[Fiji Hill]

Continuing the war in lieu of the Armistice might not have been such a hot idea.

• Germany may have been in turmoil in November, 1918, but as the Allied armies approached their homeland, the Germans may have risen to the occasion and resisted with a will--perhaps under a reactionary government led by someone like Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz, a coalition government that included radicals such as Karl Liebknecht, or even a Bolshevik regime.

• The Allies would have had to advance through rugged terrain such as the Hürtgen Forest, which they would only fully occupy after five months of heavy fighting in WWII.

• Winter was also coming on, and bad weather would have hindered Allied efforts

• The US had lost over 100,000 men by the time of the Armistice--twice the number that we would lose in Vietnam and in less than a year. Given the American public's historic distaste for protracted foreign wars, would the public have continued to support the war effort?

• Had the Allies prevailed and forced an unconditional surrender, would the American public support a lengthy and expensive occupation of the country and a nation-building program that would be necessary to preclude a power vacuum in Central Europe?

• The Germans could also have cut a deal with the Bolsheviks, as they would do time and again over the next several decades, which could have greatly complicated matters for the allies.

  Some questions to ponder.

[BroJoeK]

In fact, the German army was in far worse shape than people like Hitler later admitted.
It was on the verge of collapse, as was the German economy and political system.
Indeed, Hitler’s later remark about Russia, that it was so rotten you need only kick the door in and the rest would collapse — that could also be said of Germany at the end of 1918.

However, I am not understating the additional effort that would be required of Allies already bled dry, and nearly as demoralized as the Germans at that point.
It absolutely could not happen without strong US leadership, leadership of the kind Franklin Roosevelt provided in WWII, but of which Woodrow Wilson was utterly incapable.

But would it have been worth it?
Well, consider that the death toll in Europe alone in WWII was about 35 million, over half civilians, including six million Jews.
So how many extra deaths in the First World War would seem to you reasonable to have prevented the Second World War entirely?