Why Did Germany Lose Ww1?

How was Germany defeated in ww1?

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the incessant boom of artillery abruptly went silent along the Western Front in France. An American medical officer, Stanhope Bayne-Jones, suddenly could hear water dripping off a bush next to him.

“It seemed mysterious, queer, unbelievable,” he later recalled, according to an account on the U.S. National Library of Medicine website. “All of the men knew what the silence meant, but nobody shouted or threw his hat in the air.” It took hours for the reality to sink in. World War I —the bloodiest conflict so far in human history, with more than 8.5 million military casualties—had finally ended.

But the war ended with an armistice, an agreement in which both sides agree to stop fighting, rather than a surrender. For both sides, an armistice was the fastest way to end the war’s misery and carnage. By November 1918, both the Allies and Central Powers who’d been battering each other for four years were pretty much out of gas.

German offensives that year had been defeated with heavy casualties, and in late summer and fall, the British, French and U.S. forces had pushed them steadily back, With the United States able to send more and more fresh troops into combat, the Germans were outmatched. As Germany’s allies crumbled around them as well, the war’s outcome seemed clear.

Even so, both sides were ready for the carnage to stop. “An invasion of Germany would have required too much in terms of morale, logistics and resources,” explains Guy Cuthbertson of Liverpool Hope University and author of Peace at Last: A Portrait of Armistice Day, 11 November 1918,

Beyond that, “where would it end? Berlin is a long way from France.” Instead, “There was a need to end the war as soon as possible as long as the Allies could achieve peace with victory.” Germany’s political and military situation were weak enough that the Germans feared being conquered, Cuthbertson says.

How did Germany Get so Strong after Losing WW1? | Animated History

“Germany was suffering from starvation,” he says, with the situation getting worse “by the hour.”

Why did Germany start losing ww1?

A new, mostly female workforce populated the factories of UK and France to solve a shell crisis that had threatened to defeat the Allies in World War I. History tells us that a general can move and feed an army as efficiently as he likes but the real litmus test is the battlefield.

• All the energy he expends getting his men to the front line fit and healthy counts for nothing if they don’t have the right equipment.
• What they need, above all, is sufficient ammunition – yet there were moments during the war when a shortage of artillery shells meant the guns almost fell silent.
• Given the unprecedented scale of the conflict, it was bound to take time for each side’s peacetime armaments industry to adjust.

Each of the major combatants, moreover, had its own limits to production. Germany lacked the necessary raw materials to make cordite (the vital propellant for bullets and shells) and explosives. Austria-Hungary was hampered by a lack of rail transport and rail infrastructure.

Britain had a manpower shortage and a paucity of acetone, the key component for making cordite. And France, in the early years, had to make up for the loss of much of her industrial heartland to the advancing Germans. None of these factors was particularly pressing while the war was still one of movement.

But as soon as it settled down in late 1914 to stalemate, with the trench line stretching 475 miles (765jm) from Nieuport in Belgium to the Swiss border, artillery shells were needed in ever greater quantities to force a breakthrough. In March 1915, at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the British fired more shells in a single 35-minute bombardment than they had during the whole Boer War.

1. Britain had enough guns but it was fast running out of anything to fire, and those shells that were available often failed to explode or burst prematurely in the gun barrel.
2. By May 1915, so serious was the “shell crisis” that most British guns had been reduced to firing just four shells a day and it seemed as if the war was going to be lost, not in the trenches of Flanders but the factories of Britain.

The scandal saw the downfall of Asquith’s Liberal government and its replacement with a coalition, although Asquith stayed on as prime minister. Lloyd George became the head of a new Ministry of Munitions, tasked with increasing the supply of artillery shells to the British Expeditionary Force.

The new ministry set about building munitions factories across the country, and transforming the civilian economy to one completely geared towards war. It also, crucially, tasked the Manchester-based chemist Chaim Weizmann with producing large quantities of acetone from readily available raw materials.

It had previously been made chiefly from the dry distillation of wood; hence most of Britain’s acetone was imported from timber-growing countries like the United States. In May 1915, after Weizmann had demonstrated to the Admiralty that he could use an anaerobic fermentation process to convert 100 tons of grain to 12 tons of acetone, the government commandeered brewing and distillery equipment, and built factories to utilise the new process at Holton Heath in Dorset and King’s Lynn in Norfolk.

Together, they produced more than 90,000 gallons of acetone a year, enough to feed the war’s seemingly insatiable demand for cordite. As a result, shell production rose from 500,000 in the first five months of the war to 16.4 million in 1915. By 1917, thanks to the new munitions factories and the women that worked in them, the British Empire was supplying more than 50 million shells a year.

By the end of the war, the British Army alone had fired 170 million shells. France’s transformation of its armaments production was even more successful. By importing coal from Britain and steel from the United States, releasing 350,000 soldiers to the war industries, and bolstering them with more than 470,000 women, it was able to increase its daily output of 75mm shells from 4,000 in October 1914 to 151,000 in June 1916, and that of 155mm shells from 235 to 17,000.

1. In 1917 it produced more shells and artillery pieces per day than Britain.
2. Germany had started with an industrial advantage over both Britain and France – chiefly because it led the way in steel production, and in many branches of chemicals and engineering – and its output of shells in 1914 was 1.36 million shells.

But shortages of vital raw materials – particularly cotton, camphor, pyrites and saltpetre – meant it could not expand its production at the same rate, and only 8.9 million shells were made in 1915. The following year saw a huge improvement, thanks to efforts of the KRA, the wartime raw materials department, which commandeered stockpiles, allocated distribution and, most importantly, oversaw the chemical industry’s production of synthetic substitutes.

In 1916, as a result, the production of German shells increased almost fourfold to 36 million. But in the long term, the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria – could not hope to compete with the Allies’ financial and industrial muscle. The former’s total war expenditure of $61.5bn was less than half the latter’s $147bn.

In the summer of 1916, Germany instituted the poorly thought-out and ineptly administered Hindenburg Programme – named after the army commander Field-Marshal Paul von Hindenburg – in an attempt to boost its production of weapons. Instead it drained the army of a million men, brought on a major transport crisis and intensified the shortage of coal.

• In early 1917, Germany tried to protect its depleted and under-equipped forces on the Western Front by withdrawing to the fortified Hindenburg Line, and by launching unrestricted submarine warfare.
• The latter caused the US to enter the war, thus tipping the munitions balance even further in the Allies’ favour.

It was, ultimately, a war of attrition that the under-resourced Central Powers could not hope to win. Ever since World War I, superior force is no longer measured in terms of men or horses, but in the means to wreak destruction. In World War II, the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs across Europe and Asia.

In Vietnam, an incredible seven million tons were dropped on Indo-China. Image caption, The manufacture of munitions played an even bigger role in World War II The cost has also increased. In the second Gulf War, the US launched its wave of shock and awe against Iraq by firing 800 Tomahawk Cruise missiles over a period of just 48 hours.

Each one cost $0.5m. Today, a single Eurofighter Typhoon costs around £50m and the proposed Joint Strike Fighter is likely to come in at more than £100m each. For entire campaigns, the scale of spending is staggering. It is estimated that the war in Afghanistan has already cost the British taxpayer £18bn.

1. And yet for all the sophistication of its military equipment, Nato’s victory over an opponent armed with little more than Kalashnikovs and homemade bombs is far from certain.
2. Having the best weapons is usually decisive, but not always.
3. Saul David is Professor of War Studies at the University of Buckingham His series Bullets, Boots and Bandages: How to Really Win at War is broadcast on BBC Four at 21:00 GMT on Thursdays 2, 9 and 16 February 2012.

Catch up on earlier programmes via BBC iPlayer (UK only) at the above link.

Why did Germany lose World War?

