Why was Germany so much more powerful than France in 1914?

Slavic laziness

It wasn't it was just France fucked up super hard in the opening stages of WWI.
The battle of frontiers was a disaster as France did a number of military blunders (i.e. march in collums, wear red trousers, and fighting without artillery support) which were the worst in terms of casualties pre day for the whole of the war trumping even Verdun. The fact that France recovered from this and went on to win shows that actually they were pretty much on equal footing with Germany who probably wouldn't have been able to sustain such casualty in the opening stages.

>The fact that France recovered from this and went on to win shows that actually they were pretty much on equal footing with Germany
No, it shows that France's alliance with Russia (and decades of political maneuvering to get on Britain's good side) paid off.

>The fact that France recovered from this and went on to win shows that actually they were pretty much on equal footing with Germany who probably wouldn't have been able to sustain such casualty in the opening stages.

France "won" because it got Britain to do the heavy lifting for it. They managed one small victory at Verdun, a single insignificant town which represented a small fraction of the Western front, after which their military promptly mutinied because actually fighting was too much like hard work for them.

Without Britain to protect them, the war truly would have been over by Christmas.

So the US doubled the nearest competitors in steel and coal and had over 100,000 million people and Germany still risked war with them...

>France "won" because it got Britain to do the heavy lifting for it.

Britain did jack shit until 1916
And even then, from 1917 onward, America replaced Britain as the 2nd most important allied nation after France

>The fact that France recovered from this and went on to win shows that actually they were pretty much on equal footing with Germany
The entire French war effort would have collapsed had it not been the supplies they received from Britain and the USA. The loss of North-Eastern France meant a loss in over half of France's coal and steel production. WW1 was more of a team effort if anything.
>They had accounted for 41 per cent of the steam power in French manufacturing, 74 per cent of coal production, 63 per cent of steel production, 81 per cent of woollen textile production, and 44.5 per cent of chemicals output

>They managed one small victory at Verdun, a single insignificant town which represented a small fraction of the Western front

If we go by your retarded "portion of the front held = relevance" logic, France outclassed Britain hard
Pic related

Verdun was very important, both strategically and because of the blow it inflicted on German moral

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Britain played a pretty critical role in thwarting the Schlieffen Plan.

>Without Britain to protect them, the war truly would have been over by Christmas.

Britain only started committing a significant amount of troops with the Somme, in mid-1916
While it's obvious that France wouln't have won without Britain, they most definitly would have held until 1917

>Verdun
>Small victory
user that was the largest battle in human history.

With their 100,000 troops deployed on theater when both France and Germany had over 2 millions each?
You have to stop believing bong propaganda, m8

Britain was militarily irrelevant on the Western Front until the Somme

In the early days of the war, Britain's biggest contribution was simply in keeping the High Seas Fleet contained. If you remove Britain from the equation, then suddenly the German navy is able to be a lot more aggressive than they were in real-life. I'm honestly not sure if this would make much difference. I don't think Germany would be able to blockade France. It would save Germany itself from being blockaded, though.

If we pick for example spring 1915 (April-May-June), British casualties during that period were 120,000, whereas French were 306,000.

So British casualties even then were already roughly 40% of French ones, that's hardly "jack shit"; the French numbers in the table include Orient too, so Western Front only would be a bit smaller.

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The blockade was much more important in damaging the German economy and trade. Roughly 40% of Germany's imports came from canals, and the railroad system was already burdened enough so that wasn't fun for the Germans.

At the Battle of Mons, a relatively small force of British troops was able to slow down the advance of a much larger Germany army. It doesn't sound like much, but when you consider how much emphasis the Schlieffen Plan placed on speed and rapid advancement, any delay hurt the Germans really badly.

Yes but I got 4 (you)s for a low-effort troll which is arguably a bigger victory.

Pic related, it's from the bunker at Douaumont near the phallus/ossuary. Taking the audio tour there is probably one of the quicker ways to turn someone into a pacifist.

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We're cute don't bully us

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It was but honestly it didn't matter that they were due to the nature of thw war being fought. It was going to turn into a slow meat grinder anyway.

One word
Bismarck.

Russia was a shithole before the Bolsheviks

>implying russia was any better after the Bolsheviks

It got worse though

*bombs you*

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Terrible bait. Without the BEF, Paris would be speaking deutsch

youtube.com/watch?v=gQEcMTSgg5w

Without France, the UK would have lost

without france uk would have gotten white peace at worst

>What is a five-year plan

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Holy shit, I didn't know the Russian Navy was that large.

Or are they counting each lifeboat as an individual ship?

Russians were spending £24 million on the Navy in 1913 in contrast to Germany's £23 million, so wouldn't say it's surprising. Although in 1907-08 she was spending £9 million while Germans were spending £14 million so that might explain the gap in ship numbers.

Large != skilled
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima

That's a lot though, I expected it to be similar to the Austrians, considering how badly the Russian navy performed until the Cold War.

>Austria: 67 ships
>only one actual port

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The idea in the Russian army was that the navy was fairly important especially when it came regards to trade. In the Duma Russian admirals argued that a large navy would be more economically beneficial in the long run than a big land army which would be a "burden" until war time, which is what sort of encouraged an increase in spending.

Five year plan killed 8 million people and all the senior generals of the army.

if you really think Russia wasn't economically and industrially better with the Bolsheviks than with the Romanovs you need to find another board to post on

It also made Russia an industrial power.

>economically and industrially better
Still worse to live in.

The economy grew faster in the last years of the Imperial era than during the best years of the communist era. Communism is shit. They publish the increase of production of that one thing they build a big monster factory for during the last 5 year plan and hide that they barely made anything else.

