Thread: Post WWI scenario with Central Powers victory?

Originally Posted by Monkey Business

Then again, who is to say Bolshevism gets that far? The Royal families of Germany and Austria-Hungary might try and back the "White" Russians during that long Civil War. Maybe even send combat aid, however weakened by that horrific war they may be. A new Russian Empire is established?

Germany had already occupied the Ukraine, and following a Central Powers victory, wouldn't have relinquished it. Austria-Hungary was neck deep in nationalistic fractures, and most likely would be facing rebellions from Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slavs, and Ruthenians. The reprisals would be quite troubling.

As for backing the "whites", it's a viable possibility to keep a rival nation divided and weak.

And speaking of them, I still think the Ottoman Empire would fracture under it's own weight, though maybe not quite as soon as it would have had the Central Powers won--maybe. A real powder keg.

Not really. With the complete extermination of the Armenians; the Arabs, since they had staged a REAL revolt, would have been hunted down.

Intervention by the Central Powers to overthrow the Bolsheviks would have been inevitable, if only to forestall a communist revolution in Germany (as in 1918). Since the USA and other Allied powers had already intervened, the final chapter of the conflict on the Eastern Front might have witnessed the supreme irony of both Allies and Central Powers backing the Whites against the Reds!

Whatever White faction eventually won, it almost certainly would have been an extremely nationalistic dictatorship and bent on revenge---setting the stage for a possibly very turbulent post-war Europe.

Although Kansas Bear insists on parroting the canard of Austro-Hungarian disintegration from uprisings by its minorities, none of these actually occurred until after military defeat in Ocotober. More important, but often overlooked, were the serious disagreements arising between Germany and Austria-Hungary following the Russian and Romanian surrenders. These indicated that the alliance had become one of necessity rather than conviction and that substantial changes lay ahead. The two extremes were an Austro-Hungarian withdrawal from the alliance (favored by the Emperor Karl and his ministers) and a dismantling of Austria-Hungary by Germany (favored by nost of the pan-German groups).
Either of these would have been far too risky for either Germany or Austria-Hungary, so the new relationship was likely to have been tentative and occasionally stormy.

Bulgaria and Albania would have been the only unalloyed winners of the war---annexing all the areas inhabited by their compatriots in Montenegro, Serbia, Greece, and Romania.

As you observed, the future of the Ottoman Empire might have well been problematic even with a Central Powers victory. The Saudis were already taking over large portions of the Arabian peninsula, and might well have been able to amputate the Hejaz and Nejd regions from Turkish rule as they did from the Hashemites. With no conversion of the Middle East into British, French, and Italian colonies, and no creation of a Zionist colony in Palestine, attitudes of the Arabs toward the Allies would have remained basciallly positive, and Arab nationalism would probably have become an increasingly difficult problem for the Turks. The Germans might have covertly supported a pan-Arab nationalism as a way of undermining the British and French colonies of North Africa and at the same time increasing the dependence of the Turks on themselves.

That Japan was the big winner in the Pacific chapter of WWI is undeniable. That they were bent on further expansion is just as undeniable. Japan's involvment in the Allied intervention against Soviet Russia was not so much to contain communism as self-aggrandizement. Even after their forces withdrew from Siberia in 1922, they continued to sporadically raid Soviet territory through most of the '30's. An excellent book on the what-if's of the Pacific is War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan, 1897-1945 bu Edward S. Miller.

Not really. With the complete extermination of the Armenians; the Arabs, since they had staged a REAL revolt, would have been hunted down.

I disagree, not only were the Arab revolts under the Sherif much smaller than TE Lawrence would have us believe, Turkish reprisals against a bunch of nomadic Bedouins on their own turf would be difficult. Furthermore the Armenians were officially dhimmi, whereas the Arabs were fellow Muslims, non-Turks to be sure, but Muslims nonetheless. The Armenians were also much closer to home than the Arabs were, with extensive populations in Thrace and western Anatolia as well as eastern Anatolia. The Arabs, in addition to being more distant from the actual Turkish portion of the Empire, were also far more numerous than the Armenians.

During the course of WWI, the Turks had all but abandoned its Arab territories, and focused on the conquest of Turkic portions of the Russian Empire, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and other parts of Central Asia. The ideology of the Young Turks was Turkish nationalism, and many of them saw shedding their Arab subjects in exchange for Turkic ones as a great swap.

With a German victory over Russia consecrated by an armistice favorable to Germany with the Western Allies, there would have been some jostling between the Ottomans and the Germans in the former Russian Empire. Azerbaijan for instance, a traditionally Turkic land with large Armenian and Russian populations in Baku, was sought by both the Turks and the Germans, causing bitter division between them. I don't have any maps on hand, but the Ottomans made huge conquests in the former Russian Empire.