Germany had four key fatal weaknesses in the Second World War. These were: the lack of productivity of its war economy, the weak supply lines, the start of a war on two fronts, and the lack of strong leadership.

Did Germany lose ww1 badly?

The armistice was agreed on 11 November 1918, but the formal peace treaty was not agreed until the following year. This peace treaty became known as The Treaty of Versailles. It was signed on 28 June 1919. The discussions about the treaty between Britain, France and the USA began in January 1919.

1. Germany was not invited to contribute to these discussions.
2. Germany assumed that the 14-point plan, set out by President Woodrow Wilson of the USA in January 1918, would form the basis of the peace treaty.
3. However, France, who had suffered considerably in the war, was determined to make sure that Germany would not be able to challenge them again.

Under clause 231, the ‘War Guilt Clause’, Germany had to accept complete responsibility for the war. Germany lost 13% of its land and 12% of its population to the Allies. This land made up 48% of Germany’s iron production and a large proportion of its coal productions limiting its economic power.

1. The German Army was limited to 100,000 soldiers, and the navy was limited to 15,000 sailors.
2. As financial compensation for the war, the Allies also demanded large amounts of money known as ‘reparations’.
3. The Treaty of Versailles was very unpopular in Germany and was viewed as extremely harsh.
4. Faced with the revolutionary atmosphere at home, and shortages from the conditions of war, the German government reluctantly agreed to accept the terms with two exceptions.

They did not accept admitting total responsibility for starting the war, and they did not accept that the former Kaiser should be put on trial. The Allies rejected this proposal, and demanded that Germany accept all terms unconditionally or face returning to war.

Could Germany have won WWI?

A hundred years ago today, September 26th, the greatest artillery bombardment in U.S. history—more shells in a few hours than had been fired in the entire American Civil War—fell silent and 350,000 American soldiers got to their feet and began to advance across no-man’s-land toward the German trenches in the Meuse-Argonne.

With the French and British stalled in their sectors, the Doughboys aimed to cut the German army’s principal supply line on the Western Front and end World War I. The American role in the First World War is one of the great stories of the American Century, and yet it has largely vanished from view. Most historians tell us that the U.S.

Army arrived too late on the Western Front to affect the war’s outcome, an outcome determined by Allied grit, better tactics, the British blockade of German ports, and, ultimately, German exhaustion and revolution. It must be baldly stated: Germany would have won World War I had the U.S.

• Army not intervened in France in 1918,
• The French and British were barely hanging on in 1918.
• By year-end 1917, France had lost 3 million men in the war, Britain 2 million.
• The French army actually mutinied in 1917, half of its demoralized combat divisions refusing to attack the Germans.
• The British fared little better in 1917, losing 800,000 casualties in the course of a year that climaxed with the notorious three-month assault on the muddy heights of Passchendaele, where 300,000 British infantry fell to gain just two miles of ground.

By 1918, French reserves of military-aged recruits were literally a state secret; there were so few of them still alive. France maintained its 110 divisions in 1918 not by infusing them with new manpower – there was none – but by reducing the number of regiments in a French division from four to three.

The British, barely maintaining 62 divisions on the Western Front, planned, in the course of 1918 – had the Americans not appeared – to reduce their divisions to thirty or fewer and essentially to abandon the ground war in Europe.1918, eventually celebrated as the Allied “Year of Victory,” seemed initially far more promising for the Germans.

The French army limped into the year, effectively out of men and in revolt against its officers; British divisions, 25 percent below their normal strength because of the awful casualties of Passchendaele, had not been reinforced. Prime Minister David Lloyd George refused to send replacements to Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s army on the Western Front, so controversial were Haig’s casualties.

Lloyd George feared social revolution in Britain if casualties continued to mount, and lamented that Haig “had smothered the army in mud and blood.” The waning of the French and British in 1917 could not have come at a worse moment, when the Germans had crushed the Russians and Italians and begun deploying 100 fresh divisions to the Western Front for a war-winning offensive in 1918: 3.5 million Germans with absolute artillery superiority against 2.5 million demoralized British and French.

What saved the day? The Americans. The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, drafted a million-man army (the A.E.F.) in the ensuing months, and deployed it hurriedly to France in the winter of 1917-18. In June 1918, the Germans brushed aside fifty French divisions and plunged as far as the Marne River, just fifty miles from Paris. Marching up dusty roads past hordes of fleeing French refugees and soldiers—” La guerre est finie !”—the Doughboys and Marines went into action at Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood and stopped the German onslaught on the Marne. With Haig facing defeat in Flanders, actually warning London in April 1918 that the British had their “backs to the wall,” American troops— the manpower equivalent of over 100 French or British divisions—permitted Foch to shift otherwise irreplaceable French troops to the British sector, where a dazed Tommy, sniffing the tang of the sea air over the stink of the battlefield and apprised that Haig had spoken of British backs to the wall, replied, with a glance at the English Channel, “what bloody wall?” The Americans saved Britain and France in the spring and summer and destroyed the German army in the fall.

Most historians argue that the war was won by Marshal Ferdinand Foch’s famous Hundred Days Offensive – a coordinated Anglo-French-American envelopment of the German army on the Western Front – and most emphasize the performance of the British and French and speak of the American battles at Saint-Mihiel and in the Meuse-Argonne as sideshows.

They were anything but. After rousing success in August and September, the British and French offensives had stalled. Haig suffered nearly half a million additional casualties in 1918, and so did the French. They spent their dwindling strength breaching the Hindenburg Line and had little left for the Meuse, Moselle, or Rhine lines, where the Germans would stand fast.

1. Lloyd George’s war cabinet warned Haig that the shrinking army he was conducting slowly eastward was “Britain’s last army,” and it was going fast.
2. As winter approached and the Allies sagged, everything hinged on the pending American thrust northward from Saint-Mihiel and Verdun toward Sedan– aimed at the vital pivot of the whole German position west of the Rhine.

Verdun had always been a thorn in the German side, forcing the German front in France to bend sharply around it—compressing Hindenburg’s vital railways into a narrow space—and offering great opportunities to the Allies, if only they had the manpower, to thrust upward from Verdun to cut the famous four-track railroad line through Sedan and Mézières that conveyed most of the German army’s men, matériel, and supplies.

The American battle in the Meuse-Argonne, from September 26 to November 11, 1918, pierced the most redoubtable section of the Hindenburg Line, reached Sedan on both banks of the Meuse—denying the Germans the river as a defensive shield—and cut the vital four-track railway there, which carried 250 German trains a day.

With it, the Germans had moved five divisions every two days to any point on the Western Front; without it, they could barely move a single division in the same span. The American offensive was, a British war correspondent concluded, “the matador’s thrust in the bull-fight.” It cut the German throat.

The Doughboys won the war by trapping the German army in France and Belgium and severing its lifeline. Looking at 1918 in this new way, restoring the enormous impact of the U.S. military to its proper scale and significance, achieves two important things. First, it fundamentally revises the history of the First World War.

Second, it brings out the thrilling suspense of 1918, when the fate of the world hung in the balance, and the revivifying power of the Americans saved the Allies, defeated Germany, and established the United States as the greatest of the great powers.

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Who was the Big 4 in ww1?

The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles

In 1919, the Big Four met in Paris to negotiate the Treaty: Lloyd George of Britain, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy, Georges Clemenceau of France, and Woodrow Wilson of the U.S.

