AHC: Central Powers Decisively Defeated Before 1918

Anaxagoras

Banned
We talk a lot about scenarios in the Allies can lose the First World War, so here's a different spin on the question. How could Germany and Austria-Hungary be decisively defeated - not a status quo ante bellum agreement, but a clear and unambiguous defeat - before 1918?
 
  • Russia wins in East Prussia in August 1914. Germany has next to nothing in the area, and loses Konigsberg, one of their most important cities. CP would lose East Prussia and Austrian Galicia in this scenario.
  • France somehow anticipates Schlieffen Plan and cuts it off when the Germans smash their heads on Liege. Kind of like what they would have tried in WW2, if the original plan went forward.
  • America joins after the Lusitania is sunk. Germany gets utterly squashed much like in OTL.
  • Gallipoli is successful, Ottomans fall, AH falls and Germany is completely surrounded. I would say this is close to ASB though.
  • Proper artillery is used at the Somme, leading to a decent breakthrough there. AT THE SAME TIME AS GERMANY LOSING AT VERDUN much more massively than OTL.
  • AHE implodes due to ethnic tensions and whatever in 1915.
However, no scenario short of complete conquest (overrunning every last square mile of land) of a CP country is going to lead to anything more than a border adjustment of 10% of a country's territory, at least not of the great powers. Every conflict from about the 1600s until 1931 was about humiliation and colonies, not conquering your neighbours. Hence the vienna congress wanting everything perfectly in balance.

WWI was much more similar to the Napoleonic wars in terms of public attitudes than it was to WWII. Colonies were seen as the measure of victory, combined with how much you humiliated the other guy. Anything that can be changed to make this otherwise in 1914 will certainly butterfly WWI as we know it.

- BNC
 
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