I think Norman Sicily could have established an earlier (and slightly less dysfunctional) version of the Latin Empire in 1185/86. And I'll use this opportunity to plug my upcoming TL which has the Hauteville Empire at these borders around 1200 :)
...having said that, I don't think these...
I would say "yes and no".
There were plans to - for example - annex a large border strip from Polish territories to Germany, colonizeit with Germans, and fully or partially expel its original population.
There was a plan for a rather nasty colonization of the Baltics - in which the existing...
I can't speak for everyone, but I think there's an aspect of "trainwreck porn" to it.
For me it's not so much about high-intensity grimdark and terrible atrocities. When I like a dark timeline it's usually because the author has the knowledge and imagination to show complex systems breaking...
Interesting question. Without the Italian model, the existing German fascist-oid organizations would emerge as a more directly obvious influence. The Hungarian far-right would also probably be looked up to some extent.
Interestingly the Young Turks, or more specifically the Ittihad regime in...
Russian Empire:
Simeon Bekbulatovich (born Sain-bulat) was a Tatar/Mongol statesman in the Russian Empire who even briefly served as the ruler of Russia. Though really just as a proxy for Ivan IV in one of Ivan's convoluted political manuevers.
Sweden:
Charles XIV John of Sweden (born...
Aside from the Aegean crisis, there's one more flashpoint in the post-1912 period which Austria-Hungary could have sat out in theory (in theory - in reality, I have some doubts that Vienna would resist joining the fray). That is the dispute over the establishment of an international inspectorate...
This is a pretty interesting idea! But note that Nikephoros' proposal was to grant martyr status to all Byzantine soldiers who died in any battle for the preservation or expansion restoration of the Empire - not just to those who died fighting against Muslim armies.
So IDK how that would work...
For Albania? It varied from department to department and from one phase of the war to another. The General Staff wanted to annex as much of Albania as possible to A-H, but was also prepared to make it an independent puppet state (without, for the most part, enlarging it with Serbian or...
Surprisingly, it didn't. In discussions after June 1917 (when Greece fully joined the Entente) elements in the German and A-H governments still wanted to annex southern Albania to Greece.
The northern third was to be annexed to the Serbian-Montenegrin puppet state, the southern third to Greece, the central third to be an independent puppet state and a bargaining chip between the Central Powers. That was the German (and Ottoman) idea, at least, while the Austro-Hungarians had...
Seems quite possible. I'd even say this is one of the more likely outcomes, other than immediate break-up, for Austria-Hungary after the war, if the war lasts until late 1917 at least.
Let's say A-H's outer regions and occupation zones break out in local revolts, peasant uprisings and mutinies...
If Germany is the main influence over the settlement: Serbia is unified with Montenegro and northern parts of Albania in a puppet state under a member of the Montenegrin dynasty.
If Austria-Hungary gets to decide: ehh, this is harder to predict as there were two main schools of thought within...
Bingo.
Aside from straightforward revanchism, there were lots of factors behind the rise of the Nazis and their actions, such as:
fear of revolution and the increasing willingness of the upper classes to resort to extreme "measures" to stave it off
general war trauma and disillusionment by...