The Paris Peace Conference was an international meeting convened in January 1919 at Versailles just outside Paris. The purpose of the meeting was to establish the terms of the peace after World War. Though nearly thirty nations participated, the representatives of Great Britain, France, the United States, and Italy became known as the “Big Four.” The “Big Four” would dominate the proceedings that led to the formulation of the Treaty of Versailles, a treaty that articulated the compromises reached at the conference. The Treaty of Versailles included a plan to form a that would serve as an international forum and an international collective security arrangement.U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was a strong advocate of the League as he believed it would prevent future wars. Negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference were not always easy. Great Britain, France, and Italy fought together during the First World War as Allied Powers. The United States, entered the war in April 1917 as an Associated Power, and while it fought on the side of the Allies, it was not bound to honor pre-existing agreements between the Allied powers. These agreements tended to focus on postwar redistribution of territories.U.S. President Woodrow Wilson strongly opposed many of these arrangements, including Italian demands on the Adriatic. This often led to significant disagreements among the “Big Four.”

Treaty negotiations were also weakened by the absence of other important nations. Russia had fought as one of the Allies until December 1917, when its new Bolshevik Government withdrew from the war. The Allied Powers refused to recognize the new Bolshevik Government and thus did not invite its representatives to the Peace Conference.

1. The Allies were angered by the Bolshevik decision to repudiate Russia’s outstanding financial debts to the Allies and to publish the texts of secret agreements between the Allies concerning the postwar period.
2. The Allies also excluded the defeated Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria).

According to French and British wishes, Germany was subjected to strict punitive measures under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The new German government was required to surrender approximately 10 percent of its prewar territory in Europe and all of its overseas possessions.

The harbor city of Danzig (now Gdansk) and the coal-rich Saarland were placed under the administration of the League of Nations, and France was allowed to exploit the economic resources of the Saarland until 1935. The German Army and Navy were limited in size. Kaiser Wilhelm II and a number of other high-ranking German officials were to be tried as war criminals.

Under the terms of Article 231 of the treaty, the Germans accepted responsibility for the war and, as such, were liable to pay financial reparations to the Allies, though the actual amount would be determined by an Inter-Allied Commission that would present its findings in 1921 (the amount they determined was 132 billion gold Reichmarks, or $32 billion, which came on top of an initial $5 billion payment demanded by the treaty).

Germans would grow to resent these harsh conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. While the Treaty of Versailles did not present a peace agreement that satisfied all parties concerned, by the time President Woodrow Wilson returned to the United States in July 1919, American public opinion was overwhelming in favor of ratifying the treaty, including the Covenant of the League of Nations.

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that 32 state legislatures passed resolutions in favor of the treaty, there was intense opposition to it within the U.S. Senate. Senate opposition to the Treaty of Versailles cited Article 10 of the treaty, which dealt with collective security and the League of Nations.

1. This article, opponents argued, ceded the war powers of the U.S.
2. Government to the League’s Council.
3. The opposition came from two groups: the “Irreconcilables,” who refused to join the League of Nations under any circumstances, and “Reservationists,” led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Henry Cabot Lodge, who were willing to ratify the treaty with amendments.

While Lodge was defeated in his attempt to pass amendments to the Treaty in September, he did manage to attach 14 “reservations” to it in November. In a final vote on March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles fell short of ratification by seven votes. Consequently, the U.S.

Government signed the Treaty of Berlin on August 25, 1921. This was a separate peace treaty with Germany that stipulated that the United States would enjoy all “rights, privileges, indemnities, reparations or advantages” conferred to it by the Treaty of Versailles, but left out any mention of the League of Nations, which the United States never joined.

: The Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles

Was Germany good in ww1?

1914–15 – German soldiers on the way to the front in 1914. A message on the freight car spells out “Trip to Paris”; early in the war, all sides expected the conflict to be a short one. In this contemporary drawing by Heinrich Zille, the German soldiers bound westwards to France and those bound eastwards to Russia smilingly salute each other. The German army opened the war on the Western Front with a modified version of the Schlieffen Plan, designed to quickly attack France through neutral Belgium before turning southwards to encircle the French army on the German border.

The Belgians fought back, and sabotaged their rail system to delay the Germans. The Germans did not expect this and were delayed, and responded with systematic reprisals on civilians, killing nearly 6,000 Belgian noncombatants, including women and children, and burning 25,000 houses and buildings. The plan called for the right flank of the German advance to converge on Paris and initially, the Germans were very successful, particularly in the Battle of the Frontiers (14–24 August).

By 12 September, the French with assistance from the British forces halted the German advance east of Paris at the First Battle of the Marne (5–12 September). The last days of this battle signified the end of mobile warfare in the west. The French offensive into Germany launched on 7 August with the Battle of Mulhouse had limited success.

In the east, only one Field Army defended East Prussia and when Russia attacked in this region it diverted German forces intended for the Western Front. Germany defeated Russia in a series of battles collectively known as the First Battle of Tannenberg (17 August – 2 September), but this diversion exacerbated problems of insufficient speed of advance from rail-heads not foreseen by the German General Staff,

The Central Powers were thereby denied a quick victory and forced to fight a war on two fronts. The German army had fought its way into a good defensive position inside France and had permanently incapacitated 230,000 more French and British troops than it had lost itself.

How did Germany get so powerful after ww1?

At the end of World War I, Germans could hardly recognize their country. Up to 3 million Germans, including 15 percent of its men, had been killed, Germany had been forced to become a republic instead of a monarchy, and its citizens were humiliated by their nation’s bitter loss.

1. Even more humiliating were the terms of Germany’s surrender.
2. World War I’s victors blamed Germany for beginning the war, committing horrific atrocities and upending European peace with secretive treaties.
3. But most embarrassing of all was the punitive peace treaty Germany had been forced to sign.
4. The Treaty of Versailles didn’t just blame Germany for the war—it demanded financial restitution for the whole thing, to the tune of 132 billion gold marks, or more than $500 billion today.

How—and when—could Germany possibly pay its debt? Nobody could have dreamed that it would take 92 years. That’s how long Germany took to repay World War I reparations, thanks to a financial collapse, another world war and an ongoing debate about how, and even whether, Germany should pay up on its debts.

• Allied victors took a punitive approach to Germany at the end of World War I.
• Intense negotiation resulted in the Treaty of Versailles’ “war guilt clause,” which identified Germany as the sole responsible party for the war and forced it to pay reparations.
• Germany had suspended the gold standard and financed the war by borrowing.

Reparations further strained the economic system, and the Weimar Republic printed money as the mark’s value tumbled. Hyperinflation soon rocked Germany. By November 1923, 42 billion marks were worth the equivalent of one American cent. Finally, the world mobilized in an attempt to ensure reparations would be paid.

1. In 1924, the Dawes Plan reduced Germany’s war debt and forced it to adopt a new currency.
2. Reparations continued to be paid through a strange round robin: The U.S.
3. Lent Germany money to pay reparations, and the countries that collected reparations payments used that money to pay off United States debts.

The plan was heralded as a victory—Charles Dawes, a banker who later became vice president under Calvin Coolidge won a Nobel Prize for his role in the negotiations. But the Weimar Republic still struggled to pay its debts, so another plan was hashed out in 1928.

The Young Plan involved a reduction of Germany’s war debt to just 121 billion gold marks. But the dawn of the Great Depression ensured its failure and Germany’s economy began disintegrating again. In an attempt to thwart disaster, President Herbert Hoover put a year-long moratorium on reparation payments in 1931.

The next year, Allied delegates attempted to write off all of Germany’s reparations debt at the Lausanne Conference, but the U.S. Congress refused to sign on to the resolution. Germany was still on the hook for its war debt. Soon after, Adolf Hitler was elected.

He canceled all payments in 1933. “Hitler was committed to not just not paying, but to overturning the whole treaty,” historian Felix Schulz told the BBC’s Olivia Lang. His refusal was seen as an act of patriotism and courage in a nation that saw the reparations as a form of humiliation. Germany made no payments during Hitler’s rule.

