IF the US Never Demobilized After WW1 and Kept an Army Base in Germany Would

[SerriaFox]

IF the US never demobilized after WW1 and kept an army base in Germany would World War 2 have Happened?

Was Germany so defeated in WW1 that they would of accepted such a base?

 

[Mosher]

I can tell you're American just from what you typed...


The British had a MUCH larger role in WWI than the Americans did. I'm not going to speak more on it because I'm ignorant on the subject, however...

 

[Winner]

A base? Stop thinking in 1945-1991 terms, please.

When Germany asked for an armistice (it did not surrender unconditionally like in WW2, keep that fact in mind), Entente soldiers hadn't even made it to Germany, the main front line was still in Belgium. It was hardly a crushing military defeat - Germany gave in because it was collapsing internally.

The US in WW1 was hardly the dominant Entente power. It entered the war too late and its contribution to the final defeat over Germany is questionable. I'd say Germany would have lost even if the US remained neutral. Now, after the war, the Entente troops, including the Americans, occupied Rhineland to make sure the Germans would not return to war should the peace negotiations failed, but since the US demobilized quickly, it soon became just a token force.

 

[SerriaFox]

Your right I'm fairly ignorant of WW1. I was taught that the US was the "straw" which broke the camels back. That we enter the war late with fresh men that was enough to break the stalemate.

Although I seen to remember a history program which suggested that, Britain, Germany and Russia where starting to face massive pressure on the home front, with revolutionary overtones.

Had the Entente troops remained would Hitler been able to mobilize?

 

[Mosher]

Most likely... once Hitler got elected chancellor, he would most likely expel all foreign soldiers from his borders.

 

[Virote_Considon]

From what I gather, American involvement in WWI wasn't very popular domestically as it was, so I doubt they would have been able to sustain any further occupation for any significant time.

 

[Winner]

Your right I'm fairly ignorant of WW1. I was taught that the US was the "straw" which broke the camels back. That we enter the war late with fresh men that was enough to break the stalemate.

It's partially true. The Americans helped, but I'd say their contribution was chiefly financial (without them the Brits and the French would have gone bankrupt) and psychological. When the Americans started arriving en masse to the Western Front, it was clear to all but the most ignorant Germans that the war was lost. That's the reason why in early 1918 they launched the greatest offensive on the front since 1914, literally an all-out attempt to win the war before the Entente could receive millions of American troops into their ranks.

Although I seen to remember a history program which suggested that, Britain, Germany and Russia where starting to face massive pressure on the home front, with revolutionary overtones.

Watch "The First World War", it's a very fine documentary about all aspects of the war. I don't know how much of it is on YouTube though, they keep deleting the videos for some idiotic reason.

Had the Entente troops remained would Hitler been able to mobilize?

They did remain, for a long time. Entente basically held the region as a hostage to make sure the Germans would pay war reparations. Didn't work very well, since Germany was even more bankrupt that the French and the British. However, when they left, the agreement was Germany would not station military forces in the region, ever. Hitler broke that agreement in 1936, and he should have been punished - but wasn't.

Basically, to answer your question - IF the Americans hadn't entered a period that's usually called "isolationist" (it wasn't so, not completely) after WW1 and decided to support the League of Nations they had helped to set up (it was a sort of precursor to the UN), IF they hadn't insisted on full repayment of war debts (which made the French desperate to squeeze money from Germany), IF they had remained openly allied with France and Britain and made it clear that any violation of post-WW1 treaties would be considered an act of war, then WW2 as we know it couldn't have happened.

It's too many "if"'s if you ask me.

 

[Ataxerxes]

From what I gather, American involvement in WWI wasn't very popular domestically as it was, so I doubt they would have been able to sustain any further occupation for any significant time.

I think WWI was popular enough domestically when it occurred. When Wilson was elected it wouldn't have been. The unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman telegram made war more palatable to America. Admittedly, Wilson was a little self-delusional when he thought America was very neutral up to that point. My ancestors stopped speaking German in church or home during WWI and that started before the actual DOW.

However, I agree with the second part. Given American feeling at that time, America would not have gone along with any significant occupation for any significant time. The discussion in some ways doesn't make sense because America keeping a presence there would have required a significantly different U.S. outlook at that time. The U.S. in fact cut back it's military all through the 20's and most of the 30's. At the level of U.S. military in the 30's any sort of "base" in Germany would have taken up a significant part of the military budget.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Rhineland

that being said, it would make no sense. The French were nearby and Germany was limited to 100k men army and crap logistics/weaponry so you didn't need anyone else to have a base there...

