Italy is probably in a similar position where they don't get that much territory compared to the losses they suffered, although who knows how it plays post war (or if that would even be enough to turn the outcome of the war).
Re: Austrian unreasonableness, if they were more "reasonable" there wouldn't have been any war in the first place (same case for Germany and Russia too), so it's a bit pointless to speculate.
“In Europe, of course, the November 11 holiday is called Armistice Day”
Only if your definition of “Europe” is limited to “France”. November 11 is not a commemorative holiday in any of the former Central Powers (not surprisingly). November 11 is St Martin’s Day and was that long before World War I. In Poland it is “Independence Day”. In Spain and Portugal it is not a notable date.
Regarding the article on the Italy joining the Central Powers counter factual, it is not true that France had no interest in Serbia. Serbia was heavily indebted for infrastructure improvements and almost all the debt was owed to French banks.
Two caveats on Matt’s Italian job: First, the German “sweep” to Paris failed for basic military reasons - the logistics were impossible. This was an army that had to walk and carry most everything in horse-drawn wagons. They were exhausted early on, which the General Staff knew.
Second, the empire of Austria-Hungary was flimsy in almost every way possible, not just military strength. Their fighting capacity was deficient from the beginning. The Serbs kicked their butts the first time they invaded and they had to have the Germans do the job. Their political system was both fragmented and languorous. Their economy not much better. The Austrians disparaged the Hungarians and the Hungarians hated everybody. They were no longer a legitimate power, let alone a great power.
On the subject of Italy in WWI, I can't resist posting this link to Bret Devereaux's excellent ACOUP blog, wherein he names Luigi Cadorna the worst commander of WWI (worst as in most incompetent, not necessarily most evil).
Cadorna fought a series of battles in the Isonzo River basin, which, as Bret points out bluntly, is "a stupid place to have a battle." He elaborates: "There was nothing beyond the Isonzo except mountains. Taking the first set of mountains merely awarded one the privilege of attempting to assault the next set of yet higher mountains."
Moreover, Cadorna made a metric ton of tactical errors, and, what's worse he repeated his mistakes again and again. A highly recommended read with lots of facepalm moments.
Another random thought: am I the only person who's not jumping all over Trump for the 50 year mortgage idea? Yes, of course, it's better to avoid this if you can. That's a lot of interest! But for some people, it may well beat renting...
Mind you I'm happy to see him take political heat for this suggestion.
If you're financially capable, having access to what's basically a perpetual interest-only loan at a fixed rate is actually quite a useful thing. If I could have taken out a 100 year mortgage at the rates we had in 2021, it would have been all but free money.
It does totally fly in the face of the 'logic' of using mortgages as a tool for middle-class wealth building, though.
I'm not jumping on him. I'm more amused by all the cryptobros and goldbugs who, until about 30 seconds ago were also overwhelming pro-renting, falling over themselves to declare the glory of life-long mortgage debt.
I'm going to repost my top-level comment on the original copy of this post with a couple of typographical corrections:
A+ work, Matt! I love this kind of content and I agree with a lot of what you said. *However,* there are two specific things I disagree with in your conclusion, which I'm very surprised no one else seems to have mentioned in the first 89 comments that are showing as of me refreshing the page after typing this reply:
(1) You explicitly contemplate that Russia is knocked out of the war earlier in your scenario, but then reference the Bolsheviks being in charge of Russia post-war. My understanding is that most historians who look at this issue -- including Marxist ones! -- think that, if Russia was knocked out of WW I earlier, then the Bolsheviks would NOT succeed in gaining control of Russia for the foreseeable future. (They might still eventually succeed in doing so, but it would be a longer process and a lot more fraught.) A Menshevik-dominated Russia is probably more plausible in your scenario or even an unstable liberal Russia vulnerable to a reactionary counter-revolution, depending on the specifics of when and how Russia is knocked out.
(2) Even where Germany decisively wins the war in Europe, I do not believe that Germany plausibly gets to keep any of its overseas colonies unless you're also contemplating some spectacular annihilation of the Royal Navy. No matter how badly the BEF bled out in Flanders, etc., the British had such a colossal advantage in manpower and resources *outside* of Europe, and which would have still been largely uninterceptable by the Central Powers even with the benefit of the Italian navy, that the Germans could not realistically resupply and defend their colonies if the British made a determined attempt to take them. For Germany to not just get to keep its colonies, but gain the Belgian ones, I think you need to imagine an otherwise victorious Germany agreeing to a whole bunch of concessions in Europe, which I have a very hard time picturing the Germans doing.
