AH Challenge: Preserve Anglo-French Hostility to the Point of War

(The POD may be in the late 19th Century, but I still feel it belongs here.)

Seeing how the French and the British weren't exactly the best of friends historically speaking, I think it would be interesting to see how this might continue into the 20th Century for a TL I'm planning.

The goal is to have a major war in the first half of the 20th Century with France versus Britain as the main opponents, with bonus points for neither being explicitly fascist.

A POD I figured usable would be the Fashoda Crisis ending more badly and the late 19th Century seeing an increase in hostilities rather than co-operation between the countries. France and Britain engage in a tenser colonial struggle and eventually form poles of a larger conflict. Is this somewhat plausible?
 
Depending on the precise dates of the alliances which escape me at the moment, a war started around the Dogger Bank incident could see Britain fighting France if things escalate substantially.
 
Theres all kinds of options available for this. Like you say, Fashoda would be a good POD, and as Wendell says Dogger Bank could be a possibility as well. Maybe if France explicitly aided Russia against Japan, possibly with the hope of picking up any Japanese colonies, Britain would intervene to protect it's ally. I might be wrong, but I think both Britain and the US were interested in preventing China being colonised-fears of being shut off from the Chinese market, so maybe a France probably allied with Russia trying to colonise China could lead to war. I dont know how anyone else would line up, but I would guess a war between France/Russia and the UK/US over China would see a UK/US victory within 2 years at most
 
Your best bet is for a significantly smaller or no German naval buildup, combined with a more intense Great Game. This neatly removes the largest reason for the Anglo-German rivalry, as well as enhancing friction between Britain and France's largest ally. Add a more serious colonial competition between France and Britain, and Britain will definitely stay neutral in a *WWI, and possibly join Germany if France invades Belgium before Germany.

In this scenario, a Fashoda incident or a similar incident could lead to a war far more easily.
 
Your best bet is for a significantly smaller or no German naval buildup, combined with a more intense Great Game. This neatly removes the largest reason for the Anglo-German rivalry, as well as enhancing friction between Britain and France's largest ally. Add a more serious colonial competition between France and Britain, and Britain will definitely stay neutral in a *WWI, and possibly join Germany if France invades Belgium before Germany.

In this scenario, a Fashoda incident or a similar incident could lead to a war far more easily.

This. If you can somehow get an agreement between Germany and Britain, then Germany can easily isolate the two nations and voila! You have France and Britain on opposite sides of the alliance line. Fashoda, if it can be prolonged into the 20th Century for your POD, is also a great way to do it.
 
Britain’s continental policy was to support the weaker side to maintain the balance of power. If the French had somehow won the Franco Prussian war the French would be the most powerful country in Western Europe with no united Germany so Britain would have opposed France on Principal
 
Britain’s continental policy was to support the weaker side to maintain the balance of power. If the French had somehow won the Franco Prussian war the French would be the most powerful country in Western Europe with no united Germany so Britain would have opposed France on Principal

For that you need both a stronger French Second Empire (or for an even farther back POD, some other French regime entirely) versus a weaker Prussian-led German alliance.

Note I don't particularly mean that France looks stronger and Germany weaker superficially on paper; in that case even a Prussian leader less astute than Bismarck would avoid the conflict. I mean that when push comes to shove, the French forces and French society in general prove more solid, whereas the German alliance disintegrates, to the surprise of the Germans.

I doubt Napoleon III had it in him to lead such a France, so your POD might be that he was a better and more astute leader than he was OTL, or again that France isn't his Second Empire at all. Say the Second Republic limps along without being taken over by him at all, and gradually refashions France on a more thoroughly republican basis. Or it becomes a constitutional monarchy, or if you like an absolute one, or Bonapartist under some other guy entirely--the point being that somehow it is a more inclusive society that the French classes are more solidly aligned behind. In that case--especially if France is republican, or constitutional-monarchist on more British lines--the Germans might underestimate their potential in fighting for a cause they think is just, such as the defense of France itself. This would be especially likely if the French appeared bumbling and ineffective in more peripheral conflicts where the public consent was less committed--but then again a regime blundering around in such half-hearted adventures probably wouldn't be the stout-hearted one I am proposing here.

Frankly all this seems pretty long-shot to me. But then again perhaps the peculiar thing in the 19th century was after all France's decline.

