ATL "A Different Wilhelm II"

Sir Chaos

Banned
Small problem. Most of the colonies had already been acquired before Wilhelm II ascended the throne. The only gains during his reign were -

Caprivi Strip 1890
Kiaochow (Tsingtao) 1897
Caroline Is, Mariana Is, Samoa 1899
Two small parts of French Equatorial Africa 1911

All the others were acquired under Wilhelm I, in 1884/5. By the time Heinrich ascends the throne, it's too late do do mcuh more than fiddle with a boundary here and there.

At the very least he can trade away a colony which causes too much friction for something else.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
He did IOTL. Zanzibar and Witu for Heligoland and the Caprivi Strip.

Ha! I knew it! Ain´t I a genius? :D

More seriously: Well, I guess than that it could work more or less as I proposed.


Now, let´s continue with the timeline.

Starting in late 1921, Austria-Hungary goes through a period of messy ethnic conflict, with open unrest, terrorism, reprisals by army units against real or suspected partisans, reprisals by partisans against real or suspected collaborators with the government, and so on.
By 1924, the Emperor [Franz Ferdinand I, survivor of Sarajevo, who ascended to the throne in 1917 after the death of Franz Josef I], tired of the conflict, and sensing that his remaining loyal subjects are tired of it as well, partially dissolves the nation of Austria-Hungary; only Austria and Hungary themselves remain under his rule. The other former parts of the Empire gain independence as small nations, some of whom immediately clash with one another over territorial disputes, or old or new grievances; the general sentiment in Austria-Hungary is that it is so relaxing to be rid of them.


China, on the other hand, does not get away that easily. From 1922 on, the country is wracked by a bitter civil war fought among, most of the time, at least six different factions.
The strongest single rebel faction is that of the Communists, who are backed by their comrades in the new Soviet Union.
Among the other rebel factions, the one led by Sun Yat-sen is eventually the most successful, although they suffer several setbacks. The major turning point for them is in 1925, when Britain and Germany begin to support them with money and military equipment (particularly tanks and aircraft) [Tanks are still a new and rather unproven technology at this time; they were used for the first time during the Russian Civil War, where they were successful against lightly-armed Communist infantry on the open plains, but already showed their vulnerability in urban combat; airplanes have so far mostly been used as scouts and observers (the Russian Communists had very few aircraft, so no dedicated fighter evolved), but the Chinese Civil War will spur aircraft development much like World War I did in the OTL].
Pretty much from the start, the Imperial Chinese government is aided by Japan. This aid is coated in much noble-sounding rhetoric about "assisting another legitimate government against the depredations of bandits and terrorists" and such, but it quickly becomes clear that Japan aims to make China its puppet.

On February 20th, 1926, something happens that will have great consequences for naval warfare in times to come. A jury-rigged biplane torpedo bomber flying from a Communist airbase attacks and hits the former flagship of the IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy), the now obsolete pre-dreadnaught Mikasa which had been conducting a shore bombardment near Shanghai. The damage to the ship is severe enough to force it to retire, and ultimately leads to it being scrapped due to its being too old and outdated to be worth repairing, but the more important result is the injury to the IJN´s pride. Having a battleship, even an obsolete one, put out of action by a flimsy and jury-rigged aircraft leads them to rethink their position on the utility of aircraft, and ultimately become the leading power with regards to the use of aerial torpedoes. Other nations also shift their doctrine towards naval aviation and away from a solely battleship-based navy, but none to quite as large a degree as the IJN.

The Chinese Civil War, meanwhile, ends in 1929, more through total exhaustion as from any other cause, and leads to China being partitioned among three powers.
The Nationalists, under the not wholly uncontested leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen´s successor, control the Southwest of China, including the port city of Guangzhou, and Hainan. Their capital is Guangzhou.
What is left of the Chinese Empire, now a Japanese puppet state, retains the Northeast of China, minus the port city of Qingdao, which it "generously ceded to the Empire of Japan in return for their assistance against the rebels" (read: which Japan seized because they wanted to, and the Chinese could not stop them) [Qingdao/Tsingtao was never a German colony in this ATL]; their capital remains in Beijing.
The communists control the rest of the country, from the coastline opposite Formosa [which has been controlled by Japan since 1895, as in the OTL] to the Northwest, where it shares a border with the Eastern part of the Soviet Union, giving the two Communist nations a contiguous land area reaching from the Black Sea to the South China Sea.

