Alternate Kaiserschlacht?

Geon

Donor
I used a lot of the work done here for my ongoing TL which you might find interesting.

As to your points, I agree that avoiding a Versailles-like treaty is important. You might have some trouble with recovering Germany's African colonies as well. Interesting points in general, although I do think you are writing off the AH Empire a bit quickly.

As to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, I'll admit my studies here have not been extensive, but the more I see the more I am convinced that the Empire was already rotting from within and unable to fight a modern war. You would have needed some POD much further back in time to save the Austro-Hungarian Empire where it is technologically and militarily able to fight a modern war. It seems Austria-Hungary started to lose the war the moment they declared war on Serbia.
 
As to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, I'll admit my studies here have not been extensive, but the more I see the more I am convinced that the Empire was already rotting from within and unable to fight a modern war. You would have needed some POD much further back in time to save the Austro-Hungarian Empire where it is technologically and militarily able to fight a modern war. It seems Austria-Hungary started to lose the war the moment they declared war on Serbia.

Austria-Hungary actually proved surprisingly resilient (much the same can be said of any of the powers during WWI tbh) and only really fell apart during 1918. You are right, in that a PoD would need to occur further back for A-H to have a chance, but arguably by 1917 the only true threat came from Italy, which was itself nearly shattered near the end of that year. Yes, the Balkan front could have grown into a threat but was largely bottled up behind very defensible positions while the Russians were collapsing into civil war by early 1918 as well. By that point, the Austro-Hungarians weren't actually facing any opposition outside of Italy. The onus for A-H collapse can be put down largely to the failure of Germany's Spring Offensives (which took the morale out of all CP forces, having been viewed as the last great hope of victory), the major resource shortages of late 1917 and early 1918 and the concerted propaganda campaign conducted by the allies to bolster ethno-nationalist sentiments, which up until early 1917 had largely been dormant and only really rose to prominence in 1918.

People have a tendency to put A-H, the Ottomans and Russia in the grave, but my reading seems to suggest that in 1914 most of these states were actually pretty stable. It took several years of horrific warfare, famine, sickness and failure to reach the point of collapse for these states.
 
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