DBWI: If Plan H was never implemented

As we all know, during WW1 several leading members of the Swiss General Staff such as Karl Egli and Friedrich Moritz von Wattenwyl share confidential information regarding the Entente's war efforts to the Central Powers intelligence agencies.

France eventually caught wind of this, but instead of notifying the Swiss government they decided to use this as a casus belli to implement Plan H - invading northern Switzerland to bypass the German's defense and from there invade Germany itself.

planh1.jpg


This single act change the entire war and the entire world for years to come. So, what do you think would have happened if Plan H was never implemented; what would the world look like?
 
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The Battle of Olten was one of tthe turning points of the war. The French advance was stopped and then reversed by the Swiss Army. The French losses in January and February of 1916 enabled the German to break the Fortress of Verdun. That ended the war. If the French forces used against the Swiss could have used to hold Verdun, that would have prolonged the war at least a few months - maybe years. This would have broken the Central powers ability fight as the blockade was cutting imports which led to increasing supply problems. So the french just gave their ultimate victory away for nothing.
 
I still wondered why on Earth did the Italians decided to assist the French and suiciding into the one of the most impossible-to-attack border at the time.
As if the Austrians weren't enough already.
 
So, WI the French had won the battle of Oten decisively (never mind how)? Would they really have been able to turn the German flank before reserves countered their maneuver?
 
So, WI the French had won the battle of Oten decisively (never mind how)? Would they really have been able to turn the German flank before reserves countered their maneuver?

Assuming they won, there's still a long and painful way to go until they can cross the Swiss-Germany border itself.
Even then, I doubt anything they do will save Verdun.
 
I wonder how Ireland would be affected. At the Treaty of Amsterdam, Britain was forced to give independence to Ireland. Unfortunately, the Protestants of Ulster didn't take too kindly to being ruled by "servants of Rome", leading to decades of violence.
 
Had the British government been a little less chaotic and distracted in this months the plan for separating four to six Protestant counties may have been followed.
 

Asami

Banned
Based on what the Ministry of People's Foreign Affairs released in the early 1980s about the Entente's war goal intentions on Germany, I could see a lot of problems following the war if Germany loses. They wanted to enforce heavy reparations for the losses in the war and of the 1870 conflict, in addition to Elsass and Lothringen being repatriated to France. Lots of bad things would've followed, probably.

Otherwise, maybe Europe wouldn't still be part of the Mitteleuropa system. Not that Germany hasn't been a fair steward towards them to some degree.

Also, maybe the US would've intervened on the Entente's side instead of joining the Central Powers after that small debacle with the Lusitania and the Royal Navy in mid-1915...

I certainly wouldn't have my house on the St. Lawrence in up-state Roosevelt if France hadn't invaded Switzerland. The Republicans certainly seemed eager to settle loyal Americans in what-was-once Quebec after the war...
 
Had the British government been a little less chaotic and distracted in this months the plan for separating four to six Protestant counties may have been followed.
The people of Ulster had already voted to remain with Britain in a plebiscite. Had the Irish government respected their will, we wouldn't have had 70+ years of intermittent civil war.
I certainly wouldn't have my house on the St. Lawrence in up-state Roosevelt if France hadn't invaded Switzerland.
Is having space for vacation homes worth all the lives the US Army spent trying to pacify Canada? IIRC, the last of the former provinces, Alberta, didn't join the Union until 1995.
 
Plan H was doomed to fail anyway because the Swiss Army used its height advantage from its gun positions in the Swiss Alps to pin down and eventually turn back the French Army, which was totally untrained to fight mountain warfare. The French suffered so heavily that they literally didn't have enough troops to defend the fortresses at Verdun, and once Verdun was overrun the German Army advanced so fast they was firing shells into the northeastern quadrant of Paris with their short-range cannon at the time France capitulated! Indeed, the current Gare-du-Nord rail station in northern Paris is a Bauhaus-style structure because the original structure was pretty much flattened by all the German cannon shells impacting on the original structure.
 

Asami

Banned
Is having space for vacation homes worth all the lives the US Army spent trying to pacify Canada? IIRC, the last of the former provinces, Alberta, didn't join the Union until 1995.