Needless to say, this situation is not particularly stable, since all three sides (plus Japan) intend to gain control of the other factions´ territory as soon as they have recovered from the first civil war.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
Following the Chinese Civil War, the US and Japan drift apart politically. Japan´s turning the remnant of the Chinese Empire into a puppet state, coupled with reports about Japanese atrocities against Chinese civilians (rebel or suspected of such, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time) turn public opinion in the US against Japan, leading to all ties of alliance between the US and Japan being resolved in the late 1920s and early 1930s.


While the civil war in China winds down, the Communists have been busy elsewhere; although they never had much success persuading the masses in most of Europe, their propaganda and promises of Communist utopia (not to mention independence from the Imperialists) fell on more fertile ground in many colonies, especially in South-East Asia - not that the people in these regions needed Communists to tell them that independence would be a nice thing to have.
As a consequence, during the late 1920s and most of the 1930s, unrest in many flavours spreads throughout much of Asia and Africa, by far not all of it caused by the Communists.
Due in part to a growing and perhaps irrational fear of Communism, neither the various colonies´ European masters (and the US in case of the Phillipines) nor those independence movements not backed by the Soviet Union were too keen on letting the Communists get any kind of influence in the various colonies; besides, the examples of Russia and China were fresh in their mind, showing what a prolonged and bloody civil war can do to a country.

(to be continued)
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
By 1935, the major colonial powers have come to realize that holding on to full power in their colonies would require a long and bloody war against the rebels - which is not an acceptable option, with the example of the Russian and Chinese civil wars not so long in the past.
The obvious alternative, letting go of the colonies, is no less unacceptable, not the least because that would mean that some of these colonies would fall to Communist rebels.

To avoid either protracted, costly wars or Communist power-grabs, the colonial powers, after some consultation with one another, cut deals with various indigenous rebel groups hostile to the Communists, granting the former colonies self-government and enough autonomy to make whatever separates the countries from true independence no longer worth keeping up an open revolt. [This arrangement is roughly similar to that of the British Dominions in the OTL]
Among the former colonies that have thus been transformed to almost independent nations are Algeria and Egypt in the Mediterranean region, Togo, Kongo, Lüderitzland [Namibia, retaining its ATL German name] and South Africa in Sub-Saharan Africa, Madagascar, Kenya, India and Ceylon in the Indian Ocean region, and Indonesia, the Malay Republic [Malaysia], Viet Nam [including OTL Laos and Cambodia, at least for the time being] and the Phillipines in Southeast Asia. Australia and New Zealand, although they had never revolted, are granted the same status, on the principle that good behavior should not be punished by withholding Dominion status.


I also noticed that I forgot to mention something. The Ottoman Empire also more or less desintegrated, with a degree of messiness somewhere in between Austria-Hungary and China, during the 1920; it is still an Empire, not a Republic as in the OTL, but consists of little more than OTL Turkey´s territory and a monstrous bruised ego, with the accompanying revenge fantasies.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
By 1936, the rifts between Germany and Britain have grown deeper than ever before. Germany, especially the aristocracy, resent Britain´s relative indifference to Communism [Britain has never been repressive or stratified enough to let Communism get serious traction, unlike Germany], while Britain, especially the upper classes, resent Germany´s relative indifference to the independence movements in the colonies [Germany has never wedded as closely to the concept of being a colonial power as Britain]. Finally, in July 1936, Britain dissolves its various alliances with Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary and goes separate ways.

