Challenge: France and Germany on the same side in a World War

  • Thread starter Deleted member 67076
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Deleted member 67076

Whenever there's a world war in Europe, France and Germany will always fight each other. Your challenge is to fix that.

No POD limit, although Charlemagne must split his empire and France and Germany must develop.:rolleyes:
 
Elsass-Lothringen is given to Prussia (or another German power, or independence) at the Congress of Vienna, and geopolitical circumstances over the course of the 19th Century bring the newly-united Germany (containing an Alsace not taken from France in a recent war) and France together in alliance.
 
Only way I see it is if Germany does not annex Alsace after the Franco-Prussian war. This butterflies away revanchism and the strained Franco-German relationship that pervaded the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th. Then again, German and French interests would still be pretty hard to align. Maybe things would go a little better if the count of Chambord accepted the flag compromise and France became a monarchy again?
 
There needs to be a serious common threat. Perhaps a surviving Weimar Germany that manages to become a successful democratic state. Then sometime in the late 1940s perhaps the Soviets push westward so you have Communism vs. Capitalism which may will see Germany and France co-operate. Through in a communist Spain and Italy (not too hard) or even a commie UK (harder) and you're golden.

Of course this would be a WW2 scenario
 
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That is also acceptable
Okay, then CP victory in WWI has agood chance to get this. France would be likely be weakened too much to oppose the Germans, so they'd be stuck as dependent as AH. Then the Soviets slowly rebuild, they're still massive while the British and Americans grow closer (Japan might join in on the fun). Thus the US and Britain + the Soviets vs. the CP, probably a dispute over colonies or something. Lots of air war, with similar fighting to our WWII, but without the genociding and a weak France supporting the Germans from the start. (Also Japan might be ally.)
 
Major difficulty: the question implies an united, or reunited Germany and in OTL 19th C. Germany was largely reunited *against* France: the German 'national' sentiment was rooted in the memories of the Napoleonic wars, re Schenkendorf's Wenn alle untreu werden &c., for the Prussians 1870 was the revenge of Iena. So 'no Franco-Prussian War' seems a little too late. Anglophobia was still strong in France, revived by the colonial competition, but because of the family ties between Queen Victoria and the Kaiser an anti-British Franco-German alliance is less likely than the opposite.

Slightly earlier? Suppose Napoleon calmed down after his wedding with Marie-Louise and get rid of Spain by offering the crown to come back to a (minor) Habsburg. No disastrous Russian campaign, a long-lasting empire with the half-Austrian 'Eaglet' succeeding his father, Prussia a minor state. Could Germany unify around Austria, despite this last being tangled in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnical political entity? But the key factor is the attitude of Great-Britain: Napoleon's adventurous wars aimed at enforcing the Continental Blocus in order to compel Great Britain to leave Continental Europe alone, while the British policy was to 'divide to rule'.

Something along this lines could be set some 50 years earlier, had the French diplomacy realized sooner than the 'German threat' was no longer the Habsburgs but Prussia, and France not entered the War of Austrian Succession -or fought on the Austrian side as in the SYW. Louis XV's son rather than great-son could have married an Austrian princess.
(Btw how do you define a 'WW'? Some argue that the War of Austrian Succession was the 1st WW; but since Germany was not unified yet, the WAS is anyway irrelevant here).

The earliest relevant POD would have Louis the Pious with only two surviving sons, no Middle Frankish Kingdom, the Alps and the Rhine set as natural border between the Roman-speaking Western Franks and the Old High German-speaking Eastern Franks with the Pope's blessing.
 
Depending on your definition of "World War" and that thechnically for "on the same side" co-belligerency instead of outright alliance also counts, the Transatlantic War in "A Shift in Priorities" would fit the bill.
 
Could there be a plebiscite or something over Alsace-Lorraine? That could cause the two to burry the hatchet, or at least not be at each others throats.

Also, I agree there'd need to be a major threat to both sides,
 

drakle

Banned
I think Beer has a timeline where the Uk piss offs Germany in the german danish war and gives up part of Canada. later on France and germany versus Belgium, Britain and some one else.
 
Could some sort of England- Austria alliance do this, maybe with an Austro-wank to boot?

Or England-Austria-Russia vs France- Prussia/Germany-Ottomans?
 
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