To get an early 20th Century Great War with Britain and France being the main antagonists, surely France must somehow or other be much stronger than OTL, with no stronger yet rival other than Britain herself--bottom line, you have France essentially being OTL Germany, with German levels of industrial development. Sheer demographics work against France unless we envision a much increased French birthrate and some depression of population growth in the Germanies as well--I pretty much assume that Germany does not get united, or perhaps only very late as part of British maneuvering against France. Perhaps with Prussia discredited and possibly wracked with internal dissent and turmoil, the British promote Austrian hegemony leading to a South-German state as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Leaving Prussia as a second-rate power focused on the Baltic?

I certainly can't see the British and French (in more OTL versions) letting peripheral squabbles in the colonies lead to an all-out war while anything like the OTL German Second Reich looks on, not unless that power were allied with one or the other of them.
 
This. If you can somehow get an agreement between Germany and Britain, then Germany can easily isolate the two nations and voila! You have France and Britain on opposite sides of the alliance line. Fashoda, if it can be prolonged into the 20th Century for your POD, is also a great way to do it.

Wouldn't work IMHO. Without the German naval build-up you get a stronger Germany on the ground, and if it's on friendly terms with Great Britain, you end up with a nightmare scenario for France which is threatened by sea and by land. Therefore the French government would do its best to appease Britain, not to antagonize it. Fashoda incidents would either not happen, or end up very quickly.

You could object that a crisis could start with Fashoda, and then evolve into an Anglo-German alliance, but that would run contrary to Britain's policy on the Continent, which was to balance powers against each other, as Fibis pointed out, usually by supporting the weaker side, either openly or covertly. Britain's objective is, after all, to prevent the rise of a continental superpower. So a grand German-British alliance which would see German's ambitions backed by the Royal Navy would signal a dramatic break from Britain's objectives.

I think that for France and Britain to fight each other, you practically have to take Germany out of the equation - Prussia never achieves German reunification, like Fibis and Shevek propose, or the unified Germany resembles more the Austro-Hungarian Empire and lags behind France and Russia in military terms. Then you could have Franco-British tensions, either because France can be the biggest threat in Europe, or because, with Europe peaceful and calm, tensions can now flare up in the coalescing colonial empires.
 
(The POD may be in the late 19th Century, but I still feel it belongs here.)

POD in 1866 :
- Prussia lost the Austrian-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia is humiliated, lost Silesia for Austria and leadership in Germany. Austria took revenge against Italy who allied with Prussia and Italy lost greatly.

France mess in the conflict by taking prussian territories, the Rhineland, on the west bank of the Rhine... Such alienating germans everywhere and the different germans states decided to team up to liberate their fellow germans on the west bank of the Rhine in Rhineland but also Alsace... Austria, who suffered from victory disease, decide to lead this movement.

After its losses, Italy realized that they won Lombardy by allying with France in 1859, but they lost greatly with Prussia in 1866, so they decided to ally with France...

Fearing a strong german coalition, France decided to ally with Italy and accepted to share North Africa with Italy with Tunesia going to Italy...

In 1872, France and Italy fought a war against German Confederation and Austria...

France had a very modern army with the Niel reforms, equipped with the Chassepot rifle and the first machines-guns.
German Confederation and Austrian armies suffered from old tactics, Austria won the last war and didn't reform its army, from lack of standardized equipments and distrust among its leadership. Prussia didn't send lot of troops so the coalition lacked its support...

German confederation and Austria are crushed, Austria losses to Italy are great, Venetia and Istria with Trieste with some territories on the Dalmatian coast... France took all of Rhineland.

German Confederation is in shambles, everyone accusing Austria and Prussia for the lost of the war and for the big indemnities of war. France accepted to reduce western and southern German losses if they accepted neutrality forming a southern german confederation...

Second POD :
France support Russia in its war of 1877 against the Ottoman Empire, and France and Italy decided to take its shares of the decaying Ottoman Empire... Italy took Tunesia and Libya, French took Egypt and big influences in the Levant : Palestine, Lebanon and Syria where the French and Russian Emperor become the protectors of local christians...

During the next oriental war, Ottoman Empire disaspeared reduced to a russian puppet state in Asia Minor...
 
POD in 1866 :
- Prussia lost the Austrian-Prussian War of 1866, Prussia is humiliated, lost Silesia for Austria and leadership in Germany. Austria took revenge against Italy who allied with Prussia and Italy lost greatly.

........................................

