AH Challenge: an alternative WW1

Hello everybody, this is a challenge for you. Try to immagine a different First World War which produce those consequences:
  1. Russian republican provisional government survive (and Bolshevik revolution failes)
  2. Finland, Poland, Baltic States gain their independence
  3. Austro-Hungarian Empire survives (reformed)
  4. British Grand Fleet destroy German High Seas Fleet
  5. Germany loses the war, but keeps the Kaiser
  6. A Jewish National Home in Palestine become an independent state just after the war (in 1920 or 1921)

I tried many times, but I always failed. Now I ask you if you can find a POD (possibly, but not necessarily one: two or three PODs are welcome) which can produce those results. You can win a bonus if you end the war before 1918.
 
Hello everybody, this is a challenge for you. Try to immagine a different First World War which produce those consequences:
  1. Russian republican provisional government survive (and Bolshevik revolution failes)
  2. Finland, Poland, Baltic States gain their independence
  3. Austro-Hungarian Empire survives (reformed)
  4. British Grand Fleet destroy German High Seas Fleet
  5. Germany loses the war, but keeps the Kaiser
  6. A Jewish National Home in Palestine become an independent state just after the war (in 1920 or 1921)

I tried many times, but I always failed. Now I ask you if you can find a POD (possibly, but not necessarily one: two or three PODs are welcome) which can produce those results. You can win a bonus if you end the war before 1918.

The Jewish national home borders ASB: there were simply not enough Jews, and Zionism was nowhere strong enough among European Jews at the time. Of course, some change in pre-war Europe might do it, but it's hard. Anti-Semitism was rather widespread even OTL, and yet the Jews tended to migrate in places other than Palestine at the time.
 
Hello everybody, this is a challenge for you. Try to immagine a different First World War which produce those consequences:
  1. Russian republican provisional government survive (and Bolshevik revolution failes)
  2. Finland, Poland, Baltic States gain their independence
  3. Austro-Hungarian Empire survives (reformed)
  4. British Grand Fleet destroy German High Seas Fleet
  5. Germany loses the war, but keeps the Kaiser
  6. A Jewish National Home in Palestine become an independent state just after the war (in 1920 or 1921)

I tried many times, but I always failed. Now I ask you if you can find a POD (possibly, but not necessarily one: two or three PODs are welcome) which can produce those results. You can win a bonus if you end the war before 1918.

Well if instead of losing for German it's a drawn, we can have Italy maintain neutrality giving a healty shot to the CP with in the end a treaty who ratity a status-quo ante bellum on the western front (maybe reparation for Belgium and a plebiscite for Alsace-Lorene), German Colony divided by the Entente and in the east the treaty of brest-litovsk.
The German will not need to send Lenin on Russia, and even if a communist revolution start, will be later and weak so the republic government will had more chance.
Austria-Hungary will survive the war having lost less men in avoiding fight Italy and probably destroying the serbian army who cannot use Albania for the escape (was in great part in italian hand so if Italy is neutral it's doubtfoul that can be passed or even if it can it will be more difficult), so less stress and more prestige for the hasbourg (temporaly), with the stress of the war and the renewal of the treaty with Hungary some reform will be needed, Charles I will probably try for some federation and this will work for some time, but probably not for long (you stated that A-H must survive not for how long).
 
The Balfour Declaration was of course WW1, so you need to build an extension around that to deal with the Jewish question. Maybe after Brest-Litovsk, Germany might pay Jews from its new zone of influence (eg Zhitomir) to emigrate to Palestine, partly as settlers, partly to counter any coming out of the West?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Hello everybody, this is a challenge for you. Try to immagine a different First World War which produce those consequences:
  1. Russian republican provisional government survive (and Bolshevik revolution failes)
  2. Finland, Poland, Baltic States gain their independence
  3. Austro-Hungarian Empire survives (reformed)
  4. British Grand Fleet destroy German High Seas Fleet
  5. Germany loses the war, but keeps the Kaiser
  6. A Jewish National Home in Palestine become an independent state just after the war (in 1920 or 1921)
I tried many times, but I always failed. Now I ask you if you can find a POD (possibly, but not necessarily one: two or three PODs are welcome) which can produce those results. You can win a bonus if you end the war before 1918.

A POD in late 1915 :

Allied spies are able to inform about the next german offensive on Verdun.

1) So the French are able to rearm the forts with the heavy artillery, they dismounted to use it as field artillery, and they prepared for the inconming german offensive by :
- evacuating the first lines before the german bombardment,
- building a small railroad connexion and better roads to supply Verdun,

Verdun become the battle as we know, but the Germans lost a lot more troops than OTL... And are not able to send reinforcements on the front against the British...