I don't think there was ever a realistic prospect of getting Italy to fight France and Britain, there just wasn't enough popular support for the idea in Italy ca. 1914-15. The Habsburgs had been the traditional enemy of Northern Italians and House Savoy for several centuries. It was much easier to whip up enthusiasm to fight Austria and fight for territory that every Italian schoolboy knew was supposed to be part of greater Italy. The best the Central Powers could realistically hope for was keeping Italy neutral and they probably should have made more compromises for that outcome.
Since this is a WWI article, I gotta plug Margaret MacMillan’s book The War that Ended Peace. It’s great, informative reading about the lead up to WWI that straddles the divide between “great man” and “broader historical forces” schools of thought. it’s worth a read
I'm not a fan of that one! The Great War resolution system doesn't quite work, in my view (although there's a lot in that box I do like). I've heard great things about the new one, though, on the interwar years -
I've never had a chance to play them, but I find them conceptually more appealing because the three-way nature of those games (democrats vs. fascists vs. communists) seems a better historical fit. (I also own and have "Europe in Turmoil II," but have not played it either; I bought it because I liked the potential for linking it with "Europe in Turmoil.")
I have both of those (and let me tell you, it was not easy! 4Dados is not, shall we say, a particularly airtight logistical operation). I haven't put them on the table yet, though. Agree that the model seems more apt.
There are also at least two more Weimar games coming out in the next year or so. I really wanted to like "Weimar" by Cramer but I ended up selling my copy - just a few too many rough edges in the design, and it's too easy for the Communists to win, especially with new players at the table.
I own Cramer's "Weimar," but have also not gotten to play it, and I also have GMT's "The Weimar Republic" on pre-order, which I'd presume is another one of the Weimar games you're alluding to (not sure which the other would be).
Well, the mobile site was crapped out for me this am - it only displayed the capital letters of the article body - though the app is working fine. Substack, get your act together
I have never understood why Italian revanchists were so anxious to reclaim the old Venetian territories of Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia as opposed to the much more attractive Nice, which of course had belonged (with small interruptions) to the ruling Savoy dynasty for centuries before being traded to France in 1860, i.e. within the living memory of older Italians, and Corsica, where the local Italian dialect was still the primary spoken language in 1914.
Trieste, predictably, suffered quite badly economically under Italian rule. It went from being the primary port of the Habsburg Empire to an afterthought in an Italy already blessed with numerous Adriatic ports. It is really only since the EU brought greater integration that Trieste has started to revive. Dalmatia and Istria were both lost to the Southern Slavs within 30 years, and given the demographic imbalances that was probably predictable as well in 1915.
The Italian determination to grab the fairly impoverished South Tyrol also seems a little odd in a world where ski tourism had not yet become a big business. That seems more like people in Rome looking at a map and getting angry that Italy seems to have bite taken out of it. Even the strategic rationale of creating a solid mountain wall between Italy and the Germanic lands seems a little silly.
In an alternative scenario where Italy is on the winning side, they probably would still hold Nice to this day (it had never been "core" French territory, the way Alsace was viewed).
In re Italian territory, there's also the oddity of San Marino, which somehow survived Italian unification, World War I, and Mussolini. (I know from some light reading that the Marinese government in each of these instances made efforts to avoid antagonizing the Italian government, but, still, it's weird given (i) the wild imbalance of power, (ii) San Marino literally being entirely surrounded by Italy with no foreign power other than the Vatican City within a couple hundred miles of San Marino's borders, and (iii) the overall fervor of Italian nationalism/imperialism 1860-1943.)
Even to a rabid nationalist circa 1900, there's a difference between "Our People, suffering under the Hated Foreigner" and "Our People, but doing their own thing in a silly microstate." Like, did even the Nazis care about annexing Liechtenstein?
It's a good question. It does seem to be a weird historical accident. San Marino doesn't even provide any real tax or diplomatic advantages to Italians as far as I can tell (or didn't in the 19th century, the critical time to avoid being absorbed). I suppose it is simply too small to bother with. It is also not really independent in ways that matter. For example, San Marino had its own fascist party ruling it in the 1930s.
The only time I can think of when San Marino advantaged Italy is that for a long time from the 1980s to around 2000, three countries in Europe each had two Formula One circuits (Monza and Imola in Italy, Hockenheim and Nürburgring in Germany, and Silverstone and Brands Hatch in Britain) - but the two Italian circuits were the Italian Grand Prix (Monza) and the San Marino Grand Prix (Imola), while Britain and Germany only got 1.5 Grand Prix per year each (British Grand Prix, a German Grand Prix and a European Grand Prix that generally alternated between the two).
The F1 circuit is much less European-dominated now - rather than five Grands Prix across Italy, Britain and Germany, there are just two: Monza and Silverstone.
I have read both explanations. Italy, in my view, was never likely to join the Central Powers in the war (they were terrified of the British navy), but they were more likely to just stay neutral. There is a world where neither side views Italy as important and they sit out, which would have a similar impact to your scenario. I could see Italy joining at the end, if a Central Powers victory seemed likely, but as opportunists: not as part of any concrete gains.
In the end, if the Triple Entente survives the initial onslaught, and the US still joins, I suspect WWI ends similarly.
Italy is probably in a similar position where they don't get that much territory compared to the losses they suffered, although who knows how it plays post war (or if that would even be enough to turn the outcome of the war).
Re: Austrian unreasonableness, if they were more "reasonable" there wouldn't have been any war in the first place (same case for Germany and Russia too), so it's a bit pointless to speculate.
“In Europe, of course, the November 11 holiday is called Armistice Day”
Only if your definition of “Europe” is limited to “France”. November 11 is not a commemorative holiday in any of the former Central Powers (not surprisingly). November 11 is St Martin’s Day and was that long before World War I. In Poland it is “Independence Day”. In Spain and Portugal it is not a notable date.
Regarding the article on the Italy joining the Central Powers counter factual, it is not true that France had no interest in Serbia. Serbia was heavily indebted for infrastructure improvements and almost all the debt was owed to French banks.
Two caveats on Matt’s Italian job: First, the German “sweep” to Paris failed for basic military reasons - the logistics were impossible. This was an army that had to walk and carry most everything in horse-drawn wagons. They were exhausted early on, which the General Staff knew.
Second, the empire of Austria-Hungary was flimsy in almost every way possible, not just military strength. Their fighting capacity was deficient from the beginning. The Serbs kicked their butts the first time they invaded and they had to have the Germans do the job. Their political system was both fragmented and languorous. Their economy not much better. The Austrians disparaged the Hungarians and the Hungarians hated everybody. They were no longer a legitimate power, let alone a great power.
On the subject of Italy in WWI, I can't resist posting this link to Bret Devereaux's excellent ACOUP blog, wherein he names Luigi Cadorna the worst commander of WWI (worst as in most incompetent, not necessarily most evil).
Cadorna fought a series of battles in the Isonzo River basin, which, as Bret points out bluntly, is "a stupid place to have a battle." He elaborates: "There was nothing beyond the Isonzo except mountains. Taking the first set of mountains merely awarded one the privilege of attempting to assault the next set of yet higher mountains."
Moreover, Cadorna made a metric ton of tactical errors, and, what's worse he repeated his mistakes again and again. A highly recommended read with lots of facepalm moments.
https://acoup.blog/2021/10/08/collections-luigi-cadorna-was-the-worst/
Another random thought: am I the only person who's not jumping all over Trump for the 50 year mortgage idea? Yes, of course, it's better to avoid this if you can. That's a lot of interest! But for some people, it may well beat renting...
Mind you I'm happy to see him take political heat for this suggestion.
If you're financially capable, having access to what's basically a perpetual interest-only loan at a fixed rate is actually quite a useful thing. If I could have taken out a 100 year mortgage at the rates we had in 2021, it would have been all but free money.
It does totally fly in the face of the 'logic' of using mortgages as a tool for middle-class wealth building, though.
Yes....good point.
