AHC: Alternate 19th-Century Alliances

Is France/Germany Italy especially feasible?

Point taken. How could I forget?

France/Germany/Italy vs Britain/Russia/Austria-Hungary/Ottoman Empire

I'll even throw in my two cents as well:
France supports Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War. Maybe the French lost the Franco-Austrian War during the Italian Wars of Unification. The result is a "let's beat the crap out of Franz Josef!" scenario, and France, Italy, and Prussia all have good gains after the war.
 
This is an expansion of the thread. The challenge here is simple. For each country, provide a scenario in which the country would join the First World War, latest possible or most optimal PoD. It would be even better if you could describe two scenarios, one for the country joining the Allies, another for the country joining the Central Powers.



The point isn't prominence, just how a minor country could be involved. :D

Without further adieu, here is the list:

1) United States (get it involved earlier)
2) Spain
3) Sweden
4) Norway
5) Denmark
6) Netherlands
7) Persia

I'm mostly interested in explanations for both sides for 2 and 3, however. :D

Lemme see here...

1. Teddy Roosevelt for president. US is in the war after the Luisitania, at latest. For joining the CP's, there's that new Onkel Willie timeline, which is probably as easy as it realistically gets. So POD no later than the 1890s.
2. Harder. Them not contesting Cuba's bid for independence would leave them in much better shape, which helps. If that's fixed up, they may join the CP's at the last minute for Morocco/border adjustments/something like that. Alternately, a war emerging from the Morocco Crisis would have them supporting France by default, so there's that.
3. I can maybe see them intervening in Finland, which makes them a de facto CP co-belligerent; there's a thread about that 'round here where they do so in 1917. Allies are harder, but maybe if they make a defense pact with Denmark at some point and the Germans subsequently violate Danish neutrality (for some reason), that'd get them in. I'm not sure I see much better.
4. Unless the RN or the HSF get really, really heavy-handed in Norwegian territorial waters, I've got nothing for this.
5. No reason in the universe to support the CPs. A revanchist (and utterly stupid) government may join for Schleswig-Holstein back, but only at the last minute.
6. Really, really egregious breaches of neutrality on London or Berlin's part may provoke them, but they'd have to really work for it.
7. Russia collapses in 1916, and Britain violates Persian territory to try and reach Baku before the Germans/Turks/Austro-Hungarians can. Alternately, the Anglo-Russian rapprochement a decade preceding the war also entails replacing the existing government with a puppet acceptable to both parties, and they declare war on the Turks on behalf of London and Petrograd.
 
Okay, I have a scenario: Britain, France, and Germany unite their efforts to finally bring an end to that bothersome little colonial rebellion on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. More than a century time might be quite a delay, but better late than never I guess, eh? :D

Yes, I got the idea from a TL I was reading a while ago; I don't remember which. It was someone saying there would probably be a fun ASB TL to be made where Britain, France, Germany and he might have said Russia as well (I don't remember well) would suddenly put aside their differences and gang up against the USA.

Now, let's do a serious and in-depth military analysis of the totally plausible and reasonable Anglo-Franco-German war against the United States. First let's look at the naval aspect, the logistical question for supplying the front in North America and the question of time required to mobilise…

…which is now your job. :D
 
That's interesting. Would you mind explaining what these internal dynamics were and why they made this the case? That's not a rhetorical question, that's genuine curiosity.

In one word: Slavs.
To elaborate: Austria after 1867 was essentially two countries, one dominated by Magyars (with some concessions to Croats) the other dominated by Germans (with some concessions to everyone, but mostly to Poles). Their shared interest was to keep down the other nationalities, largely Slavic ones, an interest that the Magyar elite in Hungary felt more.
Expansion in the Balkans would mean more Slavs to deal with, something that the Hungarian government did not want.
That meant that the point of a big deal of Austrian foreign policy Balkan policy was actually about preventing Russia from gaining dominance there AND preventing local national states that could rally Slavs in Austria and Hungary WHILE not taking over those territories (except Bosnia for strategic reasons).
That meant that alliance with Germany made sense.

I agree for the points you list about the reasons why Germany and Russia could easily be friends-allies, and actually alliance with BOTH Austria and Russia was a cornerstone of Bismarck's policy. That could have continued.

However, decision-making in Austria was made problematic by the cross-purposed nature of their aims in the Balkans, where they essentially wanted to expand their sphere without raising national issues.
 
But, could this ever be true with France as well? Or, what could make France more attracted to Austria-Hungary than Russia?

This can be done if France proves to be able to offer significant guarantees to Austria against Russia (and/or Italy). However, in that case Germany would becoma a security threat for Austria that would worry Vienna a lot. They won't like to be smashed because of a quarrel over Alsace.
 
Yes, I got the idea from a TL I was reading a while ago; I don't remember which. It was someone saying there would probably be a fun ASB TL to be made where Britain, France, Germany and he might have said Russia as well (I don't remember well) would suddenly put aside their differences and gang up against the USA.

Now, let's do a serious and in-depth military analysis of the totally plausible and reasonable Anglo-Franco-German war against the United States. First let's look at the naval aspect, the logistical question for supplying the front in North America and the question of time required to mobilise…

…which is now your job. :D

Didn't something like this almost happen in the Venezuela Crisis, except with Italy instead of France?
 