If you really want to learn more about the situations in the Middle East during WWII and during the interwar period, I'd recommend A Peace to End All Peace by Fromkin.

Germany had already occupied the Ukraine, and following a Central Powers victory, wouldn't have relinquished it. Austria-Hungary was neck deep in nationalistic fractures, and most likely would be facing rebellions from Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slavs, and Ruthenians. The reprisals would be quite troubling.

I believe the rulers of Austria-Hungary had something like a type of "United States" planned, but never got around to it for obvious reasons.

Originally Posted by Pablo Cortez

Although Kansas Bear insists on parroting the canard of Austro-Hungarian disintegration from uprisings by its minorities, none of these actually occurred until after military defeat in Ocotober. More important, but often overlooked, were the serious disagreements arising between Germany and Austria-Hungary following the Russian and Romanian surrenders. These indicated that the alliance had become one of necessity rather than conviction and that substantial changes lay ahead. The two extremes were an Austro-Hungarian withdrawal from the alliance (favored by the Emperor Karl and his ministers) and a dismantling of Austria-Hungary by Germany (favored by nost of the pan-German groups).
Either of these would have been far too risky for either Germany or Austria-Hungary, so the new relationship was likely to have been tentative and occasionally stormy.

Since 'Pablo Cortez' is incapable or to terrified to give references......


"Eventually, by spring 1918, Hlinka, steadily harassed and several times imprisoned by the Hungarian authorities, turned to the concept of Czecho Slovak union."

"More serious, even from the Magyar point of view, was the problem of Roumanian nationalism. This movement was supported by the Roumanian Cultural League, founded in Bucharest in 1891. Its goals were after all objectives compatible with loyalty to the empire and the Hungarian crown, but incompatible with persistant Magyar national intransigence."

"The outcome of the Hungarian state crisis of 1905-1906 was disappointing. It did not, as hoped for, lead to equal franchise, of which the nationalities would have been chief beneficiaries. Further repressive Magyar measures could only add fuel to a fire that could no longer be extinguished."

"All things considered, the Magyar nationality policy after 1867 and particularly under Kalman Tisza and afterward was not always as atrocious as pictured by the various national irredenta movements. The fairly liberal Hungarian nationality law of 1868 was respected at certain times in dealings with individual national groups, though never with all of them at the same time. Absent, however, was the understanding for the desire not only of individuals but of national groups for identification in the form of autonomy, whether territorial or personal. Lacking also was the understanding that national discrimination, added to social discrimination, aggravated the lot of the socially under privileged non-Magyar peasant and worker still further. Social and political dissatisfaction, illustrated by increased emigration were symptoms of a situation waiting for an explosion that was bound to happen."

"The historian who deals with the evolution and the disintegration of an empire in four centuries cannot take this forward-looking position. To him the dissolution must be primarily linked to the past and not to the future. If we look backward, we will recognize the significance of the great historical process of the dissolution. What happened within a few war years is in essence only an abstract of a long-drawn-out process of decline."

"The one exeception at first was the autonomous region of Croatia. In view of the Serbian army's success against Hapburg forces in August 1914, the eastern part of Croatia had temporarily become a war zone under military jurisdiction. When the Serbians were forced to retreat in September, the military wreaked vengeance upon those local Serb 'collaborators', executing more than 120 and deporting hundreds for resettlement in the Croatian hinterland."

"As in Bosnia and Dalmatia, they had singled out key individuals for detention, Serb politicians such as the Pribicevic brothers and Srdjan Budisavljevic."

"Another tendency was to blame enemy propaganda for many aspects of the domestic unrest which was engulfing the Empire. In May, when a revolt occurred in a Slovene regiment in Judenburg, the court martial proceedings concluded: 'It can certainly be said with regard to the influence of national political factors, that the Yugoslav parties and, in the broadest sense, also the revolutionary campaign of the Entente and therefore the English propaganda ministry played some role, although there is no immediate evidence available for this'. "

"It may well have been the case that the scale of executions in Galicia at this time was exaggerated, feeding the rumour-mill of atrocity stories. But it was also a fact that the military regime set a standard of behaviour which could only alienate Ruthenes and Poles from believing that the war was being fought on their behalf. It deal a blow at the start of the war to any possible unity in the hinterland, while providing a crisis of conscience for many Serbs, Ruthenes or Poles in the armed forces."

"Similarly in Galicia, the army was so paranoid about civilian links to the enemy that it sent thousands of Ruthenes westward into the hinterland."

"Undoubtedly, it was expecting too much of the non-German representatives after almost three years of dictatorship. Many of them had been imprisoned at the outbreak of war, their 'homelands' had been subject to arbitrary military rule, and they were now still faced with an Austrian government which was largely German in outlook. On 30 May, on the opening of the Reichsrat, the Czech, South Slav, and Ruthene deputies duly presented radical demands for the Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, and Urkrainian unity. When the government of Ernst von Seidler refused to discuss any such ideas, a secondary mobilization did intensify in Austria, but it was not one on behalf of the Habsburg war effort."