But Germany wasn’t destined to win the war, and the Third Reich ended with Hitler’s suicide in April 1945 and Germany’s official surrender a few days later. By then, the country was in chaos. Millions of people had been displaced. Over 5.5 million German combatants, and up to 8.8 million German civilians, were dead.

1. Most of Germany’s institutions had crumbled, and its populace was on the brink of starvation.
2. The Allies exacted reparations for World War II, too.
3. They weren’t paid in actual money, but through industrial dismantling, the removal of intellectual property and forced labor for millions of German POWs.

After the surrender, Germany was divided into four occupation zones, and in 1949 the country was split in two. Economic recovery, much less reparations payments, seemed unlikely. By then, West Germany owed 30 billion Deutschmarks to 70 different countries, according to Deutsche Welle ‘s Andreas Becker, and was in desperate need of cash.

But an unexpected ray of hope broke through when West Germany’s president, Konrad Adenauer, struck a deal with a variety of western nations in 1953. The London Debt Conference canceled half of Germany’s debt and extended payment deadlines. And because West Germany was required to pay only when it had a trade surplus, the agreement gave breathing room for economic expansion.

Soon, West Germany, bolstered by Marshall Plan aid and relieved of most of its reparations burden, was Europe’s fastest-growing economy. This “economic miracle” helped stabilize the economy, and the new plan used the potential of reparations payments to encourage countries to trade with West Germany.

Still, it took decades for Germany to pay off the rest of its reparations debt. At the London Conference, West Germany argued it shouldn’t be responsible for all of the debt the old Germany had incurred during World War I, and the parties agreed that part of its back interest wouldn’t become due until Germany reunified,

Once that happened, Germany slowly chipped away at the last bit of debt. It made its last debt payment on October 3, 2010—the 20th anniversary of German reunification.

How did France beat Germany in ww1?

10 Significant Battles Of The First World War 1. First Battle of the Marne At the start of the, Germany hoped to avoid fighting on two fronts by knocking out France before turning to Russia, France’s, The initial German offensive had some early success, but there were not enough reinforcements immediately available to sustain momentum.

The French and British launched a counter-offensive at the Marne (6-10 September 1914) and after several days of bitter fighting the Germans retreated. Germany’s failure to defeat the French and the British at the Marne also had important strategic implications. The Russians had mobilised more quickly than the Germans had anticipated and launched their first offensive within two weeks of the war’s outbreak.

The Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914 ended in German victory, but the combination of German victory in the east and defeat in the west meant the war would not be quick, but protracted and extended across several fronts. The Battle of the Marne also marked the end of mobile warfare on the Western Front.

Following their retreat, the Germans re-engaged Allied forces on the Aisne, where fighting began to stagnate into trench warfare. The opening months of the war caused profound shock due to the huge casualties caused by, Losses on all fronts for the year 1914 topped five million, with a million men killed.

This was a scale of violence unknown in any previous war. The terrible casualties sustained in open warfare meant that soldiers on all fronts had begun to by digging trenches, which would dominate the Western Front until 1918. The Gallipoli campaign (25 April 1915 – 9 January 1916) was the land-based element of a strategy intended to allow Allied ships to pass through the, capture Constantinople (now Istanbul) and ultimately knock Ottoman Turkey out of the war.

• But Allied plans were based on the mistaken belief that the Ottomans could be easily overcome.
• At dawn on 25 April 1915, Allied troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Ottoman Turkey.
• Decided to make two landings, placing the British 29th Division at Cape Helles and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps () north of Gaba Tepe in an area later dubbed,

Both landings were quickly contained by determined Ottoman troops and neither the British nor the Anzacs were able to advance. Trench warfare quickly took hold, mirroring the fighting of the Western Front. Casualties mounted heavily and in the summer heat,

1. Sickness was rampant, food quickly became inedible and there were vast swarms of black corpse flies.
2. In August a new assault was launched north of Anzac Cove.
3. This attack, along with a fresh landing at Suvla Bay, quickly failed and stalemate returned.
4. In December, it was decided to evacuate – first Anzac and Suvla, and then Helles in January 1916.

Gallipoli became a defining moment in the history of both Australia and New Zealand, revealing characteristics that both countries have used to define their soldiers: endurance, determination, initiative and ‘mateship’. For the Ottomans, it was a brief respite in the decline of their empire.

But through the emergence of (later known as Atatürk) as one of the campaign’s leading figures, it also led to the foundation of modern Turkey. The Battle of Jutland (31 May – 1 June 1916) was the largest naval battle of the First World War. It was the only time that the British and German fleets of ‘dreadnought’ battleships actually came to blows.

The German High Seas Fleet hoped to weaken the Royal Navy by launching an ambush on the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea. German Admiral Reinhard Scheer planned to lure out both Admiral Sir David Beatty’s Battlecruiser Force and Admiral Sir John Jellicoe’s Grand Fleet.

1. Scheer hoped to destroy Beatty’s force before Jellicoe’s arrived, but the British were warned by their codebreakers and put both forces to sea early.
2. Was a confused and bloody action involving 250 ships and around 100,000 men.
3. Initial encounters between Beatty’s force and the High Seas Fleet resulted in the loss of several ships.

The Germans damaged Beatty’s flagship, HMS Lion, and sank HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary, both of which blew up when German shells penetrated their ammunition magazines. Beatty withdrew until Jellicoe arrived with the main fleet. The Germans, now outgunned, turned for home.

1. Although it failed to achieve the decisive victory each side hoped for, the battle confirmed British naval dominance and secured its control of shipping lanes, allowing Britain to implement the that would contribute to German defeat in 1918.
2. The British lost 14 ships and over 6,000 men, but were ready for action again the next day.

The Germans, who had lost 11 ships and over 2,500 men, avoided complete destruction but never again seriously challenged British control of the North Sea. The Battle of Verdun (21 February – 18 December 1916) was the longest battle of the, It was also one of the costliest.

It began in February 1916 with a German attack on the fortified French town of, where bitter fighting would continue for most of the year. The ten-hour opening bombardment saw an unprecedented concentration of firepower and although the French were forced back they did not break. In the summer, the Germans were forced to reduce their strength at Verdun after the British and Russians launched their own offensives elsewhere.

The French retook lost ground in the autumn and through careful management of their army, efficient logistics and the resilience of the troops fighting for their homeland, the French secured a defensive victory before the year’s end. The Germans had lost over 430,000 men killed or wounded and the French approximately 550,000.

• The trauma of this loss not only affected French political and military decision-making during and after the war, it had a lasting effect on French national consciousness.
• Verdun also had serious strategic implications for the rest of the war.
• The Allies had planned to defeat Germany through a series of large co-ordinated offensives, but the German attack at Verdun drastically reduced the number of French troops available.

Britain and its Empire would have to lead the ‘Big Push’ on the Western Front. The Battle of the Somme (1 July – 18 November 1916) was a joint operation between British and French forces intended to achieve a decisive victory over the Germans on the Western Front.

For many in Britain, the resulting battle remains the most painful and infamous episode of the, In December 1915, Allied commanders had met to discuss strategies for the upcoming year and agreed to launch a joint French and British attack in the region of the River Somme in the summer of 1916. Intense German pressure on the French at Verdun throughout 1916 made action on the Somme increasingly urgent and meant the British would take on the main role in the offensive.

They were faced with German defences that had been carefully laid out over many months. Despite a seven-day bombardment prior to the attack on 1 July, the British did not achieve the quick breakthrough their military leadership had planned for and the Somme became a deadlocked battle of attrition.

1. Over the next 141 days, the British advanced a maximum of seven miles.
2. More than one million men from all sides were killed, wounded or captured.
3. British casualties on the first day – numbering over 57,000, of which 19,240 were killed – make it in British military history.
4. The Somme, like Verdun for the French, has a prominent place in British history and popular memory and has come to represent the loss and apparent futility of the war.

