So, I was reading about the First Weltkrieg awhile back, and I got to thinking... what if the Entente won? Of course, you probably think this is an unrealistic scenario, but it's actually more likely than you'd think.

The Germans had this military plan (called the Schlieffen Plan, after the guy that came up with it), which probably would've been disastrous if they'd actually implemented it. Since I'm assuming, this being a rather obscure* military plan that was never really enacted, I'm going to tell you about it so you don't have to look it up on Weltnetzlexikon. The plan was to get around the heavily fortified French border by invading through Belgium instead. This may seem like a very good idea at first: the French border was a meatgrinder for the German troops, after all, but Belgium had one key ally: Britain. Although Britain did eventually join France in resisting the German invasion, the Schlieffen Plan would've caused them to join the war much earlier, while Russia was still involved, which probably would've spelled disaster for the Germans. Fortunately, the German high command realized at the last minute how stupid the Schlieffen plan was, and scrapped it, but they were very, very close to enacting it and quite possibly dooming themselves to defeat in the process.

Of course, even with the Schlieffen Plan enacted, the German Empire would probably still have a 50/50 chance of winning, assuming the Russian Revolution still happened, but the only other way I saw that Germany might realistically have lost was if the United States (the USA, not the UAHS. I'm an American, and we call our country the United States, too)*** somehow got involved in the war, but they were crazy isolationist back then and rarely ever got involved in national politics until the Second Weltkrieg, so that's unlikely.

Anyways, kinda got off topic there, but still... what if the Entente had won? What would a French (and maybe British or Russian) victory look like? Would Austria-Hungary still become the United Austro-Hungarian States without a strong German military to help keep the peace while the complex issue of reordering a horribly inefficient, problematic, and authoritarian system into a more reasonable and democratic one, or would Austria-Hungary descend into turmoil? Would Rock music have had an easier time of becoming popular in a more socially liberal environment (I mean, I know we've all seen that viral video of the Kaiser jamming out to some awesome heavy metal, but Rock wasn't nearly as well received when it first came out)? Do you think they would've had a conflict similar to the Second Weltkrieg? What other ways would this world be different?

OOC * I'm pretty sure most of you guys know what the Schlieffen Plan was. This was just an excuse for exposition on how the Central Powers won TTL.
** Weltnetzlexikon is the TTL's equivalent of Wikipedia. The Internet is called the Weltnetz, which is German for World Network. The English term is sometimes used, but not nearly as often.
*** TTL the United Austro-Hungarian States is also called the United States. It's confusing.
 
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I think we can safely agree that there would be no Mitteleuropa. I mean IF USA would join the war, it would propably went until total capitulation of Reich. It is very propably that there would be much more countries in Eastern Europe (Poland, Czechoslovakia, like 3 baltic states). There is no way that UAHS would survive without strong Germany
 
For the Schlieffen Plan to be enacted, Germany would have to have seen Russia as a greater threat than France. So, let's assume the Germans still held the Russians as a greater threat, which was a fear in Germany at the time. It's also important to note that Moltke the Younger (who was in charge of the movement) was adamant that discontinuing the Plan would cause so much chaos that it wasn't recommended. If he got his way, then we'd definitely see British intervention into the war earlier. This also pulls another aspect into the war: navy. The Germans and Britons very well could have formed an arms race in their navies, for a final fight for superiority in Europe; now, let's assume a second thing: let's presume that unrestricted below-ocean attacks were common around British seaways. Now, imagine if American merchant vessels get caught in the crossfire between Germany and Britain. This might force President Wilson into action to declare war on Germany. If they do this early enough, we could definitely see a world where America helps out the world greatly in the First Weltkrieg, and perhaps even see America begin to establish a hegemony over the world, much like Germany did IOTL.
 
These threads written from within an alternate historical perspective are always a head trip. Stop confusing me, damnit!

EDIT: So that's what DBWI refers to, eh?
 
These threads written from within an alternate historical perspective are always a head trip. Stop confusing me, damnit!

EDIT: So that's what DBWI refers to, eh?
Double-Blind What-If, pretty much meaning what you described.
 
