AHC: Communist/Anarchist revolutions in Western Europe/US during WWI

With a POD in the 1890s make at least 3 revolutions(general strike + militarist uprising of the workers) in the West(Scandinavia, Germany, Western Europe, Iberian Peninsula, US, Canada/Auz/NZ) during the First World War. Can be either Communist or Anarchist. Bonus if successful(lasts more than a year).
 
With a POD in the 1890s make at least 3 revolutions(general strike + militarist uprising of the workers) in the West(Scandinavia, Germany, Western Europe, Iberian Peninsula, US, Canada/Auz/NZ) during the First World War. Can be either Communist or Anarchist. Bonus if successful(lasts more than a year).

I doubt anything will happen during the war, unless a country is losing very badly. After the war, with soldiers returning home and an economic downturn? Definitely possible. Germany absolutely could have gone Red in 1918-1919. If that sparks a generalized Red wave across Europe, you could have all the countries end up under either Marxist governments or right-wing regimes that have crushed them.
 
I would say the best opportunity here would be for a successful revolution in Germany, given how close run things were there in OTL.
 
I'd say the easiest three to do would be Germany, Italy, and either France or maybe Spain. US is out of the question, Britain had a general strike in the 20's, but I don't think their labor movement would be militarized enough to take it further.
 
I'd say that, without any PODs before the war, any of the belligerent powers could absolutely have had revolutions, with the possible exception of the US, in the late days of the war.

I've got a little timeline in the back of my mind, which I've been thinking about and considering. It's not quite fleshed out and ready for writing, but here it is.

The PoD is that a more ardent anti-war US president is elected before the war, who manages to keep the USA out the war. A second PoD/ the first butterfly is the that Raoul Villain fails to assassinate Jean Jaurés in July 1914. Jaurés wouldn't join the government, especially if Guesde does.

So, Jaurés lives and maintains an anti-war stance. He receives some support in some sections if the CGT and SFIO, but nothing too major. However, the man is very vocal and the government begins to crackdown on his activities, which breeds resentment from the rest of the left. The war drags on and casualties mount.

Jaurés, in 1917 or 1918, attempts to lead an anti-war rally in Paris, but is imprisoned for his sedition. In response, the CGT declares a general strike. At the same time, there are mutinies amongst the French soldiers. The government, panicking, begins to use very violent measures to crush the strike, which simply results in even more violence as French industry grinds to a halt. The entire situation is made worse by the US refusing to continue financing the war.

The Germans can't capitalise on this because they're in a similarly bad position. A Sailor's mutiny leads to a similar situation as otl. The end results are revolutions in France, Germany, and potentially Britain, with a higher likelihood of success. If either (or both) France and Germany fall to revolution, Belgium and Luxembourg are likely to fall too, one way or another. Sandwiched between socialist Russia and socialist Germany, Poland and the Baltics won't last long.

This isn't even going into the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

You could also do something with OTL's Swiss General Strike in 1918, or with the Easter Rising, or the Finnish Civil War, or the Romanian General Strike.

The socialists had their greatest chances of success between 1917 and the early 1920s; there were even greater opportunities at this time than during the Great Depression.
 
I think this works best when it is happening on a local level. In OTL, there were the soviet republics of Hungary and Bavaria. Both were basically restricted to Budapest and Munich respectively: metropolitan enclaves surrounded by a rural, clerical, conservative environment and therefore bound to failure. Socialist or anarchist revolutions could be more successful in highly industrialised areas, or places with strong socialist/Communist traditions. So maybe in parts of Northern Italy, the Ruhr-Rhein region, the industrialised parts of Silesia, Belgium, the north-west of England, the "little Moscows" in the South Welsh valleys, or major cities like Paris, Berlin, Turin, Bologna, Vienna and Prague.

For a longer duration, you'd need the "white" forces kept busy with the war effort.
 
I think for this to be realistic you have to have an earlier split in the Second International than IOTL. Maybe the leadership takes Engels' advice to expel Bernstein and he takes a good chunk of his followers with him into an alternate Socialist International, while the rest of the organization remains more or less true to the revolutionary politics of Marx and Engels.
 
Yeah US proletariat is gonna need more development add rural classes are too strong, but revolution in the other countries would first cause defeat in the war and second create a "command capitalist' system since removing all capital and property would be dumb due to capital flight and poverty, but combined worker management that degrades into state management would be the way of the day. It would be the same as Nazi German economy, not so much Soviet Russia.
 
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