But the Allied offensive on the Somme was a strategic necessity fought to meet the needs of an international alliance. British commanders learned difficult but important lessons on the Somme that would contribute to eventual Allied victory in 1918. The Russian Army had suffered a series of crushing defeats in the first year of the war, but the Brusilov Offensive (4 June – 20 September 1916) would be the most successful Russian offensive – and one of the most successful breakthrough operations – of the,

Named after the Russian commander who led it, the offensive used tactics that were to also prove successful on the Western Front. Brusilov used a short, sharp artillery bombardment and shock troops to exploit weak points, helping to return an element of surprise to the attack. The offensive coincided with the British attack on the Somme and was part of the effort to relieve pressure not only on the French at Verdun, but on the Western Front as a whole.

The Russian attack also drew Austro-Hungarian forces away from the Italian Front and put increased pressure on the already strained and increasingly demoralised Austro-Hungarian Army. Germany was forced to redirect troops to the Eastern Front in support of its ally.

1. This was part of an emerging pattern of Austria-Hungary’s growing dependence on Germany, which in turn would create a strain on German resources.
2. The Russians were never able to duplicate Brusilov’s success.
3. It was their last major offensive of the war and led to an overall weakening – both militarily and politically – of both Russia and Austria-Hungary.

The war stoked political and social unrest, leading to revolution and eventually the total collapse of the Russian Army. The Third Battle of Ypres (31 July – 10 November 1917) has come to symbolise the horrors associated with the war on the Western Front.

It is frequently known by the name of the village where it culminated –, The area surrounding the Belgian town of Ypres was a key battleground throughout the war. By 1917 British forces were suffering steady casualties there, holding a salient surrounded by higher ground. planned to break out of this poor position and, by capturing an important rail junction a few miles to the east, to undermine the whole German position in Flanders.

If this succeeded he hoped to threaten the German submarine base at Bruges as the was threatening Britain with defeat. A preliminary operation to seize the Messines Ridge was a dramatic success, but the Germans had reinforced their position by the time the main battle was launched on 31 July.

1. Initial attacks failed due to over-ambitious plans and unseasonal rain.
2. The drainage of the low-lying battlefield had been destroyed by the bombardment, creating muddy conditions that made movement difficult.
3. Drier conditions in September enabled British forces to make better progress during this phase of the offensive.

This demoralised the Germans, who did not have an answer to the British ‘bite and hold’ tactics of taking limited portions of German positions and holding it against counter-attacks that cost the German Army further casualties. This period encouraged Haig to continue the offensive in October.

• But the rain returned and conditions once again deteriorated.
• Although the Canadians finally captured Passchendaele ridge on 10 November, the vital railway still lay five miles away.
• The offensive was called off.
• Many soldiers felt utterly demoralised and the government’s confidence in Haig hit a low point.

Both sides had suffered heavy casualties, but the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had made no strategic gain.8. German Spring Offensives The German Spring Offensives (21 March – 18 July 1918) represented a calculated gamble for Germany in trying to tip the balance on the Western Front once and for all.

Operation ‘Michael’, the first of the offensives, began on the damp and misty morning of 21 March 1918. British and Allied troops were met with a huge concentration of German artillery,, smoke and infantry. The German Army achieved unprecedented gains measured in miles rather than yards. Germany had concentrated all of its resources on the Western Front after the defeat of Russia.

Facing them were weary Allied forces that for three years had largely been on the offensive, had not fully organised their defences in depth and were beginning to suffer manpower shortages. In the face of the onslaught the Allied line bent but did not break.

The fighting became uncharacteristically open as isolated pockets of defenders attempted to slow the German advance. Such was the situation that on 11 April, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig issued a special order of the day using the phrase ‘Backs to the Wall’ to sum up the desperate but determined fighting in progress that needed to be maintained.

But whilst were tactical successes, they were strategic failures. The advances had no decisive goal other than to punch a hole in the Allied line and primarily target the British. The largest gains took place where the Allies were most willing to give ground.

1. German casualties were high, particularly amongst the best units.
2. The Allies appointed as Allied Generalissimo to better co-ordinate a united defence.
3. The tide began to turn and by early summer the German offensives ground to a halt.
4. The Battle of Amiens (8-11 August 1918) heralded the start of the Hundred Days campaign, a four-month period of Allied success.

After surviving the German Spring Offensives, Allied forces launched a counter-punch of their own and from the summer of 1918 onwards, they were constantly on the advance. Through the harsh experiences of the past the Allies had developed advanced operational methods that best used the materiel power at their disposal.

• The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was at the forefront, combining scientific artillery methods and flexible infantry firepower with the use of tanks and aircraft.
• These combined arms methods were to form a blueprint for the future.
• The first Allied counter-attacks began in July and the Battle of Amiens opened on 8 August.

Secretive preparations ensured surprise and the BEF made gains of seven miles on that one day – German General Erich Ludendorff described it as the ‘black day’ of the German Army. But unlike offensives of the past, the Allies now knew when to stop. After four days of fighting at the battle was halted as its effects diminished, with a fresh offensive launched elsewhere.

1. This set the pattern for success.
2. A series of co-ordinated hammer blows forced increasingly exhausted German forces back.
3. Allied attacks were flexible, utilising surprise and mobility but also the methodical approach of 1917 when necessary to break German defences.
4. Casualties were still significant, but the gains were decisive.

By November the German Army could fight no longer. It had been pushed back to the battlefields of 1914 and was moving in only one direction. The Hundred Days was an impressive feat of arms that, The Battle of Megiddo (19-25 September 1918) marked the beginning of the final British-led offensive in the,

It successfully combined cavalry, infantry, artillery, armoured vehicles and aircraft to achieve a decisive victory over the Ottoman Turks and their German allies. It was the start of a series of important Allied victories that ultimately led to the collapse of Ottoman Turkish forces and their eventual withdrawal from the war.

On 19 September the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), under the leadership of British Lieutenant-General, launched an offensive against Ottoman forces in northern Palestine and the Jordan Valley. Allenby’s plan was to encircle Ottoman forces regrouping in the area around and cut off their escape routes.

A successful Allied deception campaign had convinced Ottoman forces that an Allied attack would come further east, leaving Ottoman defences in coastal Palestine vulnerable and ultimately outnumbered. The offensive opened with an intense but brief artillery bombardment. British and Commonwealth forces quickly broke through the battered Ottoman lines with an advance of over 30km on the first day.

The Desert Mounted Corps then quickly pushed through gaps in the defences to encircle the Ottoman troops. The Ottoman Eighth and Seventh Armies collapsed under the pressure of the Allied attack, surrendering in the tens of thousands. Victory at Megiddo opened the way to Damascus, which Australian troops entered on 1 October.

1. In the weeks that followed, the Allies captured other strategically important cities.
2. On 30 October, the Ottoman Empire sought a peace settlement with the Allies and an armistice was signed at, with hostilities ceasing at 12 noon the following day.
3. This was also after Turkish forces were defeated by Britain and its allies in Mesopotamia.

This article was written by Matt Brosnan, Paul Cornish, Nick Hewitt, Ian Kikuchi, Nigel Steel and Jessica Talarico. See more of the most significant battles of the First World War on our YouTube Channel with animated battle maps, as well as photographs and film from the IWM collection.

Which was the most important? Be sure to give us your ranking in the comments. £25 In 2014, the major art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper at the Tower of London captured the imagination of the public. £9.60 For many the poppy symbolises the great losses suffered during the First World War.

Our poppy brooch is made by the Zoe Project which provides training and fairly paid work for women living in some of the poorest shanty towns of Lima, Peru. The brooch is handmade and includes a fixing clasp. £9.99 This anthology from IWM provides a new approach, focusing on the best poems by the poets who were actually on the front line.