With all these things it really depends on how the Central Powers lose.

Do the Germans over-extend themselves in France in 1914 and get some of their armies destroyed while the Russians march into Berlin? I'm assuming this plan involved removing the OTL German armies facing Russia and sending them into Belgium. I don't know how it could have been implemented otherwise.

Or do we have the Germans falling short of defeating France but somehow keeping their army intact and holding some French and Belgium territory, and the war settles into a stalemate that I guess is resolved only if the USA somehow enters on the Entente side (why would they do this?). This is a much longer war and maybe other countries that stayed out IOTL also enter it?

Or are we wanking Russia? I thought they underperformed somewhat.

Each of these events have a different set of consequences.
 
OOC: If Britain stays out, or is involved but barely, this war would not be callled anything like the "World War". That was what the Germans called it when Britain declared war on them because of the worldwide nature of the British empire. It would be called something different. And it is not the "First" since presumably there is no "Second."
 
OOC: If Britain stays out, or is involved but barely, this war would not be called anything like the "World War". That was what the Germans called it when Britain declared war on them because of the worldwide nature of the British empire. It would be called something different. And it is not the "First" since presumably there is no "Second."

(OOC: Not necessarily. There could very well have been a 2nd WW and a reason to call it "World War" that's not historical. In fact...)

Or are we wanking Russia? I thought they underperformed somewhat.

.

You don't need to wank Czarist Russia in order to give her a solid chance at overwhelming Germany and the Habsburg Empire; its hard to imagine a worse military-geopolitical set-up for fighting a modern war than the one Russia ended up with IOTL. First off, if Britain was involved than, under the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan would at the very least have been forced to pursue her opportunistic push into northern Manchuria and submit the Crisis of the Khanate to international mediation out of respect for the "The Ally of my friend is at least not my enemy" principal. This alone would have reduced the Asiatic theater of the war from the whack-a-mole defense/raids on the Trans-Siberian railway, complex dance of Chinese Warlord proxy-fights, and major naval clashes that tied down so many resources from the Russian interior (Which would have otherwise been brought to bare on their Western/the German Eastern front) to the seizure of a few hopelessly isolated German outposts by the French and British, if not the Nipponese themselves. I know folks in Europe tend to forget this, since it had little to do with the broader politics and ultimately resulted in very little territory shifting hands (Nor did it have much reporting... we diden't see books that could give more than a curisary glimpse into the chaos until DECADES later, it took so long to compile the sources) , but the Chinese Theater ended up being the bloodiest anywhere, with over twice the dead as any of the European fronts and uncountably more wounded.

Britain's naval presence and diplomatic-economic pull would have also likely kept the Ottomans out of the war, which would have had the duel effect of preventing the Caucasian and Central Asian Kalifenkampf insurgency and kept the Bosporus Straits open to commerical traffic. That alone would have extended the endurance of southern Russia's logistical and commercial infrastructure for several years, easily allowing them to grind down the Habsburg troops. As it was, they struggled to simply get sufficent rations and rifle ammunition to their numerically large conscript forces spread across her various frontiers, which not only lead to the crushing 30% desertion rates as early as 1915 and skyrocketing attrition in the mountains and steppes, but in several cases was directly responsible for the surrender of whole divisions and entire cities rising in bread riots. If you had the Royal Navy aiming its guns at Konstantinye, though (This was before it was renamed Islambol) and even the Three Pashas woulden't dare take such drastic action. Afghanistan, too might never have joined the conflict... though I imagine the butterflies are minimal here.

Even just eliminating these two major resource-sinks is enough to allow Russia to bring her natural advantage in manpower to bare.
 
OOC: If Britain stays out, or is involved but barely, this war would not be callled anything like the "World War". That was what the Germans called it when Britain declared war on them because of the worldwide nature of the British empire. It would be called something different. And it is not the "First" since presumably there is no "Second."

OOC: I said that Britain eventually got involved, but after the Russian revolution. I also made several references to a Second Weltkrieg. I don't have anything particular in mind, but it probably involves the French, and I made a reference to the Americans being involved somehow.
 
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