Re: OT. Spanish Flu

Aug 20, 2020 Last reply: 6 years ago 5 Replies

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TimR 6 years ago

TimR snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote

>
> > There are some historians who believe Germany
> > was poised to push the Allies out of Europe
>
> Just reading von Tirpitz memoirs, he doesn’t agree with that. >
> No chance of pushing the allies out of europe once the yanks got involved. >
> > when the flu hit and degraded their readiness so badly.
> > It may have affected the outcome of WWI.

Yeah, I've read people on both sides of that.

It kind of makes sense to me that both sides had pretty severe impacts from the flu. I've read some compelling history though that the German war effort was not the draw or stalemate that we'd been taught in high school, but that they had been doing much better than that and the long run favored them much more than the allies, until the US entered and they basically settled pretty quickly.

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Information here may be outdated?

rbowman 6 years ago

The revolution led by the Social Democrats and Kiel mutiny didn't help Germany either.

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Rod Speed 6 years ago

TimR snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote

No real evidence that that had any real effect on the outcome.

Yes. the hard right including Adolf have always ran that line, that they were internally sabotaged by the hard left and that that is the reason they lost.

But there is no evidence that they could have won, let alone pushed the allies out of europe once the yanks got involved in the war.

No evidence of that. In fact they were getting internal mutinys by their troops.

That’s bullshit given the effective siege that germany was under.

Because they realised that there was no chance of winning once the yanks got involved, let alone pushing the allies out of europe.

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TimR 6 years ago

On Thursday, August 20, 2020 at 1:36:40 PM UTC-4, Rod Speed wrote: > I've read some compelling history though that

Not really correct. While the lines did not move much, the losses were running about 2 to 1 in favor of the German side, and the Germans were in control of the iron and coal rich regions. The supposed stalemate was favoring the German side when the US entered.

When the US entered the German side quickly agreed to a peace before taking (or causing) huge losses.

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gfretwell 6 years ago

When Pershing got there he started arguing against the "dig in and shoot at each other" strategy and once he got out from under French leadership they got out of the trenches and gained ground.

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TimR 6 years ago

Found this interesting snippet:

****** In early December, 1917, American Expeditionary Forces Commander General John Pershing warned the Secretary of War that with the collapse of the Russian front, the Germans would be able to concentrate as many as 260 divisions on the western front in the spring. Against that force, the allies had just 169 divisions. Pershing judged that it was "very doubtful" that the allies could stop the Germans given the disparity in manpower.

Part of the problem stemmed from the mismanagement of American mobilization. Preparing America for a major war was a monumental challenge, characterized by so much inefficiency and corruption that Secretary of War Newton Baker had offered to resign. Despite having been technically at war since April, the United States had just four infantry divisions in France, and they were all short on training, equipment, and modern staff techniques.

***********

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