AHC: How to keep the Balkan League alive today?

ben0628

Banned
The Balkan League was a military alliance between the countries of Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and kinda Montenegro which was created in they year 1912 and was directed towards the dying Ottoman Empire

The challenge is to keep the regional military alliance alive past the Balkan Wars and have it last to the present. Bonus points if you can get Romania and Albania to the alliance, as well as having them use the same military equipment.

Personally, I don't think its possible. There is too much hatred during this time period between the nations. I think the best way to possibly keep it alive though is to avoid a Second Balkan War (no Bulgaria getting selfish) and then get the League to fight with Serbia against Austria at the beginning of World War One (assuming Franz Ferdinand's assassination isn't butterflied away). Then during World War One, Romania joins the League with the promise of getting Transylvania while Greece and Bulgaria get parts of the Ottoman Empire.
 
Either the Ottoman Empire remains a threat, or something else is a threat to them.

For the latter, perhaps an aggressive communist Germany or *Soviet Union or something like that, that tries to support the spread of communism in the Balkans.
 
I don't think it was ever envisioned as more than a temporary alliance of convenience, and there were inevitably going to be disputes over spoils. The immediate answer is to have them lose to the Turks in 1912, but that still leaves the question of where they go from there.
 
Either the Ottoman Empire remains a threat, or something else is a threat to them.

That's the only way. Let's say the Ottoman Empire is only halfway defeated in 1912, and quickly starts rebuilding while maintaining an undisguised cult of revanchism towards the Balkan states. It needs to rebrand itself from the "Sick Man of Europe" to a dangerous threat in a year or two, which is hard enough.

And even in that case, an alliance lasting 100+ years is a bit too much...
 

Deleted member 94680

Have a Macedonian Condominium jointly administered by Serbia Bulgaria and Greece. Give it a German Princling as ruler (all the rage in those days) so no one annoyed by anyone else gaining too much territory. Keep them aligned during WWI, where Romania joins with the promises of Transylvania. They fight a purely defensive War in WWI and a new South Slav state joins which doesn't include Serbia. Post WWII as pointed out, it becomes anti-communist and more of a proto-NATO/EU
 
Have a Macedonian Condominium jointly administered by Serbia Bulgaria and Greece. Give it a German Princling as ruler (all the rage in those days) so no one annoyed by anyone else gaining too much territory. Keep them aligned during WWI, where Romania joins with the promises of Transylvania. They fight a purely defensive War in WWI and a new South Slav state joins which doesn't include Serbia. Post WWII as pointed out, it becomes anti-communist and more of a proto-NATO/EU

I think this butterflies Lenin's success, though. Maybe the Nazis as well. I think the immediate post-war enemy might be Italy, actually.
 

Deleted member 94680

I think this butterflies Lenin's success, though. Maybe the Nazis as well. I think the immediate post-war enemy might be Italy, actually.

How does it butterfly Lenin? The only way (outside of convoluted and obscure PODs) you have no Nazis is no WWI so I don't think this affects that.

Agreed, Italy has a chance of being the main threat - but would they go up against a still allied Balkan League?
 

ben0628

Banned
How does it butterfly Lenin? The only way (outside of convoluted and obscure PODs) you have no Nazis is no WWI so I don't think this affects that.

Agreed, Italy has a chance of being the main threat - but would they go up against a still allied Balkan League?

If Italy goes facist post world war one and doesn't get what they want after the treaty of Versailles, I could see them trying something.

So what I'm getting at here is to keep the alliance together after the first Balkan war, you need world war one that includes Austria and the Ottomans as enemies. After the first World War, you need a threat to the entire alliance such as a more aggressive Kemalist Turkey, a Facist Italy, and Communist Russia.
 
The alliance fell apart because Serbia couldn't get Albania and so held onto Macedonia, have the Serbs get Albania and the Bulgarians get Macedonia and those two could stay allied.
 
How does it butterfly Lenin? The only way (outside of convoluted and obscure PODs) you have no Nazis is no WWI so I don't think this affects that.

Agreed, Italy has a chance of being the main threat - but would they go up against a still allied Balkan League?

With the Balkan League onside in defense of Serbia from the start, I'd expect the Entente to win before 1917, so a Bolshevik takeover seems unlikely. And by the same token, I didn't mean that there'd be no Nazis, but that it's unlikely they'd succeed in taking over Germany, especially if there isn't a Communist Russia.

As for Italy, if they're smart they'll try prying the League members apart. They might not take the smart approach, though, depending on their political climate.
 

ben0628

Banned
With the Balkan League onside in defense of Serbia from the start, I'd expect the Entente to win before 1917, so a Bolshevik takeover seems unlikely. And by the same token, I didn't mean that there'd be no Nazis, but that it's unlikely they'd succeed in taking over Germany, especially if there isn't a Communist Russia.

