Thread: Post WWI scenario with Central Powers victory?

A Central Powers victory would really mean a German victory, because neither Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, nor Bulgaria would have been strong enough to take full advantage of the big shift in the world balance-of-power that would result.

The Germans wanted to establish themselves as a true World Power, on par with the continent-sized USA or globe-girdling British Empire. "Go Big or Go Under" would sum up the point-of-view. If you don't have enough population, enough raw materials, or a big enough market, you just won't rate in the competitive world of the future!

They weren't all wrong. They predicted that if Germany could not "break out" then the Anglo-Saxon powers would dominate world trade and finance, while a modernizing Asia would loom in the East. Either way, Germany gets dwarfed. Not far off the mark, really. While the century between their time and ours has seen many events they didn't predict, nevertheless the global outcome wouldn't have surprised a German arch-nationalist of, say, 1910.

A Central Powers victory in the Great War would have placed Germany in the hegemonic position in western Eurasia. That's why France, Russia, and Britain all went to the wall to try to stop them.

While a Central Powers victory would be humiliating to the French, France would still have retained its independence and most of its empire. However, its industry and finance, along with those of the Low Countries, would be "integrated" on terms favourable to Germany. The Germans might have been able to appeal to anglophobic sentiment in France to get cooperation on naval and imperial issues. Basically France would become a "junior partner" in a German-led European system--like an EU that could actually make decisions.

The biggest losers would be the Slavic peoples. Sorry, folks, make way for the spread of "civilization"! Lebensraum was not a Nazi invention; the notion of utilizing Russia and the Ukraine as areas for future Germanic settlement was shared by a lot of pre-WWI German nationalists. The notion was that German emigrants could go east rather than to the Americas, and that way the German nation would not "lose blood." And why should those backward Russians be permitted to keep all those lands and resources anyway? No, only German settlement and investment could ever possibly make the most out of that vast region. However, unlike the Nazis in the East, a German victory in the Great War would probably resulted in a more generous German overlordship in Eastern Europe.

While the navalist school in Germany would push for additions to the overseas tropical empire, I doubt that they would get their way. Instead, I think attempts would be made to conciliate the British by offering them chunks of the French Empire--at least until Europe was consolidated. A German push into the Middle East would be unnecessary, since the acquisition (or investment penetration) of the Caucasus would provide all the necessary oil--Baku was already flourishing pre-WWI.

When you think about these consequences, it's not hard to understand why the USA eventually felt compelled to go to war. Their first choice would have been to let those "damn fool Europeans" keep killing each other forever, but in the end it was better for the USA to keep a divided Europe rather than risk it being dominanated by a single power. The US policy towards Eurasia isn't too much different than Britain's towards the "Continent", just on a much bigger scale: never let one power dominate it.