I Blame Communism
Banned
I think Snake has the right idea: if it's to work, you need a much earlier PoD that leads to a different war where France and Russia hold a stronger corner. Perhaps France retaining Alsace, Russia having the appearance of greater strength thanks to an imperial project in East Asia that doesn't get such a bloody nose (the R-J War was hardly inevitable), a more successful and aggressive French colonialism, perhaps Ottoman alignment with the other team, that sort of thing. And even then pro-*CP neutrality seems more likely. Perhaps we come in late to get a place at the peace table or something. It would help if Germany didn't go fleet-mad, but there was some structural reasons for that phenomenon that aren't easy to shake.
As it stood, this would have contradicted our whole interest in the balance of power. And don't assume that because Chamberlain was a Germanophile he expected to fight France or Russia: there had been no war involving more than two great powers for decades, and everybody was doing the alliance-shuffle to advance their diplomatic goals. Look what became of Italy's alliances, for the most outstanding example. When each Great Power decided to stick up for its allies in the summer of '14, it did so because to let that ally go hang would be an urgent danger to its own security.
If you mean Austria (not Austria-Hungary), this is certainly not true. Austria had manhood suffrage and a pretty lively public debate and party scene, whereas Russia had an extensively fiddled suffrage and a rather busier apparatus for locking up socialists. Some Austrian local governments were fiddled, as against all Russian ones. And Austria's House of Lords had less oversight than the Russian opposite number.
As it stood, this would have contradicted our whole interest in the balance of power. And don't assume that because Chamberlain was a Germanophile he expected to fight France or Russia: there had been no war involving more than two great powers for decades, and everybody was doing the alliance-shuffle to advance their diplomatic goals. Look what became of Italy's alliances, for the most outstanding example. When each Great Power decided to stick up for its allies in the summer of '14, it did so because to let that ally go hang would be an urgent danger to its own security.
France was more democratic than Germany, and Austria and Russia were at roughly the same point.
If you mean Austria (not Austria-Hungary), this is certainly not true. Austria had manhood suffrage and a pretty lively public debate and party scene, whereas Russia had an extensively fiddled suffrage and a rather busier apparatus for locking up socialists. Some Austrian local governments were fiddled, as against all Russian ones. And Austria's House of Lords had less oversight than the Russian opposite number.
Last edited: