There were standing German-Italian protocols, established before the war, to transfer the troops that Italy did not need on the Alps front or to defend its coasts, in Alsace-Lorraine, incase of a war with France. It was a fairly detailed protocol, down to the special railway arrangements to transfer the troops) and I am fairly sure that it was renewed in the 1910s (which disproves Wiking's argument that Italy stopped taking the Triple Alliance seriously after 1902), but for the life of me I can't remember how many armies were supposed to be involved.
Wiking asserts that this was an informal, spoken arrangement by the general staffs to cover that particular contingency, just as general staffs try to cover all contingencies. Neither of you has produced evidence, but this is precisely the sort of thing that creates documentray sources, so if what you say is true they ought to exist.
Uh, sure, and as I said, it was much more probable that they send troops to A-L, as per stansing accords, but I would not be too surprised if CP Italy decided to send some troops to the Eastern front again, as another type of political card trick (say, to win Germany's support for grabbing an extra couple of French colonies at the peace table).
It's not impossible that something like the Ottomans in Galicia would happen, but given that Italy has France to worry about I doubt it will be a terribly significant change.
Oh, but that is absolutely true. My point was that given Russia's political frailty in 1914, it could afford to expend much less of that potential pool before the political bottom fell out.
The bottom didn't fall out until three years of outrageously bloody fighting with wasteful offensives were up.
In this context, say one that significantly harms the economic resources of the defender. We were talking about German harm from French advances in Alsace-Lorraine.
True, and I see no reason that a large French army couldn't push even a little bit into economically important areas.
So is your argument that TTL Russia would still take the same time to collapse ?
Yes. It was an internal process. WW1 was not so much a war as a contest to see who's social structure was best adapted to pointless bloodshed (the genteel term is 'total war'), and the Russians were the first to buckle. The war was not decided on battlefields in the east or in the west.
The CP block is bigger ITTL, and the Entente one smaller, so America gets more mindful of potential disruptions of trade with the CP. The CP have invaded no neutral country, but the Entente has. More American citizens have their roots in CP countries and may sympathize and lobby for them.
And all of this is going to enter the calculations of the German general staff in electing which strategy to follow?
Yes. For instance, I remember crossing swords with you about the topic of a Franco-Prussian War joined by Austria, Italy, and Russia.

Although admittably it was a scenario akin to the Great War in some ways, it was not bloody WWI. One of those times where we radically disagreed about what Bismarck would do.
I'm plenty interested in diplomatic PoDs in the 19th C, but where we differ is, I think, my suspicion of PoDs based on diplomats suddenly changing policy. What happened happened for a reason. I look for PoDs in things that depend on chance (eg, deaths and scandals bringing low the ministers) and then try to see what their consequences are, not knowing when I begin where I'll finish.
Yup. I'm largely agnostic about monarchy or republic, although I prefer (semi-)presidential systems over parliamentarism.
My ideal constitution seperates the functions of head-of-state from those of head-of-government, and using a monarch as the HoS lifts it above political concerns and connects the country to its past.
But like a proper cynic I recognise that my ideal constitution won't happen in the real world. Some monarchs are better for the people than the alternative, others are not. I think that all else being equal, Britain should be a monarchy, but I'll be first on the barricade if we get King Ernest Augustus.
No, not apologist in the strict sense. More of a "fan".
Did you read what I wrote? Seriously, the idea that I'm a 'fan' of such a humanitarian disaster area puts me in a fankle.
I'm a fan of the British people. I'm one of them, and I couldn't escape from the attitudes being British and Scottish have given me if I wanted to. But the crew who were most enthusiastic about the British Empire seldom gave much of a damn about the British people - still the case today.
None of the three. Although you seem to be a Russophile with a taste for playing devil's advocate of Communism (which, I'm ready to admit, is the eerie mirror image of me, Germanophilia, and fascism).
That I'd plump for - but the idea that my fondness for Britain the nation make me a fan of the British Empire I consider very roughly equivalent to saying that because I like the Russians I'm a fan of Stalin.
Absolutely yes. I despise religious zealotry as the most desplicable form of ideology ever. The other nasty ideologies, as much as they may falsify biology and the social sciences, at least don't pretend to have the direct approval of the Universe for their misdeeds.
Somebody who believes, at some level, that the Universe approves of everything he does is a succinct definition of "totalitarian demagogue". Historical Inevitability is Marxist God, the Nation is the fascist God. They're all worshipped by irrational people and used to justify gross crimes.
And while I'm an agnostic with no illusions about the role of religion in history (as I think my comments above have shown) or about the story of the good old Protestant Taleban in Scotland, I've got to admit an odd kind of fondness for organised religion, in a Clement Attlee kind of way: "Like the ethics, can't accept the mumbo-jumbo".
Organised religious mumbo-jumbo certainly has more gravitas than New Agey stuff, and better songs. I feel that if faith in a God, whatever his name, who justifies everything you do is the totalitarian religion, absolute materialism is the philosophy of Victorian callousness. Socialists believe that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, as the saying goes. We consciously choose to consider ourselves more worthy than rats and unsuited to taking part in a rat-race, which to me implies some sort of higher ideal, something which makes us more than the some of flesh, bone, piss, and vinegar.
Isn't humanism just the belief that the "higher ideal" is humanity itself? Humanists have done much more good for humanity than the Church of Scotland, but I wasn't raised in Humanistland. I can see a Gothic Revival kirk from my window, my street is named after the leader of the Disruption, and I can't deny that I've got a slightly Presbyterian soul. I absolutely understand and accept the necessity of keeping drug-abuse, gambling, and prostitution legal, but there's still a little John Knox in my head who refuses to consider them as anything other than vice and failing. Prude I'm definitely not, but there's few things I find more aesthetically repellant than pornographic magazines. I'm not being honest if I say that I think a place like Las Vegas deserves to exist.
And I do believe in God. I don't believe that a Jewish vagrant-mystic was his son or that an Arab statesman was his prophet, and I certainly don't believe in eternal punishment. But he's up there.
Ahem. That wasn't altogether relevent!
What I can say, every rule has its exceptions, and apparently the lure of the most popular AH subject ever, eventually overcame me too.
But Hitler killed more people than John Knox.
As you can see, I'm a pseudo-member of the kirk, which I do attend when I can be bothered. You might call me CoS without being Christian. I feel ever-so-slightly persecuted when Calvinism is singled out (and you are singling out the radical reformation, if Cromwell is somehow worse than the Restoration: the episcopalian settlement killed plenty of people) and Nazism isn't.
OTOH, the list of guys I may approve of winning is fairly long.
True, but its a qualitive and not quantative difference. My list has only one entry: "the wretched of the Earth".
I eagerly admit a bias in that I generally root in favor of bigger and stronger empires, the more the better, with some caveats. Some subjects (such as America) may get a sentimental or greater knowledge bias, the latter more than the former, admitted as well. But I never knowingly distort facts.
I don't think you do. It would be a bit pointless on a forum for idle discussion. But you're fond of saying that other people do.
I've certainly noticed that you're fond of the American model - which, again, has kiled plenty of people and justified plenty of crimes against common human dignity. You've got American capitalist democracy, I've got the kirk, hmm?
Blind ? No. More willing to excuse them if they are not too many or last for too long. I'm much more willing to take say the Romans burning down Carthage in stride than the Visigoths sacking Rome, in the light of what ensued afterwards.
To me, history is mass biography, and therefore every murder has the exact same moral value.