Was Rommel actually a good guy?

One does not simply turn down an invitation to star in one of Herr Goebbels' films

>So, do you have to be a politcal genius to be involved in propaganda flicks?

You don't need to be a political genius, but someone who "Doesn't give a single fuck about politics or internal affairs" generally doesn't leave frontline or even staff duty to go be a propaganda star.

>"you don't understand what I want"

I wonder what Rommel's reaction would've been if he had "accidentally" received a copy of the Wannsee Conference's notes.

>Caesar
>Never having mercy
Now I've heard everything.

Of course, its not the same with your familiar.

He would frequently shift the blame to others in his command or on the Italians,

Kesselring asked him to be polite to the Italians. He wasn't.

He didn't listen to Kesselring well, and strained that relationship quickly

He was far too temperamental for being placed in charge of a Army Group, he would berate his men for even the hint of failure.

Several occasions during the siege of Tobruk, he would scream at officers for being cowards for relenting on the attacks.

He was morally flexible and a noted opportunist but he behaved with as much chivalry as he could afford. It was the Western Front after all. If he was sent east, I doubt he would have been nearly as respected.

He was a human. flaws and strengths and all.

> "...Badly mishandled. Nose broken at last interrogation. My time is up. Was not a traitor. Did my duty as a German. If you survive, please tell my wife... I die for my fatherland. I have a clear conscience. I only did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler. "

;_;

Today, I learnt something new

Oh, wow, thanks, user. The very little i've read about him and the German Intelligence he ran, he seemed like a complete Nazi arsehole. I literally had no idea he was even like that. Thank you.

I havn't seen much of the flicks, which Rommel was involved in, but I am pretty sure it was about war-related stuff aswell and not about inner affairs.

Rommel should have been sent East

Model should have been sent to Africa

>Unlike Erwin Rommel, another field marshal who preferred to lead from the front, Walter Model was almost universally disliked by those who had to work with him. For example, when he was made commander of the XLI Panzer Corps in 1941, the entire corps staff asked to be transferred. He made a habit of being abusive and foul-mouthed, micromanaging his subordinates, changing plans without consultation, and bypassing the chain of command when it suited him. He was oblivious to the niceties of etiquette, often reprimanding or castigating his officers in public. When he departed Army Group North in March 1944 after being sent to Ukraine, the army group's chief of staff remarked, "the 'Swine' is gone." It was a reference to Model's nickname among his staffers, that he had earned during his time at XLI Panzer Corps, namely 'Frontline Pig'.

>At the same time, he held himself to the same high standard as he held those around him, saying: "He who leads troops has no right to think about himself". His visits to the front may not have helped operational efficiency, but they energized his men, who consistently held him in much higher regard than did his officers. As commanding general of Ninth Army he was once recorded as personally leading a battalion attack against a Soviet position, pistol in hand.

It's also likely that the reason why the Abwehr was so easy for the Brits to crack was because Canaris permitted it.

>>He would frequently shift the blame to others in his command or on the Italians

The Italians were worthless imbeciles in ww2 and they deserved every bit of blame that Rommel could give them.

I think the board you are looking for is /meme/

Very likely Rommel was sent to Africa for a reason. That reason being the general staff did not want him in a major theater.

Alexander absorbed armies he didn't kill them

He tried to kill Hitler and was made to commit suicide, so he's A ok in my book

You have a point there

He wasn't involved with the group that tried to kill Hitler.

He also helped create the Brandenburger Division, for who are intereste.

>War flicks
>not about politics

jfc

Which was fucking dumb. Rommel was an offensive-minded loose cannon. You can't just park him in Africa and go "Oh by the way, we order you not to launch any offensives, okay? Peace."

>He tried to kill Hitler

Wow, so many history experts on this board.

False, he was suspected of it but from the many letters he sent to his wife we can see that he was never affiliated with the coup members but Rommel's superior was.

He was fighting for Germany, not Hitler's utopia. Atleast in his mind.

Well he killed them until he could absorb them.

Rommel, like most senior German army leadership, was a professional career soldier, not the stereotypcial "evil" nazi Jew gasser....not that there's anything wrong with that.

Of course he was. He realized Hitler's imperial fantasy was collapsing, and wished to save Germany, and was killed for it. He was a patriot.

It's hard to be a successful commander in any country and not get stuck into the propaganda. Especially if you're a high-profile commander, it'd be more damaging to morale at the homefront to keep on resisting.