In one word: Slavs.
To elaborate: Austria after 1867 was essentially two countries, one dominated by Magyars (with some concessions to Croats) the other dominated by Germans (with some concessions to everyone, but mostly to Poles). Their shared interest was to keep down the other nationalities, largely Slavic ones, an interest that the Magyar elite in Hungary felt more.
Expansion in the Balkans would mean more Slavs to deal with, something that the Hungarian government did not want.
That meant that the point of a big deal of Austrian foreign policy Balkan policy was actually about preventing Russia from gaining dominance there AND preventing local national states that could rally Slavs in Austria and Hungary WHILE not taking over those territories (except Bosnia for strategic reasons).
That meant that alliance with Germany made sense.

…[snip]…

However, decision-making in Austria was made problematic by the cross-purposed nature of their aims in the Balkans, where they essentially wanted to expand their sphere without raising national issues.

That's very interesting. I knew that there were de facto two separate power-structures in Austria-Hungary and I knew that the Hungarians were reluctant to go to war but I didn't know that the Hungarians were anti-expansionist or that Austria-Hungary opposed ethnic-nationalist states like Serbia… but given the troubles that such states posed to Austria-Hungary and the problems of other nationalities within the Kingdom of Hungary that the Hungarians faced, it makes perfect sense. Thank you for the explanation.

If the Balkan peninsula were sorted out not by the compromises brokered by Britain but by Austro-Russian diktat, the entire situation would be radically different. With the Austro-Russian intervention happening in 1876, the Augsleich was new, recent, not very ingrained and quite possibly reversible by force from Cisleithania (to the extent of taking in further autonomous Hungary-esque 'kingdoms' within the Habsburg empire, I mean, not to the extent of undoing Hungarian autonomy or taking any territory from the Kingdom of Hungary), so the Habsburg empire's policy could have gone very differently.

I agree for the points you list about the reasons why Germany and Russia could easily be friends-allies, and actually alliance with BOTH Austria and Russia was a cornerstone of Bismarck's policy. That could have continued.

Yes; Bismarck was a gambler at first, but by the time Germany was united he was much more pragmatic in foreign policy than his successors. A particularly lovely quotation of his is this gem:

"An English attack would only be thinkable if we found ourselves at war with Russia and France, or did anything so utterly absurd as to fall upon Holland or Belgium or block the Baltic by blocking the sound."

The irony… :D
 
Didn't something like this almost happen in the Venezuela Crisis, except with Italy instead of France?

The Venezuela Crisis IOTL was never too close to an actual war, and I don't know of Germany joining in; Wilhelm II might have suggested it but I doubt that the Germans actually would.

In any case, the British were interested because they had a (fairly legitimate) claim to some territory with lots of gold mines and the Venezuelans were trying to take it, and the Americans were interested as a vaguely sentimental anti-colonialist ideal rather than out of any concrete national interest. Even if it did come to war, it wouldn't have been a major war by any stretch of the imagination.
 
That's very interesting. I knew that there were de facto two separate power-structures in Austria-Hungary and I knew that the Hungarians were reluctant to go to war but I didn't know that the Hungarians were anti-expansionist or that Austria-Hungary opposed ethnic-nationalist states like Serbia… but given the troubles that such states posed to Austria-Hungary and the problems of other nationalities within the Kingdom of Hungary that the Hungarians faced, it makes perfect sense. Thank you for the explanation.

If the Balkan peninsula were sorted out not by the compromises brokered by Britain but by Austro-Russian diktat, the entire situation would be radically different. With the Austro-Russian intervention happening in 1876, the Augsleich was new, recent, not very ingrained and quite possibly reversible by force from Cisleithania (to the extent of taking in further autonomous Hungary-esque 'kingdoms' within the Habsburg empire, I mean, not to the extent of undoing Hungarian autonomy or taking any territory from the Kingdom of Hungary), so the Habsburg empire's policy could have gone very differently.



Yes; Bismarck was a gambler at first, but by the time Germany was united he was much more pragmatic in foreign policy than his successors. A particularly lovely quotation of his is this gem:

"An English attack would only be thinkable if we found ourselves at war with Russia and France, or did anything so utterly absurd as to fall upon Holland or Belgium or block the Baltic by blocking the sound."

The irony… :D

My understanding is that the Ausgleich was actually extremely tricky to touch and modify in ANY significant way. Austria was, after all, a German power in its orgin; at least according to AJP Taylor (a bit dated, yes, but still fundamental to the history of that area in that era) Germany was de facto guaranteeing the Ausgleich on the basis that a "non-Ausgleich" Austria would be a potential challenge to Prussian dominance over Germany. Hungary provided a counterweight to the German focus of Vienna and a support to the continued existence of a "non-Prussian" but "German" state that did not threaten the German balance. This was especially relevant in the 1867-1871 timeframe, of course, when Prussia had to worry about a revanchist stance from Vienna, but would continue.
Hungary had been a chronic thorn in Austria's side, and any attempt to change the compromise would have turned it into a running sore, as if Austria hadn't too many o them anyway. Ironically, the Ausgleich had been originally suggested as a way to strengthen the monarchy in view of a re-match with Prussia, a re-match that the Hungarians had no interest or desire to ever see and, after the Asugleich, the power to block ever (talk about self-defeating schemes).
The problem is that Austria was putting itself in a lose-lose situation, where it was forced to defend an increasingly intractable status quo, the alternative being even more intractable problems posed by either more restive nationalities into the fold or Russian encirclement.
Agreeing to partition the Balkans with Russia in 1876 is doable (they discussed it indeed) but Austria's foreign minister at that point was Gyula Andrassy, the same guy who had negotiated the Ausgleich for the Hungarian side... You see the problem.
 
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