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Post by aeson on Oct 6, 2017 20:56:48 GMT -6
Also, I think historically, while battleships were considered the primary arbiter in that period, it was actually the submarines that proved far more effective. While steel battleships played a decisive role in the Russo-Japanese War, by WW1 they had evolved into expensive status symbols that were considered too valuable to risk, and spent most of the war swinging at their anchors and looking impressive. It was the Kaiser's U-boats, not his dreadnoughts, that almost won the war. The historical diplomatic cost of the unrestricted German U-boat campaigns of the First World War was such that, at least in hindsight, they could only be justified by unambiguous success or a war situation so dire that the cost to Germany of engaging in them was negligible. History tells us that the U-boat campaigns failed, and also suggests that the war situation was not nearly dire enough that the diplomatic cost - most notably the entry of the United States into the war - was justified. The course of events in Russia was little affected by the U-boat campaign - Russia's trade with the rest of the world had largely been cut off since the start of the war, through the Baltic by the German Navy's controlling position over the route out of the Baltic and through the Black Sea and Mediterranean by the Ottoman Empire's closure of the Dardanelles and subsequent entry into the war. The nonresumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 would have removed perhaps the most significant immediate cause of American entry into the war, delaying or perhaps even preventing the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe. With a delayed or entirely absent AEF, the strategic situation on the Western Front after the Russian collapses in 1917, and especially after Russia's exit from the war in 1918, is considerably better for Germany, and even without any more than the historical level of success the Ludendorff Offensives may have been enough to compel the Allies to come to the negotiating table on terms more favorable to Germany than were offered with the Armistice and the eventual Treaty of Versailles. I would further point out that while the Kaiser's dreadnoughts were not particularly active during the war and consumed men and materiel which could perhaps have been better employed elsewhere, both during the war and in the peace preceding it, their existence compelled a similar commitment on the part of Great Britain and the fleet of which they formed a part successfully closed the Baltic to Russian merchant traffic, and one of the Kaiser's dreadnoughts (or perhaps more accurately one of his battlecruisers) played a key, if incidental and perhaps in the long run unnecessary, role in bringing the Ottoman Empire into the war, with the consequent diversion of Allied resources to the Levant and Southern Russia and the preemption of diplomatic efforts to re-open the Dardanelles to Allied ship traffic. Even if they accomplished nothing else, though, the Kasier's dreadnoughts influenced British warship deployments throughout the war, which among other things probably contributed to the defeat at Coronel and impacted the naval operations to force the Dardanelles, the failure of which lead to the Gallipoli campaign. In case this was meant more generally rather than being specifically targeted at the navies of the Central Powers during WWI, I will add that the utility of the submarine was not symmetric, and that whatever economic advantages a submarine blockade may have held compared to a surface blockade for the Allies, those advantages would be offset by the diplomatic costs and the need for ships for ASW patrols - which could have been conducted at least in part by ships which were on blockade duty, especially early in the war before specialized sub-hunting equipment really started becoming available - and convoy escort. However capable period-appropriate submarines were for sea denial, trade interdiction, and covert observation, they were not suitable to exert sea control: their poor speed and meager armament combined with all period-appropriate warships' difficulties in detecting, localizing, and engaging submerged targets would likely have made them rather ineffectual convoy escorts and ASW patrol craft. The Western Allies, and in particular Great Britain, needed to be able to protect their sea traffic much more than the Central Powers did and submarines simply would not have been capable of doing that at cost. Further reducing the relative value of the submarine for the Triple Entente as opposed to the Central Powers is that the majority of the Central Powers' sea traffic, once a blockade of any kind went into effect, was always going to be in the relatively confined waters of the Baltic Sea or in coastal waters of the North Sea near Germany or the Adriatic near Austria-Hungary, or once the Ottoman Empire entered the war in the Sea of Marmara and coastal waters off the Levant in the Black, Aegean, and far eastern Mediterranean Seas, which reduces the number of ships needed to attain a given density of ASW patrols or provide a given level of protection to convoys. Personally, I think that the kind of submarine campaign which Rule the Waves appears to model - in essence an absolute submarine blockade, almost regardless of which operational setting the player selects - is inappropriate for the most common types of wars which the player will fight in the game, which are essentially limited colonial wars involving two or at most three powers.. Even in a war involving as many and as great powers as the First World War did, the participants feared to provoke the neutral powers - in particular the United States - into entering the war on the opposing side and produced interruptions and changes of tactics in the German submarine campaigns against the Triple Entente. In the kind of war that the player is most likely to fight in Rule the Waves, fear of the neutral powers joining the war on the 'wrong' side should if anything be magnified and exercise an even greater restraint upon the effectiveness of a submarine campaign. Maybe extremely strict adherence to prize rules could prevent enough sinkings of neutral ships or provide enough of a token concession to deflect the ire of the neutral powers, and maybe the fact that all the powers in Rule the Waves engage roughly equally in submarine warfare would also help, but I don't see e.g. Spain enacting a submarine blockade of Germany so effective as to result in the collapse of the German government within a year or two - or less - of the outbreak of war while keeping its submarine operations at a level and in a mode consistent with not provoking neutral powers engaged in trade with Russia, certainly not without giving up a large part of the advantages that the submarine has over the traditional surface raider or blockading warship.
