Would the World be a Better Place if the Central Powers Won the Great War?

[Grinning_Colossus]

Yes, it would depend on whether Mitteleuropa or the Syndicalist International won WWII.

[szmik]

The question is a bit too wide to be interesting. I think a more interesting discussion is about the Versailles treaty, and how it could have been made to be better and/or how the victors could have implemented it competently. The main problem with the Entente victory as it happened is Versailles. It was the Caudine Forks all over again, in spite of the warnings of Livy and Machiavelli.

Yes, the problem with the Entente victory was Versailles.

Ironically, I suggest you guys dig up a bit on the German Mitteleuropa plans they made during the war, preparing for their victory. They envisioned a Europe under economic dependency on Germany. 
So you can say that the only difference we ended up after two world wars and scores of dead is that the Balkans is not under the control of a single German puppet, and is instead a clusterfuck of epic proportions.
Oh, and we also ended up with 50 years of communism.

[jimmy olsen]

Yes, it would depend on whether Mitteleuropa or the Syndicalist International won WWII.

I am interested in your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Martinus]

What about the rest of the world? If France and the UK lost WW1, their colonial empires would fall earlier - what would replace the power vacuum?

[Neil]

What about the rest of the world? If France and the UK lost WW1, their colonial empires would fall earlier - what would replace the power vacuum?

In some cases, Germans.  In other cases, tribalism.  In still others the Japanese.  And there are always the Americans and their business interests.

[CountDeMoney]

Shame we don't have Languish's archives, so we could just sticky the same thread once instead of Timmay restarting it every so often.

[Eddie Teach]

We could easily sticky an alt history thread here.

[Viking]

A more interesting question here might be that if the allies had know the consequences of versailles; what, if any, different choices might the Entente make? Or, for that matter, the Central Power or the Bolsheviks make based on the situation of 11:00-11/11-1918.

[Razgovory]

Well it's clear that the Central Powers can't win by invading France and Russia.  All attempts to do so had a 100% failure rate.  To win they really need to think out side the box.  Like dig a series of massive trenches on the French border down to the Earth's mantle thereby creating a fault and hope that France is subducted under Germany.  That's something of a long term project.

[dps]

What about the rest of the world? If France and the UK lost WW1, their colonial empires would fall earlier - what would replace the power vacuum?

In some cases, Germans.  In other cases, tribalism.  In still others the Japanese.  And there are always the Americans and their business interests.

Given a quick CP victory, the British and French would almost certainly have kept the bulk of their overseas empires.  The French would have almost certainly had to cede some territory to the Germans, but had the French been knocked out quickly, the British might well have settled for a peace that more-or-less left the British possessions as they were--the Germans could possibly have knocked out France in 1914 given really good luck and a bit better leadership, but they had no real means to invade the UK or seriously threaten Britian's overseas territories in the face of the Royal Navy.

Given that a short war wouldn't have been so destructive to the Great Powers, there's no reason to think that it would have hastened the fall of the colonial empires--in fact, it might have delayed it.

[Faeelin]

I'm somewhat suspicious of the notion that the world wars weakened the European empires and so hastened the fall of their empires. Weakened them how? The UK in 1960 was richer and more powerful in absolute terms than in 1939.  But still, it left Africa.

I don't see how the Kaiser's boot on the people's of Europe is really ideal or better than OTL. 

[Razgovory]

By 1960 they had already dropped some of the dead weight.  Still, vast amounts of money and manpower were lost due to the war.  Money that could have gone somewhere else.  The World Wars also created another problem:  there were a lot of weapons floating around afterword.  Colonial insurgencies were often nearly as well equipped as their colonial masters.  Before 1914, armies in Asia and Africa were severely antiquated.  Soldiers equipped with muskets or swords in 1914, would have semi-automatic rifles and machine guns in 1960.  The best example of this is the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu who showed up to the battle with WWII era artillery and used it to defeat a French Army in the field.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm somewhat suspicious of the notion that the world wars weakened the European empires and so hastened the fall of their empires. Weakened them how? The UK in 1960 was richer and more powerful in absolute terms than in 1939.  But still, it left Africa.

I don't see how the Kaiser's boot on the people's of Europe is really ideal or better than OTL.

It weakened them financially and it shattered the myth of European invincibility.

[jimmy olsen]

Well it's clear that the Central Powers can't win by invading France and Russia.  All attempts to do so had a 100% failure rate.

[CountDeMoney]

Well it's clear that the Central Powers can't win by invading France and Russia.  All attempts to do so had a 100% failure rate.

It's your thread, you fucking moron.  You deserve the responses you get.  Like this one.
And this one.  You fucking moron.