DBWI: Another Great War?

[Morraw]

For the majority of the 19th and 20th centuries, rulers in the European empires had an almost neurotic fear of a pan-European conflict breaking out once again; a 'world war' in the same vein as the Great War¹, and other conflicts in the Early Modern period. Whilst there have been some apparent close calls - the Crimean, Franco-Prussian, Alpine, and Mediterranean Wars being examples - no conflict has exploded to continental proportions since 1815.

My question is: how could you get another war in the same vein as the Great War to break out? There are many reasons why another major conflict hasn't developed in over two hundred years (interconnected economies, interconnected royal families, European cooperation in the undeveloped world, etc.), I don't believe these have always been enough to prevent another pan-European conflict.

So, what PODs are available to have a 'Second Great War' break out in Europe post-1815?

Note 1 - The 'Great War' is a historical term used ITTL to describe the OTL French Wars of 1792-1815.

 

[Questerr]

Well I mean, you could always have Europeans powers do something as stupid as mindlessly adhering to entangling defensive alliances even when it isn’t really in their interest to do so or when one side in a conflict is actually an aggressor.

I don’t know why European leaders would do something like that, but I guess weirder things have happened.

 

[Arcavia]

In many ways, the Treaty of Utrecht signed in 1893 under Bismarck's guidance was among his lasting legacies, and formalized the system of conflict de-escalation that is still the basis of the modern one. However, according to a lot of sources, the Kaiser very nearly dismissed Bismarck in 1890--perhaps if he had been dismissed, it would allow one of the crises to heat up into a pan-European war?

 

[Morraw]

Well I mean, you could always have Europeans powers do something as stupid as mindlessly adhering to entangling defensive alliances even when it isn’t really in their interest to do so or when one side in a conflict is actually an aggressor.

I don’t know why European leaders would do something like that, but I guess weirder things have happened.

How would you get them to 'mindlessly adhere' to the Turn of the Century alliance system though? The Great Powers of the day were never really concerned with them, and they amounted to nothing more than bluster in the end. If you somehow get them to put great importance into these really loose 'alliances', you'd get nothing more than an earlier form of MAD; as you said, if the Great Powers could see a massive war on the horizon, what leader would be willing to kill thousands of their citizens and wreck their economies? They probably wouldn't.

I think what you'd need is a war in which sides are drawn 'accidentally' where individual powers are brought in one-by-one (much like the Great War); if the Europeans saw such a massive war on the horizon, they'd have the systems in place to prevent it from growing (à la what happened in the Alpine War).

 

[Tehshudge]

A general war of that nature was impossible ever since the mid-to-late 19th Century. A Second Great War would result in literal millions of casualties, and would cause socio-political upheaval so violent that you even the victorious nations would be faced with the specter of revolution. Imagine the 1950's French Revolution playing out across all of Europe at once (I'm pretty sure there are a few ASB timelines that do this).

Not to mention that the costs of such a war would be so massive that even if you were to win without any social strife (a fairy tale), it still wouldn't be worth the cost.

 

[Questerr]

How would you get them to 'mindlessly adhere' to the Turn of the Century alliance system though?

Really, I was just throwing something at the wall to see if it might stick. I mean the early 20th century alliance system was insane. Republican France allied with autocratic Russia? You'd swear that is ASB if you couldn't read about it in any history book.

 

[West]

There was an obscure group called the black hand that wanted to assassinate archduke Ferdinand, they were easily caught in the planning stages after a few of them were killed by their own bomb during the bomb making process. That could have caused things to spiral out of control.

But then again maybe it wouldn't, the Colionial powers France, Germany, Britian, ect spent the 1800s getting their empires and the 1900s consolidating their empires none of them wanted to blow it all on some daft conflict.

 

[Pera]

Totally ASB. Norman Angell proved in 1909 in his book The Great Illusion that the economist cost of war was so great that no nation could hope that the gains wouls outweigh the costs.This has been a common opinion for over a century.

International cooperation has brought so much, like the joint Danubian-Ottoman mission to Saturn last year or the Moscow-Berlin-Paris hyperloop.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

Totally ASB. Norman Angell proved in 1909 in his book The Great Illusion that the economist cost of war was so great that no nation could hope that the gains wouls outweigh the costs.This has been a common opinion for over a century.

International cooperation has brought so much, like the joint Danubian-Ottoman mission to Saturn last year or the Moscow-Berlin-Paris hyperloop.

You just hit a big point here though: the Habsburgs and the Ottomans. Both were victims of the general "Eastern European Slump" of the mid-1800's, when the traditional balance of economic power in Europe went lopsided as the Western half industrialized faster. Russia, Turkey, and Austria all had their periods of Instability there and could have started sliding into terminal collapse if they bungled the Josphist/Tanzimat/Post-Crimean Reforms, and if any of those lynchpins collapse before the others you have a giant power vacume in the heart of Europe...

Not pretty. A war could easily break out

 

[karatachi]

Perhaps not in Europe but could it have started in Americas or Asia?

 

[CountDVB]

One close call was over in Southern Europe due to Serbian anarchists and rebels. Some thought the Russian tsar would step in to help them out when Austria-Hungary went to cause trouble, but they decided it wasn't their business and even backed up Bulgaria to serve as a Southern Slavic united sort of state.