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Post by bcoopactual on Oct 6, 2017 21:59:13 GMT -6
History tells us that the U-boat campaigns failed, and also suggests that the war situation was not nearly dire enough that the diplomatic cost - most notably the entry of the United States into the war - was justified. Why do you say that? I'm certainly no expert but I was under the impression from what I've read since starting to play this game that the Germans were being strangled of food and war materials by the British blockade and they didn't have the manpower to overcome the French and English in a battle of attrition in the West even with the forces coming over from the East. So since they couldn't defeat the Grand Fleet and break the blockade their only chance was to try to knock Britain out of the war using U-boats. So the 1917 U-boat campaign was certainly an act of desperation and a role of the dice but not doing it was as much as admitting Germany's defeat. Like I said above though, I don't consider myself to be well read enough to have established a firm opinion on the subject so if you wouldn't mind sharing, what drives you to your conclusion?
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Post by aeson on Oct 8, 2017 17:14:07 GMT -6
History tells us that the U-boat campaigns failed, and also suggests that the war situation was not nearly dire enough that the diplomatic cost - most notably the entry of the United States into the war - was justified. Why do you say that? I'm certainly no expert but I was under the impression from what I've read since starting to play this game that the Germans were being strangled of food and war materials by the British blockade and they didn't have the manpower to overcome the French and English in a battle of attrition in the West even with the forces coming over from the East. So since they couldn't defeat the Grand Fleet and break the blockade their only chance was to try to knock Britain out of the war using U-boats. So the 1917 U-boat campaign was certainly an act of desperation and a role of the dice but not doing it was as much as admitting Germany's defeat. Like I said above though, I don't consider myself to be well read enough to have established a firm opinion on the subject so if you wouldn't mind sharing, what drives you to your conclusion? The Allies' position wasn't that great by that stage of the war, either, at least not until the USA came into the war. The Tsar was forced to abdicate in March due to social unrest related in part to a lack of popular support for the war, a large part of the French Army mutinied in May and refused orders to engage in offensive operations and as part of the response General Petain promised an end to major offensive operations until the American Army was ready to take part in them, nobody was yet making any great gains in the trenches, Romania was basically conquered, and then in October-November the Italian Army suffered a severe defeat at Caporetto that lead to six French and five British divisions being sent to shore up the Italian front. More or less none of this was directly and significantly impacted by the submarine campaign; what was accomplished by the submarine campaign was the USA entering the war in April. I am also of the opinion that the German Navy's estimates of its submarines' ability to sink ships were overly optimistic; the target 600,000t/month was only exceeded twice (April - ~850,000t, and June - ~630,000t) and was not reached in any other month, and the convoy system introduced in May rapidly reduced losses despite the number of German U-boats participating in the campaign remaining at roughly 125 for the remainder of the war. Some variation in sinkings per month is to be expected, and naturally it may take some time for the sub commanders to become truly effective, but those first few months of the submarine campaign are also when the greatest number of targets is available for the submarine to hunt and when the enemy's ASW and escort tactics can be expected to be at their least effective. If your campaign is failing to meet its objectives before your opponent really begins to adapt to what you're doing, that's a sign that your campaign isn't going to go well. Admittedly, none of this was something that the German military and government could have known beforehand, though they were aware that Russia was unsteady and that Romania was failing - the Central Powers had after all been driving the Romanian Army back more or less continuously since it entered the war in August 1916 and Bucharest, the capital, had fallen in December.
