Just how much did the Hindenburg Line benefit Germany and hurt the Entente?

Futurist · Sep 23, 2019

Just how much did the Hindenburg Line benefit Germany and hurt the Entente? I know that this line allowed Germany to shorten the length of the front lines in the West and thus to divert some of its military manpower to other fronts. However, was this actually decisive? As in, without the construction of the Hindenburg Line, would the CPs have collapsed and lost the war earlier than they did in real life? Any thoughts on this?

MG1962a · Sep 23, 2019

Futurist said:
Just how much did the Hindenburg Line benefit Germany and hurt the Entente? I know that this line allowed Germany to shorten the length of the front lines in the West and thus to divert some of its military manpower to other fronts. However, was this actually decisive? As in, without the construction of the Hindenburg Line, would the CPs have collapsed and lost the war earlier than they did in real life? Any thoughts on this?

Definitely

The Hindenburg Line gave the impression of greater strength and resources than the Germans really had. if the Allies had realized just how on their last legs the Germans really were, they war would have ended far faster.

Futurist · Sep 23, 2019

MG1962a said:
Definitely

The Hindenburg Line gave the impression of greater strength and resources than the Germans really had. if the Allies had realized just how on their last legs the Germans really were, they war would have ended far faster.

I thought that moving through the Hindenburg Line for the Entente would have been very difficult for logistical reasons due to the Germans' scorched earth policy in the territory surrounding the Hindenburg Line?

Isleifson · Sep 23, 2019

Well, there was the Hindenburg Line and the Hindenburg Licht.

Hindenburg light - Wikipedia

Futurist · Sep 23, 2019

Isleifson said:
Well, there was the Hindenburg Line and the Hindenburg Licht.

Hindenburg light - Wikipedia

And the Hindenburg zeppelin! :

time-100-influential-photos-sam-shere-hindenburg-disaster-26.jpg

Tercios Espanoles · Sep 24, 2019

It's impossible to be certain, but I tend to think the Arras offensive as originally conceived might have been, if not perhaps decisive, at least an important Entente victory had the Germans not withdrawn to the Hindenburg line before it kicked off. If the level of victory at Vimy Ridge was repeated along the whole front - and I think it could have been - things would have been very bad for Germany in the west.

That is, of course, entirely opinion.

Kotromanic · Sep 24, 2019

Engineering and being rapid in making concrete works was a strength of that German army. Overall they likely had better hygenic conditions than the Entente. That might be the real what if, what if their abilities as engineers was spread as thinly as it was for the Russians, Turks or Italians? Would have lost more manpower to illness.

Futurist · Oct 16, 2019

Kotromanic said:
Engineering and being rapid in making concrete works was a strength of that German army. Overall they likely had better hygenic conditions than the Entente. That might be the real what if, what if their abilities as engineers was spread as thinly as it was for the Russians, Turks or Italians? Would have lost more manpower to illness.

Would losing more manpower to illness have been decisive, in your honest opinion?

Kotromanic · Oct 16, 2019

Futurist said:
Would losing more manpower to illness have been decisive, in your honest opinion?

Ask the Austrians? Ask the Italians?

Losing manpower meant eventual defeat, esp. since the CP had no access to French colonial, UK Imperial or USA replacements.

Futurist · Oct 16, 2019

Kotromanic said:
Ask the Austrians? Ask the Italians?

Losing manpower meant eventual defeat, esp. since the CP had no access to French colonial, UK Imperial or USA replacements.

That's a good point. It's quite interesting that it took four years of manpower losses for the CPs to actually go down, though. Plus, even then, Germany could have lasted a bit longer had it been able to avoid hunger and keep things steady on the home front.

Kotromanic · Oct 16, 2019

Futurist said:
That's a good point. It's quite interesting that it took four years of manpower losses for the CPs to actually go down, though. Plus, even then, Germany could have lasted a bit longer had it been able to avoid hunger and keep things steady on the home front.