The Ottoman Empire nearly went under, but then it put down the insurrections by the House of Saud thanks to the House of Rashid. Then the so-called sick old man of Europe discovered oil in the Mashriq and Arabia and quickly became prominent once more. They and Bulgaria (due to the Romanian oil fields) became prominent power players

 

[terranova210486]

If Germany became some economically bankrupt that they needed a war to rebuild their lost fortunes, then that could happen. But luckily it didn't and the German Empire is now one of the most stable and progressive nations in the world, much like Japan.

 

[CountDVB]

If Germany became some economically bankrupt that they needed a war to rebuild their lost fortunes, then that could happen. But luckily it didn't and the German Empire is now one of the most stable and progressive nations in the world, much like Japan.

Yeah though Mittelafrika got by pure luck thanks to a governor who successfully convince the various people of the German Kongo to unite like Germany did.

 

[terranova210486]

Totally ASB. Norman Angell proved in 1909 in his book The Great Illusion that the economist cost of war was so great that no nation could hope that the gains wouls outweigh the costs.This has been a common opinion for over a century.

International cooperation has brought so much, like the joint Danubian-Ottoman mission to Saturn last year or the Moscow-Berlin-Paris hyperloop.

Or the joint Moonbase established by the US and China.

 

[terranova210486]

What would pop culture be like if another Great War broke out?

 

[TheReformer]

Any modern 'great war' so you speak of would probably be over quite quickly. The arms race that has existed for most of the last two centuries between the great powers to develop new and more technologically advanced weapons would mean it would be short, brutal and fought in every theatre - air, land and sea. You might even get a war start in September and be over by Christmas. Anything more drawn out would be immensely expensive on logistics though as the army would need to develop new means of transporting potentially thousands to millions of shells, bullets and men to frontlines. Though the relative speed of armoured/mechanized warfare seen in some more recent conflicts would be decisive in making war a speedy operation. One more interesting area may be you'd likely get a much more super-power based world rather than the relative division of power between several major regional powers that we have today. One power, propelled by the economic growth of a great war, may come out 'on top' so to speak making it a global hyperpower able to project influence anywhere. Either way, i'd expect a much less peaceful world than we have today.

(OOC from a warfare perspective this would have enormous ramifications. Nuclear weapons would be non existent to start with as the Military would never have the incentive or political backing to develop them. Simple doctrines of modern war like rapid logistics would be highly undeveloped and if a big war did break out, much like in the first world war irl, countries would literally run out of ammunition and shells in a matter of weeks even if they had enormous reserves. The most interesting schism though is no war in the world would be able to be decisive or gamechanging in this world as in order to maintain such a fragile and paranoid peace you would need a highly bipolar world of many superpowers that project peace through strength, any war that did happen would have to be so small or short and undamaging that there would be no major shift in power. For example, the Germans would never have been able to form a state under this scenario as doing so would unbalance the European balance of power to such a degree that there would be a major war of some form eventually, if just out of fear by the Russians, French etc that they would become too powerful and dominate the continent. Essentially you'd need a world in which nobody fears another nation is becoming too strong and therefore would build coalitions to contain them. Funnily enough the economic situ of this world would also probably be weaker and there would likely be a lot more monarchies. Either way i expect everyone in this world to be convinced that wars would be short and bloody due to a paranoia about the human cost of conflict and the certain arms race between the great powers that would still be ongoing to oppose one another enough to not encourage war due to weakness.)

 

[Tales Weaver]

One close call was over in Southern Europe due to Serbian anarchists and rebels. Some thought the Russian tsar would step in to help them out when Austria-Hungary went to cause trouble, but they decided it wasn't their business and even backed up Bulgaria to serve as a Southern Slavic united sort of state.

The Ottoman Empire nearly went under, but then it put down the insurrections by the House of Saud thanks to the House of Rashid. Then the so-called sick old man of Europe discovered oil in the Mashriq and Arabia and quickly became prominent once more. They and Bulgaria (due to the Romanian oil fields) became prominent power players

Another close call was over japan and China in 1930s. When the Japan tried to take control of Manchuria, ROC Nationalist government was barely talk the EoJ out of it.

 

[TheReformer]

SNIP

(OOC: Even more interestingly, this situation would likely mean the state in the modern era is smaller and less powerful. The world wars pushed states towards more statist models and largely were the cause for a major and all encompassing welfare state in many countries, the need for better logistics and better trained officers for example resulted in the establishment of many mathematical colleges etc to train engineers for conflict and even Income tax (which was sold as a temporary measure in most countries) to fund the ever expanding cost of war).

 

[MusuMankata]

What would pop culture be like if another Great War broke out?

I imagine we wouldn't see all that many books glorifying war and conquest, for one. After all, it's difficult to keep a position past the point it's proven wrong, right?

Another thing that would probably change is the "cool" language of pop culture: perhaps there won't be all these many English speakers around the world, and I can't imagine how would the cultural juggernaut that is Vietnam would even develop, given how its existence was reliant on being a sleepy little French protectorate that developed at breakneck speed inthe Fifties and tried to export it's culture elsewhere.

 

[Cryhavoc101]

Or the joint Moonbase established by the US and China.

An amazing enterprise given the USA being a relative latecomer to 'Space Exploration'