I'm not jumping on him. I'm more amused by all the cryptobros and goldbugs who, until about 30 seconds ago were also overwhelming pro-renting, falling over themselves to declare the glory of life-long mortgage debt.
I'm going to repost my top-level comment on the original copy of this post with a couple of typographical corrections:
A+ work, Matt! I love this kind of content and I agree with a lot of what you said. *However,* there are two specific things I disagree with in your conclusion, which I'm very surprised no one else seems to have mentioned in the first 89 comments that are showing as of me refreshing the page after typing this reply:
(1) You explicitly contemplate that Russia is knocked out of the war earlier in your scenario, but then reference the Bolsheviks being in charge of Russia post-war. My understanding is that most historians who look at this issue -- including Marxist ones! -- think that, if Russia was knocked out of WW I earlier, then the Bolsheviks would NOT succeed in gaining control of Russia for the foreseeable future. (They might still eventually succeed in doing so, but it would be a longer process and a lot more fraught.) A Menshevik-dominated Russia is probably more plausible in your scenario or even an unstable liberal Russia vulnerable to a reactionary counter-revolution, depending on the specifics of when and how Russia is knocked out.
(2) Even where Germany decisively wins the war in Europe, I do not believe that Germany plausibly gets to keep any of its overseas colonies unless you're also contemplating some spectacular annihilation of the Royal Navy. No matter how badly the BEF bled out in Flanders, etc., the British had such a colossal advantage in manpower and resources *outside* of Europe, and which would have still been largely uninterceptable by the Central Powers even with the benefit of the Italian navy, that the Germans could not realistically resupply and defend their colonies if the British made a determined attempt to take them. For Germany to not just get to keep its colonies, but gain the Belgian ones, I think you need to imagine an otherwise victorious Germany agreeing to a whole bunch of concessions in Europe, which I have a very hard time picturing the Germans doing.
I don't think there was ever a realistic prospect of getting Italy to fight France and Britain, there just wasn't enough popular support for the idea in Italy ca. 1914-15. The Habsburgs had been the traditional enemy of Northern Italians and House Savoy for several centuries. It was much easier to whip up enthusiasm to fight Austria and fight for territory that every Italian schoolboy knew was supposed to be part of greater Italy. The best the Central Powers could realistically hope for was keeping Italy neutral and they probably should have made more compromises for that outcome.
Since this is a WWI article, I gotta plug Margaret MacMillan’s book The War that Ended Peace. It’s great, informative reading about the lead up to WWI that straddles the divide between “great man” and “broader historical forces” schools of thought. it’s worth a read
Time for another A Farwell To Arms movie adaptation.
yes one where his muse does not kick the bucket! 😎
Well, Matt, if you're ever in LA and want a game of "The Lamps Are Going Out" or "Imperial Elegy", hit me up!
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/176146/the-lamps-are-going-out-world-war-i
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/415308/imperial-elegy-the-road-to-the-great-war-1850-1920
"Europe in Turmoil: Prelude to the Great War" might be more Matt's speed, given that I can't recall him mentioning playing a war game heavier than "Diplomacy": https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/227127/europe-in-turmoil-prelude-to-the-great-war
I'm not a fan of that one! The Great War resolution system doesn't quite work, in my view (although there's a lot in that box I do like). I've heard great things about the new one, though, on the interwar years -
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/326019/europe-in-turmoil-ii-the-interbellum-years-1920-19
I will agree that I've seen the Great War resolution system being the most heavily critiqued part of that game. For interwar gaming, have you ever looked at "Rise of Totalitarianism" (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216220/rise-of-totalitarianism) or "Democracy Under Siege" (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/90568/democracy-under-siege)?
I've never had a chance to play them, but I find them conceptually more appealing because the three-way nature of those games (democrats vs. fascists vs. communists) seems a better historical fit. (I also own and have "Europe in Turmoil II," but have not played it either; I bought it because I liked the potential for linking it with "Europe in Turmoil.")
I have both of those (and let me tell you, it was not easy! 4Dados is not, shall we say, a particularly airtight logistical operation). I haven't put them on the table yet, though. Agree that the model seems more apt.
There are also at least two more Weimar games coming out in the next year or so. I really wanted to like "Weimar" by Cramer but I ended up selling my copy - just a few too many rough edges in the design, and it's too easy for the Communists to win, especially with new players at the table.