Of course not. We gained some luxuries but there's reasons why there's still violence in Ottawa and Mount Royal; but it's slowly ebbing away... lots of younger people up here don't identify as Canadian these days.
 
Maybe the UK would not have tried Gallipoli as their last chance to win the War and get fucking murder and forever ruin relations with Australia and New Zealand.

So no Republic of Australia for one.
 
Indeed, Great Britain spent much of 20th century as a pariah after the crumbling of their empire in the 20s and 30s. The discovery of the Thatcher affair-in which London was found to be sending covert aid to the Holy Ulster Republican Army-in the 1980s was the low point. To think that so many innocent Irish citizens were murdered with British arms.:mad:
 
Had the British government been a little less chaotic and distracted in this months the plan for separating four to six Protestant counties may have been followed.
Even without the UVF assassinating Prince Joachim that plan was never going to be implemented as the German military (especially Admiral von Tirpitz) were insistent on controlling the entire island of Ireland as a base and using the shipyards of Belfast to build ships for the Hochseeflotte.

That said without the assassination Germany might have leaned on Ireland to take a lighter approach and grant more liberties to the Ulster-Scots, which might have prevented the conflict from becoming as bad as it eventually became.
 
Even without the UVF assassinating Prince Joachim that plan was never going to be implemented as the German military (especially Admiral von Tirpitz) were insistent on controlling the entire island of Ireland as a base and using the shipyards of Belfast to build ships for the Hochseeflotte.
Yeah, there was a lot of resentment from both the Protestants and Catholics, the latter feeling that Ireland had traded a British yoke for a German one.
 
OOC: Did the French actually have a plan to invade Switzerland and if so can I find sources for that please?

Here it is

Along with others you can find if you do a quick google search.
I can't find a detailed source anywhere in English though, most of them are Germans. And the content are disputed, some say it's in case Switzerland was invaded by Germany ala Belgium, some say it's to outright invade Switzerland.
 

FBKampfer

Banned
Well, if we're assuming the Entente wins (either ASB'ing Plan H, or if they somehow beat back the American-supplied German onslaught if Russia capitulates in 1917 as in OTL, as well as the 9(I think?) divisions of the AEF), I think one of the more interesting butterflies might actually be US policy in the cold war.

Think about it, OTL, Germany provided a big damn counter-weight to the Soviets, especially after they gobbled up a decent chunk of the Balkans and Greece went communist in '47. A weakened Germany might not have been able to put her foot down on the Poland incident, and the USSR might have gone all the way up to the German border.

Without a European counterweight, the US-Soviet proxy wars might have been much more severe if the US felt its back was being put up against a wall.
 

Asami

Banned
Well, if we're assuming the Entente wins (either ASB'ing Plan H, or if they somehow beat back the American-supplied German onslaught if Russia capitulates in 1917 as in OTL, as well as the 9(I think?) divisions of the AEF), I think one of the more interesting butterflies might actually be US policy in the cold war.

Well, I'm assuming that if Plan H hadn't of gone through, Britain wouldn't have felt the need to... force the United States into the war as the Germans were beating them back; hence no fake 'Grey-Zimmermann Telegram', and the sinking of the Lusitania is probably averted. It was all that President Roosevelt needed to go gonzo into the war against the Entente.

Think about it, OTL, Germany provided a big damn counter-weight to the Soviets, especially after they gobbled up a decent chunk of the Balkans and Greece went communist in '47. A weakened Germany might not have been able to put her foot down on the Poland incident, and the USSR might have gone all the way up to the German border.

If Germany had lost World War I, I think we could be looking a Red Europe--or at the very least, Red Europe up to the Rhine, with the West Bank being occupied by the French and probably Belgians, maybe?

Without a European counterweight, the US-Soviet proxy wars might have been much more severe if the US felt its back was being put up against a wall.

Well, we saw examples of that in the Yellow River Crisis, and in the Turkish Straits Crisis. The US was not willing to concede an inch to the Soviets--this would be a similar process if the circumstances had differed. Hell, would Lenin (and there-after Trotsky) have even won if the Central Powers hadn't?
 
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