WWI Stalemate issues

Here's a question, I'm currently writing a TL (not on the site yet-I want to get it to a decent length first.) which involves the Zimmerman Telegraph never being accepted as truth, no US involvement in WWI, and a stalemate on the Western Front (Eastern Front largely as OTL.) In this situation, Germany accepts they have lost the war, but not drastically, so would be making some concessions to Britain and France. What would these be? Alsace-Lorraine, Schleiswig-Holstein, Memel? What about colonies.

Next, A-H collapses, but could Bavaria (and Baden-Wurrtenburg) use the loss of the war to team up with Austria, Bohemia-Moravia and possibly Slovenia as an independant state (something like the country being run in accordance to the will of the Prussian North, ignoring the South.) Is this possible?

I don't think such a scenario (secession of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) is plausible at all. Bavarian secessionism was pretty much a joke by 1900 and Baden-Württemberg never had a separatist movement at all. And most parts of BW are actually culturally closer towards Hesse, the Palatinate or Switzerland than towards Bavaria (let alone Austria). The same goes for Northern Bavaria (Franconia), which is also closer to Hesse, Thuringia and even the westernmost part of Saxony than to the rest of Bavaria (once more, let alone Austria). If somehow Bavaria manages to become independent, I would strongly think that Franconia (and maybe Swabia as well) will declare its independence from Bavaria and rejoin Germany. I'm more than 100% sure that Bavaria would definitively lose the Rhenish Palatinate (the area between Alsace and Rhenish Prussia) because those people were about as attached to Bavaria as they would have been to, say, Peru.

In short, you would need a peace treaty by far harsher than Versailles to break up Germany, because once the 20th century came around, the parts of Germany with a clear German majority (except Alsace-Lorraine) wanted to stay German and unified.

And I guess after the stalemate you described, Germany would most likely only lose Alsace-Lorraine to France, probably the colonies and maybe Posen as well. AFAIK, the Northern Schleswig plebiscite was an outflow of Wilson's self-determination stance and a compromise peace would not change the Northern border (remember, Denmark was neutral during the war and in OTL they even refused to take central Schleswig after it had voted for Germany despite France wanting Denmark to annex all of Schleswig [I'm not sure about Holstein]. The desire of the Memellanders to join Lithuania was not that strong, so I guess Memel would remain German as well.

Alex,

Zimmerman freely admitted he'd composed and sent the telegram. Your timeline will have to address his "confession".

Another aspect of the Telegram that usually gets overlooked is that Germany sent the message on a US State Department cable to which Wilson had personally given them access against the advice of his Cabinet. Wilson had hoped Germany would use the cable to address his various truce proposals, so when they used it instead to transmit a proposed offensive alliance between Germany, Mexico, and Japan against the US, Wilson was pissed to say the very least.


Bill

Bill Cameron said:

Alex,

Zimmerman freely admitted he'd composed and sent the telegram. Your timeline will have to address his "confession".

Another aspect of the Telegram that usually gets overlooked is that Germany sent the message on a US State Department cable to which Wilson had personally given them access against the advice of his Cabinet. Wilson had hoped Germany would use the cable to address his various truce proposals, so when they used it instead to transmit a proposed offensive alliance between Germany, Mexico, and Japan against the US, Wilson was pissed to say the very least.


Bill

Click to expand...

I know, the PoD is in Jan 1917, a couple of months before the confession, which won't happen in this timeline.

So as far as I can gather, we have Germany losing A-L to France, Posen to Poland, German New Guinea/Samoa to Britain, German Kameroon to France and East Africa to Britain.

This is why I checked this before writing. Would Austria join Germany?