I own Cramer's "Weimar," but have also not gotten to play it, and I also have GMT's "The Weimar Republic" on pre-order, which I'd presume is another one of the Weimar games you're alluding to (not sure which the other would be).
Ah, never mind, I was thinking of an older title.
(Could play online too, ofc, but that would mean everyone would have to have their own rulebooks)
Well, the mobile site was crapped out for me this am - it only displayed the capital letters of the article body - though the app is working fine. Substack, get your act together
I have never understood why Italian revanchists were so anxious to reclaim the old Venetian territories of Trieste, Istria and Dalmatia as opposed to the much more attractive Nice, which of course had belonged (with small interruptions) to the ruling Savoy dynasty for centuries before being traded to France in 1860, i.e. within the living memory of older Italians, and Corsica, where the local Italian dialect was still the primary spoken language in 1914.
Trieste, predictably, suffered quite badly economically under Italian rule. It went from being the primary port of the Habsburg Empire to an afterthought in an Italy already blessed with numerous Adriatic ports. It is really only since the EU brought greater integration that Trieste has started to revive. Dalmatia and Istria were both lost to the Southern Slavs within 30 years, and given the demographic imbalances that was probably predictable as well in 1915.
The Italian determination to grab the fairly impoverished South Tyrol also seems a little odd in a world where ski tourism had not yet become a big business. That seems more like people in Rome looking at a map and getting angry that Italy seems to have bite taken out of it. Even the strategic rationale of creating a solid mountain wall between Italy and the Germanic lands seems a little silly.
In an alternative scenario where Italy is on the winning side, they probably would still hold Nice to this day (it had never been "core" French territory, the way Alsace was viewed).
In re Italian territory, there's also the oddity of San Marino, which somehow survived Italian unification, World War I, and Mussolini. (I know from some light reading that the Marinese government in each of these instances made efforts to avoid antagonizing the Italian government, but, still, it's weird given (i) the wild imbalance of power, (ii) San Marino literally being entirely surrounded by Italy with no foreign power other than the Vatican City within a couple hundred miles of San Marino's borders, and (iii) the overall fervor of Italian nationalism/imperialism 1860-1943.)
Even to a rabid nationalist circa 1900, there's a difference between "Our People, suffering under the Hated Foreigner" and "Our People, but doing their own thing in a silly microstate." Like, did even the Nazis care about annexing Liechtenstein?
At least per Wikipedia, the Nazis planned on annexing Liechtenstein as part of their eventual invasion of Switzerland and only refrained from occupying it earlier because of wanting to avoid harming relations with Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenbaum#Nazi_attitudes_toward_Liechtenstein
It's a good question. It does seem to be a weird historical accident. San Marino doesn't even provide any real tax or diplomatic advantages to Italians as far as I can tell (or didn't in the 19th century, the critical time to avoid being absorbed). I suppose it is simply too small to bother with. It is also not really independent in ways that matter. For example, San Marino had its own fascist party ruling it in the 1930s.
The only time I can think of when San Marino advantaged Italy is that for a long time from the 1980s to around 2000, three countries in Europe each had two Formula One circuits (Monza and Imola in Italy, Hockenheim and Nürburgring in Germany, and Silverstone and Brands Hatch in Britain) - but the two Italian circuits were the Italian Grand Prix (Monza) and the San Marino Grand Prix (Imola), while Britain and Germany only got 1.5 Grand Prix per year each (British Grand Prix, a German Grand Prix and a European Grand Prix that generally alternated between the two).
The F1 circuit is much less European-dominated now - rather than five Grands Prix across Italy, Britain and Germany, there are just two: Monza and Silverstone.
Can you recommend a few books that have been formative to your understanding of the war?
I have read both explanations. Italy, in my view, was never likely to join the Central Powers in the war (they were terrified of the British navy), but they were more likely to just stay neutral. There is a world where neither side views Italy as important and they sit out, which would have a similar impact to your scenario. I could see Italy joining at the end, if a Central Powers victory seemed likely, but as opportunists: not as part of any concrete gains.
In the end, if the Triple Entente survives the initial onslaught, and the US still joins, I suspect WWI ends similarly.
Great job, Austria! [claps sarcastically]