As for Italy, if they're smart they'll try prying the League members apart. They might not take the smart approach, though, depending on their political climate.


I don't think the war will end earlier if the entire Balkan League joins the Entente. The Central Powers won't be able to win of the Eastern Front, but at the Same time, an Entente Bulgaria plus the other League members (who were already fighting for the Entente in otl) wouldn't be enough to defeat Austria and Germany. If anything, the Central Powers will maintain a more defensively oriented strategy throughout the war which would protract the struggle longer (what ended the war was Germany's costly 1917-18 Offensives combined with American entry) and still lead to civil unrest in Russia. So basically, you'd get a revolution, but whether or not you get a Bolshevik revolution is up for debate. As for Germany, I agree that you'd get a militaristic, conservative Germany, but no Nazis coming to power.
 

Deleted member 94680

With the Balkan League onside in defense of Serbia from the start, I'd expect the Entente to win before 1917, so a Bolshevik takeover seems unlikely. And by the same token, I didn't mean that there'd be no Nazis, but that it's unlikely they'd succeed in taking over Germany, especially if there isn't a Communist Russia.

As for Italy, if they're smart they'll try prying the League members apart. They might not take the smart approach, though, depending on their political climate.

The Entente winning earlier is a distinct possibility, but this POD also allows for less distractions to the CP effort if there's no Bulgaria or Balkan front to worry about outside of A-H's border with Serbia. Russia was going to collapse by 1916, remember the first revolution was in February 1917. The soviets are almost a certainty if the Russians fight WWI broadly the same way they did OTL (i.e. badly). With this POD a unified Balkan League still allows the idiots in the War Party in A-H to plunge ahead.
 
I don't think the war will end earlier if the entire Balkan League joins the Entente. The Central Powers won't be able to win of the Eastern Front, but at the Same time, an Entente Bulgaria plus the other League members (who were already fighting for the Entente in otl) wouldn't be enough to defeat Austria and Germany. If anything, the Central Powers will maintain a more defensively oriented strategy throughout the war which would protract the struggle longer (what ended the war was Germany's costly 1917-18 Offensives combined with American entry) and still lead to civil unrest in Russia. So basically, you'd get a revolution, but whether or not you get a Bolshevik revolution is up for debate. As for Germany, I agree that you'd get a militaristic, conservative Germany, but no Nazis coming to power.

None of that will matter as much as the Entente potentially cancelling Gallipoli. There will be less need for it with the Balkan League to hold down the fort, which means that then Entente offensives on the Western Front in 1915 will have an extra 15 divisions, which could easily break German lines given that they were busy attacking in the East IOTL. If the Germans suspend those attacks, then the Russians are saved the Great Retreat, which gives them an extra two armies to potentially knock out Austria-Hungary with. It was a maximum effort war for both sides, which means that troops freed up or otherwise committed on these peripheral theaters will show up in the results somewhere else.

The Entente winning earlier is a distinct possibility, but this POD also allows for less distractions to the CP effort if there's no Bulgaria or Balkan front to worry about outside of A-H's border with Serbia. Russia was going to collapse by 1916, remember the first revolution was in February 1917. The soviets are almost a certainty if the Russians fight WWI broadly the same way they did OTL (i.e. badly). With this POD a unified Balkan League still allows the idiots in the War Party in A-H to plunge ahead.

The Entente was more distracted by Turkey than the Germans were in Serbia, at least in 1915, so no, this is an unambiguous net gain for the Entente. And like I alluded to above, the Russian collapse was predicated on the specific situation they were in, which would be altered radically in the absence of, say, Gorlice-Tarnow because Falkenhayn suddenly needs to plug a gap on the Western Front that's appeared because the British and French aren't trying to force the Dardanelles by themselves. This is how butterflies work, and why you don't generally see timelines where things snap back into place after six months or so. I don't think the February Revolution can be stalled for long, but the October one was predicated on the Provisional Government's poor handling of the war, which is a moot point if the war is over of winding down by mid-1917, which I think it probably would be. If nothing else, both sides had figured out how to properly conduct offensives by 1915-1916, so even if the Germans go onto the defensive, it won't save them.
 

Deleted member 94680

So are you proposing that a Balkan League keeps the Ottomans out of the War? Otherwise the Allies would still be distracted by the Turks, would they not? Granted, if the Balkan League Bulgaria and Greece dissuade the Ottomans from entering the War then there is no need for the Gallipoli landings. But, if the Turks enter the War anyway (which, OTL, they did while Bulgaria and Greece were neutral) then the Allies will still need to deal with them. The 15 divisions used in Gallipoli were raised specifically for that operation or redirected from Egypt, were they not? Will 15 divisions on the Western Front make that much difference that the Germans will not be able to counteract them? Agreed, it will change the course of the War, but will 15 Allied divisions allow the Russians to recover and remake the deficiencies that caused their collapse OTL?
 
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