Except for when Rommel asked the Ariete Division to do the impossible at El Alamein, and then blame the division for not managing to meet its objectives.

>He didn't listen to Kesselring well,

Because Kesselring was a fucking Luftwaffe officer and didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

>Kesselring didn't know anything because he was Luftwaffe!

The man turned the push north into Italy a fucking bloodbath contested until the very, very end of the war. He didn't fuck around like his boss.

He willingly took part in a war of conquest as the aggressor, allowing all the bad shit that Nazi Germany did to happen.

Did he personally shove Jews into ovens while goose stepping in a black uniform covered in skulls? No.

Did he do anything to stop that? No.

Did his actions encourage and allow that to happen? Yes.

>but muh valkyrie!!

Was blatantly an attempt to feather the nests of the conspirators when it became obvious they weren't going to win and were going to face the gallows for what they'd done when the Allies got hold of them.

And Rommel was a mountain infantry officer who didn't know his ass from a tank.
Meanwhile Kesselring came up as army (considering there was no Luftwaffe when he started) and made it to the general staff in WW1.

>Did he do anything to stop that? No.

I may be talking out my ass, but I recall mention of him protesting the regime's treatment of Jews.

As for the rest of it, yeah he shares in the blame in so far as everyone can be said to share in the blame of their country's misdeeds.

>Was blatantly an attempt to feather the nests of the conspirators when it became obvious they weren't going to win and were going to face the gallows for what they'd done when the Allies got hold of them.

That may be true in the case of Eduard Wagner
and Arthur Nebe (head of Einatzgruppen Detachment B and selected Stalag Luft III prisoners to be taken to death camps and murdered) but it would not be true in the case of all conspirators.

Canaris and Beck
had been attempting to undermine Hitler at least since the annexation of Austria. Claus von Stauffenberg's motivations included his horror at the Nazi atrocities against Catholics and Jews in the East. Tresckow, while originally a supporter of Nazism, was horrified by the Night of the Long Knives and had as early as 1939 confided to friends that "both duty and honor demand from us that we should do our best to bring about the downfall of Hitler and National Socialism to save Germany and Europe from barbarism".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rommel_myth Wehraboo scum fuck off and die.

>The man turned the push north into Italy a fucking bloodbath...

And?

A good commander would have kicked the allies the fuck out, as he could have done at Anzio.

If it wasn't for the terrain, the allies would have walked all over him in Italy, the same way they did in north Africa and Sicily.

Kesselring was an incompetent ground commander, but not as incompetent as the idiot that made a Luftwaffe comander the C.I.C of the med.

There is no other branch of service that understands, appreciates, and employs combined arms tactics better than the Infantry. Period.

A tank is little more than a mobile crew served weapon, that can be concentrated and massed, or distributed as needed.

>A good commander would have kicked the allies the fuck out, as he could have done at Anzio.

AHAHAHAHAHA.

Because charging at the beaches worked so well at Avalanche, right? And it would have dislodged the rest of the force in Italy slowly working their way up north?

>If it wasn't for the terrain, the allies would have walked all over him in Italy, the same way they did in north Africa and Sicily.

Yeah, funny how overwhelming air, armor, and artillery support does that. You know what happened when the Allies landed in France? They rolled right over all the Germans there, on two different landings, both of which put up a hell of a lot less fight than Kesselring did.

>Kesselring was an incompetent ground commander,

Then why does everyone who either fought under or against him say differently?

His tactics are still taught to officers today in military colleges, that's all you need to know instead of listening to the revisionists on this board. Can you really trust people who think the Catholic Church caused the Renaissance?

>His tactics are still taught to officers today in military colleges

So? Do military colleges determine what tactics they teach by whether the general who utilized them was a swell dude or something?
>yeah the strategy is kinda shit and you'll lose a lot of men but the guy was really fucking friendly okay? He loved dogs and shit. Just work with me here.

What do you mean "his" tactics? Exactly what tactical innovations did Rommel even create, let alone that it's taught elsewhere.

>Brits rolled over ze Germans....ever

Oh boy, Canaris was a special case of well meant guy getting fucked over by everyone.

When I was at University I met an old lady in one of my classes. Old people around my country often enroll university but I was surprised to learn why she was there. Apparently she was the favourite child of Admiral Canaris and was saved from the Nazis while the rest of her family was killed in the KZ.
She told really interesting stories, but most of the centered around the nazis and not really about Canaris. Maybe she was making shit up. I don't know.

