AHC: An alt-WW1 – but with a neutral Germany

Is such a thing possible? Is there a conceivable (and plausible) way to keep Germany neutral in a conflict on the scale of WW1, while France, Russia, Britain, Italy, Austria and the Ottomans are all involved? Germany doesn‘t necessarily have to remain neutral all throughout, they could join at a later point, similar to Italy in OTL.

Would internal unrest in Germany be enough to do the job? Maybe its two main allies are on different sides, making it hard to choose. Or would Germany automatically choose the Austrian side if war breaks out between Austria and Italy for example? Or maybe a war that starts in Asia instead of Europe?
 

FBKampfer

Banned
The biggest problem is that Germany was the European 800lb gorilla. She had global aspirations (and everyone else had incentive to keep Germany local so she could only kick their asses locally).

It would be like asking the nascent superpower USA from weighing in on a major conflict in 1950.


If it's big enough to be a World War, there's no way German interests aren't involved. And if German interests are involved, suddenly the UK gets interested no matter what else has been going on beforehand.


Germany doesn't particularly give a shit about AH, from what I'm given to understand. Austria, due to inherent geographic reasons and subsequently long standing political reasons, has mostly been the slightly incompetent kid brother to the rest of Germany.

As for the Hungarian component of AH, Germans historically have almost zero reason to feel a sense of loyalty to them, ally or not.



Germany would pick whatever side stands to be most beneficial to Germany..
 
the OTL without Germany it would just be war between Russia and Serbia against Austria-Hungary. maybe Italy would get involved if the war lasts over a year, but i cant see why any other power would get involved. if a conflict happens different to the OTL say a war between Russia and the Ottoman empire and Britain for some reason backs the Ottoman empire and France joins the war on the Russian side. we could see a ww1 scenario without Germany.
 
the OTL without Germany it would just be war between Russia and Serbia against Austria-Hungary. maybe Italy would get involved if the war lasts over a year, but i cant see why any other power would get involved. if a conflict happens different to the OTL say a war between Russia and the Ottoman empire and Britain for some reason backs the Ottoman empire and France joins the war on the Russian side. we could see a ww1 scenario without Germany.

At first, perhaps, but you can expect Britain in this case to be burning the midnight oil in Berlin to get the Germans, if not to directly intervene, at least rattle her sabres. Russia and France would have to keep a large portion of their military forces guarding their borders anyway, to keep themselves safe from exactly that possability, which no doubt will lead to rising tensions with Germany as she finds large armies surronding her on active alert. No doubt paranoia will eventually get the better of them.
 
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