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This timeline is a revised version of the similar one I posted last year, which was called "A Different Wilhelm II".


Prelude

This timeline has two significant PODs, which are independent from each other.

The first, less significant one is that the Confederates win the Battle of Gettysburg - or possibly that what was the Gettysburg Campaign in OTL went a much more different way which ended in a Confederate success. As a result, the British recognize the CSA and support them with weapons, supplies, bases for commerce raiders and so on, but not with direct military intervention. The CSA still loses, but the war drags on into late ´66, about 18 months longer than in OTL.
Butterflies from this cause Lincoln to survives the assassination attempt and is around to steer the post-war Reconstruction on much more amiable terms than in OTL, so that North-South rivalries, while they still exist, are less pronounced than in OTL.
The main consequence, beside anti-British sentiment (at least in the North), is the realization in the USA than isolationism does not mean that others will let you stay isolated; in the following decades, isolationist sentiment is not nearly as strong, and foreign intervention comes much more easily to US administrations, although still not as easily as to many European governments.

The second, more important POD is that Prince Wilhelm (later Emperor Wilhelm II in OTL) dies of diphteria in 1879 (instead of, in OTL, his younger brother). The second son of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, Prince Heinrich, becomes his successor and takes the throne after Friedrich Wilhelm´s death in 1888.

Unlike Wilhelm, Heinrich listens to Bismarck, and later to Bismarck´s successor X (I have not made up my mind who this is; perhaps I will invent someone); Bismarck´s policies live on after his resignation in ´94, although they are not a complete success. There is no confrontational naval buildup that antagonizes Britain; the Germany High Seas Fleet never exceeds about 15-20% of the size of the Royal Navy (Heinrich, a naval officer before he became emperor, sees the fleet as his pet project, but he has personally guaranteed Queen Victoria (who is his grandmother, if I am not mistaken) that he will maintain a non-threatening force ratio in ocean-going warships). Colonization is scaled down, and Heinrich trades Zanzibar to Britain in return for Heligoland.
In European foreign policy, Heinrich´s Germany tries to drive a wedge between Britain and France (or rather, increase the wedge already driven there), and try to act as peacemaker in disputes between Britain and Russia. Another party in driving in aforementioned wedge are several successive US administrations who strengthen ties with France, in memory of France´s assistance in the Revolutionary War, and as a means of annoying and obstructing Britain.
In the Far East, the period following the Meiji Reforms sees diplomatic ties created between Germany and Japan; Prussian military advisors help train the Imperial Japanese Army and create its organization, doctrine, tactics etc, and German naval yards build several warships for Japan over the years (much later, the first two Kongo-class ships will be German-built rather than British-built as in OTL).
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