raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
Here's the challenge - With a PoD after 1914, have WWI end with OTL's Versailles (&co-treaties like St. German, Trianon, Neuilly, and later Lausanne) borders, without the US participating as a belligerent power.
AHC: With a PoD after 1914, WWI ends with OTL's Versailles (&co-treaties) borders, without US as a belligerent power
- Thread starter raharris1973
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raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
People really gotta drop the illusory belief that agitation for independent Slavic successor states to the Habsburg empire sprang whole cloth from Woodrow Wilson's mind.
British people had ideas about a postwar cooperative international organization too. It went by different names, but it wasn't on Wilson's mind alone.
Yes - just not go to war.
I meant more like the Slavic states would get more here, probably.
Were there British politicians favoring that to a larger degree, or would they care more about crushing Germany?
Here I expect the Entente to win a harsher peace, unless the US loans run out or they run out of men.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
It's interesting to compare the "harshness" of the US and British positions on Germany.
Britain was harsh enough to enforce blockade after the war until treaty.
Britain was the harshest of allies about calculating high reparations figures at the outset.
OTOH -
Haig was less harsh in his armistice demands than Foch or Pershing, he was willing to accept an armistice line west of the Rhine. He was more opposed to any calls for "on to Berlin" than either French or American commanders.
Britain stopped caring about *reparations enforcement* early - the Ruhr crisis, and stopped caring about new border enforcement early, the Locarno treaties, and started pretty soon in the 20s to worry that France would be a greater risk than Germany, either because it would get too strong and dominant in Europe, or it would just try to enforce peace too vigorously and provoke German retaliation and bring a war nobody wanted.
So Britain got out of the "crushing Germany" phase pretty quick.
Option 1) fire most of the Russian high command and use the ones that were actually competent. Drop: Edit, was going to make a list, stopped because I found to few competent ones....
Option 2) Mikhail Alekseyev manages to sway the Tsar to remove the worst idiots from his command, axing Aleksei Evert amongst others. Replace him with a competent leader, making a sound push like Brusilov. IT might be enough with a WAllies push
Option 2) Mikhail Alekseyev manages to sway the Tsar to remove the worst idiots from his command, axing Aleksei Evert amongst others. Replace him with a competent leader, making a sound push like Brusilov. IT might be enough with a WAllies push
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
The war didn't end until the signing of the treaty. The terms agreed at Compiegne were for an armistice only, so the Allies or Germany could - on paper - resume the war at any time, which is why the armistice terms were so severe as to effectively prevent Germany from fighting on except under enormous disadvantage.
As we know the fighting didn't continue, and we view peace as starting on 11 November 1918, so the British maintaining the blockade seems inhuman. Having lost more than 1 million dead they didn't want to risk Germany's corpse reviving.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
I don't really care if Britain was objectively harsh or not. My point in bringing it up was to compare US versus British harshness. I mentioned there was a case for Britain being harsher than America and a case for it not being so. This was in reaction to @Help's post which seemed to say the British cared more about crushing Germany and the Entente would impose a harsher peace on Germany without the US moderating their terms somehow.
Just to clarify, I meant the British would be harsher relative to the US. France would the one with the actual vengeance. I agree with raharris though.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
As do I. Lloyd George wanted to appear to the British public as squeezing Germany until the pips squeaked, but realised doing that would unhinge the reparations that France & Belgium claimed, and with some right.
I was explaining the reason why the blockade continued - the war had not ended, and you don't supply your enemy with succour during a truce, do you?
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
So divergences starting with better British performance from 1916? Changes build-up, and the Germans avoid USW, but Germany gets ground down by 1918. In the meantime, Russia's revolted and dropped out from the strain.
How would US politics and attitudes towards the war be effected as a bystander who lost no men and was not "suckered" into the war, but didn't get practice hating Germans and imposing various acts like the Trading with the Enemy Act, reused multiple times during the Great Depression and WWII era?