In the late 1920s and early to mid-1930s, many of Europes monarches died, and the respective thrones passed to their successors.
In Germany, Emperor Heinrich dies in 1931, and is succeeded by his [fictional] son Friedrich Wilhelm II. FW2 is a naval and aviation (and technology in general) enthusiast like his father, but does not quite have either his knack for diplomacy or his foresight and patience for longer-term planning, although he manages to be very popular with the nobility and the more educated commoners.
In Austria, Franz Ferdinand I dies in 1934; his [fictional] son Maximilian [NOT his historical son of this name, who does not exist in this TL, and who was never eligible to succession], who succeeds him, is very much a military man, with dreams of restoring the lost glory (not to mention lost territory) of the Empire.
In Russia, Tsar Nicholas II dies in 1929, leaving the throne to his son Alexei, who [as in the OTL] is a hemophiliac and suffers from poor health most of his life. Having developed a close friendship with the then Crown Prince of Germany, Friedrich Wilhelm, who was married to his older sister Tatiana, Alexei defers to Friedrich Wilhelm in most things, even when they are both rulers, and over time, Russia develops into a de facto German puppet regime, a development which is to bring great grief both to Russia in general and to the Romanovs in particular later.
In England, meanwhile, George V dies in 1936 [as in the OTL]; his successor is Edward VIII, who in this TL never met Wallis Simpson, and marries the daughter of an old English noble family instead.
In Japan, the Taisho Emperor dies in 1926 and is followed by his son, Hirohito.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
Before I continue the timeline, a couple of general comments... metahistorical, you might say.

With a more capable German Emperor, no Great War, no Great Depression, and now no Hitler and no Third Reich, even though the Russian and Chinese civil wars ended up bloodier than in the OTL, I suppose my timeline would at first seem quite optimistic - perhaps too optimistic.

Well, it isn´t, really. Sure, we got a bit of a breather, narrowly skirted a couple of ugly disasters, but something big like World War I (or the Nazi party and the Third Reich) doesn´t just pop up out of nowhere. Most of the grievances, real and imagined, are still there. What brought down the various empires, in Germany, Russia and China, is pretty much inherent in the system, and no mere reform can that.
This timeline has avoided most of the triggers for what caused the disasters of the first half of the OTL´s 20th century, at least so far, but has done little to adress the root causes. This can´t go on indefinitely, especially since the ruling classes (certainly the current rulers in Germany, Austria and Russia) fail to realize that there is any root cause at all, being too invested in the belief that the way things are (with them on top and the peasants at the bottom) is the way things are meant to be - the Divine Right of Kings is dead, but not that dead.

So, barring divine intervention (and this is not an Alien Space Bat timeline), things are going to come to a head, and probably sooner rather than later. And it is not going to be pretty...
 
But don't such seeds of revolt and revolution exist just about everywhere? It is "events, dear boy, events", which decide whether they get to sprout.

Field Marshall Haig, or hearing of the Kaiser's abdication, noted in his diary "No doubt had we lost, our king would have had to go". The rulers of Russia, Germany and A/H weren't overthrown for having old-fashioned attitudes, but because they had led their countries to disaster.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
But don't such seeds of revolt and revolution exist just about everywhere? It is "events, dear boy, events", which decide whether they get to sprout.

Field Marshall Haig, or hearing of the Kaiser's abdication, noted in his diary "No doubt had we lost, our king would have had to go". The rulers of Russia, Germany and A/H weren't overthrown for having old-fashioned attitudes, but because they had led their countries to disaster.

Not quite. I think it depends on how serious the grievances are that exist in a society. In a nation which is not so far removed from a medieval feudal state, as Russia was in 1917 OTL (and still is in my TL), there is so much resentment that it doesn´t take much for it to catch fire and burn the whole place down, to put it figuratively.

If for example the US suffered a defeat as severe as Russia (or Germany) did in WW1, I doubt the changes in their society would be as drastic. I suppose the president might be impeached, and his career and that of everyone in his government would most certainly be over; his party would be out of power for decades, and perhaps would go down and in due time be replaced by another one. But the general order of society would stay the same.

You´re certainly right that the Kaiser and the Tsar had to go because they led their country to disaster. But they did that because they, on their own, had the power to do so, and nobody else (in their countries) had the power to dissuade them.

"Events, dear boy, events" is true, to a degree, but you have to keep in mind that, in a sense, the Russian society, for example, was a single ongoing catastrophic event as well. "Only" losing a war will never hit a nation as hard as losing a war on top of having a horrible governmental and social structure.
 
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