In 1936 when Rhineland was remilitarized, if the French would've cough louder, Hitler would have to retreat.

No base was necessary, they had no army; a bit of brains however, would've helped.

 

[Winner]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Rhineland

that being said, it would make no sense. The French were nearby and Germany was limited to 100k men army and crap logistics/weaponry so you didn't need anyone else to have a base there...

In 1936 when Rhineland was remilitarized, if the French would've cough louder, Hitler would have to retreat.

No base was necessary, they had no army; a bit of brains however, would've helped.

Well, read the Wiki article on re-occupation of Rhineland by Hitler's forces. It basically says that the French were in a very bad situation financially and the Brits didn't care what the Germans were doing. French politicians faced elections and they were unwilling to to get into any sort of trouble with Germany that could undermine the French economy.

Fatal mistake, if you ask me.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

yeah, but as bad as it might be, if you have 10 times the other guy's army, really... ain't that much of a challenge. Anyway, wasn't a situation of lacking raw military power and needing US support.

And it would've been the same if they've kept the troops there - if you don't use them, or make a credible threat to use them, those troops are perfectly useless.

The french had more then enough troops by themselves to keep Germany demilitarized so the answer was never "need more troops". Would've need better politicians eventually.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

With hindsight, we can all agree that it would have been easier and simpler for the Western Allies to fight Germany in the Rhineland in 1936.

But people really, really didn't want to fight another war after the horrors their older brothers had been through.

There's a fun blog by the BBC's Paul Mason where he uses Hearts of Iron (yes, really!) to explain the constraints politicians faced: I re-fight World War Two and lose.

 

[Winner]

With hindsight, we can all agree that it would have been easier and simpler for the Western Allies to fight Germany in the Rhineland in 1936.

But people really, really didn't want to fight another war after the horrors their older brothers had been through.

The psychological explanation is... lacking. It wasn't the "people" who were making the decisions. It was their leaders, and they screwed up royally - they actually made Hitler look like a genius political strategist, while in fact he was a complete and utter idiot.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

The psychological explanation is... lacking. It wasn't the "people" who were making the decisions. It was their leaders, and they screwed up royally - they actually made Hitler look like a genius political strategist, while in fact he was a complete and utter idiot.

I include leaders and those putting pressure on them through the democratic channels. Just read Hansard from the 1930s. Most members of Western elites were desperate to avoid another such war.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

another such war with whom exactly? Germany didn't have an army. Period.

I have a gun; you don't - unless it's hollywood, I win...

 

[Dachs]

IF the US never demobilized after WW1 and kept an army base in Germany would World War 2 have Happened?

As many people have said, it is hard for me to imagine American troops remaining in the positions they briefly occupied on the Rhine after the armistice. They went 'over there', they won, and now they got to come home. Nobody in America gave a toss about whether the Germans got to have an army or whatever so long as Americans weren't getting shot at by German submarines and such. So I'm going to deny the hypothetical by stating that it's hilariously implausible.

Was Germany so defeated in WW1 that they would of accepted such a base?

Don't think in terms of 'bases'. Allied forces occupied parts of Germany for a long time - until 1935-6 in some cases - but it wasn't for use as power projection, it was to keep Germany down. In that context, American participation would have been virtually irrelevant, as one among many. So even if the hypothetical were plausible, which it wasn't, it wouldn't matter.

So let's change things up even further and magic every one of the Entente armies out of Germany except for America's, while giving the Americans military occupation of western Germany and the internal political will to stay in occupation. Still probably wouldn't prevent much of anything. As could be seen in the Ruhr crisis, even democratically elected German governments led by a fairly moderate social-democratic party were willing to resort to drastic expedients to kick out countries that were occupying German territory. I find it hard to imagine a scenario in which the Germans quietly acquiesce to the occupation of their country, barring what happened in the Second World War. Either the Americans would be forced to leave by nonviolent or semiviolent action, as historically in 1923, or the American presence would, out of bitterness, induce the German electorate to more and more extreme nationalist positions.

On the bright side, such a scenario would probably embitter France and the UK towards the Americans as well. So Europe might very well find common ground - against the Americans.

Ridiculous? Sure. But so was the hypothetical.

The British had a MUCH larger role in WWI than the Americans did. I'm not going to speak more on it because I'm ignorant on the subject, however...