"It allowed the AOK to interfere directly in what were otherwise non-military spheres of influence in the Austrian hinterland, ordering local military officials to arrest suspect individuals, or the regional censors to suprress 'unpatriotic' news in the press. Because of the secrecy which surrounded its activity, the KUA's influence has probably been exaggerated, but its very existence was symptomatic of the type of regime which ran Austria for the first three years of the war. Both would be responsible together for the powerful backlash wich would come from the 'oppressed peoples' in the new constitutional circumstance of 1917."

"In Carinthia and Styria there were 910 arrests in the first four months of the war. In Dalmatia, hundreds were arrested on the outbreak of hostilities, put on a prison-ship at Split, and taken northward to Maribor to be interned."

"By the end of 1914 in Bohemia, 950 people had been arrested for political offences and 32 societies dissolved. As Emperor Franz Joseph told Sturgkh on 22 November 1914, the behaviour of Czech soldiers could be traced back directly to 'unhealthy political conditions' at home. They arrested Karel Kramar, the leading Czech politician, put him on trial and sentenced him to death; Kramar thereby gained the status of martyr."

Originally Posted by Pablo Cortez

The survival of Austria-Hungary is another, and closely related, example of Allied historical orthodoxy. Rather than admit that they had destroyed a nation simply to sate their greed (as demontrated by the promises of the secret Treaty of London in 1915), it was convenient to attribute the end of the Habsburg Monarchy to inevitable internal conflict. Yet the monarchy had held together well throughout the entire course of the war without any uprising of any of its various peoples.

Martial law.

Imprisonment.

Originally Posted by Pablo Cortez

The collapse came only after military defeat and by the agency of external committees fomenting partition between greedy neighbors and new homeland for expatriate patriots. A militarily successful Austria-Hungary might more likely have become a Superswitzerland or a prototype of a European Union.

The situation in Austria-Hungary was far from ideal. The naive thought of a "Superswitzerland" or "European Union" shows ignorance in this regard.

"Undoubtedly, it was expecting too much of the non-German representatives after almost three years of dictatorship. Many of them had been imprisoned at the outbreak of war, their 'homelands' had been subject to arbitrary military rule, and they were now still faced with an Austrian government which was largely German in outlook. On 30 May 1917, on the opening of the Reichsrat, the Czech, South Slav, and Ruthene deputies duly presented radical demands for the Czechoslovak, Yugoslav, and Urkrainian unity. When the government of Ernst von Seidler refused to discuss any such ideas, a secondary mobilization did intensify in Austria, but it was not one on behalf of the Habsburg war effort.

In this way, from the summer of 1917, there began that polarization of national and social groupings which would eventually tear the Empire apart. The irony was that in the early years of the war, when a certain consensus was evident, the military authorities had operated ruthlessly and done much to alienate large sections of the population. From 1917, however, when social and nationalist unrest was intensifying, there were relatively powerless to control events in the Austrian hinterland."

Taken from...
"A History of the Habsburg Empire" by Kann
"The Undermining of Austria-Hungary" by Cornwall

Originally Posted by Ironduke

I disagree, not only were the Arab revolts under the Sherif much smaller than TE Lawrence would have us believe, Turkish reprisals against a bunch of nomadic Bedouins on their own turf would be difficult. Furthermore the Armenians were officially dhimmi, whereas the Arabs were fellow Muslims, non-Turks to be sure, but Muslims nonetheless. The Armenians were also much closer to home than the Arabs were, with extensive populations in Thrace and western Anatolia as well as eastern Anatolia. The Arabs, in addition to being more distant from the actual Turkish portion of the Empire, were also far more numerous than the Armenians.

During the course of WWI, the Turks had all but abandoned its Arab territories, and focused on the conquest of Turkic portions of the Russian Empire, such as Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and other parts of Central Asia. The ideology of the Young Turks was Turkish nationalism, and many of them saw shedding their Arab subjects in exchange for Turkic ones as a great swap.

With a German victory over Russia consecrated by an armistice favorable to Germany with the Western Allies, there would have been some jostling between the Ottomans and the Germans in the former Russian Empire. Azerbaijan for instance, a traditionally Turkic land with large Armenian and Russian populations in Baku, was sought by both the Turks and the Germans, causing bitter division between them. I don't have any maps on hand, but the Ottomans made huge conquests in the former Russian Empire.

If you really want to learn more about the situations in the Middle East during WWII and during the interwar period, I'd recommend A Peace to End All Peace by Fromkin.

I've read Fromkin, good book, although he leaves a few things out.

