raharris1973
Well-known member
There is a what I think is a "trope" in popular alternate history imaginings and speculations, written into a few different novels, and games or game settings like GURPS alternate earths, where if Germany wins WWI, it inverts Germany and France in the postwar years, France instead of Germany, becomes a right-wing, maybe Fascist, Revanchist power (maybe under DeGaulle, maybe under somebody who was a Fascist/quasi-Fascist politician in real-life), come up with a military doctrinal equivalent of blitzkrieg, I once read it as guerre eclair (yum!) and starts the timeline's alternate WWII.
I guess the thinking behind this is that France and Germany are easily mirror-image inversions of each other other's politics taking turns at revenge, Russia is doing its own weird thing with Socialism/Communism, and Britain is just too democratic, level-headed and cool as a cucumber to ever get reckless and revanchist.
I don't buy it.
Even as an exercise in mirroring France and Germany, Germany quit after losing two wars in a row. Here, France would have lost two wars in a row (Franco-Prussian and WWI), and if you're counting only ones that had a German/Prussian front, three in a row (the Napoleonic Wars, at least the final one).
And only a funhouse mirror can make France as big as Germany in the economy, industry, population, coal energy reserves.
Germany's revanchist drive in OTL (our timeline, real history) came from two sources, yes, rage at being cut down to size, but also confidence it really had been winning, certainly was at the edge of winning, a feeling of power. After a WWI defeat, either early in the war, 1914-ish, the middle, or late, after exhaustion, France may have the rage, but not the underlying confidence and sense of power for a comeback.
Going into the war in 1914 indeed the least was expected out of France out of the Triple Entente powers, both the Russian Empire and Britain were considered more formidable, and both of them could have more plausibly felt the sense of power and entitlement, in addition to anger about defeat, to lead to support for revanchist policies.
But the Russians had internal social divisions a mile long, and followed their WWI losses with a Civil War and famine equally bad. They had a harder time bouncing back and were highly unlikely to produce a Hitler-ish revanchist by the 30s or 40s.
Notably, it was the strongest, and relatively most intact, of the defeat Central Powers, Germany, that had the strongest revanchism and led the revanchist pack.
Britain would have been Germany's opposite number in Entente camp. The most industrial, the most technological, the strongest, the one most accustomed to success and least accustomed to failure abroad. It's true even in a "lost" Great War, Britain would not have been invaded, would not have lost any home island territories at all, and quite probably not lost any colonial territories or protectorates to any of its Central Powers foes. Nor would it be disarmed or compelled to pay indemnities (except perhaps in a disguised form of "payment for upkeep and support of British Empire PoWs until their safe return home"). In that respect Britain would be more fortunate than Germany and have less to rage about.
A German/CP victory in Europe would be recognized as Britain's defeat nonetheless, with defeat measured in other ways. Defeat measured in loss of allies, loss of status, loss of military formidability for having tried to intervene on the continent at great cost and been defeated anyway, loss of naval formidability or the ability of surface seapower or blockade to be decisively war-winning. Defeat measured possibly in having to return some captured German colonies back to Germany. The scale and sense of Britain's defeat would defend on the scale of total battle deaths before the fighting is over, whether the final battles include any actual outs or overrunning of British lines or big pockets of batches of British troops as PoWs out of proportion to the #s of Germans the British hold.
This kind of defeat would lead to questioning the old older, social and class tension, colonial tension, including defiance by oppressed-feeling colonial groups, but also an angry feeling of loss of status among the upper and middle classes and patriots - productive soil for reactionary and revanchist politics.
A drive to compete with, get even with and show up Germany and arrange for harm to Germany would be part and parcel of this reactionary politics in all likelihood, in addition to whomever is labelled "the enemy within". In large countries, there is room for both kinds of enemies, internal and external, and use in having both. Britain can also rebuild its military, naval and industrial capabilities at home and in imperial territories with far less risk of quick German preemption or smothering than Brest-Litovsk'ed Russia, or certainly France, could.
The ability of a victorious WWI Germany to quickly smother a France trying to make a militant revanchist comeback in the decades after French defeat is the least realistic aspect of that concept. Germany, with almost twice the population of France, and the leader in any coalition it is in, not a highly dependent* partner like France, is free, ready, willing and able to stomp on France as soon as it has any "remilitarize the Rhineland" equivalent moment. It won't have to look to an ally, or its budget, like France did to Britain and its credit rating, for a "mother may I?" before acting - and then not act.
