In The Pity of War, Niall Ferguson analyzes alternate-history scenarios to explore whether the European powers made good decisions during the First World War. He argues that Great Britain would have been better off if it stayed out of the war. Germany did not want to dominate the Continent like a 20th-century Napoleon. Rather, its prewar aims were limited to neutralizing the threat posed by France and Russia and establishing a customs union little different from today’s E.U. A neutral Britain would have not have lost 700,000 men or spent itself into debt servitude; it would have emerged from the war with sufficient wealth to keep the British Empire intact and influence the Continental powers. In the actual event Britain became dependent on American loans, and the principle of self-determination underlying the postwar peace led to the breakup of the British Empire.
Ferguson argues that if Britain had made that it would fight with France instead of equivocating after the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire by a Serb nationalist, Germany would have forced Austria to moderate its demands against Serbia, which in turn would have averted the calamitous chain reaction in which Austria's military mobilization against Serbia led to Russia's mobilization against Austria, which in turn led to Continent-wide conflagration when France refused Germany's request to commit to remaining neutral in the conflict. On the other hand, if Britain had stayed out of
the war when war came, Germany could secured victory, which would have led to
the establishment of a customs union little different from the European Union.
It is remarkable that the Triple Entente powers (Britain, France, Russia) were unable to defeat the Central Powers (Germany and Austria) when one considers the Triple Entente's pronounced superiority in terms of economic resources and population. Before the war began in 1914, the combined armies of the Triple Entente numbered over 5.7 m men, while the armies of the Central Powers numbered only 3.48 million. In 1914, the Triple Entente powers, including the British Empire, had a combined population of 656 m; they called up a total of 32 m men to fight. The Central Powers had a combined population of 144 m and called up about 25 m to fight. The combined national income of Russia, France and the British Empire was 60% greater than that of the Central Powers.
Given these gross disparities, how did the Central Powers defeat Russia, advance to within 40 kilometers of Paris, and avoid decisive defeat? The answer Ferguson gives is the tactical superiority of the German army and the "net body count": the Germans permanently incapacitated more French, Russian, and English soldiers than the Germans themselves lost. The Central Powers killed 5.4 million men fighting for the Triple Entente powers and their Allies, as against just over 4 million men who died fighting for the Central Powers. A similar net body count held for prisoners of war, with the Central Powers capturing between 3.8 and 5.1 million prisoners and the Triple Entente capturing 3.7 million.
Why did the Germans seek an armistice in October 1918 if their army was superior? According to Ferguson, Generalquartermaster Erich Ludendorff suffered a nervous breakdown after his spring offensive, Operation Michael, failed to destroy the British and French armies. At that point, Ludendorff should have offered to restore Belgian independence in return for a negotiated peace, but he continued to make smaller offensives that cost lives without improving Germany’s position. Then there were only 325,000 American soldiers in France. British and French leaders believed Germany might still take Paris. After Amiens, instead of offering the Kaiser his resignation and publicly admitting that the German army had been defeated, Ludendorff should have withdrawn to the existing Germany frontiers while fighting a rearguard action. The net body count on the Western Front had swung against the Germans from July to September 1918, but it swung back in their favor in October 1918, when mass surrenders eased and German soldiers regained the will to fight. If Luddendorff had not hastily sought an armistice due to loss of nerve in October 1918, the Germans could have won a negotiated peace rather than an armistice in which the Allied Powers were able to dictate terms.
