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But for a start in 1917:
The Naval bockade of Germany started. Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, and the U.S. entred the war.
Question: World War 1 Turning Point
Why was 1917 the turning point of World War 1?
Discuss.
You might get more replies in the history section.
But for a start in 1917:
The Naval bockade of Germany started. Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, and the U.S. entred the war.
Well !!!
the British and the french convinced themselves during World War 1
that they were doing just fine on the battlefields...
Only the timely participation of the United States saved Paris and in the months thereafter,enabled the Allies to win the
War..."
also the Germans Won the major Battles
whit one-Half to one third fewer casualties than the Allies
and how the American troops in 1918 saves the allies from defeat and negotiated peace whit the Germans...
I thought the naval blockade started earlier in the war. :SOriginally Posted by Bryson C
There was no turning point.
If you really look into it. The turning point was the replacement of the Kaiser and the collapse of the German home front.
It's navy was not defeated.
It's army was still reletivly intact.
Basically it was the collapse of the German home front that caused them to come to the peace table in 1918.
And if you really wanted to get into the nitty gritty. The key turning point was arguably the day the German Navy mutinied. It's U-Boats had been deployed in advance of the battle squadrens. It's respective fleets were being assembled for one last attempt to remove the English blockade.
England without a fleet would of meant a peace on more favourble terms to Germany.
WW1 ended in stalemate. That's all there is to it.
Minardiau, American involvement made a difference at the end. I know you don't like that reasoning but it is true. I agree that a specific "turning point" wasn't exactly a verifiable thing but come on. It didn't end in a stalemate. It ended with Germany getting assraped by the other European powers. Cause they could.
The war would of ended in 1919 or 1920 at the latest. If the Americans had of stayed out. In a military sense the American contribution minimal at best. I've always said that, always will say that.
But I'm sensible enough to know that the US involvment was the key political turning point of the war. In the sense that had the allies had of launched a full scale invasion of Germany then Germany would of well and truly been ****ed.
At the end of the day it's all what if's anyway.
But the German military leadership only admitted the war was over after Operation Michael because of the inevitability of more than a million American combatants arriving in-theater to bolster Allied offensive efforts. Would they have opted for the surrender if the Americans were still neutral?In a military sense the American contribution minimal at best. I've always said that, always will say that.
Regardless of the 'military' contribution of the Americans, the threat of their full-scale involvement alone dissuaded the Germans. No one wants to bleed out completely over a lost cause. As long as the Amis weren't there, though, it wasn't a 'lost cause'.
Lokos
1917 was NOT a turning point: 1917 was quite calm, a year of reorganisation for the the French after the disaster of the offensive of April 1917 and the mutinies.
The turning points are:
- 1914: First Battle of the Marne, when the French stopped the Germans and the war of position started,
- 1915: Batte of Verdun when the Germans failed to puncture the French front,
- Spring 1918 when the last big Germans offensive were stopped and second victory of the Marne,
- 4 last month of the war when the front started moving again and the allies were crushing the Germans.
I don't know wether 1917 was THE turning point of WWI.
In the west, there was not much movement in favor of the Germans either in the year before, either. And during 1917 some good things happened: Russia gave up and the French military nearly collapsed. Then in Spring 1918, the Germans opened up with an offensive that broke through the Allied lines and made more ground than anyone had in the West since 1914. And when the Western Allies began with their counter-offensive in Summer 1918, this was actually the first successful offensive of Western forces in the war. (With this in mind one could also claim that Summer 1918 was the turning point).
In any case, the Americans made a difference. And the "Dolchstosslegende" was not so much the claim of German nationalists that one could have still won the war, but rather that the fast demobilisation of the German army ordered by the new German government took away the last German trump card that could have ensured a relatively fair treatment of Germany by the victors. Without it's army, Germany was completely helpless and victim to the complete humiliation and exploitation that was subsequently done by the French and British. This accusation is in so far unfair as that the German democrats themselves did not expect this and were as shocked about the contents of the Versailles treaty (or the treatment of the Germans during the negotiations) as anybody else.
Don't really agree with you mate: the turning points of the war were just the battles of the Marne: the first in 1914 started the war of positions, the second in 1918 ended it. Verdun was a giant bloodbath for both sides.
I agree with Roland about the turning points. The Marne battle saves the Western allies from a crushing defeat by disrupting the Schlieffen war plan. Verdun is supposed to bleed the French army white, but its cost is also horrendous on German armies. The second battle of the Marne sends Germany to a more passive posture. The last 4 months show Germany retreating towards the 1914 borders for the first time in 4 years.
I'll just add these two ones that did not directly involved France :
- 1917 : The Zimmermann telegram (Brits intercept a German diplomatic telegram showing that the Reich is ready to pre-empt a US intervention by supporting Mexican, and possibly Japanese militray action against the United States)
- 1917 : The Germans send revolutionary-in-exile Vladimir Illitch Oulianov, aka Lenin, to Russia and fund his political movement aimed at dislocating the Russian government.
minardiau
you have the I.Q. of a wombat
man !!! read take some courses or open the light in your head.
in there final days, the man governing Wilhelmine Germany finally managed to put together a coherant and successful foreign policy.
they simply ignored France and the UK and sent President
wilson a message indicating they would accept his 14 points.
this was logical: the U.S had the Army that was defeating them.
from a puraly military point of view petain realized-as did pershing
that Germany was nowhere near beaten.
the Allies wanted to continus the war the German who wanted to preserve there army and their military cadre intact, saw an opportunity for doing
that by dealing whit wilson and wilson who was determined to end it,
had all the cards.Or moreaccuraly,the allies had lost most of theirs.
So on 29 October 1918 wilson's trusted adviser Colonel House
,put it to the allies leadership directly: if germany accepted the 14 points
and the allies did not then the U.S might well have to negotiate a peace directly whit Germany
whitout pershings 2 milion Americans, there was no Army capable of beating the Central Powers. Wilson's
terms became the allied terms.
Well....by the end of WWII, the Germans were loathe to surrender to the Soviets, and if they had a choice, they'd surrender to the Americans instead. This wasn't because the Americans were "winning the war" moreso than the Soviets (the opposite was true), but it had everything to do with the fact that the Americans would treat them better. In WWI, Wilson stabbed his European allies in the back by going over their heads to negotiate with the Germans for an armistice, instead of listening to them (and his own general Pershing) who wanted nothing short of total victory over the Germans. To make things worse, Wilson then didn't do anything to make Germany stick to the terms of the Armistice, and the Allies felt they couldn't do much in this regard if the Americans weren't on board. It was this weak handling of Germany at the end of WWI that ultimately caused WWII.
It's a question that has no defenitive answer.
You read up on your history. Just about every single historian will have a different answer.
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