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Post by director on Oct 8, 2017 17:39:32 GMT -6
Germany was certainly affected by the blockade, but the collapse in 1918 was in no small part caused by the Hindenburg-Ludendorff 'total mobilization' for the 1918 western offensives. It is, I think, within the bounds of probability that no unrestricted submarine warfare (and no American entry into the war) coupled with the collapse of Russia would have tilted the balance of power toward Germany. The German offensives of 1918 might have led to a political settlement if the Entente powers had known no American troops were coming. Or, conceivably, a stout German defense in the west backed by the manpower freed from the Eastern front might have withstood Allied plane-and-tank assaults.
A good part of the manpower crisis in the British Army before and during the 1918 offensives was because Lloyd George was holding men at home. As long as he kept the Army short of troops it was unlikely that the Army would launch another offensive and produce another wave of casualties.
To be more practical, just assume Britain starts convoying from the moment Germany declares unrestricted warfare. Then you have a failed submarine offensive, far fewer Entente shipping losses and less reason for Germany to depend on subs in WW2.
Personally, I think the Kaiser's 'vanity fleet' fell between two stools. It was never going to be as large as the Royal Navy, was unsuited for combat anywhere but in the Baltic and North Sea, and was far larger than necessary for control of the Baltic. Its primary achievement was to stir up British resentment of Germany and increase the likelihood that Britain would join France in any contest with Germany.
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Post by archelaos on Oct 9, 2017 3:45:06 GMT -6
Admitting defeat when they were still strong enough to fight on could have been much better for Germany (in hindsight) Compared to actual result, that is. An interesting question is if a white peace (or a one where Central Powers would pay reparations to France, UK) in the west while also taking what was captured in the east (Poland, Baltics, Ukraine) would be possible at the end of 1917 if sub campaign was not started and US had not entered the war.
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Post by babylon218 on Oct 9, 2017 5:48:37 GMT -6
One thing I will say is that Germany would have had a much better shot at victory in June 1918 without the Americans. It was American reinforcements which allowed the French to hold back the German Army at the Marne. Without those reinforcements, Anglo-Canadian forces would have had to have been pulled south from Flanders. It could have still worked, but the Commonwealth troops would have then been in no state to launch their counteroffensive in October. It was the ability of Franco-American troops to hold at the Marne and of Anglo-Canadian troops to lead the offensive in the Autumn that shattered the German Army. Without that counteroffensive, the Germans would have been able to dig into their new positions and wait out the Entente, who would now be in an impossible position with the Home Front failing and German guns within firing range of Paris. Germany would be in a position to force peace negotiations.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 22, 2017 18:06:04 GMT -6
The Allies' position wasn't that great by that stage of the war, either, at least not until the USA came into the war. The Tsar was forced to abdicate in March due to social unrest related in part to a lack of popular support for the war, a large part of the French Army mutinied in May Russia was the less important ally and the French situation was so dire that they had hundreds of thousands of troops to spare for overseas deployments...
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Post by theexecuter on Oct 22, 2017 19:56:40 GMT -6
The Allies' position wasn't that great by that stage of the war, either, at least not until the USA came into the war. The Tsar was forced to abdicate in March due to social unrest related in part to a lack of popular support for the war, a large part of the French Army mutinied in May Russia was the less important ally and the French situation was so dire that they had hundreds of thousands of troops to spare for overseas deployments... The Allies were perilously close to suffering a socialist revolution themselves...Germany almost fell to one as part of the end of the war. Battlefield success for both sides was largely illusory as a solution for the political situation. The hundred days offensive was successful at pushing the Germans back to Germany...but that is a far cry from winning the war by occupation. In addition, neither Britain nor France would have been able to finance the war without US backing...and they wouldn't have been able to manufacture sufficient weapons and supplies without access to US industry. If the US doesn't enter the war, Europe succumbs to revolution and the Russian Civil War is enacted over all of Europe...
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Post by Airy W on Oct 23, 2017 0:51:08 GMT -6
If the US doesn't enter the war, Europe succumbs to revolution and the Russian Civil War is enacted over all of Europe... That's pure speculation. What I provided you with was hard fact, the French were confident enough in their ability to hold that they shipped hundreds of thousands of troops overseas. In addition, neither Britain nor France would have been able to finance the war without US backing...and they wouldn't have been able to manufacture sufficient weapons and supplies without access to US industry. American soldiers were equipped with surplus French equipment in 1918. The larger American industry certainly would have been the primary source of weapons with more time and the French certainly benefitted from the ability to buy on credit but French production had been expanded after the losses of 1914. A good analogy would be to the Soviets in WWII who lost vast swathes of territory then built new factories far from the frontlines.