How strong was Germany in ww1?

Germany had the largest and the most powerful army. It also had the strongest economy. However, social and regional tensions were simmering beneath the surface of this success. This was the situation when, in the summer of 1914, the war that everybody had anticipated coming for years finally broke over Europe. – When the war first broke, everybody believed the troops would be back in a couple of months. (Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock)

Why was Germany so strong in ww2?

In September 1939 the Allies, namely Great Britain, France, and Poland, were together superior in industrial resources, population, and military manpower, but the German military, or Wehrmacht, because of its armament, training, doctrine, discipline, and fighting spirit, was the most efficient and effective fighting force for its size in the world.

The index of military strength in September 1939 was the number of divisions that each nation could mobilize. Against Germany’s 100 infantry divisions and six armoured divisions, France had 90 infantry divisions in metropolitan France, Great Britain had 10 infantry divisions, and Poland had 30 infantry divisions, 12 cavalry brigades, and one armoured brigade (Poland had also 30 reserve infantry divisions, but these could not be mobilized quickly).

A division contained from 12,000 to 25,000 men. It was the qualitative superiority of the German infantry divisions and the number of their armoured divisions that made the difference in 1939. The firepower of a German infantry division far exceeded that of a French, British, or Polish division; the standard German division included 442 machine guns, 135 mortars, 72 antitank guns, and 24 howitzers.

• Allied divisions had a firepower only slightly greater than that of World War I.
• Germany had six armoured divisions in September 1939; the Allies, though they had a large number of tanks, had no armoured divisions at that time.
• The six armoured, or panzer, divisions of the Wehrmacht comprised some 2,400 tanks.

And though Germany would subsequently expand its tank forces during the first years of the war, it was not the number of tanks that Germany had (the Allies had almost as many in September 1939) but the fact of their being organized into divisions and operated as such that was to prove decisive.

In accordance with the doctrines of General Heinz Guderian, the German tanks were used in massed formations in conjunction with motorized artillery to punch holes in the enemy line and to isolate segments of the enemy, which were then surrounded and captured by motorized German infantry divisions while the tanks ranged forward to repeat the process: deep drives into enemy territory by panzer divisions were thus followed by mechanized infantry and foot soldiers.

These tactics were supported by dive bombers that attacked and disrupted the enemy’s supply and communications lines and spread panic and confusion in its rear, thus further paralyzing its defensive capabilities. Mechanization was the key to the German blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” so named because of the unprecedented speed and mobility that were its salient characteristics.

Tested and well-trained in maneuvers, the German panzer divisions constituted a force with no equal in Europe. The German Air Force, or Luftwaffe, was also the best force of its kind in 1939. It was a ground-cooperation force designed to support the Army, but its planes were superior to nearly all Allied types.

In the rearmament period from 1935 to 1939 the production of German combat aircraft steadily mounted. The table shows the production of German aircraft by years. World War II events Holocaust 1933 – 1945 Invasion of Poland September 1, 1939 – October 5, 1939 Battle of the Atlantic September 3, 1939 – May 8, 1945 Dunkirk evacuation May 26, 1940 – June 4, 1940 North Africa campaigns June 1940 – May 13, 1943 Battle of Britain July 1940 – September 1940 Vichy France July 1940 – September 1944 the Blitz September 7, 1940 – May 11, 1941 Battle of Crete May 20, 1941 – June 1, 1941 Operation Barbarossa June 22, 1941 Battle of Moscow September 30, 1941 – January 7, 1942 Pearl Harbor attack December 7, 1941 Battle of Wake Island December 8, 1941 – December 23, 1941 Pacific War December 8, 1941 – September 2, 1945 Bataan Death March April 9, 1942 Kokoda Track Campaign July 1942 – January 1943 Battle of Stalingrad August 22, 1942 – February 2, 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising April 19, 1943 – May 16, 1943 Operation Fortitude 1944 Normandy Invasion June 6, 1944 – July 9, 1944 Battle of Saipan June 15, 1944 – July 9, 1944 Operation Bagration June 23, 1944 – August 19, 1944 Cowra breakout August 5, 1944 Operation Market Garden September 17, 1944 – September 27, 1944 Battle of the Bulge December 16, 1944 – January 16, 1945 Yalta Conference February 4, 1945 – February 11, 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima February 19, 1945 – March 26, 1945 Battle for Castle Itter May 5, 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki August 6, 1945 – August 9, 1945

German aircraft production by year

year	combat types	other types
1933	0	368
1934	840	1,128
1935	1,823	1,360
1936	2,530	2,582
1937	2,651	2,955
1938	3,350	1,885
1939	4,733	3,562

The standardization of engines and airframes gave the Luftwaffe an advantage over its opponents. Germany had an operational force of 1,000 fighters and 1,050 bombers in September 1939. The Allies actually had more planes in 1939 than Germany did, but their strength was made up of many different types, some of them obsolescent.

Allied air strength, September 1939

aircraft	British	French	Polish
bombers	536	463	200
fighters	608	634	300
reconnaissance	96	444	—
coastal command	216	—	—
fleet air arm	204	194	—

Great Britain, which was held back by delays in the rearmament program, was producing one modern fighter in 1939, the Hurricane, A higher-performance fighter, the Spitfire, was just coming into production and did not enter the air war in numbers until 1940.

1. The value of the French Air Force in 1939 was reduced by the number of obsolescent planes in its order of battle: 131 of the 634 fighters and nearly all of the 463 bombers.
2. France was desperately trying to buy high-performance aircraft in the United States in 1939.
3. At sea the odds against Germany were much greater in September 1939 than in August 1914, since the Allies in 1939 had many more large surface warships than Germany had.

At sea, however, there was to be no clash between the Allied and the German massed fleets but only the individual operation of German pocket battleships and commerce raiders.

What did Germany want in ww1?

Military alignments in 1914. When the war started Italy declared neutrality; in 1915 it switched and joined the Triple Entente (i.e. the Allies ). Germany entered into World War I on August 1, 1914, when it declared war on Russia, In accordance with its war plan, it ignored Russia and moved first against France –declaring war on August 3 and sending its main armies through Belgium to capture Paris from the north.

1. The German invasion of Belgium caused Britain to declare war on Germany on August 4.
2. Most of the main parties were now at war.
3. In October 1914, Turkey joined the war on Germany’s side, becoming part of the Central Powers,
4. Italy, which was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary before World War I, was neutral in 1914 before switching to the Allied side in May 1915.

Historians have vigorously debated Germany’s role. One line of interpretation, promoted by German historian Fritz Fischer in the 1960s, argues that Germany had long desired to dominate Europe politically and economically, and seized the opportunity that unexpectedly opened in July 1914, making Germany guilty of starting the war.

Would ww2 happen if Germany won ww1?

James Y. Simms Jr. Some historians enjoy the intellectual exercise of engaging in counter-factual history, i.e., positing the opposite outcome of a particular historical even such as: England winning the American Revolutionary War, the Confederacy winning the Civil War or Napoleon winning in Russia.

• Reversing the results in history and speculating about the subsequent course of history is one way to illuminate the full significance of what did occur.
• In the spirit of intellectual fun and given that the Western World is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, one might assert the following proposition: The entry of the United States on the side of the allies — England, France, Russia, Italy and Japan, which was critical in the defeat of the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) — was the biggest diplomatic blunder of the entire 20th century.

Within the context of this proposition, the world and the course of history would have been better off had we remained in isolation and Germany had won the war. *** One could make this assertion largely because of the results of WWI, all of which were extremely important.