>he thinks the two landings refer to the the BEF and Operation Overlord

Further proof Veeky Forums knows absolutely fuck all about history

>expecting a real answer from memefags

Seeing as you know absolute jack about history and military strategy, maybe it is best that you stop posting.

>this nigger

Infantryfag here. The guy you're replying to is speaking the truth. When it comes to platoon and company-level leadership, Infantry officers are the ones who really know how all the disparate pieces of combined arms work together, because they are the ones who see their effects up close and personal.

The simple fact is, unless a commander has seen the battlefield from that intimate perspective, he is missing a vital part of his tactical mindset. Understanding exactly how everything operates at close range makes all the difference in how he approaches a scenario and achieves success. An Infantry officer can visualize his plans working at the micro level, which impacts everything at the macro level. In officers from other branches, this scenario is reversed.

I have seen this fact demonstrated innumerable times in the training area and disturbingly often in-country. Armor and Cav guys know how to fight and win their Armor and Cav battles, but when it comes time to planning and leading the decisive operation, they oftentimes fail to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of their Infantry components, which means bad things when it comes time to seize an objective. The Infantry guys, by contrast, know exactly what it means for the guys in the mud if every asset isn't coordinated effectively, and so they are much more adept at doing so. They plan for the smallest piece--their grunts--to achieve success, and direct everything around that.

TL;DR: To win the battle of the last hundred yards, you need a lot of things working in concert. Infantry commanders know best how to make that happen--and perform better at that task than their peers in other branches--because they understand what it means for winning that battle if they don't.

A good read for the Anti-Kesselring crowd.

allworldwars.com/Kesselring-an-Analysis-of-the-German-Commander-at-Anzio-by-Teddy-Bitner.html

Napoleon seemed to be convinced that artillery knew better than anyone.

I know that the current US Army is dominated by officers from the infantry, and the Marines have that whole rifleman fetish.

He wasn't involved in that conspiracy. He was made to commit suicide because he was aware of its presence and did nothing about it.

Napoleon was a former artillery officer that was so successful partly for his genius use of artillery. With the advent of indirect artillery, you just don't get the frontline glory of an artillery officer anymore.

This guy was based as fuck.

Interestingly:

>After 1942, Canaris visited Spain frequently and was probably in contact with British agents from Gibraltar. In 1943, while in occupied France, Canaris is said to have made contact with British agents. He was conducted blindfolded to the Convent of the Nuns of the Passion of our Blessed Lord, 127 Rue de la Santé, where he met the local head of the British Intelligence Services, code name "Jade Amicol", in reality Colonel Claude Olivier. Canaris wanted to know the terms for peace if Germany got rid of Hitler. Churchill's reply, sent to him two weeks later, was simple: "Unconditional surrender".

Classic Winston

New to this line of conversation, but I imagine some of it is just what the army in question focuse on. A lot of 19th century armies, not just the French one, saw artillery as THE important battlefield implement, and so a lot of the most talented people went into artillery. I admit, I don't know much about modern warfare, but you could make an argument that this has shifted to infantry, and thus a lot of the best people gravitate there.

It seems to me it's less of "one arm intrinsically gets things more than others" but that at times and places, better people gravitate towards this, that, and the other field, and better people well, do bette.

Seriously please shut up. This is a history board, not I'll fictionalize based on my personal experience of a completely different context board.

I would hazard that a lot of the "best" of society, the better educated, more privileged, more wealthy people, do not seek out military or public service period.

Within the military, the most intelligent tend to become pilots, or other types of specialized engineers, like nuclear watch officers. But in any arm of the military, tours for officers at ground level are so short that they do not become proficient in the same fashion that NCOs do.

There aren't really any hero officers anymore because the military is a machine. They put in their time, get a good performance review, and get kicked up the chain to do a staff tour and get coffee for generals.

TL;DR Junior officers are extremely limited in ability most of the time, and by the time they know how to do their job, they're off to a new job.

I dunno.

Unlike the Ivy League, service academies are free, and they actually have less of a patronage system now.

So the military might actually have more access to intelligent, well motivated people that don't have cash or connections.

I think the distinction between different fields of the military might be less important after the Goldwater-Nichols Act (all of the military forces in a given area are under a unified command that has officers from all services) and the rise of mission type tactics (superior officers give subordinates a task and expect the subordinates to find the most effective way to do it.)

