What If Germany Won the Battle of the Marne in 1914?

i did some thinking:

since the french and British were mostly retreating, had they lost that battle they woudl still retreat (losing Paris i'm afraid) until the German army over extends itself, im thinking around the Orleans area. assuming the french doesn't surrender at this point, the french plus British troops will attack the exhausted Germans ( may or may not take back Paris) and trench warfare settles around that area.

... this is the version of WWI ( of the western front) that i use for my current Byzantine time line.

Mathalamus said:

i did some thinking:

since the french and British were mostly retreating, had they lost that battle they woudl still retreat (losing Paris i'm afraid) until the German army over extends itself, im thinking around the Orleans area. assuming the french doesn't surrender at this point, the french plus British troops will attack the exhausted Germans ( may or may not take back Paris) and trench warfare settles around that area.

... this is the version of WWI ( of the western front) that i use for my current Byzantine time line.

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You're assuming the Germans would be stupid enough to overextend themselves in this manner. I sincerely doubt they would.

why not? they did over extend themselves in the real WWI too.

Mathalamus said:

why not? they did over extend themselves in the real WWI too.

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But not by nearly that bloody much.

Lord Baal said:

You're assuming the Germans would be stupid enough to overextend themselves in this manner. I sincerely doubt they would.

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Actually, they did, and it was in fact part of both the Schlieffen Plan and Fall Gelb. To avoid getting bogged down in a meat grinder war, their plan was to overextend themselves in order to encircle the French. It failed in the former because it was logistically nigh-impossible, and it succeeded in the latter partly because of French frailty and partly because Manstein, Guderian and Rundstedt together had the military genius of Napoleon.

LightSpectra said:

Actually, they did, and it was in fact part of both the Schlieffen Plan and Fall Gelb. To avoid getting bogged down in a meat grinder war, their plan was to overextend themselves in order to encircle the French. It failed in the former because it was logistically nigh-impossible, and it succeeded in the latter partly because of French frailty and partly because Manstein, Guderian and Rundstedt together had the military genius of Napoleon.

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I'm aware of the success of Fall Gelb, which was a singularly brilliant plan. But the Schiefflen Plan didn't involve as much of an over-extension as Mathalamus suggests.

Lord Baal said:

I'm aware of the success of Fall Gelb, which was a singularly brilliant plan. But the Schiefflen Plan didn't involve as much of an over-extension as Mathalamus suggests.

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The point of the Schlieffen Plan was that it was supposed to be Cannae on a huge scale. Almost by definition it was an over extension, though you could partly blame Moltke's alterations to it, as well as practical impossibilities that weren't an issue during Schlieffen's own time; for instance, part of Joffre's counter-attack at the Marne was because of aerial reconnaissance.

An interesting part of the original plan that was eliminated by Moltke was that Schlieffen envisioned ceding Alsace-Lorraine almost immediately to France, in order to have the French armies too far within Germany in order to reposition fast enough to the Belgian border. Neither Moltke nor Wilhelm had the resolve to do this; they thought simply storming through Belgium in a week would've been enough to encircle France. Though as you might recall, the critical part of Hannibal's trap at Cannae was the inverted arc of infantry.

LightSpectra said:

The point of the Schlieffen Plan was that it was supposed to be Cannae on a huge scale. Almost by definition it was an over extension, though you could partly blame Moltke's alterations to it, as well as practical impossibilities that weren't an issue during Schlieffen's own time; for instance, part of Joffre's counter-attack at the Marne was because of aerial reconnaissance.

An interesting part of the original plan that was eliminated by Moltke was that Schlieffen envisioned ceding Alsace-Lorraine almost immediately to France, in order to have the French armies too far within Germany in order to reposition fast enough to the Belgian border. Neither Moltke nor Wilhelm had the resolve to do this; they thought simply storming through Belgium in a week would've been enough to encircle France. Though as you might recall, the critical part of Hannibal's trap at Cannae was the inverted arc of infantry.

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I also recall that Cannae is far from the greatest encirclement in classical history, despite its fame, though that's a tangent.

I was under the impression that the modified Schlieffen Plan was basically storming through Belgium while simultaneously invading France further to the south, swinging around to take Paris from the rear and crushing the French and British armies both against the coast and against the German army in Belgium. Stupidly, less than the necessary forces were allocated to this task, never mind the obvious logistic difficulties in this plan to start with. I didn't actually know about the plan to cede Alsace-Lorraine to the French, though it's a far better plan than what they came up with.

Smellincoffee said:

I don't know what Britain would have done, but I'm not sure they would have simply given up. Perhaps they might, but perhaps they would resist as best they could -- as they did with Napoleon.

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It's important to note that French possession of Belgium per se wasn't inherently unacceptable to the British, starting at least with Amiens and continuing for half of Napoleon's reign. Stripping him of Belgium only really entered into the debate with the ascension of Castlereagh, and that not for Belgium's geopolitical danger to Britain but because it was needed as an intermediary zone between France and Prussia. And even according to the outrageously grasping September war aims proposal, the Germans would have left most of Belgium intact.

Godwynn said:

An Anglo-German alliance would have been sweet like Joseph Chamberlain proposed.

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Meh. Congress system was far better in terms of preserving peace than an Anglo-German alliance would have been.

LightSpectra said:

If they had also gotten a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain, it would've been like the 16th century all over again.

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It didn't work with Romania, why would it work with Spain?

