Quote Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult View Post
Did you miss the point about the second war in what I wrote?

We know from the 1914 September Programme exactly what the Germans planned in the event of a victory in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm

The Brest-Litovsk shows they weren't joking in terms of imposing such a punitive peace.

Have a look at the terms of the Sept Prog - you'll like "Germany would create a Mitteleuropa economic association, ostensibly egalitarian but actually dominated by Germany." {Brexit is the final stage of its implementation.}

Now which is the only country not mentioned at all? GB. Why? Because Germany planned a second war with the UK for global domination.

{This is why Fritz Fischer in the 1960s - the first historian given full access to the imperial German archives - talked about German war aims being identical in both wars. And the Fischer Thesis is the accepted, historical consensus over half a century later.}

This can also be seen with the peace offers made later in 1916 to France and Russia which explicitly stated "the war at sea continues."

Had the Sept Prog been implemented, all the Channel Ports would be in hostile hands, and our trade would be banned from the continent.

But more importantly, this massive German continental sized economy would then devote all the resources to building a fleet capable to beating the RN. They wouldn't have to put most of their military spending towards the army as France and Russia were no longer threats.

So had the Germans won at any point during the war, which was possible until the Spring Offensive failed to split GB and Fr on the Western Front, then we would have been looking at a second war within a decade that we wouldn't be able to afford to fight.

So I'm afraid you're completely wrong to dismiss the threat to GB during WW1. The reason the UK isn't mentioned in the Sept Prog - why there's not even a demand for an indemnity from us, unlike the French - is because they saw it as only the warm up for the sea war with us for global domination.

Think about it as Schlieffen Plan 2.0. Knock out France then knock out Rus. Then use the resources of the continent and control of the Channel Ports to knock out GB in a second war.
Yes, but it was nonsense. Germany never had a chance of defeating the Royal Navy. It was simply too fúcking big and as was made clear by actual events, any attempt to defeat Britain at sea would necessarily have brought the USA into the war - at which point it was game over.

The Spring Offensive was a last, desperate gamble, by the way. It terrified the allies because it made significant local gains so quickly, but the fact is that it could never have succeeded because Germany simply didn't have the strategic resources to exploit their successes. All they ended up with were stretched supply lines, isolated troops and lots of impossible-to-defend salients. Their men were half-starved and exhausted and the offensive cost them a million casualties they couldn't afford. It looked impressive, but it petered out and then they were then crushed by Haig's war-winning combined arms offensive.

Besides, they didn't even have the means to fight the Spring offensive until they'd won on the Russian front and brought all those troops west, by which time the USA was already in the war and they were strategically fúcked. Their fleet was still blockaded in harbour by the Grand Fleet and their population was starving as a result.

No. In strategic terms, the Germans lost the war at the Marne in 1914. It just took them four more years to realise it. As a result, there was never any realistic chance of Ireland coming under the Prussian jackboot - even if they'd wanted to.