1. First, four great empires in Central and Eastern Europe experienced the overthrow of the government that led the country into the war: Russia, Turkey, Austria-Hungary and Germany.
2. Turkey became a secular Muslim state, Austria-Hungary disappeared, Germany slowly evolved into a Nazi-Hitlerian state, and Russia brought Communism to the world.

Another result of the war was that France emerged as the dominant power on the continent. However, France was a weakened power as a result of the war and was totally overwhelmed by the emergence of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Germany’s desire, especially that of Hitler and the Nazis, to abrogate the Treaty of Versailles produced World War II in Europe, which also produced the horrors of the Holocaust.

Another major consequence of WWI was the Bolshevik/Communist Revolution in Russia, which led to a 70-year struggle between the Soviets and the West. Communism has been a disaster for the people of Russia and also China. Ignoring in this instance the tragic history of China, consider, that in the first 30 years of the Soviet Union more than 27 million people were imprisoned or perished: From 1918 to 1920, 4 million died in the civil war and a typhus epidemic; 5 million died from famine in 1921-22 while 10 million died or were imprisoned in the collectivization of agriculture, 1928-33, as were 8 million in the purges 1935-38.

This does not take into consideration the 29 million Soviets who perished in WWII. Thus, the allied victory in the Great War, in making possible the Soviet Union, World War II, the Holocaust, the Cold War and the wars in Korea and Vietnam, proved to be a disaster.

*** In suspending disbelief, one might ask what would have been the results of WWI had the United States not intervened in the fratricidal war in Europe? I think the majority of scholars would argue that without American intervention, the Central Powers would have won, and Germany would have been the dominant power in Europe.

Granted, Germany would have inflicted a severe treaty on the Allies; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, signed by Russia and Germany after Russia’s defeat, is indicative. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk took huge areas from Russia, including Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine, all as independent states but protectorates under Germany.

In 1916, Germany’s war aims in the West called for Belgium to remain independent, but be a protectorate, and for a few small but significant border adjustments in France. Austria was to become dominant in the Balkans, and colonial territories in Africa would be partitioned in Germany’s favor. Germany also planned to create a European customs union that would be dominated by the Germany economy.

And finally, there would be some sort of reparations. Europe would have been dominated by Germany. *** While a German-dominated Europe might not have been an optimal result, consider what events almost certainly would have been avoided: First, there would not have been a Second World War because France did not have the power to even attempt to overturn a German victory.

• Second, while there was an anti-Semitic component to German society, the conservative nature of a Wilhemine government would never have allowed Nazi thugs to assume power.
• There would have been no call to abrogate a “Treaty of Versailles,” no serious threat of a Communist takeover of the government, and no great inflation as occurred in 1923, all of which were used as justifications for the assumption of power by the Nazis.

With no Nazis, there would have been no Holocaust. Lastly, the Germans, after the war in the West ended, would have crushed the Bolsheviks in Russia and some sort of “White” regime would have emerged victorious, and Russia would have avoided the pain and suffering of Soviet rule, not to mention the dire consequences of the Cold War, and the spread of Communism into Eastern Europe, China, Vietnam, and Cuba.

• A German-dominated Europe, but no World War II, no Holocaust, and very likely no Communism — not a bad trade-off for a German victory in WWI.
• In the early 20th century, the Allied powers, especially Great Britain, participated in WWI to prevent German domination of Europe.
• It is arguable that Europe and the world would have been better off had Germany been the victor in WWI.

The irony of history is that at the end of the 20th century, Germany had emerged as the dominant power in Europe and the leader of the European Union, essentially a customs union similar to that conceived by the Germans in their war aims during WWI.

Who won ww1 and who lost?

Who won the first World war? Find the Answer at BYJU’S UPSC Preparation The first World War was won by the Allies consisting of the United Kingdom, France, United States, Japan, Italy. They defeated the Central Powers consisting of Imperial Germany, Austro-Hungary Empire and the Ottoman Empire. : Who won the first World war? Find the Answer at BYJU’S UPSC Preparation

Why did Russia leave WW1?

Russia left WW1 because it was in the interest of Russian Communists (Bolsheviks) who took power in November 1917. The Bolsheviks’ priority was to win a civil war against their domestic opponents, not to fight in WW1.

How many Germans died in WW1?

Characteristic	Military	Civilian
Germany*	2,037,000	700,000
Turkey*	325,000	2,000,000
Russia*	1,811,000	500,000
France	1,327,000	600,000

What if Germans won ww2?

Adolf Hitler during his speech to the Reichstag officially declares war against the United States. (Bundesarchiv Bild) In June 1940 a serious faction within the British government urged making peace with Germany. In September 1940 the RAF was within a whisker of defeat, leaving Britain open to invasion. The HistoryNet Box : Goodies for history lovers, curated by our editors, delivered every season—straight to your door. What would have happened then? In a slim but fascinating book titled Visions of Victory, historian Gerhard L. Weinberg (author of the magisterial A World at Arms, widely considered the finest study of World War II yet written) followed a trail of intriguing hints left by the major heads of state about the postwar world each envisioned.

• It was Franklin D.
• Roosevelt’s vision that most nearly matched the post- 1945 world order that actually materialized.
• But unsurprisingly, the most chilling vision was Hitler’s.
• In his mind, the sequel to a victorious World War II would have been World War III, followed by World War IV, and so on—until Germany had conquered the entire globe.

The initial victory in Europe would have been followed by the direct annexation of countries Hitler deemed suitably Nordic: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, as well as the German-speaking region of Switzerland. The brutal “General Government” of Poland would have extended into the former Soviet Union as far as 70 degrees east longitude—a bit more than half of the entire Russian empire—and the entire region converted into a vast pool of expend able slave labor.

• Japan would (temporarily) receive the rest of the Soviet Union.
• Mussolini would be permitted to acquire lands approximating those of the Roman Empire, except that Hitler intended to retain control of France and Great Britain (as well as Ireland) and convert Spain and Portugal into satellite states.
• In sub Saharan Africa he expected to restore the colonies Germany had lost after the First World War and seize the rest from defeated European powers.

Since the Afrikaners were implacable racists much after Hitler’s own heart, he anticipated a pro-Nazi South Africa. It goes without saying that the Nazis intended to eradicate the Jews and other “sub-humans” in every region they controlled. But they also intended to eliminate Christianity and to adopt a state policy of polygamy so that the male survivors of wars expected to kill four million German soldiers would be able to impregnate enough German women to forestall a drop in population.

• Hitler plainly saw his principal allies, Italy and Japan, as partners of convenience.
• As a fascist state, Italy might be permitted its new empire on a permanent basis, but Japan, after doing the dirty work of conquering China, the eastern half of the Soviet Union, southeast Asia, Australasia, and the central Pacific, would eventually be conquered in turn—though only after the destruction of the United States, the last great power free of Axis control.

Weinberg discerned only the vaguest German plans for how it intended to deal with this last problem, the elimination of the United States. A major reason for this seems to have been Hitler’s persistent underestimation of the American population as a “race of mongrels,” unable to present a serious threat to Aryan military prowess and liable to collapse from within at any moment.

As late as the autumn of 1944, Hitler continued to see the British as his most dangerous adversary in the West, notwithstanding the fact that by then the United States was contributing not only the most manpower in the European Theater of Operations but also the most tanks, aircraft, and artillery. Indeed, by that point American military aid was propping up the war efforts of every nation fighting the Axis powers.

Hitler’s blindness on this subject underscored not only the extent to which racism dominated his world view but also his monumental ignorance. Hitler’s original strategy for Europe wisely called for completing the conquest of western Europe before turning on the Soviet Union—which maintained its non aggression pact with Germany right up to the moment of the Nazi invasion in June 1941.

