Verbose, true, the Germans had no longer so many heavy guns as they realized for their new shock and awe strategies medium and light guns. This new strategy is another factor why the Germans would have made it the Entente much worse to win it.
Adler
But by "shock and awe strategies" here you are referring to Stormtropper/Hutier tactics, no?
And since I think we started out by observing that with no Americans in their millions on the horizon, Germany had the option of hunkering down to adopt a defensive position, which again negates a lot of the usefulness of medium and light guns designed for offensive operations. This was the exact problem of the French army in the early days of the war; lots of medium and light guns deployed in a form of battle requiring heavy long-range guns.
I assume it would allow the Germans to execute better counter offensives, but there is nothing in that situation allowing Germany to actually break through and win, unless they don't adopt a defensive position at all, but go for the kind of major offensives they did historically. Otherwise that initiative would remain with the Entente, depending on how fast they could churn out enough artillery, tanks and planes.
Which is also why I'm dubious as to any assumption that a later major German offensive would have been more successful. Either the German army gets caught up in events, responding to Entente offensives, or when there is more time to strengthen lines and bring in more gear, the British and French forces are bolstered quicker than their German counterparts, making the task again harder for the Germans.
Best German scenario under the circumstance; the Entente again attacks after underestimating the number of tanks and guns needed, gets bloodied, and comes away contemplating offering terms... Or not, and come back later, better prepared...
In any instance, the German army was from the start of WWI, and remaining so, outgunned by the French army in medium and light artillery alone. The French paid in blood in the early years of the war for not having the heavy arty to match the Germans, and only caught up in mid-1917, but they always had plenty of good medium artillery to be used in their planned offensive operations, the ones that never really materialised as they had conceived, with the exception of the Battle of the Marne, which they won.
This is what I mean with the tide being against the Germans. Whatever statistic we are going to chose, as far as equipment and materiel is concerned, by 1918 Germany was coming up short.
What it had going for it in 1918 was the relative manpower situation (I say "relative" for the German army also found it harder to take large numbers of casualties by 1918, than earlier in the war, just like everyone else). Which is why Stormtroopers made sense in a way, despite leading to rather heavy casualtiues for the attacker. They were still in some respects a matter of making a virtue out of necessity.
By comparison the French and British could stick with churning out guns, tanks and planes until the point where they could dominate the Germans. That this was the way to do it was known since at least 1916. What was consistently underestimated was exactly how huge the numbers to let you do that would actually be. By 1918 they would seem to have been getting there, both in understanding what was required and in the ability to provide it, after some very dearly bought lessons.
. Anyway Britain was already under strategic bombing and another year with less resources would have brought both parties to the negotiation table.