*dependent on Britain certainly and any of the USA, Russia, or other eastern allies
I guess the thinking behind this is that France and Germany are easily mirror-image inversions of each other other's politics taking turns at revenge, Russia is doing its own weird thing with Socialism/Communism, and Britain is just too democratic, level-headed and cool as a cucumber to ever get reckless and revanchist.
I don't buy it.
Even as an exercise in mirroring France and Germany, Germany quit after losing two wars in a row. Here, France would have lost two wars in a row (Franco-Prussian and WWI), and if you're counting only ones that had a German/Prussian front, three in a row (the Napoleonic Wars, at least the final one).
And only a funhouse mirror can make France as big as Germany in the economy, industry, population, coal energy reserves.
Germany's revanchist drive in OTL (our timeline, real history) came from two sources, yes, rage at being cut down to size, but also confidence it really had been winning, certainly was at the edge of winning, a feeling of power. After a WWI defeat, either early in the war, 1914-ish, the middle, or late, after exhaustion, France may have the rage, but not the underlying confidence and sense of power for a comeback.
Going into the war in 1914 indeed the least was expected out of France out of the Triple Entente powers, both the Russian Empire and Britain were considered more formidable, and both of them could have more plausibly felt the sense of power and entitlement, in addition to anger about defeat, to lead to support for revanchist policies.
But the Russians had internal social divisions a mile long, and followed their WWI losses with a Civil War and famine equally bad. They had a harder time bouncing back and were highly unlikely to produce a Hitler-ish revanchist by the 30s or 40s.
Notably, it was the strongest, and relatively most intact, of the defeat Central Powers, Germany, that had the strongest revanchism and led the revanchist pack.
Britain would have been Germany's opposite number in Entente camp. The most industrial, the most technological, the strongest, the one most accustomed to success and least accustomed to failure abroad. It's true even in a "lost" Great War, Britain would not have been invaded, would not have lost any home island territories at all, and quite probably not lost any colonial territories or protectorates to any of its Central Powers foes. Nor would it be disarmed or compelled to pay indemnities (except perhaps in a disguised form of "payment for upkeep and support of British Empire PoWs until their safe return home"). In that respect Britain would be more fortunate than Germany and have less to rage about.
A German/CP victory in Europe would be recognized as Britain's defeat nonetheless, with defeat measured in other ways. Defeat measured in loss of allies, loss of status, loss of military formidability for having tried to intervene on the continent at great cost and been defeated anyway, loss of naval formidability or the ability of surface seapower or blockade to be decisively war-winning. Defeat measured possibly in having to return some captured German colonies back to Germany. The scale and sense of Britain's defeat would defend on the scale of total battle deaths before the fighting is over, whether the final battles include any actual outs or overrunning of British lines or big pockets of batches of British troops as PoWs out of proportion to the #s of Germans the British hold.
This kind of defeat would lead to questioning the old older, social and class tension, colonial tension, including defiance by oppressed-feeling colonial groups, but also an angry feeling of loss of status among the upper and middle classes and patriots - productive soil for reactionary and revanchist politics.
A drive to compete with, get even with and show up Germany and arrange for harm to Germany would be part and parcel of this reactionary politics in all likelihood, in addition to whomever is labelled "the enemy within". In large countries, there is room for both kinds of enemies, internal and external, and use in having both. Britain can also rebuild its military, naval and industrial capabilities at home and in imperial territories with far less risk of quick German preemption or smothering than Brest-Litovsk'ed Russia, or certainly France, could.
The ability of a victorious WWI Germany to quickly smother a France trying to make a militant revanchist comeback in the decades after French defeat is the least realistic aspect of that concept. Germany, with almost twice the population of France, and the leader in any coalition it is in, not a highly dependent* partner like France, is free, ready, willing and able to stomp on France as soon as it has any "remilitarize the Rhineland" equivalent moment. It won't have to look to an ally, or its budget, like France did to Britain and its credit rating, for a "mother may I?" before acting - and then not act.
*dependent on Britain certainly and any of the USA, Russia, or other eastern allies