Second POD :
France support Russia in its war of 1877 against the Ottoman Empire, and France and Italy decided to take its shares of the decaying Ottoman Empire... Italy took Tunesia and Libya, French took Egypt and big influences in the Levant : Palestine, Lebanon and Syria where the French and Russian Emperor become the protectors of local christians...

During the next oriental war, Ottoman Empire disaspeared reduced to a russian puppet state in Asia Minor...

I continue this TL :

In 1880, France is the dominant power in Europe with an alliance with Italy in the Med and with Russia in south-eastern Europe and the eastern Med...

France territory in Europe are OTL territory + Luxemburg and west bank Rhineland... Belgium felt treatened by french appetite for its territory...

Germany is divided between a northern confederation lead by Prussia and a southern confederation lead by Austria, Austro-Prussian war of 1866 and the supposed treason of Prussia during the war of 1872-1873 with France created a schism between both Germany...

Southern Germany (Baden, Wurtemberg, Bavaria) were pleased to not be treated poorly by France and escaped heavy war indemnities but local population are unfriendly to the French and its rulers...

Germany + Autria suffered greatly from both wars, 1866 and 1872-1873, both wars being fought on germans lands, heavy wars indemnities were paid, some rulers are very unpopular, some riots happened...

Austria is isolated, she tried to take a upper hand in Germany but loose a big war with France and Italy. Russia is also very unfriendly and the Balkans minors, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece become all russian aligned...

Suez canal was built by the french and the egyptian and its construction was opposed by the british. In this TL, the Egyptian ruler didn't sold its share to the british but to the french so confirming french power in Egypt who later become a protectorate.

Controlling all the Med with its allies (Italy, Russia) or its colony and puppets, France can support italian revendications on Malta, Greece revendications on Chypre (the british took it in 1878 because they try to help Ottoman Empire during the peace negociations)...

Having destroyed the power of Ottoman Empire in Europe, Russia tried to established influence in northern Irak, in Persia...

France began the conquest of Africa from Egypt in Sudan and the Red Sea, from Senegal to western Africa...

And she began to build a high sea fleet to protect its Empire...

In 1900-1920, the world is ready to war between France-Italy and Russia against a coalition of the UK, Germany and Austria...

The fighting can begin because France try to conquer Belgium or try to prevent a rising power in Germany who will try to reunite Germany...

Or a reunited Germany in 1880-1890 will try 20 or 30 years later to reconquer germans provinces on the west banks of the Rhine...
 

Beer

Banned
These no German Unification scenarios are lacking in the fact that France for all her pluses, due to several factors has not the same growth potential that Germany has. And several scenarios are rather standard. Why not an "Enemy of my Enemy is my friend"?
Let´s say Bismarck gets his wish and Germany does not annex Elsaß-Lothringen. Instead they annex nothing or a colonial possession France will not miss. The relations Berlin-Paris will be better from the start. Archenemy this and that, but rhetorics aside, back in that days, unlike modern stubbornness, alliances with the enemy from yesterday were not that uncommon.
With no E-L to sour the relations, as Bismarck wanted, his alliance-building will not be as anti-French as he had to make it OTL. Naturally there will be no alliance stanta pede, but even OTL there where several phases of warmer relations. Now in TTL scenario, Germany and France start with better relations in the last 30 years of the 19th. century. Now put in the sometimes quite close to war incidents France and Britain had. Esp. after Germany begins his Fleet buildup. They might have a long enmity, but Paris and Berlin would recognize the fact that an alliance against Britain helps both. With enough propaganda you can sell it to the populaces rather nice, since once both nations were united under frankish kings.
 
These no German Unification scenarios are lacking in the fact that France for all her pluses, due to several factors has not the same growth potential that Germany has. And several scenarios are rather standard.

Franco-Prussian war was a war declared by France.

So a more diplomatic Germany can win on both sides :

- unite Germany after a successful war,
- help the new republican regime in France to establish himself, by accepting a very moderate peace.

During the Commune events, the Germans helped Versailles government to crush the Paris Commune because parisians were very anti-germans.

For exemple, without annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after the war, France and Germany can divide between themselves Belgium and Luxemburg, Luxemburg to Germany, Belgium to France and the UK will be completely upset.

In the mind of a german nationalist, annexing french speaking parts of Belgium for France is natural, as reuniting every german-speaking areas to Germany...

Of course, a white peace in 1870 is ASB because prussians really wanted a revenge against France after the numerous defeats of the Napoleonic wars...
 
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