With a Versailles-like peace, the chances of a revanchist style Germany emerging later are still plausible. How will US attitudes be towards international problems when that happens? Will the US be even more in the comfortable habit of thinking its not their concern, and lack all muscle memory for fighting a first-class opponent overseas? Or will the US attitude toward European disorder returning, be "this time we've got to set it straight, because look what happened when we didn't"? In other words, the isolationist anti-Entente backlash is negated because of non participation in WWI, so getting into a sequel is politically far easier for the US, and also something eastern hemisphere powers - a revanchist Germany, any other revanchist power like a Japan, are less worried about forestalling because they've never seen the US go big in the eastern hemispher.
Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
This is a problem that realistically cannot be solved.
In WWII there are a number of PODs that end with the same result - complete & irredeemable defeat of Germany & Japan, because it was unconditional surrender.
WWI was ultimately not a fight to the death; Germany chose a time when she could not go on any further. So unless it is a completely POD i.e. has almost no effect on the conduct of the war, it would be impossible to create a different set of circumstances leading to the Central Powers being defeated to the same degree with the same level of pain experienced by the Allies, leading to the redrawing of Europe's national boundaries as per Versailles & the other treaties. Removing the US is not such a POD - it moves the goalposts not just to another stadium, but another sport! Wilson's driving ambition of self-determination, often used as a figleaf to strip the Central Powers of territory, is absent.
In WWII there are a number of PODs that end with the same result - complete & irredeemable defeat of Germany & Japan, because it was unconditional surrender.
WWI was ultimately not a fight to the death; Germany chose a time when she could not go on any further. So unless it is a completely POD i.e. has almost no effect on the conduct of the war, it would be impossible to create a different set of circumstances leading to the Central Powers being defeated to the same degree with the same level of pain experienced by the Allies, leading to the redrawing of Europe's national boundaries as per Versailles & the other treaties. Removing the US is not such a POD - it moves the goalposts not just to another stadium, but another sport! Wilson's driving ambition of self-determination, often used as a figleaf to strip the Central Powers of territory, is absent.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
It's a very difficult needle to thread
Yes
I think there is a word missing in this clause
It is admittedly a challenge to calibrate it just so. I wouldn't say impossible.
Here I disagree, for reasons already articulated in post # 4.
Was Wilson the only person of consequence promoting self-determination? No, there were Polish, Czech, and South Slavic national movements.
Did others want to strip the CP of territory? Check- neighboring Entente countries like France, Italy, Serbia, Romania certainly did, would not mind local nationalist movements vicariously stripping away other territories away from the CPs they resented anyway.
Did Wilson singlehandedly bring the idea of Poland back to life? I think it was in the air, and a possibility in a war that Russia and Germany both lose.
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
I wonder if we could have a freak internal cause in Germany, or entry of an alternate combatant, compensate for the lack of US participation to yield a settlement similar to OTL Versailles. To some extent lack of USW would partly offset lack of US entry, but there's still a huge gap that needs to be filled with some other factor, that ends up being a *late*, not early, anti-CP game-changer.
Real big problem as both sides near to collapse before the US troops started to arive.
Without the arrival of 1 million+ US troops (and another 2 million on their way), it's unlikley Germany will see the need to call it quits ... The Russian revolution allowed them to redeploy from East to West and whilst that hasn't let them win, it has stopped them loosing ...
We know from OTL that the Blockade won't stop them fighting until sometime after 1920/21 ....
Even then I can't see anything other than some sort of 'cease fire' as both sides exhausted In exchange for calling off the Blockade, the Germans might agree to return to their 1914 western borders (didn't they already do a deal with the Soviets on their eastern borders ?)
Without the arrival of 1 million+ US troops (and another 2 million on their way), it's unlikley Germany will see the need to call it quits ... The Russian revolution allowed them to redeploy from East to West and whilst that hasn't let them win, it has stopped them loosing ...
We know from OTL that the Blockade won't stop them fighting until sometime after 1920/21 ....
Even then I can't see anything other than some sort of 'cease fire' as both sides exhausted In exchange for calling off the Blockade, the Germans might agree to return to their 1914 western borders (didn't they already do a deal with the Soviets on their eastern borders ?)
raharris1973
Gone Fishin'
Could we use a secondary pod of majorly upping Italian competence and performance in 1917, so it crashes down Austria Hungary about the same time the bolesheviks quit the war?
Thomas1195
Banned
It is very hard, because it would require the French to win the Battle of the Frontiers. Perhaps the lazy POD would be having Joffre himself switching back to Plan XVI.