Challenge: US With Central Powers

Okay, WOW, before you go running saying this is ASB, this could be done, it just needs a POD before WW1, like Germany and the US have better relations for some reason.

Otherwise, challenge COMMENCE!
 
Okay, WOW, before you go running saying this is ASB, this could be done, it just needs a POD before WW1, like Germany and the US have better relations for some reason.

Otherwise, challenge COMMENCE!

Some sort of major falling-out between Great Britain and the USA is all you really need, with the rest of history proceeding as usual. The USA probably won't do much other than invade Canada and the British and French Caribbean, run guns to Irish republicans, and try to convoy stuff to Germany. I'm not sure almost any international incident would get them to do this. More likely they would just stay neutral and sell stuff to both sides....
 
Some sort of major falling-out between Great Britain and the USA is all you really need, with the rest of history proceeding as usual. The USA probably won't do much other than invade Canada and the British and French Caribbean, run guns to Irish republicans, and try to convoy stuff to Germany. I'm not sure almost any international incident would get them to do this. More likely they would just stay neutral and sell stuff to both sides....

Ah, I see.
 
Just thought of this. If there is socialist (more likely Syndicalist) revolution in France and/or Britain before the war, you may have the USA ally with Germany to stop these revolutionaries. Just a thought, probably ASB
 
Just thought of this. If there is socialist (more likely Syndicalist) revolution in France and/or Britain before the war, you may have the USA ally with Germany to stop these revolutionaries. Just a thought, probably ASB

Extremely ASB, even by Kaissreich standards, which isn't exactly known as the pinnacle of historical accuracy. Well, okay, not without PODs so early as to probably butterfly WW1 as we know it entirely.
 
The problem with the Central powers is that they were far more autocratic than the Entente, which is not something that favors American alliance.
 
Didn't we come close to opening up to the Central Powers OTL?

I could swear it's been mentioned here multiple times that Wilson was getting increasingly pissed off with the British Blockade, and came within a hair's breadth of setting out to end it by force. If only because the Entente wasn't really in a position to purchase more aid, through loans or otherwise. (So that the US was actually at the point they wanted to trade something fierce with the Germans.)

But before things reached that tipping point, Germany decided to resume Unrestricted Submarine Warfare . . . And foolishly sent the Zimmerman Telegram.

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Really, it seems like all you'd really need to do to get a situation that's probably as close to a CP America as you're going to get . . . Is have Germany decide not to get submarine crazy again, and definitely have them decide against any foolish telegrams to Mexico.
 
Didn't we come close to opening up to the Central Powers OTL?

I could swear it's been mentioned here multiple times that Wilson was getting increasingly pissed off with the British Blockade, and came within a hair's breadth of setting out to end it by force. If only because the Entente wasn't really in a position to purchase more aid, through loans or otherwise. (So that the US was actually at the point they wanted to trade something fierce with the Germans.)

But before things reached that tipping point, Germany decided to resume Unrestricted Submarine Warfare . . . And foolishly sent the Zimmerman Telegram.

-------------

Really, it seems like all you'd really need to do to get a situation that's probably as close to a CP America as you're going to get . . . Is have Germany decide not to get submarine crazy again, and definitely have them decide against any foolish telegrams to Mexico.

hmmm....and then have the British sinking a U.S. convoy bound for germany.....:eek::eek::eek:
 

BlondieBC

Banned
If you have an actual pro-German USA president, that could be enough, even though i have not likely candidates.

Early in WW1, it would be very hard to have the USA with the Central Powers. Later in the war, if Germany does not ever do unrestricted submarine warfare and not shoot ships like the Lusitania, then maybe the British Blockade might eventually drive the USA to the CP. But, it took til 1812 for the USA to get angry enough about British Policy during the Napoleonic Wars. So this one is hard to achieve.

It helps a lot to have some Entente outrage that sells newspapers. The USS Maine lead to war with Spain largely due to Hearst and other newspaper men. There are no likely outrages, but war has strange events such as a German cruiser being capture by the Russian Navy and the code books is not destroyed and the Germans don't change the codes after having a ship captured.

Types of Outrages that might help:

1) British Warship fires on US Warship by mistake.
2) USS Warship explodes in British Harbor.
3) British send back diplomatic reply to Wilson that Wilson sees as insulting.
4) Some outrage on the Western Front that the papers can run with, such as maybe a British Artillery Unit shelling something historic by mistake. The New York Times spends a lot of time talking about one Cathedral in Rheims that the German shelled.
5) UK invades Denmark as shortcut to get to Germany.
6) Japan is felt to be threatening the Philippines. So a bombastic, nationalistic Japanese leader would help a lot.

It was a slow process of the USA going to war with the Entente, and many items contributed, so it is likely a bunch of little things that would cause it to go the other way.

US complaints with Entente:

1) Blockade cause USA to lose business.
2) Poles not Free.