LightSpectra said:

The point of the Schlieffen Plan was that it was supposed to be Cannae on a huge scale. Almost by definition it was an over extension, though you could partly blame Moltke's alterations to it, as well as practical impossibilities that weren't an issue during Schlieffen's own time; for instance, part of Joffre's counter-attack at the Marne was because of aerial reconnaissance.

An interesting part of the original plan that was eliminated by Moltke was that Schlieffen envisioned ceding Alsace-Lorraine almost immediately to France, in order to have the French armies too far within Germany in order to reposition fast enough to the Belgian border. Neither Moltke nor Wilhelm had the resolve to do this; they thought simply storming through Belgium in a week would've been enough to encircle France. Though as you might recall, the critical part of Hannibal's trap at Cannae was the inverted arc of infantry.

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I'm honored to see that you haven't read my posts.

Well maybe if you learned the art of brevity, you'd be less so honored!

... okay, I'm sorry.

It didn't work with Romania, why would it work with Spain?

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what do you mean?

SnowlyWhite said:

what do you mean?

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Having a Hohenzollern on the throne didn't translate into geopolitical advantage for Germany. Romania joined the other side in the First World War.

Same with Greece if I'm not mistaken. Some Bavarian dude.

Nah, the royal family of Greece was Danish. They kicked the Bavarian out in the 1860s. That said, the king - Konstantinos I - was still related by marriage to Wilhelm II. And yes, the royal tie didn't actually help Germany in the end.

I never understand why people imagine that the Hohenzollern Candidacy was a real geostrategic threat to France. It wasn't, it was an attempted prestige hit for Bismarck, and was never, ever a valid ground for war on the part of the French.

Dachs said:

Nah, the royal family of Greece was Danish. They kicked the Bavarian out in the 1860s. That said, the king - Konstantinos I - was still related by marriage to Wilhelm II. And yes, the royal tie didn't actually help Germany in the end.

I never understand why people imagine that the Hohenzollern Candidacy was a real geostrategic threat to France. It wasn't, it was an attempted prestige hit for Bismarck, and was never, ever a valid ground for war on the part of the French.

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I think the French were just terrified that they'd be facing some huge Hohenzollern empire, much like they'd been stuck with Hapsburgs on both sides previously. Of course, someone should have pointed out to them that they'd pretty much pwned the Hapsburgs for much of that time anyway.

Lord Baal said:

I think the French were just terrified that they'd be facing some huge Hohenzollern empire, much like they'd been stuck with Hapsburgs on both sides previously. Of course, someone should have pointed out to them that they'd pretty much pwned the Hapsburgs for much of that time anyway.

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Well cock, I lost the original post.

That would have been quite the reasonable attitude to take - in 1550. In 1870 there was precisely no chance in hell that the Spanish and Prussian crowns would be united, even if the Prince of Prussia had succeeded to the Spanish throne instead of the actual cadet-branch prince that was suggested. There was also essentially no reason for the Spanish and Prussian governments to even cooperate unless it was already in their interests to do so. States by 1870 had ceased to act solely for the benefit of the monarch (you could even argue that they hadn't even done so in the past, either, but that's obviously debatable and even irrelevant). Even earlier, having a Bourbon on the Spanish throne had not prevented the Spanish from working with Napoleon. One of the key moments in the death of monarchic geopolitics in Europe was the Baden-Bavaria crisis of the late 1810s, when Bavaria claimed certain territories in the Grand Duchy of Baden upon the death of the Badenese grand duke, and Baden's parliament simply wrote a clause into the constitution of the state forbidding any of its territory to be alienated on succession. Bavaria was roundly mocked by the other states of Europe and eventually had to acquiesce.

The French knew this in 1870. They weren't stupid, although it's easy to portray the French government in 1870 as precisely that. Napoleon and his ministers used Carlos I/Karl V as a nationalistic bogeyman for the media, not as a serious representation of their fears. It was they, and not Otto von Bismarck, who wanted a pretext for war in the summer of 1870, and the Hohenzollern Candidacy provided a cover for what could not be openly stated: the French government's self-perception that it was a Great Power in relative decline in both power (on land to Prussia-North Germany, on the high seas to the United Kingdom) and prestige (after the abject failures in the Luxembourg Crisis and in Mexico). It is a remarkably similar position to that of Austria-Hungary in 1914. (The key difference is that Austria-Hungary also faced serious issues of internal cohesion. France may have as well, but they were clearly not as severe.) So when another opportunity arose - no matter how implausible - to launch what was essentially a face-saving war, the French grabbed it with both hands.

well, in Romania's case, beside royal family ties, there were about 0 reasons to join the Central Powers and a couple of solid ones to join the Entente... But I doubt anyone expected a country to enter the war on one side just because of royal family ties in 20th century; and against all their interests. Ok, maybe willy did, but it's just a proof he daydreamed too much...

Nah, there were reasons, and the original alliance of the 1880s played them up. For instance, Romania could have switched her territorial ambitions to Russian Moldavia and Bessarabia instead of Transylvania. And an alliance with the Austro-German bloc would have provided an element of security against Bulgaria.

well, here I don't know about Basarabia/Bucovina part(have to confess my country's history wasn't necessarily on the list of very interesting subjects) - I mean, in the end, the 1812 cedded parts were returned at the end of the war in 1918, so... it's not like the Central Powers could give them back twice or anything

Yeah, but you got them from the puppet-Ukraine that was set up out of territories the Central Powers took from Russia. Originally, they belonged to Russia, and the Central Powers would conceivably have not given them to puppet-Ukraine if Romania were on their side.