The Powder Keg
This is something that I don't want to go into too much depth on, because I've been thinking about another post in which I'll have to do just that, but it does need to be mentioned for context.
In the late 1800s, Otto von Bismarck set a ball rolling. Through a combination of war, domestic affairs and foreign policy, he set the stage for what eventually happened in 1914. In the period of his influence, Prussia went to war with Austria and France, Germany was unified and complex alliance systems were set up in Europe. By the time he left the scene, Germany found itself encircled by France and Russia, who would undoubtedly end up as future enemies if war flared in Europe. This fear of encirclement played a large part in German strategy leading up to WWI.
The Schlieffen Plan
In 1905, Alfred von Schlieffen began to devise this strategy for the future war. The basic idea of the plan was to attack France through Belgium, widening the frontline and enabling a fast victory over the French before Russia had enough time to mobilise and deploy troops to the east. By the time this actually happened almost a decade after the plan was conceived, Germany had assembled a group of 30,000 troops with the sole purpose of training them to quickly steamroll through a set of Belgian defensive forts that would stop their army from advancing on to France. The level of planning was absurd, one German field marshal was even said to have taken his holidays in Belgium, to inspect the location where the future battle would be fought.
Britain
In 1839, the Treaty of London was signed by major European powers. Essentially, everyone agreed to recognise Belgium as a country after there was a scuffle involving Holland, and guarantee it's neutrality. Britain was one of the countries that signed, and really the only important one in relation to WWI. Germany, Russia, France and other countries also signed, but as they were already going to be at war anyway it made no difference.
Some in Germany did not believe that Britain would go to war over the invasion of Belgium. When Britain declared war, the ambassador to Britain was in a state of disbelief. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, upon being informed of this response, famously said he couldn't believe Britain was going to war over a "scrap of paper".
What If?
It is not clear that Britain would have stayed out of the war if the German invasion of Belgium did not occur. France was doing everything it could to get the British involved, as there was no hard treaty between the two countries that would create an "official" alliance. On the eve of Germany's invasion, for example, French politicians ordered bewildered generals to pull troops out of fortified positions near Belgium to locations 20 miles away from the border, in order to ensure that neither the British or Germany could claim that France had been the first to violate Belgium's neutrality.
Additionally, as briefly mentioned in my last post, Germany was already worrying the British by building a huge naval fleet. This has been called the Anglo-German naval arms race, and was almost like the space race of its time period. Britain continued to be irritated by this even after the war, signing the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1935 which limited the German navy to 35% of the tonnage of the British fleet. Bizarrely, this number was actually larger than the one agreed in the Treaty of Versailles decades earlier.
If Britain does stay out of the war for those reasons, it's still not guaranteed that they wouldn't eventually join later for a number of reasons. Assuming they stay out of the war, everything changes.
The United States may not enter the war, as there is no British pressure to join and British blockades of Germany do not result in the Germans conducting unrestricted submarine warfare. The deaths of American citizens on board ships destroyed by Germany would eventually pull the US into the war.
The Russian government possibly breaks down faster, or perhaps even loses the war outright due to the amount of soldiers that do not have to be on the western front to fight the British. Additionally, offensives on the western front have a higher chance of breaking through due to there being less allied soldiers to defend it, though the front would be far smaller. Germany is no longer fighting a war of attrition in this scenario, at least in the sense that their country isn't being starved by the British blockade.
One of the smaller, but still important aspects of the war, is that Germany does not lose the propaganda battle immediately. As soon as the Belgian border was crossed, they became a target for propaganda. This was also not helped by atrocities committed by German soldiers passing through Belgium. Rapes, murders and incidents of "collective punishment" occurred in Belgian towns, villages and cities. If they arrived at a river and found the bridges destroyed, a nearby town would have citizens executed. The British and French press wildly exaggerated these incidents.
Does Germany win the war? Maybe. They would certainly be in a better position at the end of the war for a peace deal to be agreed.
Edit: I forgot to add that WW2 may not have happened too, or at least there would have been some different form of war. It could be argued that Germany would not have been so enthusiastic about another war if they weren't put into the same position after the Treaty of Versailles was signed. As French general Ferdinand Foch put it at the time, "This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years".
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