"In 1915 and 1916 scores of Syrians, both Muslim and Christians, were accused of anti-Turkish conspiracies and executed." --The Shaping of the Arabs, by Carmichael.

"Several months later the Arab Literary Club and the Turkish Society came into existence. These literary societies have been ascribed an undue share in the politicization of Arabism and Turkism, because some of the leaders of Al-muntada subsequently played a leading role in Arab nationalist activity and were among those executed by ??Cemal??(Djemal) Pasha in 1915–16; and Türk Derneği and its successors had prominent Unionists, including some deputies, as members." --Arabs and Young Turks, by Kayalı

My apologies to Ucar, I believe in this edition, Kayali's writing may have been mis-translated. I find no evidence of Cemal Pasha in Syria from 1915-1916. Djemal Pasha was the person involved in Syria.

Quoting one of the foremost proponents(Kann) of the theory that Austria-Hungary was on the verge of disintegration to prove that theory is illogical, circular reasoning. Actual events, particularly the empire's ability to survive four years of war and food shortages, show a state much more resilient than its destroyers like to "remember". Even in defeat Austria-Hungary would almost certainly have survived if the territorial greed of the Allies and Wilson's deadly combination of idealism, ignorance, and expediency had not been in place. Best single volume supporting my position is Peace or Partition: The Habsburg Monarchy and British Policy 1914-1918 by Wilfried Fest; Prior Publishers; London; 1978. The minorities of Austria-Hungary for the most part were of the opinion expressed by Palacky to the Frankfurt Assembly during the revolutions of 1848---"if Austria did not exist, it would be necessary to invent her". He rightly discribed the inevitable chaos if the Habsburg Monarchy were either partitioned or dissolved into its ethnical components.

On a different level, personal attack hardly strikes me as a worthwhile way to conduct a discussion. Since my very first posting, Kansas Bear has seen fit to reply with more rudeness and invective than reason. After years of participation with colleagues in academic arguments on all sorts of issues, I supposed that adults all knew that disagreements could be both profound and still cordial. Apparently that view is not shared by Kansas Bear. The very idea of an absolutely correct interpretation of an historical "might-have-been" is preposterous. To try and insult others into accepting your own position is self-defeating.

All history should be under continous review free of popular and idological orthodoxies. Since 1989 many of the policies and theories of 1918 have been found wanting, e.g. there never was a "Czechoslovak" idea. The Czechs wanted their own mini-empire and laid claim to the Slovaks as a means to achieve it despite Slovak reticence. It didn't require Hitler's intervention to create the antipathy that led Slovakia to sever its bond to the Czechs in 1939 any more than it did in 1991. The Slovaks were "Habsburgertreu", and dispite their problems with the Hungarians, had even less desire to become the poor relatives of the Czechs. The Croats had essentially the same attitude toward the Serbs, separating in 1941 as well as 1991. All the South Slavic peoples fought bravely and determinedly against the Italians, preferring the relative autonomy they enjoyed under the Habsburgs to the probability of vigorous efforts at Italianization should the Allies win.

Every nightmare of Palacky has already come true, but if the EU is unsuccessful at uniting Europe, the band of non-viable ministates populating Central and Eastern Europe is a geopolitical disaster waiting to happen.

"In 1915 and 1916 scores of Syrians, both Muslim and Christians, were accused of anti-Turkish conspiracies and executed."

First of all, score, in the strict sense, means twenty, so that passage could be properly interpreted as "twenties of Syrians were executed". Fromkin is a much more established and reputable historian, and if there was an action in Syria anything near a fraction of what happened to the Armenians, it surely would have been touched on to a great degree in his book. IIRC, a number of the community leaders who advocated independence/revolt against the Ottomans were executed or imprisoned, and these included both Christians and Muslims.

Syria is also in much closer proximity to Turkey proper, than say Mesopotamia which lay across mountainous Kurdistan or the Hejaz which was on the western coast of Arabia. It would be much harder to deal with the Sherif or Ibn Saud than it would be the Syrians.

If Germany won WW1, there would be no place for National Socialist Party and no Adolf Hitler. There might still be a WW2. France might take the part of Germany to avenge a humiliating defeat. Would the British Empire allow Kaiser's navy to strengthen and threaten British dominance? Would hte Ottoman Empire get a piece of the French and British pie in Africa? I don't know.

It seems to me that WW1 didn't solve anything, either way. WW2 was inevitable. WW1 was to set the stage for the real solution later on in the 20th century. We couldn't solve all our problems in one huge global war. We had to wait for technology to catch up. Anything before was just to shape the world for the inevitablel.

France might take the part of Germany to avenge a humiliating defeat.

Now that would be interesting... a revanchist fascist France sparking WWII. In place of Sudetenland, maybe Wallonia & western Switzerland, then they march in and take the rest of both countries. That would be an interesting discussion.