Depends by a lot of factors:
- There will be a WWII? With Italy neutral the CP have some good possibilities of win so things will change a lot.
- Italy will partecipate? Skippping the First Great Massacre and having seen what happened to the other nations, even the victors, can make a lot of politicians and even the King a lot less enthusiastic to go to war. Much will depend by the fate of A-H and by the stance of Germany
- One of the factor of the italian abysmall performance in WWII was that Italy modernizated the military pretty quick so by the time of the war his equipment was outdated, but in general a more rich Italy can divert more money on the armed forces and the industry (plus no binary division nonsense and without Benny a little more coordination between service).
Agreed.
You have to work through these and some other questions. This single POD can give you a lot of TL's. Simple things like the difference between a pro-CP neutrality (helps CP cheat on blockade) versus pro-Entente neutrality (Government tries to enforce blockade and keeps large portion of army in threaten position to A-H) is huge. A-H survival is also huge. You can end up with an Italy fighting a long partisan war to keep control of many Southern Slavic lands. You can end up with an Italy facing a strengthened and hostile A-H. You can end up with a lot of extra colonies or none.
You could skim my TL for one possible take, but basically I end up with an Italian navy similar to what I put in the previous post. Only the UK, Germany and the USA will be stronger. Japan is not stronger at the end of the war. Italy will gain Tunisia and a few other colonies. I have not worked out the details, but they will directly or indirectly come from France. I am consider border adjustments in Italy favor with Egypt and Sudan. The TL is on hold now.
I could have written the Italy part many other ways as to how Italy benefits, but it always benefits greatly. And the CP win barring really second strange butterfly or POD. The interplay gets complicated, and you may get lost if you look at my TL since it is a secondary impact, but it basically plays out like this.
1) In June 1915, A-H has about 12 more divisions to use (a full army). Either things go worse for Russia or Serbia falls faster in most ATL's.
Note: I cancelled Gallipolli, so it did not work out directly that way in my ATL. The UK sent the Gallipoli forces to Flanders so the Germans sent units to Flanders and A-H sent units to Poland, so the Ottomans did a lot better. I enjoy complicated butterflies because life is often that way.
2) The blockade is much looser. Hard to quantify, but important. CP has a lot more of something.
Note: I pegged 50K tons per month, with Italy making about a 2:1 profit for its trouble.
3) In 1916, Conrad avoids the blunder that setups the Brusilov Offensive. He had a tendency to attack on the least important front, but with only one front, it is hard to make this mistake.
Note: This may be the largest win for CP. No Brusilov means Romania stays out of war means 1 million more tons of cereal means A-H does not fall apart in late 1918.
4) By 1917, we are looking at closer to 1 million more A-H men due to not fighting Italy. Probably 500K more not fighting Romania. In a war of attrition, the numbers win out even with the USA entering the war on time. Russia will fall apart faster than OTL, which means a hard attack by the German on France in 1917 or a very hard attack in 1918.
I spent a lot of words to try to explain that if Italy stays out, nothing looks the same in Europe compared to OTL. It will immediately butterfly everything.