Had all gone according to plan, the undivided might of the German army would have fallen on Russia, and Hitler’s vision of a Europe under German domination from Ireland to the Urals might well have been realized. But Hitler’s overall grand strategy—to seize the rest of the world on the installment plan—would have then encountered a problem that Hitler seems never to have considered.

Hitler assumed that the Japanese would obligingly remain at war with China and the United States until he could gobble up his erstwhile allies. Yet Imperial Japan clearly understood that its partnership with Nazi Germany was temporary, especially given the virulent racism on which Nazism rested.

Hitler might call the Japanese “honorary Aryans,” but the phrase itself reveals the ideological awkwardness of the alliance.) And history is replete with reversals of alliance in the face of new circumstances. The Austro Prussian bruderkrieg of 1866 gave way to the Dual Alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879; Italy, the third member of the Central Powers in World War I, actually entered that war on the side of Allies, and would switch sides in World War II as well.

And ten years after the end of World War II, the United States and West Germany became partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

How much did Germany pay after ww1?

London Schedule of Payments – The London Schedule of Payments of 5 May 1921 established “the full liability of all the Central Powers combined, not just Germany alone,” at 132 billion gold marks. This sum was a compromise promoted by Belgium—against higher figures demanded by the French and Italians and the lower figure the British supported—that “represented an assessment of the lowest amount that public opinion,

1. Would tolerate”.
2. This figure was divided into three series of bonds : “A” and “B” Bonds together had a nominal value of 50 billion gold marks ( US$12.5 billion) —less than the sum Germany had previously offered to pay.
3. C” Bonds, comprising the remainder of the reparation figure, “were deliberately designed to be chimerical,” They were “a political bargaining chip” that served the domestic policies of France and the United Kingdom.

The figure was completely unreal; its primary function was to mislead public opinion “into believing that the 132-billion-mark figure was being maintained”. Furthermore, “Allied experts knew that Germany could not pay 132 billion marks and that the other Central Powers could pay little.

• Thus, the A and B Bonds, which were genuine, represented the actual Allied assessment of German capacity to pay.” Taking into account the sum already paid between 1919 and 1921, Germany’s immediate obligation was 41 billion gold marks.
• To pay towards this sum, Germany could pay in kind or in cash.
• Commodities paid in kind included coal, timber, chemical dyes, pharmaceuticals, livestock, agricultural machines, construction materials, and factory machinery.

The gold value of these would be deducted from what Germany was required to pay. Germany’s assistance with the restoration of the university library of Louvain, which was destroyed by the Germans on 25 August 1914, was also credited towards the sum, as were some of the territorial changes the treaty imposed upon Germany.

Was Treaty of Versailles fair?

I agree with the statement “The Treaty of Versailles was a fair settlement” to a certain extent. I know that Germany had been unmerciful during the war leading to thirty seven million casualties. Therefore “The Big Three”: Lloyd George (Great Britain), Clemenceau (France) and Wilson (USA), the driving forces behind the treaty, need not be merciful in return.

When you put the Treaty of Versailles in perspective against World War I it appears to be fair towards Germany. The war had destroyed most country’s economies and a large area of land. These, among many other things, needed to be restored. Considering that Germany had been defeated and they were largely at fault for the start of the war it was fair to make them pay reparations.

After the war Germany was still a serious threat to the world. People believed that they would not give up. Therefore one of the main aims of the peace treaty was to make sure that the risk of Germany attacking again was as low as possible. The treaty of Versailles was fair to take away Germany’s armed forces and colonies as it protected the rest of the world in the short term and punished them.

• However, we now know that the Treaty of Versailles failed as the world has seen another, even more horrific war.
• I believe that the Treaty was unnecessarily harsh and not as fair as it should have been.
• All of the victorious nations were furious with Germany so at the time very few thought of being fair towards their enemy of four years.

This is reflected in the treaty through the reparations Germany was forced to pay. These were outrageously high (£660 million) and later changed. The confiscation of Germany’s territories and colonies and the reduction in their army was also excessively severe.

1. Although this was meant to keep peace in the short term it only angered Germany more, sparking revenge.
2. War Guilt was also an unnecessary condition that publicly humiliated Germany triggering resentment.
3. This was tactlessly done to compensate the victorious public who desired a subject to blame for the loss of their loved ones.

Similarly the rest of the treaty was too harsh because the rulers had to please their countries if they wished to be re-elected. Germany did not get any second chances from the peace treaty. Their pride majorly suffered at the forced decrease in their army and they were not able to improve themselves in their colonies as those were repossessed causing jealousy and anger.

• The peace treaty unfairly focused too much on punishing Germany for what they did wrong rather than trying to maintain peace.
• This is because the public was too angry to think intelligently about preventing future losses.
• In general I believe that the Treaty of Versailles had good intentions however mainly due to public pressure it was too harsh and unfair.

The Big Three had an impossible task and pleasing everyone was not probable but I believe they did the best that they could at the time. However the treaty was largely unfair and too severe contributing to World War II.

Why did Italy drop out of the Big Four?

By March, the treaty negotiations were being handled by the Big Four, namely, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy. Italy soon dropped out of the process when its representative became angry that his demands for more territory were rejected.

What countries defeated Germany in ww1?

Map – Germany lost World War I, In the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, the victorious powers (the United States, Great Britain, France, and other allied states) imposed punitive territorial, military, and economic provisions on defeated Germany. In the west, Germany returned Alsace-Lorraine to France.

• It had been seized by Germany more than 40 years earlier.
• Further, Belgium received Eupen and Malmedy; the industrial Saar region was placed under the administration of the League of Nations for 15 years; and Denmark received Northern Schleswig.
• Finally, the Rhineland was demilitarized; that is, no German military forces or fortifications were permitted there.

In the east, Poland received parts of West Prussia and Silesia from Germany. In addition, Czechoslovakia received the Hultschin district from Germany; the largely German city of Danzig became a free city under the protection of the League of Nations; and Memel, a small strip of territory in East Prussia along the Baltic Sea, was ultimately placed under Lithuanian control.

How did Germany break the rules in ww1?

The U-Boat Campaign That Almost Broke Britain From the start of the in 1914, Germany pursued a highly effective U-boat campaign against merchant shipping. This campaign intensified over the course of the war and almost succeeded in bringing Britain to its knees in 1917.

1. At first, U-boats obeyed ‘prize rules’, which meant that they surfaced before attacking merchant ships and allowed the crew and passengers to get away.
2. This left U-boats vulnerable to attack, especially after the British introduced ‘Q-ships’ – disguised warships with hidden guns intended to lure U-boats in close and then sink them.

The use of Q-ships contributed to Germany’s eventual abandonment of prize rules. On 4 February 1915, Germany declared a war zone around Britain, within which merchant ships were sunk without warning. This ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’ angered neutral countries, especially the United States.

The tactic was abandoned on 1 September 1915, following the loss of American lives in the torpedoed liners and Arabic, After failing to seize control of the sea from the British at the in 1916, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917. This, coupled with the Zimmermann Telegram, brought the United States into the war on 6 April.

But the new U-boat blockade nearly succeeded and between February and April 1917, U-boats sank more than 500 merchant ships. In the second half of April, an average of 13 ships were sunk each day. In November 1916, Admiral Jellicoe created an Admiralty Anti-Submarine Division, but effective countermeasures arrived slowly.

Most important was the introduction of convoys, in which merchant ships were grouped together and protected by warships. In addition, merchant ships were painted in dazzle camouflage, aircraft and shore-based direction finding stations were introduced to locate U-boats, and warships acquired new weapons such as an early form of sonar and depth charges.

On 23 April 1918, British naval forces attacked U-boat bases at Ostend and Zeebrugge. By the, the U-boat threat had been neutralised. : The U-Boat Campaign That Almost Broke Britain