The Final Campaign

Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

What Really Happened: After The ‘Hundred Days’ Campaign in 1918, the Germans sued for peace after being decisively beaten by the British forces. The resulting peace humiliated the Germans and laid the grounds for world war two, as the Germans increasingly believed that they had been stabbed in the back by the politicians.

What might have happened: Lets say that the German military, who were the real rulers of Germany at the time, decide to keep fighting. That’s not as impossible as it may sound. The German border has not been crossed, they are building their own tanks to match the British ones and the allies are divided amongst themselves on what outcome they want from the war. For example, Italy has been cheated by Britain and France on the issue of territory.

The Germans approach the Americans and offer a honorable peace, based around Wilson’s fourteen points. They also point out the dangers of communism and that the Germans are under threat from subversives. If they surrender, the German state will collapse into communism. Meanwhile, they withdraw to Germany and effectively dare the allies to cross the border into Germany itself.

The allies are divided. The French want to ‘liberate’ Alsace-Lorraine at least and also to humiliate the Germans. The British want the German fleet either handed over to them or sunk. The Americans want a honourable peace. The Italians want a large part of the Ottoman Empire (so does Greece) and the belgums want the Germans completely out. Those aims are hardly compatible. However, all of the nations are determined that Germany will not be allowed to defy them. They start a build-up while redoubling pressure on the Turks and sorting out their problems over tea and cake.

In a very acrimonious conference, they decide that the shape of the post war world would be Britain getting the German colonies, Palestine, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia as mandates. They will also have a trusteeship over the Dandalines. France gets Syria and a chuck of Turkey, the rest of which will be split between Italy and Greece. America receives, without enthusiasm, a limited mandate over Armenia and Japan demands concessions in China.

Meanwhile, the Germans have been busy. They have fortified every village throughout the front in Germany; they have built-up stockpiles of supplies and aircraft. However, many of the people in Germany are staving as disease (influenza) wrecks havoc. Revolution is not far away, while all that’s keep it underground is the military patrols and a very efficient secret service. Wilhelm is completely lost his grip on reality and is desperately hoping for a miracle. They do make secret contacts with the Bolsivicks in Russia and trade help for supplies.

Having built up supplies for a mass advance, with hundreds of the most advanced tanks and aircraft, the allies advance into Germany. Almost immediately, they run into problems. The Germans have been arming their people for behind-the-lines operations and they wreak havoc on the allied logistics, as they have no experience in partisan warfare. The allies do try to be civilized, but the French and the others who have experience of the German method of conducting anti-partisan warfare are more than willing to extract a little revenge. Every German village is a stronghold and the Germans try to fight for each house. Some Germans do surrender, but they only do so after running out of food and ammunition.

The allied tank expert, Major Fuller, proposes changes to the structure of the allied advance. So far, the allies have won every stand-up battle, but when the German army digs into its cities, the cost in allied lives is horrendous. Fuller’s plan is very simple: allied tanks will spearhead any major push through open ground, while guns and Infantry will be used to clear out villages that can’t be bypassed. Large concentrations of German troops will be surrounded and left to starve or breakout. In a smaller and slower scale, its pretty much a ‘prequel’ of Operation Barbarossa. The allies managed to push as far as the Rhine, while slowly forcing German civilians out of their places and creating a major refugee crisis.

The Germans have one last shot of the dice. They try to talk the various powers into accepting something short of a total humiliation for Germany. However, Hindinburg has one last chance and in April 1919, the Germans launch their last offensive of the war. They have press-ganged Poles, Austrians, and even a few Russians, into a massive army and have massed their last remaining tanks and planes. The allies have some warning, but the intelligence services have a major screw-up and miss the size of the impending offensive.

The attack begins reasonably well. German forces re-cross the Rhine and attack allied formations. However, the allies have vastly more tanks and planes than the Germans and manage to seize complete control of the air and are even bombing as far as Berlin. The slaughter convinces most of the Germany army to give up and they are placed in allied concentration camps while waiting for the war to end.

The allies breach the Germans last realistic line of defence when they seize both banks of the Rhine and push towards Berlin. The British attempt to seize bits of the German fleet and discover that many of the German sailors are more than willing to surrender if the British feed them, which they do. Soon, the rest of the German fleet mutinies and sails to Britain. The British claim the ships as spoils of war. The French are not happy, but the British offer to support the claim they are currently pushing for the Rhineland to become French or to become a buffer state between France and Germany.

Incidentally, the allies have accidentally destroyed a Germany military hospital and killed most of the patients, including one gas victim, Adolf Hitler. Germany is collapsing into chaos and the Kaiser finally tries to abdicate, only to discover that he is blamed for Germany’s fate. There is a palace coup and the Emperor is found dead of a bullet wound, while the Germany army officers take their own lives. The Allied armies reach Berlin in what is more of a triumphal procession than an invasion, as the Germans are sick of war.

Having crushed Germany utterly, the allies have to work out a peace settlement. The French push a claim to the Rhineland, but the Americans block it, while the British propose a compromise of an independent Rhineland, allied to France. The extensive depopulation endured by the people there means that they might welcome new blood. Germany becomes a loose federal structure, but most of the power rests with the rulers of the old states that made up the German empire. There is no longer a Germany in most sense.

The British oversee the final destruction of the Ottoman Empire and its division between the victors. Italy is delighted with its spoils; through they’re really worthless, while the Greeks enjoy a chance to humiliate their old foes.

The British and Americans also face down Japan at Wilson’s insistence, ordering them out of China, which they reluctantly do so, although they keep Russian installations such as Vidivstuck. The allies supply the whites in the civil war, and they finally manage to win the Russian civil war, establishing a loose democraticy in Russia, which is heavily dominated by the nobles. Lenin and Co. flee to Switzerland.

Europe is devastated. The Americans arrange aid to the states that agree to support Wilson’s plan for the League of Nations, which has is seats based on population. At French insistence, the Rhineland is offered a seat, as are the British dominions. Disease and Deprivation stalk all over Europe, far worse than OTL. However, there is no attempt to make the German states pay massive reparations for the war or to force them to accept blame.

Short Term Consequences: Europe has been devastated far worse than in OTL. There will be no short-term German reunification, while there is now a border state between Germany and France. The Germans are not too keen on reunification themselves.

There will be vast effects beyond any attempt to predict. People who existed in our OTL will have been killed in the last round of fighting, or been killed by the worse diseases.

There will have been worse outbreaks of communism, particularly without the disaster of the USSR to warn people away, and with a greater ‘anti-establishment’ bent, as the governments will be blamed for the fall of the USSR. There may well be socialist victories in the polls.

Medium-term Consequences: I find it unlikely that any ‘white’ government could match the USSR’s build-up and recovery schemes. They would have little support from the peasants and will have to fight a long graualla war against them. On the other hand, they have the Japanese presence in Siberia to push out.

Consequently, Japan is more likely to decide firmly it’s a land power instead of embarking (LOL) on a massive naval build-up. This may lead them into later conflict with China or Russia.

Long Term Consequences: I can’t see a World War Two in this timeline, particularly with a divided Germany. On the other hand, Russia and France might both want to gain territory and Russia may go to war with Japan. There will be constant rebellions in Turkey. However, there would be strong anti-war sentiments across all of Europe, not just in Britain and France.

Without a World War Two, the European empires will probably last longer than in OTL.

Thoughts?