2) The British are able to crush germans lines on the Somme and their offensive become a Breakthrough toward Belgium...
The tanks are not used in september 1916 because the british are on the offensive and the lands ships are not useful when the armies moved.

3) Germans troops are send from the eastern front to Belgium and Brusilov offensive and rumanian offensives are more successful..

4) In 1917, the western allies are in south Belgium and most of northern France is free from the Germans who didn't have the time to destroy the industries.
Western allies are in a better position for the new year of war and first use of tanks is more successful, even critical, the shock they created in the germans troops provoked some case of real panicks. During all the year, Germany lost all the occupied territories.

On the eastern front, things are better for the Centrals Empire but the Russians and the Rumanians lost less ground, and General Brusilov is able to crush the October Revolution.

5) Charles of Habsburg personnaly contacted Woodrow Wilson to become the referee of the peace in Europe. Wilson accepted but he also accepted the survival of the Habsburg Empire as a confederation of severals kingdoms : Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Croaty...

6) On the western front, the germans loose every territories west of the Rhine and the Kaiser accepted to negociate the peace...

Armistices are signed by every centrals powers during Spring 1918...

Poland and most of the Baltics States are still occupied by the Germans, these countries gained their independance, with regimes friendly to Germany or Austria.

Poland can become for example a Habsburg kingdom with territories from Russia, Austria and parts of Germany, the province of Greater Poland with Posen...

Alsace Lorraine become french again, Serbia is satisfied with parts of Bosnia, Italy with Trieste and Istria...

For the creation of Israel, after the crush of the October Revolution, numerous pogroms are commited against Jews in Russia where entire parts of the territories are in complete anarchy. They fled towards the southern ports in Ukraine where they think they will be protected by allied navies who supply Russia after the openings of the Straits after Ottoman capitulation. Thousands of jews are evacuated by the Allied fleets or by Rumania and having nowhere to go, they are evacuated to Palestina...
The western allies don't want the repetition of the Armenian Genocide and great help is provided to evacuate severals thousands people.

Simple POD about the battle of Jutland :
This battle see the complete destruction of the Hochseeflotte and become the Trafalgar of the XXth century...
 
For getting the Bolsheviks to fail, how about having the Germans deny Lenin passage through their territory? I don't recall how important Lenin was to the mobilization and unity of the Bolsheviks, but wasn't he the one who effectively unified the disparate factions without undue infighting?
 
Russian republican provisional government survive (and Bolshevik revolution failes).
Not too difficult assuming that the revolution and follow on event occur pretty much as in our timeline. Paraphrasing from a post I read on the board IIRC in mid-1919 Anton Denikin was leading the White Army attack on Moscow when Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine made a hit and run attack on his supply lines and he sent six regiments back to deal with them. Now Makhno's troops had mostly disappeared by the time they got back so they weren't really all that useful but their absence at Oryol meant he lost the battle there with the Red Army. If the extra troops turned the battle in his favour then that opens up the road to Moscow and probably forces the Communists to pull all the troops they can in to defend the city. This weakens the defences of Petrograd so that Nikolai Yudenich's Northwestern White Army is able to capture it and then they both move on and capture Moscow.

This throws up some interesting knock-ons since as I'm fairly sure that at this stage the Whites hadn't recognised the independence of Poland or the Baltic States.


Finland, Poland, Baltic States gain their independence.
Difficult with either the Whites or the Reds. Finland might be able to keep their independence, Poland was heavily supported by France so they've got a good chance - although would a strong non-communist Russia be considered a stronger ally and have the French throw the Poles under a bus? - and if there's no protracted Civil War the Whites might be able to cling on to the Baltic states. This isn't really my area of expertise though.


Austro-Hungarian Empire survives (reformed).
Well the Austro-Hungarians did try to negotiate a seperate peace with the Allies with the Sixtus Affair. Maybe relations with Germany are worse than in our timeline so that he agrees to the Allied demand of independence for the Kingdom of Serbia but tells them the rest of them are in Germany's control and bows out of the war in return for favourable conditions.


British Grand Fleet destroy German High Seas Fleet.
Not too hard if you change a couple of key people and give the British a little extra luck.


Germany loses the war, but keeps the Kaiser.
Hhmm. The best I can think of is some sort of negotiated peace - say after Austria-Hungary pulls out, Russia is still White so they can't free up troops from the east and the High Seas Fleet is on the bottom of the North Sea - that has Germany giving up Alsace-Lorraine but in return for greatly reduced reparations and no admission of guilt with Wilhelm II abdicating in favour of his son the Crown Prince.


A Jewish National Home in Palestine become an independent state just after the war (in 1920 or 1921).
As others have said pretty much impossible at that point in time.
 
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