What if Britain and the Empie remained neutral in 1914

I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question.
After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, Britain tried to find a peaceful solution to the Balkan crisis. I wonder what would have happened if Britain remained neutral when war broke out?
Would Germany have defeated France in a few months?
Would the British Empire have remained intact?
I doubt there would have been a World War II. Hitler would never have gone into politics. Russia would have still become the Soviet Union but under the domination of the more powerful German Empire????
It would have had a major impact on Canada's evolution.
Comments and speculation welcome.

queenmandy85 said:

I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question.
After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, Britain tried to find a peaceful solution to the Balkan crisis. I wonder what would have happened if Britain remained neutral when war broke out?
Would Germany have defeated France in a few months?
Would the British Empire have remained intact?
I doubt there would have been a World War II. Hitler would never have gone into politics. Russia would have still become the Soviet Union but under the domination of the more powerful German Empire????
It would have had a major impact on Canada's evolution.
Comments and speculation welcome.

Click to expand...

Look up Hardcore History by Dan Carlin - it's one of the most popular podcasts out there. For now, his six-part series on WWI is still available for free - it's a great listen. Anyway, he' addresses this very point in that even two days before they declared war, Britain was largely anti-war...but changed their mind almost instantly as soon as Germany invaded Belgium. He implies rather strongly through the podcast that while England's army was small, it was the most professional of the armies of the world at that time. I'd say it's very likely that if England didn't join the war, France likely would have fallen - there wouldn't have been a "Miracle on the Marne" - and even if France did survive the first several months, England wouldn't have blockaded Germany - and their blockade was directly responsible for the dearth of materials (especially food) brought into Germany over the next four years - see "the Turnip Winter".

But it wasn't just a matter of Britain. If Belgium hadn't put up such a desperate resistance up to and including opening the floodgates to flood their lands to prevent Germany from taking Antwerp, France may well have fallen anyway - the Belgians seriously screwed up the timetable for the Germans' Schlieffen Plan. What's more, just three weeks after Germany began the invasion, the Russians had already penetrated to eastern Prussia, and Germany's General Von Moltke (the younger) had to send an entire army from the Western Front to shore up their defenses against the Russians. It turned out that the extra army was unnecessary...but the lack of that army on the Western Front may well have made a crucial difference.

Dan Carlin makes a great case that there were several instances wherein if this or that hadn't happened just the way it did, Germany would have won even as late as the Spring of 1918. But he also makes the point that - as you asked - it's quite possible that if the French had known how terrible it was going to be, they might well have given up just to save the millions of lives they lost. But they didn't - there were individual days in which they lost 22K or more killed. Anybody who calls the French "surrender monkeys" (as a lot of young and ignorant and too-full-of-themselves American men do) has no clue that there were weeks in which France lost more men than we lost in the entire Vietnam War...and they didn't surrender.

Dunno. The Germans bankrolled Lenin & Co and sent them into Russia to destabilize them. May not have been necessary without a western front.

queenmandy85 said:

I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question.
After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, Britain tried to find a peaceful solution to the Balkan crisis. I wonder what would have happened if Britain remained neutral when war broke out?
Would Germany have defeated France in a few months?
Would the British Empire have remained intact?
I doubt there would have been a World War II. Hitler would never have gone into politics. Russia would have still become the Soviet Union but under the domination of the more powerful German Empire????
It would have had a major impact on Canada's evolution.
Comments and speculation welcome.

Click to expand...

Even if WWI happened as it did, it was treaty of Versailles imposed on Germany after the war, its very harsh terms along with the Great Depression that led to Hitler's rise. I think without one or the other Hitler doesn't come to power. The one thing most German's didn't understand at the time is that their troops were still in France, yet Germany surrendered. To them it was a sellout.

As for England, I don't see how she could have stayed out of the war with all the treaties floating around Europe at that time. Even if England did stay out, there is no guarantee France would have fallen. France still had Russia under the Czar on their side along with Italy and later on Japan, Portugal, Greece, Romania, China and Siam . Just way too many ifs even to give it an educated guess.

queenmandy85 said:

I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question.
After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, Britain tried to find a peaceful solution to the Balkan crisis. I wonder what would have happened if Britain remained neutral when war broke out?
Would Germany have defeated France in a few months?
Would the British Empire have remained intact?
I doubt there would have been a World War II. Hitler would never have gone into politics. Russia would have still become the Soviet Union but under the domination of the more powerful German Empire????
It would have had a major impact on Canada's evolution.
Comments and speculation welcome.

Click to expand...

e

Good post. The world would be a much different place had Britain not entered the war. Much of the calamity and horror of the 20th century can be traced directly to the decision to turn a regional conflict into a world war. A strong argument can be made that the world would be a much better place had the Ottomans remained in control of the middle east, Russia did not turn to communism, and democracy continued its slow but steady development in all of these countries, which was destroyed with that world war. In regards to the United States, we would surely not have entered into so many of the entanglements and shady alliances which we now find ourselves, especially in Europe.

Harshaw said:

Dunno. The Germans bankrolled Lenin & Co and sent them into Russia to destabilize them. May not have been necessary without a western front.

Click to expand...

Legitimate operation to destabilize a government during warfare. Unfortunately in the long run it worked to well, as before the end of the war Germany also fell to a Socialist revolution.

France would've lost.

The German offensive into France was based heavily on a strong German right thrust through Belgium, and it worked marvels in the initial stages in terms of how it positioned the German forces opposite of the French. Von Kluck's First Army was advancing virtually unopposed, as the French 5th Army was unable to move to meet it due to Von Bülow's Second Army. It was dug in British riflemen that initially stopped Kluck (and later helped by Von Bülow's stubbornness), that prevented von Kluck from outflanking Lanrezac's 5th Army, which would've led to a total collapse of the French forces in the field.

Of course, that was only possible by invading Belgium, which guaranteed British entry into the war.

queenmandy85 said:

I hope this is the appropriate forum for this question.
After the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, Britain tried to find a peaceful solution to the Balkan crisis. I wonder what would have happened if Britain remained neutral when war broke out?
Would Germany have defeated France in a few months?
Would the British Empire have remained intact?
I doubt there would have been a World War II. Hitler would never have gone into politics. Russia would have still become the Soviet Union but under the domination of the more powerful German Empire????
It would have had a major impact on Canada's evolution.
Comments and speculation welcome.

Click to expand...

in 1914 their was a home rule bill going through the house of Parliament in regards to Scottish home Rule the very reason Keir Hardie and Robert Cunningham Graham had founded the Labour Party, this bill was cancelled at the outbreak of WW1 as well as the Irish Home Rule Bill, so more than likely by 1939 Scotland's ties with the rest of the Empire would have been broken ... Robert Cunningham Graham went on to found the SNP after he realised English Labour MPs would not support home rule for Scotland after they voted against it in the mid 1920s