AH Challenge: Peaceful 20th Century in Europe?

I was thinking, maybe if Franz Ferdinand survives, the United States of Austria could have been.
 
We had the chance... and blew it.

In 1915 during WW1. On Christmas day thousands (maybe as much as 75%) of the soldiers fighting in the trenches got out and walked across no mans land to extend the hand of peace. When the generals on both sides heard of it they demanded it stopped and ordered round the clock aretilly barrages.

But, if they would have instead decided to make the peace permanent and have everyone just say they were sorry and go home, things would have turned out much differently. No angry Germany leading to WW2. No Bolshevik revolution.

Maybe then peace.
 
I've read that the best way to prevent major wars is a crystal clear heirarchy of power. A really good Britwank (or Francewank, or Germanwank...) ought to do it.:D
 
We had the chance... and blew it.

In 1915 during WW1. On Christmas day thousands (maybe as much as 75%) of the soldiers fighting in the trenches got out and walked across no mans land to extend the hand of peace. When the generals on both sides heard of it they demanded it stopped and ordered round the clock aretilly barrages.

But, if they would have instead decided to make the peace permanent and have everyone just say they were sorry and go home, things would have turned out much differently. No angry Germany leading to WW2. No Bolshevik revolution.

Maybe then peace.

Would have been perhaps the greatest moment in the history of mankind. If everyone just threw down the rifles and stopped. Refused to fight.
 
I don't think a gernuinely peaceful twentiewth century is possible without changes so majoer the idea becomes meaningless (colonisation by a surviving Song China might lead to a peaceful period in 1900-2000 AD, but I guess that's not what you mean). European culture had embreaced war to too great an extent.

That said, I think it is possible to have a much less disastrously warlike twentieth century. IMO your best bet is taking Prussia down a peg or two. United Germany was a massive disturbance in the force smack in the middle of the continent. If that doesn't happen, France keeps its sphere of influence in Italy and Southwestern Germany, and Prussia stays hegemon of Northwestern Germany, you have a much better chance of averting the seminal disaster of WWI. Next, throw a war into the mix that is major by previous standards, though smaller than WWI. Have the horrified powers of Europe see two of their number bankrupt themselves in a fruitless slogging mastch. Governments will be much less willing to risk economic and demographic armageddon (everybody was horrified by WWI, but nobody quite knew how to end it).

An additional bonus would be to maintain the primary confrontation line between Britain and France. The two can't really touch each other, so even in the event of a war, it wouldn't be as destructive asd the Germany/France slogging matches.
 

Hendryk

Banned
It's a very, very difficult challenge. Maybe not impossible but extremely tough to achieve. The most obvious but hardly the only obstacle is the fact that, as carlton points out, early 20th century Europeans were infatuated with the idea of war. They relished it, they fantasized about it, they called it "the only hygiene of the world" (The Futurist Manifesto), they viewed it as the way to turn boys into men (Baden-Powell). Otherwise normal people thought nothing of their fellow countrymen machine-gunning unruly natives by the thousands in the name of imperial expansion--as Hannah Arendt argued in Imperialism, you can only slaughter darkies for so long before you consider that homicidal violence is a legitimate way to solve every problem. Every last country had grievances real or imagined which it thought could be resolved with massive application of military force, even (especially) countries that had just come into existence and were dreaming of a grandiose national destiny.

Then there is the fact that the early 20th century world order was a massively unfair and unsustainable one, with most of the world ruled through overt violence by European powers. At some point the whole edifice would have come crashing down, and that would have meant war.
 
No War...

The classic AH story Pavane offered a peaceful 20th Century on the back of the triumph of the Catholic Church in the late 16th Century.

I think it's possible to argue that general war COULD have been avoided though another flare-up in the Balkans in the late 1910s is a strong possibility.

More likely, I think, is internal conflict as the autarchic regimes in Germany, Austria and Russia were inreasingly unviable given economic and social developments and the resulting political changes.

Given the nature of the regimes, could peaceful transition to more democratic structures have happened ? I think it could have in Austria with the Empire becoming a looser confederation or federation of states. Germany and Russia are more problematic and given the 1905 experience, revolution or violent evolution is more likely.

Without war, social changes in Britain and France would have proceeded more slowly so today's society would be more like the 1950s of OTL in my view though there would be considerable consumer wealth.

The Europeans would have faced more issues with their colonies - India was already causing problems in 1914. Would the Europeans have fought to keep the status quo or would we have seen a gradual transition to independence ? I suspect that as in OTL, it would have varied considerably. Britain resisted Gandhi until WW2 exhausted their resolve but look at France in Algeria and Vietnam to see the other scenario.

I think we'd have seen general peace in Europe but conflict in other parts of the world though within states rather than between them.

The one exception is Japan which I think would have become embroiled in China irrespective of events elsewhere.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
If you don't limit Europe to Germany France and Britain, you cannnot start with a 1914 POD, you would have to get rid of the Balcan Wars first.

This would, of course leave Bosnia in the hands of the Osmans, butterflying away the Franz Ferdinand assasination.

and YES, I love beeing a smart-ass...
 
Sorry, I didn't meant to say a completely peaceful century with no wars at all, I think that's a very much impossible scenario. But what about regional and centralized conflicts that never escalate into World Wars?
 
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