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Post by babylon218 on Oct 23, 2017 3:09:08 GMT -6
It's generally accepted by historians that France and Italy were on the cusp of revolution in late-1917. Only the arrival of US troops and Petain's decision to suspend offensive operations until the AEF was ready to take part prevented a total collapse of the French Army. I cannot emphasis enough the importance of Petain's care for his men in 1917: between 1915-1917, the French Army had been subject to constant offensive battle with little sign of that critical breakthrough; any sedition or demoralisation was met with brutal reprisal. When people speak of the French Army being on the verge of total mutiny, they aren't exaggerating - the French soldiers absolutely hated their officers, to the point that many mutineering units executed their officers and elected new ones such as happened in Russia around the same time. Petain's decision when he was placed in charge of that section of the front to stop attacking and focus on rebuilding the morale of his men probably saved the French Army.
Similarly, the Italian Army collapsed at Caporetto in Summer 1917, with the front only being held thanks to support from French and British units pulled from other fronts. Cadorna's bloody terror exacted on his army (even more extreme than those of his French counterparts prior to Petain) combined with new small-unit tactics in use by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies meant that the Italian Army had no will left to fight with. As a result, Cadorna was dismissed and a more sympathetic general put in his place.
What will be noted is that so far I have yet to mention submarines. The only country really threatened by the submarine blockade was Britain, and even here revolutionary/pacifist sentiment was due more to the conduct of the war on land than due to food shortages. The Bolshevik's decision to release the secret Allied War aims outraged anti-imperialist/socialist/pacifist elements in Britain, who had been led to believe they were fighting for international justice, not conquest. The arrival of the Americans and the departure of the Russians allowed the British Government to repaint the war goals along Wilson's 14-points (or at least allow Wilson to do so for them). These brought the pacifist elements back into the fold for the time being.
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Post by Airy W on Oct 23, 2017 4:07:37 GMT -6
It's generally accepted by historians Okay, name two histories written in the past twenty years that say so.
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Post by babylon218 on Oct 23, 2017 13:55:06 GMT -6
It's generally accepted by historians Okay, name two histories written in the past twenty years that say so. Hew Strachan, The FIrst World War: A New Illustrated History (2006). And also in The Oxford Illustrated History of the First WOrld War (2000) Heather Jones, 'As the Centenary Approaches: The Regeneration of the First World War Historiography', Historical Journal, 56, 2013
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Post by oldpop2000 on Oct 23, 2017 14:15:02 GMT -6
Okay, name two histories written in the past twenty years that say so. Hew Strachan, The FIrst World War: A New Illustrated History (2006). And also in The Oxford Illustrated History of the First WOrld War (2000) Heather Jones, 'As the Centenary Approaches: The Regeneration of the First World War Historiography', Historical Journal, 56, 2013 I will add to that, The First World War by John Keegan, Chapter nine, "The Breaking of Armies. Its related in his sections of this chapter titled "The Mood of the Combatants", "The French Mutinies", and "The Rout on the Italian Fronts". Also "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy Chapter 5, "The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the Middle Powers Part one, 1885-1918"
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Post by babylon218 on Oct 23, 2017 15:33:08 GMT -6
Hew Strachan, The FIrst World War: A New Illustrated History (2006). And also in The Oxford Illustrated History of the First WOrld War (2000) Heather Jones, 'As the Centenary Approaches: The Regeneration of the First World War Historiography', Historical Journal, 56, 2013 I will add to that, The First World War by John Keegan, Chapter nine, "The Breaking of Armies. Its related in his sections of this chapter titled "The Mood of the Combatants", "The French Mutinies", and "The Rout on the Italian Fronts". Also "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy Chapter 5, "The Coming of a Bipolar World and the Crisis of the Middle Powers Part one, 1885-1918" Thank you. I would imagine Erich Hobsbawm would also refer to it in Age of Extremes, 1914-1990, but I haven't got a copy yet.
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Post by theexecuter on Oct 23, 2017 16:25:54 GMT -6
Thanks to everyone for the recent scholarship links.
Much like the age of Napoleon...world war 1 is exceptionally difficult to study because the Allies were so adept at spinning events...and historians post event continued to spin yarns in the name of national glory.
People still, after a century, posit entirely discredited views of the combat on the Western front and the 'success' of British and French arms pre-1917 because nationalist historians took the military propaganda at face value.
...and documentary evidence of the fighting in 1918 is exceptionally sparse anyway...likely because it contains the worlds most recent experience with large scale chemical weapons use. That information, I suspect, is too horrifying (and politically damaging) to be released wholesale...as well as too useful to rogue regimes.
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