Also Germany would probably would have been like GB and France during the 30's letting France and Belgium re-militarize, and it would end similar to the Battle for France because Germany would not be Militarized like the French and British were not in Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Additional giveaways are planned. Detailed information about all U. Posting Quick Reply - Please Wait. Search this Thread Advanced Search.
Similar Threads The British were the 'least bad' of the colonial powers. Agree or disagree? User Name. Remember Me. Advanced Search. View detailed profile Advanced or search site with. Search Forums Advanced. Page 2 of 2. Advertisements I'm posting on the premise that the Central Powers either won the war because the United States never intervened on the Allied side, or after doing so, was badly mauiled by the Germans, That would have greatly fortified American isolationism. Great posts!
Location: Peterborough, England posts, read , times Reputation: P eople who see a divine hand or the iron laws of dialectical materialism at work in human affairs bridle at the question: "What if things had turned out differently? Other historians have confessed to being more intrigued. It is important to recognise that, at any moment in history, there are real alternatives, argued Hugh Trevor-Roper. Happily, none of this argument deters the writers of fiction or the public.
Germany's possible defeat of Britain in is by some distance the national treasure trove of might-have-beens. As long ago as , the film It Happened Here by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo raised the then unthinkable thought that collaboration would have thrived in Hitler's Britain. By comparison, the first world war has been the subject of far less counterfactual speculation. Niall Ferguson is one of the exceptions, in an essay which considers the possibility that Britain might have stood aside from the European war in August And although his essay suffers from the fact that the Eurosceptic Ferguson is over-eager to portray the kaiser as the godfather of the later European Union, his account of the cabinet debates of is fascinating because Herbert Asquith's Liberal government could so easily have decided to stay out of the war — and very nearly did.
With the centenary of the first world war almost upon us, is likely to witness plenty of debate about the right forms of commemoration and about whether the war achieved anything.
At present, argument about the war mainly consists of two mutually uncomprehending camps. On the one hand, there are those who, as Margaret MacMillan put it recently , think the war was "an unmitigated catastrophe in a sea of mud". On the other, there are those who insist that it was nevertheless "about something". At the time, says MacMillan, people on all sides thought they had a just cause.
But what was the something that the first world war was about? To answer that it was a war between empires, which it surely was, is fine as long as some effort is made to distinguish between the empires. But this rarely happens in a debate that is polarised between collective myths of national sacrifice on the one hand certainly in Britain and France and an indiscriminate muddy catastrophe on the other.
The more one tries to examine and maybe get beyond these dominant narratives, as we should next year and as the centenary rolls on, the more a bit of the counterfactual may help the process. The first world war came to an end in November , when the German armies surrendered near Compiegne. People had no choice but to support leaders who promised to restore the pride and power of their nations. It is likely that Hitler would have never risen to power. Even if he did, people would not have got together with him.
Anti-Jewish sentiments would not have flared up and horrors of the Nazi Holocaust would have been avoided. What about the extent of Communism post-Central Power victory? Russia, an Allied Power, would have eluded circumstances that brought Communism to the world. Germans would have crushed Bolsheviks in Russia and the agony and sufferings of Soviet rule could have been avoided. Therefore, there would have been no spread of communism in Eastern Europe, Cuba and China, and thus, no threats of takeovers by the Communist governments.
Moreover, no nation would have the power to even attempt to overturn a victorious and defiant power like Germany. This would have prevented a chain of unfortunate events. If there was no WW2, there may not have been a Cold War either. Maybe today the world would be thriving in the absence of nuclear states, free from the fears of mutual destruction.
If Central Powers won WW1, things would have changed forever. They would be stronger and more competent than they are in history as we know. Germany fought the war with the aim of transforming itself from a merely continental power to a true world power. On recovering from the war, it would have risen to become a dominant power in Europe.
Germany was already an industrial power in and it would have become a mighty world power in the event of winning WW1. It might have ended as a superior nation with abundant resources, very much like what the US is today. With certainty, one can say that the world would have been a better place. Several events would not have found a place in our History textbooks and some of them would be non-existent for greater good.
The world would not have lost innumerable innocent lives, with far fewer people dying in the 20th century owing to events whose seeds were sown during the world war, bearing fruits in the subsequent years. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and the reality is what it is.
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