US complaints with Germany.

1) Submarine warfare.
2) Poles not free.
3) Belgium Invaded.
4) Lusitania.
5) Damage to Rheims Cathedral, other historical buildings in France.
6) Wilson found the German diplomatic replies insulting, but not the British ones. Reading them a 100 years later, it appears to be much ado about nothing, but if Wilson felt slighted, it is huge.

If there are more complaints against the Entente than the CP, then it could go the other way. Germany PR is real bad, I am reading the New York Times on WW1, and from the paper alone, one would think Germany was burning Polish towns, when it was really more the retreating Russians. Also, in Galicia, the New York Times says that Russian wartime martial law is more just than AH peacetime administration.
 
Probably one of the two Venezuela Crisis go hot. That's all it takes really.
The U.S. would likely lose or stalemate, and would take Canada and the Entente Carribean.

Also, Wilson was an extreme Anglophile. He was de facto pro-Entente for a long time.
 

Tsao

Banned
I vaguely remember reading a TL that has the US go to war with Britain over the Venezuela Crisis...........

Can't remember it's name though. :(
 

mowque

Banned
I vaguely remember reading a TL that has the US go to war with Britain over the Venezuela Crisis...........

Can't remember it's name though. :(

Two of them, one being mine although I am working on it and not posting right now. Mine goes the reverse since Germany and the UK were together in 1902.
 
This happens in my Up With the Star ATL but it happens because the British wind up fearing the rising military might of Russia due to its military reforms more than the Germans and Idiot Nicky beats Idiot Billy to the menacing naval race, geopolitical logic be damned, sweepstakes. And as it is this Central Powers faces a very different WWI alliance and wins the war in two years due to the cumulative logistical-industrial advantages they have over the Allies. However this whole thing alters both the war, its alliance system, its outcome, and the propaganda leading up to it.

Any scenario with a WWI like we'd recognize creates a circle impossible to square for the Germans in this regard. No US politicians will choose Germany over the UK.
 
This happens in my Up With the Star ATL but it happens because the British wind up fearing the rising military might of Russia due to its military reforms more than the Germans and Idiot Nicky beats Idiot Billy to the menacing naval race, geopolitical logic be damned, sweepstakes. And as it is this Central Powers faces a very different WWI alliance and wins the war in two years due to the cumulative logistical-industrial advantages they have over the Allies. However this whole thing alters both the war, its alliance system, its outcome, and the propaganda leading up to it.

Any scenario with a WWI like we'd recognize creates a circle impossible to square for the Germans in this regard. No US politicians will choose Germany over the UK.

Unless the UK couldn't pay its debts. Seriously though, best hope for Central Powers in WW1 is just to let the Entente run out of money.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
... Seriously though, best hope for Central Powers in WW1 is just to let the Entente run out of money.

Yep, And the Central Powers need to figure out how to feeds its people. There are posters on this board who basically see the CP having won the war by December 1916, then only to throw the victory away by engaging in unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmerman Telegram. I have been reading a lot of online source material on this subject, and i am slowly moving towards this viewpoint. My main holdup is can AH survive internally and does Germany or France have the internal revolution first.

The minimum credible POD for the USA entering the war on Germany's side is for Germany not to use subs on neutral ships and passenger ships carry many neutrals, and some other POD of German brilliance or UK stupidity. The minimum POD for the USA being neutral is no unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 or 1918 and no Zimmerman. Even without Zimmerman, the USA was going to break diplomatic relations with over the submarines, and once this happens, some event triggering the USA intervention is likely.

If you go back in time and have a POD (1910 or before), the world is so changed that the Great War will not look like our WW2, and the history of the 20th century is butterflied away.

Very near the war, there could be something that made the USA hostile to the UK that would not totally butterfly away the war, but one event this extreme is likely to be viewed as ASB by most. Most people will see a 1913 border clash between Canada and USA or USS naval ship shot at by HMS ship as implausible. Something like dispute over China trading rights would take years to happen, and as other have stated, something like a hot dispute over Venezuela would change world history. The USA was a bigger country than Germany and could afford a huge army. If the USA felt humiliated in Latin America, i can easily see a 500K active army with 3.5 million in reserve. Even half this number would present massive strategic challenges to the UK and would be enough to be respected by the Prussians.
 

Deleted member 1487

The easiest way is if the Germans avoid their diplomatic blunders of 1917. No unrestricted subs and no Zimmermann note (though without the subs there is no note) means the US will confront the British on the blockade, which could turn into a shooting war. The US won't be a Central Power, but it will be an associated power fighting an independent struggle that just happens to aid Germany. Wilson will see it as saving Europe from communist revolutions and societal collapse.
 
Germany's biggest weakness during world war one was their diplomacy, create a competant diplomatic core that understands that germany needs allies or at the very least fewer foes and a alliance with the US might be possible if the british really screw up.
 
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