American Rio del Oro?

[MrP]

No, I meant that the USN combined with the High Seas Fleet could do it. A large part of the RN is busy bottling up the HSF in port. That means the USN, although it couldn't take on the RN in a pitched battle, can do enough commerce raiding to seriously hurt the trade needed to keep Britain in the war.

Besides the fact that America wouldn't be sending stuff to Britain itself, of course.

This is all highly hypothetical of course because I don't think a CP America is very likely at all...and I'm not a WW1 expert, anyway. Paging P...

Hm, I'm not optimistic. I doubt the basing facilities in the Canaries are up to handling dreadnoughts for starters. But the main problem with a CP America is money and common sense. If Britain has loads of money she can give America because she's cut trade links between Germany and the USA, and France is offering lots of money, too, it makes more sense to accept that money than get entangled in a war that'll necessitate a vast increase in US military spending. In a word, it's a choice between taking Franco-British cash and laughing all the way to the bank or burning money for an uncertain chance of victory that leaves everyone poorer.

There's also the Trinitrotoluene problem. The USA IOTL is the big supplier of this to the Entente, IIRC. No USA supporting the Entente and the loss by France of the Briey Basin means that shell production is kinda fucked. Certainly compared to OTL.

One can get an America that dislikes the UK, but then I'd opine that the UK will avoid one of antagonising the USA or getting involved in a war that'll see the Empire really threatened. So I tend to hmmm thoughtfully at scenarios of CP-America nowadays. But I'm not the final word by any means.

 

[black angel]

Well, in the Phillipines, Spain had just lost a painful guerilla war with Filipino rebels, and considered the place a lost cause. Whereas the Canarias are a core part of Spain and home to thousands (millions?) of Spaniards. I don't think Spain would agree to giving the islands up.

thousands maybe, and there not quite "Spaniards" it was a colony just like Phillipines they had it as long as Cuba and they gave that up, and all the people there are as Spanish as the Canarians

 

[Dean_the_Young]

MrP is far too modest. What he really means is "Are you daft? The Royal Navy always triumphs!"

And then his short attention span drifts to battleships or tanks. Or the next glass of scotch. Or a kitten.

 

[Kriegdämmerung]

So basically, if some extraplanetary winged mamml flaps its magic-wings, and the US joins the Central Powers and builds up a decent army and navy, the Central Powers could actually dent the Entente forces and possibly win.

Well, I suppose that's all I really wanted...

 

[MrP]

MrP is far too modest. What he really means is "Are you daft? The Royal Navy always triumphs!"

And then his short attention span drifts to battleships or tanks. Or the next glass of scotch. Or a kitten.

Well, the RN has a few definite problems in the era. One is countering commerce raiders. The Canaries are actually better neutral than hostile, since the British could attack and occupy them without fear of diplomatic repercussions were they at war with the owners. This denies the use of the area for refueling operations. Another quite different problem is that RN shells aren't much cop at this time IOTL.

One can't really hypothesise too much, though, about what an alt-WWI would be like in a world in which the USA had seized the Canaries in the SAW, since it'd have a profound effect on naval thinking worldwide. The USN might develop a proper cruiser force. Butterflies could remove the RN shell problem and switch it to another navy, or it might stay the same or worsen. Dreadnought might not be the first Dreadnought. The French Army could be thoroughly shaken up. The Russians might beat the Japanese in the RJW. There's loads of medium-sized stuff that adds up and needs defining before we can be sure about anything else.

But in a world which is pretty much OTL but with American Canaries, I don't see much that'd lead America to ally with Germany against Britain and France.

 

[MrP]

So basically, if some extraplanetary winged mamml flaps its magic-wings, and the US joins the Central Powers and builds up a decent army and navy, the Central Powers could actually dent the Entente forces and possibly win.

Well, I suppose that's all I really wanted...

Well, there are a few openings IOTL for the HSF to smash isolated bits of the Grand Fleet. Combine this with bad shell handling procedures (common to both the HSF and the GF at first, but the Germans learned the lessons from Dogger Bank IOTL), and some bad luck for the RN, and the Germans could win a smashing victory early on. I think you might need to knock the Kaiser out of the arena, though, because he was wary of risking his nice shiny fleet on one throw of the dice. This could knock the Brits and subsequently the French out. I still don't see this leading to the Americans getting involved in the war, though, since they'd have to invade Canada, and they'd lose the British money. They have more to gain as neutrals. Plus, Congress doesn't want to spend the money it costs to maintain a large European sized army; though she did manage to give the USN quite a bit of cash, even if it all went on battleships rather than a balanced fleet.

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

thousands maybe, and there not quite "Spaniards" it was a colony just like Phillipines they had it as long as Cuba and they gave that up, and all the people there are as Spanish as the Canarians

eh, no. You are absolutely wrong. After the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands were exterminated in the 15th century, the islands were repopulated by castilian settlers. The islands ceased to be a colony in the 16th century and in 1898 was a regular spanish province, unlike Philippines, where spanish power was always shaky at its best, and where there were almost no spanish settlers. The US occupying the Canaries would be like trying to land in Galicia or Cádiz.

 

[black angel]

eh, no. You are absolutely wrong. After the original inhabitants of the Canary Islands were exterminated in the 15th century, the islands were repopulated by castilian settlers. The islands ceased to be a colony in the 16th century and in 1898 was a regular spanish province, unlike Philippines, where spanish power was always shaky at its best, and where there were almost no spanish settlers. The US occupying the Canaries would be like trying to land in Galicia or Cádiz.

Cuba was repopulated by the Spanish too, like ways with Puerto Rico, which at the time was an overseas province of Spain.