-Caveat Lector-
>Measuring the effectiveness of an army by how many casualties it had is
>not very accurate. More importantly is the strength of that army, its
>potential, how many casualties it inflicts, and how much territory it
>takes. Before the US came into the war there was a basic stalemate.
True as far as it goes, but the economics of the situation were telling
on Germany. Britain and France were still functioning economically, but
the German High Command had tried to run the war on the basis of a
command economy, with price controls and state-regulated production.
Like every other such system, it wrecked the economy. Germany was
running out of the necessary wealth to maintain its army in the field;
the army itself was still a fully-functioning fighting force, but would
fairly soon have been unable to afford ammunition. (Britain, by
comparison, imposed exactly one formal control on its economy: it
regulated pub opening hours to keep the munitions workers sober while
they assembled shells. Those regulations were not relaxed until 1992,
and show no sign of being removed altogether before the end of the
millennium. I digress.)
The casualty comparison was there not as a measure of effectiveness, but
rather to point out one of the flaws in the argument presented, which
was that the US presence in WWI was decisive and necessary. It was,
rather, desirable and served to hasten the end of the war, forcing an
early capitulation.
> With the surrender of the Russians the balance would have shifted
towards the
>Germans. The Eastern front was large and took a considerable number of
>German combatants out of the western front.
Again, the numbers of combatants were not a problem. It was logistics
and the constraints of a badly-managed war economy that was defeating
the German army.
> Even with the addition of
>the US fighting forces, Germany had not been invaded when it
>surrendered.
German forces had, however, been in continuous retreat for three months,
a fact which rather gives the lie to the 'stab in the back' proponents.
>However, it had become obvious to the German leadership
>that with the men and supplies now coming (and soon to come) from the
>US, there was no way the war could have been won.
That was the function of the US - they hastened the inevitable. The
presence of the US gave the German High Command a face-saving excuse for
capitulation.
>Previous to the US
>entry, it was still possible for the German leadership to believe that
a
>favorable negotiated settlement was still possible with an exhausted
enemy.
It still wouldn't have been true. Even without the US presence, Germany
was playing poker against opponents with deeper pockets - she couldn't
make that last raise that would have decided the hand. (Soviet Russia
did the same thing in the Cold War).
Germany still faced Britain and France, both of whom had access to the
resources and markets of their overseas possessions and, domestically,
functioning free-market economies. Germany, meanwhile, had been
bankrupted by four years of command economy, was blockaded along all of
her coastline, and had no navy with which to break the blockade.
Without the US, WWI would have ended in late 1919, early 1920 with
British and French troops on German soil. What difference that would
have made to history, I leave for you all to speculate (some suggest
that it would have made Hitler's successes impossible, others that the
Soviet revolution would have spread to Germany).
Andrew
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