That does not mean that the Americans could not have played a larger role in the occupation of the Rhineland.

When Germany asked for an armistice (it did not surrender unconditionally like in WW2, keep that fact in mind), Entente soldiers hadn't even made it to Germany, the main front line was still in Belgium. It was hardly a crushing military defeat - Germany gave in because it was collapsing internally.

Ah yes, the "Dolchstoßlegende". We have dismissed that claim.

German armies had suffered rather catastrophic defeats and were being pushed back on all fronts; German territory (although it was, inconveniently, located in what became France after the war) was under partial occupation, and in the immediate aftermath of the armistice, Allied forces, including American troops, moved to occupy positions on the Rhine. This was their blackmail that forced the Weimar government to sign the Treaty of Versailles: hey look, your country is in the midst of a revolution and we've got armies in control of your industrial heartland.

The proximate reason for seeking an armistice lay with Ludendorff, and Ludendorff made his decision probably sometime in August, when the German military was being dealt catastrophic defeats, as were the armies of all of Germany's allies in Italy and the Balkans. It was Ludendorff who initiated what's called the "revolution from above" that created the Weimar Republic in all but name before Kaiser Wilhelm was even thinking about fleeing to the Netherlands. The negotiations between the Army and the SPD over the new republic were easy because Ludendorff had made the key concessions - including the constitutional ones - before he relinquished power. It was not the Kiel Mutiny or the Spartakists who started the revolution, and it was not the revolution that brought the Germans to the table; it was Ludendorff, chief of the army, who made the armistice negotiation decisions. Popular feeling didn't ruin the German army's fighting chances - if anything, it was the leadership of the army that stabbed people in the back.

This isn't really a Main Area of Disagreement, it's just that I noticed this rather pervasive and unfortunate myth come up in your argument and wanted to address it.

The US in WW1 was hardly the dominant Entente power. It entered the war too late and its contribution to the final defeat over Germany is questionable. I'd say Germany would have lost even if the US remained neutral.

I disagree. I think that the Allies would have lost the war in the fall of 1917, if not earlier, if the United States had remained neutral. The reasoning is fairly simple, actually.

In the spring of 1917, the United Kingdom's cash balance in the United States was, to put it lightly, in the crapper. They had virtually run out of American hard currency and were nearing the limits of their ability to acquire more. The Bank of England still retained considerable reserves, of course, but those were in pounds, and pounds were rather useless - and most of those reserves were tied up guaranteeing larger sums for use in the war anyway. And without American hard currency, the British would have had zero ability to buy from America - ability that the British depended on, for raw materials, for manufactures, and for resources, especially meat and grain. They had perhaps a month or two left before they ran out of the financial ability to purchase American goods; maybe some of the shortfall from losing the ability to 'buy American' would have been made up from increased buying in Argentina and similar powers, but I rather doubt it; most of Britain's funds there had been leveraged as well.

So the UK was, essentially, about to run out of the 'sinews of war'. It was at this point, armed with a new plan to deny resources to the United Kingdom, that the Germans announced their new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, which brought the United States into the war in short order. With the Americans allied to the entente powers, the UK's lack of American hard currency suddenly became irrelevant. The tap was reopened; the resources began to flow again.

In short, Germany's attempt to shut down the British economy made it impossible to shut down the British economy. I've said this elsewhere, but I think the Germans probably could have won the First World War if they weren't trying so damn hard to win the First World War.

What happens if the British economy tanks? Well, for one thing, the armies on the Western Front run out of steam. Haig's grand offensives to take pressure off the French don't happen. If the Nivelle Offensive still occurs, it would almost certainly fail quite badly; if the mutiny still happens, which is probable, it would be deepened by Britain's (and France's, indirectly) economic woes. Would that be enough to permit the Germans to take advantage with their own offensives? Probably. Imagine the sweeping attacks into Germany in 1945, with the Wehrmacht utterly starved of resources, lacking fuel for its tanks, food for its soldiers (and its people!)...German troops surrendered in droves. What would prevent the same from happening in Flanders, if the British were down to shrinking stockpiles of ammunition and supplies? And what about the specter of social revolution at home? Perhaps it would not be enough to actually start such a thing, but the fear of it could bring Lloyd George to the negotiating table...combine it with the collapses in Italy and Russia, and the Central Powers would be victorious on practically every front.