So it's been quite common to have admirals or air force generals commanding ground forces, but because the responsibility is delegated to the lowest possible echelon, the people actually doing the fighting are led by people who know what they're going.

From my admittedly limited field of view as one of the people on the ground, I still found that JO's were terrible at everything. They were essentially overglorified E1s.

They might have had a college education and some OCS, or ROTC, or even a spot at an academy, but that did not change that all of their knowledge was general. Specific knowledge of how to accomplish objectives was lacking.

Given a familiarization period, they became better acquainted with their job, but by the time they knew which way was up, they would get transferred and I would have to break in another brand new LT.

Canaris probably would have been willing to oblige considering what the alternative entailed.

This would make sense.

Any large bureaucracy wants generalists, and uses lower ranking people for specialist jobs.

Did you spend any time working with butter bars in artillery, or armor or what have you?

That guy was not a patriot, he was a traitor to Germany. Rommel was a good guy who ignored Hitler's orders to kill jews. But he did not fuck up Germany's war effort against the British. He preferred the British to the Germans.

>swear an oath to a politician and not the people of your country
>actually carry out the oath
>not a traitor

pls

See Sounds to me like he loved the German nation, the very nation that was leading him to the gallows, to his dying breath.

>Rommel
>Good guy

Rommel was an ambitious guy who was very supportive of the Nazi party pre-war when they were reviving the fortunes of the military, and only started ignoring them and maybe working against them when it was clear they weren't going to survive the war.

He was an opportunist, nothing more.

>He wasn't involved with the group that tried to kill Hitler.

T. Hermann Von Hozenhollernshosen Kürfurst von der Niederschliesen

Does your duty as a German include letting the British destroy your military, humiliate your nation, occupy you, and economically dominate you and throw you into poverty? Germany was full of retards, and Hitler was one of them. The Germans after world war 1 got shafted hard, but they decided to make their arch rivals the commies and slavs to the east. They should have looked west and noticed that it was the UK and also France that was responsible for Germany's situation. The group that was most dangerous to the Germans weren't poles, jews, or russians. It was the British.

>Does your duty as a German include letting the British destroy your military, humiliate your nation, occupy you, and economically dominate you and throw you into poverty?

Losing WW2 was the best thing that ever happened to Germany.

What would have happened if Spain joined the Axis?
Was there any possibility of Germany winning if Franco joined?

>What would have happened if Spain joined the Axis?

At best, they can seize Gibraltar, allow the Italian fleet out of the Med (for whatever that's worth) and hamper British efforts in the Western Med.

At worst, they open up another soft underbelly, since Spain is a basket case post civil war and there's a lot of unrest and general malaise.

>Was there any possibility of Germany winning if Franco joined?

No, there was not.

No it's not. The best thing that could ever happen to Germany. Is Germany winning the war, and beating the Allies. You can argue that it's unlikely as hell, or impossible or whatever. But that would be the best thing to happen to Germany. After world war 2 Germany was fucked, and split in two. Thats not a good ending for Germany.

>After world war 2 Germany was fucked, and split in two

Again

>implying this isn't the best thing that ever happened to Germany
>implying that Germany didn't need to be fucked until they started acting like civilized people

Oh, ok. So you just hate Germans and see them as inferior. What country are you from? While the Germans have been historical fuck ups, after world war 1 they were kicked pretty badly. Anyway the absolute best thing/case scenario is for Hitler to stop before invading Poland, and to keep put. He should not invade any other nation. And just work on building up his economy. They should stop being Nazis, and treat jews better, try to research building nuclear bombs. Try to have a good relationship with the Soviets and other eastern european nations.

>So you just hate Germans and see them as inferior

No, they needed their government and culture unfucked, rapidly.

They were about a century behind the rest of the civilized world.

Everyone pitched in and did a rush job, and the end result was pretty good.

And obviously the best case would be for Hitler to not act like Hitler.

Not that idiot, but it is easily possible to posit scenarios where Germany wins the war and is still in a worse off position than historically, such as any war that drags on; Germany keeping the Allies on the back foot on land, but getting nuked repeatedly come 1945-46.

Alternate historians always forget that part.

VE day was in March.

The first atomic bombing was in August.

If Germany hadn't folded when it did, they'd be producing anime right now.

