paris was "Quarante-Huitante" ("Forty-Eighty"), with the implication that as there were 40 million Frenchmen and eighty million Germans, if every Frenchman killed two Germans Germany would be annihilated.

No, the question is whether, in hindsight, it would have been better for us NOT to enter the war. Whether the war was a foregone conclusion is pertinent to that because if it was, then the question becomes meaningless. Whether the U.S. had, arguably, good reason to enter the war does not apply.

To your strategic argument I assert: 1870. We have a precedent.

I really wonder if you are capable of debating without resorting to gratuitous insults such as the above. This is the last time I will tolerate it. The next instance will see you added to my ignore list.

Germany's revolution occurred before the armistice, thus, peace would have been made by the provisional government that became the Weimar Republic, as I said, and not by the Kaiser.

The USSR was Germany's neighbor in 1941, which you included in your range of years, thanks to the partition of Poland. I do not dispute that Germany would have been the strongest nation in Europe, as indeed she is today. But I do dispute that this would have led inexorably to war.

You are trying to demonstrate that Germany was the aggressor in the war. The text of Austria's demand to Serbia is irrelevant for that purpose. The "aggressor" is not the nation one judges to have been unreasonable. It is the nation that fires the first shot or first declares war. By that standard, Austria was the aggressor between Austria and Serbia; Russia between Russia and Austria; Germany between Germany and Russia; France and England between each country and Germany. Europe was a continent full of war-crazy aggressors. It is not reasonable nor realistic to single out one of them.

Everything you mentioned was not part of the treaty, beside the crippling of the fleet. However, the fleet was not dismantled and still capable of upkeeping the colonies.
I gave you a pretty reliable source of the franco-german agreement and it supports every single claim I have announced. The french even didn't hesitate to sign the treaty. However, what happened after England refused to make peace with Hitler's Germany, that was admittetly worse than the Versailles Treaty. But that does not change the fact that in 1940, Hitler was willing to make a pretty much white peace with both France and England.

BBC - WW2 People's War - A Last Appeal to Reason by Adolf Hitler

Unlike in 1918 the entente, he even welcomed the french delegation with militarical honours. Hitler was willing to start unconditional negotiations. Already after Fall Weiß. One can only speculate which demands he would have made, but it was him who was willing to start peace negotiations, and it were the allies who wanted to continue the war.
At all costs.

__________________
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- John McCain on an episode of Hardball, 2006, before the commercial break

"I do not believe that gay marriage should be legal."
- John McCain on the same episode of Hardball, after the commercial break

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- Tucker Bounds, Spokesman of the John McCain presidential campaign.

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PART 2 OF REPLY


Your chronology is all fouled up.

Get it straight the next time, OK?

Here is the correct chronology:

Trenches on the Web - Timeline: Jul-1914: The July Crisis
First World War.com - Feature Articles - Who Declared War and When

7/28 Austria declared war on Serbia

7/30 Austria began mobilization

7/31 Russia began mobilization
7/31 France began mobilization
7/31 German ultimatum to Russia to stop mobilization
7/31 German ultimatum to France to declare neutrality
within 18 hours and hand over the frontier forts at
Liege and Namur in a show of good faith.

8/1 Germany declared war on Russia

8/2 Germany invaded France
8/2 Germany invaded Luxembourg
8/2 Germany ultimatum to Belgium demanding passage

8/3 Germany invaded Belgium
8/3 Germany declared war on France

8/4 Germany declared war on Belgium
8/4 UK declared war on Germany

8/6 Austria declared war on Russia
8/6 Russia declared war on Austria

8/7 Russia declared war on Germany

8/12 Austria invaded Serbia




Yes.

At any time before the actual opening of hostilities
Germany could have forced Austria to back down.
Instead it made the second opening declaration of
war, against Russia. Four days later it invaded France
and Luxembourg prior to declaring war and the day
after that it invaded Belgium prior to declaring war.




What do you think now that I have taught you the facts?




What the hell are you talking about?




Impossible only because they lacked the will.




I believe even pro-German historians will concede
my point here.

Austria was certainly not going to go risk war with
Russia as well as Serbia without German backing.

See events for 7/5/14 at this link:

Trenches on the Web - Timeline: Jul-1914: The July Crisis




Germany did not conduct any diplomacy in the
summer of 1914. It only plotted war, issued ultimata,
and launched invasions.




There were two finally precipitating aggressors:
Germany and Austria, but Germany was the only
one which really counted.




The Serbs were not innocent as you have pointed
out yourself.

Slip of the tongue I guess. You must mean Belgium.

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From the fury of the Northmen, Good Lord, deliver us.