Somewhere in the site archives it might be possible to find a reasonably detailed discussion whether Saxony would have been invaded from the South in early '19. I know the discussion I'm thinking of but not sure the search function can retrieve with little effort on my part.

Karri · Oct 16, 2019

Futurist said:
That's a good point. It's quite interesting that it took four years of manpower losses for the CPs to actually go down, though. Plus, even then, Germany could have lasted a bit longer had it been able to avoid hunger and keep things steady on the home front.

How much did the draft hurt the farms though? Likewise, industry suffered when specialists were sent to the front.

Futurist · Oct 16, 2019

Karri said:
How much did the draft hurt the farms though? Likewise, industry suffered when specialists were sent to the front.

That's true for all countries, no?

Kotromanic said:
Somewhere in the site archives it might be possible to find a reasonably detailed discussion whether Saxony would have been invaded from the South in early '19. I know the discussion I'm thinking of but not sure the search function can retrieve with little effort on my part.

The Allies are first going to need to successfully cross through both the Moravian mountain range(s) and the Sudeten mountain range(s):

pugsville · Oct 16, 2019

Futurist said:
That's true for all countries, no?

German agriculture was mainly small farms. The loss of manpower, horses and fertilizer did not help production. The Management of the rationing and food supply during the war also did not help. The Black market was rife,

Futurist · Oct 16, 2019

pugsville said:
German agriculture was mainly small farms. The loss of manpower, horses and fertilizer did not help production. The Management of the rationing and food supply during the war also did not help. The Black market was rife,

Which countries didn't have their agriculture dominated by small farms back then?

Isleifson · Oct 18, 2019

pugsville said:
German agriculture was mainly small farms. The loss of manpower, horses and fertilizer did not help production. The Management of the rationing and food supply during the war also did not help. The Black market was rife,

Did you ever hear about the Junker?

Junker (Prussia) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Larrey · Oct 18, 2019

Futurist said:
Which countries didn't have their agriculture dominated by small farms back then?

They didn't all pre-war for political reasons decide to primarily conscript their farmers and rural population for being presumably more loyal and dependable, like Germany did.

pugsville · Oct 18, 2019

Larrey said:
They didn't all pre-war for political reasons decide to primarily conscript their farmers and rural population for being presumably more loyal and dependable, like Germany did.

The Germans did have a rural bias in their conscription.

Well the French conscripted everyone regrdless.
The Russians really had little choice but to conscript the rural population (as it was the bulk)
The British conscripted no one at the start.

pugsville · Oct 18, 2019

Isleifson said:
Did you ever hear about the Junker?

But Junkers were really just mainly east prussia,

Germany - Industrialization, Unification, Prussia | Britannica

Germany - Industrialization, Unification, Prussia: The speed of Germany’s advance to industrial maturity after 1890 was breathtaking. The years from 1895 to 1907 witnessed a doubling of the number of workers engaged in machine building, from slightly more than one-half million to well over a...

www.britannica.com

"While Germany was characterized by large Junker estates and cartels, it was also the nation of dwarf-sized farms (60 percent of farmers owned less than five acres"

Larrey · Oct 18, 2019

pugsville said:
The Germans did have a rural bias in their conscription.

Well the French conscripted everyone regrdless.

Certainly. And so did the Germans as well eventually.

In the German case there were centrally planned measures that seem to denote a certain casual disregard for the realities of agriculture, i.e. avoidable mistakes that didn't help any, like the great German 1915 "Pig Murder":

Schweinemord - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Schweinemord – Wikipedia

de.wikipedia.org

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Just how much did the Hindenburg Line benefit Germany and hurt the Entente?

Futurist

MG1962a

Futurist

Isleifson

Futurist

Tercios Espanoles

Kotromanic

Futurist

Kotromanic

Futurist

Kotromanic

Karri

Futurist

pugsville

Futurist

Isleifson

Junker (Prussia) - Wikipedia

Larrey

pugsville

pugsville

Germany - Industrialization, Unification, Prussia | Britannica

Larrey

Schweinemord - Wikipedia

Schweinemord – Wikipedia

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