Are you for real? How was Germany behind the rest of Western Europe by a century? What metric were you using? They were technologically advanced, they had decent literature, art, music, etc. How was Germany behind say England or France? I mean after world war 1 Germany wasen't in a good place because it lost a war, and was fucked by the great depression. But before world war 1 Imperial Germany wasen't that bad. I mean they weren't any more evil or barbaric than Great Britain.
Umm it's kind of impossible to win a war and get nuked repeatedly. I mean unless you are Russia or the U.S. and you also have nukes and you are able to hit them back harder than they hurt you. But no once America entered the war Germany could not win.

>Umm it's kind of impossible to win a war and get nuked repeatedly.

Nonsense. Nuclear weapons were just more efficient strategic bombing tools. It is eminently possible to win the war while enduring a strategic bombing campaign.

> I mean unless you are Russia or the U.S. and you also have nukes and you are able to hit them back harder than they hurt you.

Again, what makes you think that? Germany couldn't retaliate in kind against strategic bombing that was blowing out entire cities come 1942 onward, and they hung on for years: The expected "moral collapse" never happened, and Germany had to be occupied, mile by mile.

In a very simple (albeit somewhat fanciful) scenario, imagine if the Soviet union really did crumple in 1941-42. You'll probably never see an Overlord style invasion, not with a hundred plus German divisiosn freed up and greater access to fuel. But there's also no real way for Germany to strike back at the Allies. Come a year or two of nuclear strategic bombing, and Germany's materially a wreck, but the army's still there, and the Allies don't want to risk an invasion that will almost certainly fail on the beaches.

They offer terms.

Voila, German victory in spite of being nuked.

The metric I'm using is the sophistication of government and diplomacy.

The Germans were playing 1790s kinds of games in the 30s and 40s.

This is what led directly to their ruin.

That and languishing under a slowly disintegrating fascist state led by a madman doesn't seem fun.

Also, it's even money the British would have beaten Germany to the atom bomb.

They had a much more sophisticated project and access to far more fissile material.

The real question is whether Germany could neutralize them conventionally before they started producing atom bombs and pancaking the reich.

Now there's a fun alternate history.

>Nuclear weapons were just more efficient strategic bombing tools

I don't think you're getting how much more efficient.

A single atom bomb, of the simplest gun type, does about the same amount of physical damage to a city as a successful thousand bomber raid, with firestorm.

It does this instantly.

You're talking about Germany losing their entire civil service in an afternoon. The only reason the US didn't hit Tokyo is that they wanted an armistice. If they had wanted to, they could kill every senior member of the Japanese government at once. The entire cabinet, and most of the middle management that allowed them to operate as a country and not a feudal patchwork.

A handful of well placed nuclear warheads could turn Germany into warlord era China.

Nuclear weapons are different. Nuclear weapons are something that can easily cause genocides, if every German city, or large concentration of people like armies or towns was nuked. Germany would cease to exist wheither or not they were willing to submit.
Germany before world war 1 was a constitutional monarchy just like the UK was. Under what you said, you could make the argument that the U.S. and French were above the Germans since they were Republics. But still being a constitutional monarchy they were peer rivals of the British. Also if the Nazis were not retards who drove the jews away, and called physics jewish science. They may have been able to build the nuke way before the English did. Still the smart thing to do as Germany is try to appease the British and French and play the long game for a couple of centuries. Wait until those nations collapse and then get your revenge on them. Sadly humans don't work like warhammer fantasy dwarfs otherwise the Chinese would have nuked Mongolia now.

>A single atom bomb, of the simplest gun type, does about the same amount of physical damage to a city as a successful thousand bomber raid, with firestorm.

Of which Germany got hit with about once per month after September of 1943. If the U.S. is producing 3 atom bombs a month, as per document 72, they've roughly quadrupled their strategic bombing output.

Would that have won the war? If they were doing 4 firestorm bombings a month? I doubt it very much myself, although I suppose it's possible. But you don't seem to be anywhere close to a moral breaking point, especially if things are still going well on the ground in some alternate hypothetical.

>You're talking about Germany losing their entire civil service in an afternoon.

Wut? Certainly not with an airburst. And I don't think Allied intelligence was good enough to find them for a pinpoint strike.

>A handful of well placed nuclear warheads could turn Germany into warlord era China.

