Imperial Germany
By Yglesias makes an interesting observation, which allows me to engage in some historical noodling:
Wilhelmine Germany wasn’t especially noxious. It was quasi-democratic and evolving in the direction of greater democracy. Among its opponents was Tsarist Russia, the most noxious regime on the European continent at the time. And, of course, the allied victory didn’t exactly prevent noxious Germany from dominating Europe . . . the Germans came back, in much more noxious form, and tried again. Even though Nazism only lasted 1933-1945 it inflicted sufficient suffering that I think it’s extremely plausible that the world would have been better off with a German victory. The real twist, however, is what would have been the fate of the Bolshevism in case of a German win. It would depend, I suppose, on how and why the German victory was achieved.
On top of that, reliable sources have contended to me that American intervention in the war wasn’t especially decisive, though I’m not sure about that one way or the other.
Some commenters have agreed with Matt that Wilhelmine Germany in 1914 really wasn’t that noxious of a regime, and they’re right. The institutions of pre-war Germany were marginally less democratic than their counterparts in Britain and France, and far more liberal than those of Russia. Germany had a strong and active labor movement and a socialist movement committed to the norms of liberal democracy. However, the democratic traditions of Wilhelmine Germany were certainly less well-developed than those of France or Great Britain, and the democratic culture less effectively entrenched. In particular, wide swaths of German opinion (particularly in the upper classes) remained hostile to liberalism in far greater degree than found in the Allied countries.
This became evident during the war. All three countries made a hard right turn when the war began, but Germany’s institutions and political culture became positively authoritarian. Moreover, they became more authoritarian as the war went on. Ludendorff and Hindenburg enjoyed a virtual dictatorship in 1917 and 1918. Germany’s war aims shifted on parallel course. While the central political aim (securing German dominance of the continent by neutering France and Russia) remained the same, the territorial expectations of a victorious Germany grew, such that, by 1918, it was expected that Germany would annex Belgium, wide swaths of France, and most of the territory captured through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In short, the Germany of 1918 was a far more authoritarian creature than the Germany of 1914, and would in all likelihood have executed a brutal victor’s peace on the Allies if it had prevailed, a peace that would have made Versailles look moderate and measured. I think it’s also fair to say that Germany would have had little interest in supporting democratic regimes in its neighbors; they helped install the Bolsheviks, after all, and I suspect that a demand for a friendly French government would have been a provision of any peace deal. By the time that the United States intervened in the war, Germany genuninely was a bad egg.
As a caveat to this discussion, I wouldn’t necessarily extend that analysis to Austria-Hungary. Because of the nature of the regime, a virulent nationalism was not possible, and I don’t think that the Empire became noticeably more authoritarian (in the sense that Germany did) during the war. Indeed, I suspect that the survival of the Empire would have been, on balance, a better outcome than what we actually saw in the wake of World War I, but this is a debatable proposition. We might well have seen a return to the London-Vienna axis that had characterized the 18th century and parts of the 19th.
Yglesias second remark, regarding the consequences of America’s intervention, has to be evaluated in light of the war situation at the time. By 1917, Germany could have won the war in one of two ways; by starving Britain into submission with submarines, or by destroying the French and British armies in the offensives of 1918. I’m of the opinion that direct US intervention wasn’t critical to the outcome of either of these campaigns, although US assistance certainly contributed in both. The British decision to adopt the convoy system staunched the bleeding far more than the provision of US destroyers (which were late arriving because of intrasigence at the USN anyway), and the German offensives of 1918 were finally stopped by British and French, rather than American, soldiers. Still, it’s not hard to imagine a German victory in the absence of US intervention; Wilson might have decided to limit maritime trade in the face of the U-boat offensive, which would have devastated Britain. Similarly, without certainty of immense US manpower reserves, British and French forces might have been more likely to buckle in the great offensives of 1918, Italy might have collapsed following the devastating defeat at Caporetto, and both Austria-Hungary and Germany might have been more likely to see things through in 1918 than they were. I don’t think there’s any doubt that US intervention helped shape the eventual settlement, as Germany probably would have been more inclined to continue the war in late 1918 if the US had remained neutral.