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Leadified on 04 November 2017
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barneystinson69 said:
Leadified said:

Germany had some street cred, they beat France (and Austria-Hungary) which at the time was considered to be strongest continental power and had a powerful economic backbone.

The main problem I have with AH and the earlier Austrian Empire is it's poor record, Austria was crushed by Prussia during the Brothers War and the country almost collapsed in 1848. Ironically I think you should give the Ottomans more credit for opening up another front against the Russians and winning some major victories against the British.

The problem in WW1 was the lack of resources for the Central Powers (similar problem with the later Axis). Britain, France and Russia controlled a large part of the world at the time while the Central Powers had colonies only on paper and by the time they managed to force Russia out of the war, it was already too late.

The reason Russia collapsed was because of Lenin was smuggled into St. Petersburg by the German's and starting the october revolution (oh the irony in that). Until then, the Ottomans where being pushed back by the Russians. Even after that, the Ottomans where still struggling against the British, and eventually lost arabia and surrendered. If the German offences in 1914 or 1918 where able to achieve a successful capture of Paris, or if the ship that was sunk by the German's (don't know the name) wasn't, its likely the American's wouldn't have an excuse to join the way, and I would guess WW1 ends in stalemate even with a failure of the spring offences in 1918. 

Either way, the Ottoman's really didn't do much to allow for a Russian, that was all on Germany. 

Don't get me wrong, the backbone of the Central Powers was Germany without a doubt, but Russia ended up contributing close to a million men for the Caucasus Campaign that ended up being bogged down in the Armenian Highlands. If all those troops were directed towards Germany then Russian domination of Europe might have started 20 years earlier.

I can see the argument for taking Paris to force France to surrender like in the Franco-Prussian War but I'm not too sure how Germany could achieve this in 1914 since Blitzkrieg was not yet possible and France had political stability along with British and Belgian troops.