You are severely overestimating the power of air war as an independent arm in the 1940s. Even if it obltierated mass amounts of infrastructure (which again, really did happen), we saw no signs of actual breakdown of control of government functions until you had actual allied foot troops in Germany proper and a pervading sense of inevitable defeat.

>Germany before world war 1 was a constitutional monarchy just like the UK was

Not really.

By WW1, there was universal suffrage in the UK, and the de facto head of state was the Prime Minister.

Not to mention the very basic fact that the UK wasn't stupid enough to initiate hostilities without a good reason.

If Germany hadn't invaded Belgium, they probably would have left France out to dry.

>Nuclear weapons are different.

They really aren't. Especially not a pre-fusion weapon. And I don't htink you fully appreciate how badly good old fashioned conventional bombing smashed up cities. Everyone makes a big deal about Dresden, but it was hardly the worst hit city, in either aboslute numbers or in terms of the amount of the city destroyed. And even places like Bochum, which saw more than 4/5 of their buildings obliterated, had population losses of about 5%. Most German cities by 1945 were heavily fortified against attack from the air, warrens for people to hide in extending for miles and miles. An airburst, which is how you get a real scattershot nuclear effect does little (immediate) damage to people underground.

It would be again, a lot like strategic bombing in general. The infrastructure would be hit a LOT harder than the population base.

>armies nuked.

Completely useless. Even a division is too spread out for a 1945 style atomic weapon to do much damage to it.

>Germany would cease to exist wheither or not they were willing to submit.

Extremely unlikely, not unless and until you go all the way to hydrogen bombs and making dozens a month, not the 3 or so America was capable of come late 1945.

>Of which Germany got hit with about once per month after September of 1943.

You're missing the part with the firestorm.

There were only 6 of those in Germany during the entire war. It's a complicated thing to do, you need a thousand bombers, very detailed coordination, a city made out of wood, and the right weather.

The simplest atom bombs could do that at will with one bomber. The really key part is that civil defense preparations don't work well against atom bombs.

Even if you did find out in time to get everyone into the shelters, the entire place is going to become radioactive, and the incineration is going to take out everything close enough to the blast.

The Germans wouldn't have seen it coming. A single plane would be interpreted as a reconnaissance flight. This means that everyone above ground for several square miles of city will die. In a city such as Berlin, this means entire ministries. Office buildings full of bureaucrats getting knocked over like dominoes by the pressure wave. The Fuhrerbunker might survive, but there would no longer be a civil service connecting them to the rest of the country.

Not to mention, German people aren't going to stay in a city if it's certain death. Even the deadliest real allied raids in Germany killed perhaps 50,000 at a time. You're talking about ten times that, at least three times a month.

And this still doesn't cover the most important point. It's never going to stop. The Germans have absolutely no way to put the campaign to an end. The allies aren't going to agree to a ceasefire if every ongoing month favors them. They proved that by going through years of warfare.

TL;DR ur dumb

And Germany gave women the right to vote right after world war 1 in 1918. That is not 100 years behind the UK. Also Imperial Germany did have a lot of power given to it's chancellor. Bismarck was more prominent than the Kaiser at the time. Part of the reason Germany was somewhat stupid at the time was because the new emperor moved away from Bismarck's strategy. Still though, I doubt that England would have left France out. They saw Germany as a rising threat and British strategy the past 500 years has been to prevent any powerful empire from growing on the European continent.

>after world war 1 in 1918

Well, if the republic established by the 1918 revolution had held, there wouldn't have been a second world war.

As it stood, the republic collapsed 15 years after its founding.

>just like the UK was
No. It was a constitutional monarchy, yes, but one where executive power was still firmly in the hands of the (pretty probably insane) king. The King of England hasn't had a direct hand in the running of his country since Victoria.

It's not for nothing that people called Imperial Germany "An army with a nation" instead of the other way around. The Junker Prussian military class held quite a bit of clout in decision-making, and in advising the King.

Basically, as constitutional monarchies, Britain was more constitutional, and Germany was more monarchy.

>if the republic established by the 1918 revolution had held, there wouldn't have been a second world war

There certainly would, between the commies and the capitalists. It was shaping up to be that way pretty much until Hitler wedged himself into history with those 12 years that made Atlantic countries and commies into temporary allies.

That barely would have counted as a world war.

It took the US, UK, and USSR 4 to 6 long years to defeat Germany.

US, UK, and Germany against USSR? I'm not sure even Stalin would be stupid enough to start that war.