The overwhelming majority of warships are going to be small ships like destroyers and submarines. Russia did have a few battleships and battlecruisers under-construction, but they weren't finished in time to participate in war.

The USSR was so economically powerful that its economy collapsed and it disappeared from the earth.

Ironic, it could save others from economic collapse, but not itself.

Why are the Ottomans absent from this list?

>Great power

so did germany even when invading soviet union in 1941

>nationalizing an economy killed 8 gorillion people
>but some how the idea that a totalitarian regime that was explicitly based on racism, and was the industrial power house of Europe, could put forth an exerted effort to systemically exterminate millions of Jews is preposterous hogwash

Reactionaries are scary delusional

He didn't say the nazis were good you fucking retard.

>Douaumont
Wasn't that leveled?

pump

Early 20th century Germany was extremely OP in Europe.

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France was a colonial power. All their troops were overseas in their colonial holdings.
Same with Britain, but Britain had a superior Navy and an island, so their ground troops didn't matter.

>promptly mutinied because actually fighting was too much like hard work for them
this so much

No, you would have lost some colonies at least.

Wow, I didnt have those scales in mind. A better question then: how come Germnay didnt win early on? How could France or Britain even compete artillery wise?

becuase france and england were fighting over some bullshit throne. While the germans just sat back and built their kingdom

>how come Germnay didnt win early on
Their troops really just didn't even try. They were lazy and poorly motivated.

>All their troops were overseas in their colonial holdings.

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>600 million people living in the British empire
>40 million living in Britain
Hmmm i wonder where the majority of troops came from?

More in respect to the French army claim

France sort of believed they were the power in Europe, but in that confidence they were actually stagnating and inefficient.

The Germans had a lot to prove and thus were very driven and motivated and were actually putting lots of effort into their economy and military.

Even so whatever languidness had taken over France hadn't damaged them enough to make them a walk over for the Germans.

>discosales.jpg

the only reason soviet growth in the thirties was large was because of the self-inflicted economic disaster of the twenties. russian economic growth in the aughts was so explosive due to british-franco capital that germany literally started the most destructive war ever on earth to stop it.

I don't think the numbers for the armies are accurate, the French peace time army was actually larger than the German because the former drafted more recruits who served longer

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>French forgetting to update their tactics for modern warfare (Then again, this is the first war they've experienced of this type)
They already were using skirmish lines when the war started
>Brightly colored uniforms (This isn't the Napoleonic era anymore, france)
The new uniforms were already ordered when the war started

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Germans had better heavy artillery, but French 75 was really great.

>bigger population
>bigger economy
>better ressources
>stylish pickelhaube
>had to make up for terrible allies

France has always historically had resource issues. Part of the reason they are so reliant on nuclear energy is because they simply don't have the coal or gas to do otherwise.

They almost did is the thing. Knocking France out was the plan, and they got right up to Paris.

The problem Germany had was that Austria Hungary was the worst possible ally anyone could have had. Germany was forced to send troops to the Eastern Front and deal with Russia because Austria-Hungary was too inept to handle the front.

The village was, and you can walk around in the ankle-high outlines of the houses with information placards in front to say who lived there and what they did.

No pic related because it didn't feel appropriate to whip my camera out there but here's a shot of part of the bunker exterior.

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Uhmm... No? Krautniggers LOST ww1 preety much in 1916. And they only ''won'' eastern front because Krautniggers were in command of Russian army.

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No, it shows that Krautniggers were inferior soliders to French, you dumb fuck.

>almost
Almost counts for nothing when your plan to knock out France quickly is almost guaranteed to bring Britain into the war on France's side. The stunt that Germany pulled by going through Belgium instantly made them the villains in the eyes of the world.

Other countries industrialized just as fast, and some faster, without killing anyone, and without stagnating afterwards, because their dumb plan didn't create a functional economy.

It was a valid guess that Britain would not ruin their country about an ancient obscure treaty with some minor country.

Wrong, you dumb fucktard. SU was superior in industrial output to Germany and US combined, you cretin. Face it, Five year plan was the fastes and most efficient way to industralize.

France was not a minor country, you dumb fuck. Krautland was much more of an artificial stare, as Germany was ALLWAYS supposed to be collection of small states, and not a unified nation. Germany was essentially created by Prussia, (which was not even german state, but a Balto-Slavic one)

Lurkers:
If you don't report such posts, they will eventually make up the majority of the content on this board.

Do your part, for a Veeky Forums that isn't just noise.

You are just a butthurt Krautaboo.

Remember to not reply to them, that will derail the thread and they feed on attention.

Not all miles were equally relevant, most fighting was concentrated north.

If five-year-plans were so great, then why did the Soviet Union collapse into non-existence?

>Germany and US combined

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Because Gorbachev's 5 year plans were basically "collapse the Soviet Union" written in crayon and underlined several times

Allowing Germany to control Belgium would have meant accepting the possibility that Germany might use Belgium as a staging ground to invade the UK at some point in the future. Britain had a very clear national security interest in protecting Belgium's independence.

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>implying mods will ever act on Veeky Forums
Hotpockets are to busy fapping to loli. /int/, /pol/ and /leftypol/ have won, user.

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If Germany had managed to knock France out, Britain would have been as irrelevant in WW1 as it was in WW2
Their army was too shit to organize a landing and fight all alone on some enemy territory
They failed that against the Ottomans, so imagine against Germany...

fundamentally the Schlieffen plan dragging Britain into war and holding actions and counterattacks at Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne fucking up all the timing of their one shot at decisive victory

Just wait a few years and Britain will turn up with an army of 200 million pajeets on the banks of normandy that proceed to displace the population if Europe

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