Like you, I'm a little dubious about American contributions to the actual fighting, and whether they were, strictly speaking, completely necessary to the victory over Germany. Since the Germans screwed up their own offensive (which on its own had quite a good chance of destroying the British army on the Continent), it's difficult to envision a scenario in which the Germans could have pulled their attack off after about May or so. I think that, less American manpower, which did plug some rather important holes and which did conduct some rather difficult operations in the post-"Black Day" offensives, the British and French would certainly have felt a bit of a squeeze. They still would probably have avoided losing the war in 1918, but I'm not sure that the French, at least, could have launched offensives without the Americans present to relieve pressure and attack the Germans of their own accord. There would be no "Hundred Days", to say the least, and the war might very well have stretched into 1919. Hard to say. But yes, America's military contribution was not nearly as important as the financial one.

From what I gather, American involvement in WWI wasn't very popular domestically as it was, so I doubt they would have been able to sustain any further occupation for any significant time.

Gold star!

Basically, to answer your question - IF the Americans hadn't entered a period that's usually called "isolationist" (it wasn't so, not completely) after WW1 and decided to support the League of Nations they had helped to set up (it was a sort of precursor to the UN), IF they hadn't insisted on full repayment of war debts (which made the French desperate to squeeze money from Germany), IF they had remained openly allied with France and Britain and made it clear that any violation of post-WW1 treaties would be considered an act of war, then WW2 as we know it couldn't have happened.

It's too many "if"'s if you ask me.

Yeah, on this I completely agree with you.

And that "as we know it" is definitely a big sticking point, too.

 

[History_Buff]

Indeed, everything I've ever read has lead me to believe that even by 1920 another Great War is basically guaranteed. By 1917, its clear the French didn't have the power to destroy Germany even if they could beat her, Britain and the USA had no interest in doing France's preferred dirty work.

The big hope for averting a second great war was not a military solution at all, but an economic one. By somehow stitching the three European powers into some sort of successful economic community (an early EEC if you will), you create a prosperous economy, particularly in Germany, there is a counterweight to the ultra-nationalist movements that would sweep Europe in the 30s. The economics of it all play out along Keynesian lines, and as I recall, this was his preferred solution to the peace.

Of course, making that politically possible is difficult without the benefit of hindsight; France would have needed serious convincing, and the Americans would have been rather skeptical to reduce debts to encourage trade. Plus the messy way borders in South/East Europe and The Area Formerly Known as Poland played out imply some sort of conflict, though hopefully not between the great powers.

Love to hear your thoughts on that hypothetical mess Dachs

 

[Dachs]

Indeed, everything I've ever read has lead me to believe that even by 1920 another Great War is basically guaranteed.

I think Locarno, among other things, gives the lie to that assertion. When the governments of not just France and Britain but Germany as well agree that war between the three of them is undesirable (to put it lightly), it's hard to imagine war being "inevitable" unless the German government fell. Historically, of course, it did, but that was not inevitable by any stretch as late as 1929 - and whatever replaced it did not have to be as aggressive as the Nazi Party. And if the history of European international relations between 1935 and 1939 shows anything, it is that the Western powers were willing to concede a great deal to German nationalism.

Love to hear your thoughts on that hypothetical mess Dachs

I think that convincing the French and the Germans and the British to join in some kind of mutual economic community in 1919 was so unlikely as to have not been an option at all. You correctly noted that the French would take some convincing. I can't see the Germans taking it seriously unless reparations are dropped, along with the French control of the Saar, the demilitarization of the Rhineland, and the pilfering of the German merchant-marine - concessions utterly unacceptable to the French and British. In short, such a union would be a pipe-dream, nothing more.

 

[Tycho Brahe]

It would have made a larger difference if Germany wasn't forced to pay huge war reparations which crippled their economy and paved the road for more agressions.

 

[Dachs]

The war reparations weren't a huge problem per se, it was what happened in the twenties because of the reparations.

1. Because of the reparations issue, the French and Belgians occupied the Ruhr in 1923;
2. Because of the occupation of the Ruhr, the Germans deliberately sabotaged their own currency and initiated widespread strikes to drive the occupiers out;
3. Because the Reichsmark had been effectively destroyed, a new currency was introduced;
4. Because the new currency was not introduced properly and the government bungled revalorization, the electorate fractured;
5. Because the electorate fractured, the Nazis were in a position to secure a much larger share of the vote.

None of those events necessarily had to happen, although some were certainly more (or much more) likely than the alternatives. It's a good deal more complicated than "Germany had to pay too much money, it destroyed the economy and caused the Nazis to come to power", though.