Do you mean at all, or that the offensive in the west still occurs but is better executed in some details?

If you want no changes at all there is still a lot of unrealised opportunity for the Navy in Flanders from late 1914 onwards, histories of both the Dover Patrol and MarineKorps Flandern agree on this point. Coast defense battleships and destroyers could have made the Dover narrows a real war zone for little opportunity cost for the German. In contrast countering this threat would impose significant impacts on British war efforts, either to accept the risk and losses or limit some other activities to provide resources to defeat the stronger than OTL German naval forces

In perfecting the Schlieffen Plan I feel I am just stepping in the same path that began just as soon as the General Staff needed a scapegoat for its failures. You and a few others have tread that ground, in part I want to take the other road, the Western Front is at least generally known, the East is a virtual black hole beyond these pages. In moving East I simply use the existing doctrine and plan for the Battle of the Frontiers, hold 2nd and 3rd Army in reserve, rely on the counter-offensive, absorb the French and then break them, hopefully capturing the men rather than letting them slip away before the conquest of dirt. But if I were staying West then your treatment of Flanders is informative of what more could be done. In fact I keep it back of mind for just how much more poorly placed the Germans are having moved East, the HSF is that much further from the war.
 
This was my own thinking with the EDC. It started really in 1962, in a fascist British Republic in decline, glaring at a fairly united and complacent European Federation; I wanted a reasonably plausible way of getting there. While there are aliens, time travellers and mad scientists they're not responsible for everything. Humans can screw thing up quite well enough on their own..


I could see Britain and France declaring war against Sweden but not doing much. However the ability to stop trade with Russia will be important.


Agreed, I'm the last person to dismiss authorial fiat...
In my own case I wanted and needed a Franco-German rapprochement by the 1930s to lay the foundations for later years.


Given the relative strengths of offense and defense with 1914 technology I think this is reasonable. French élan and offensive doctrine won't help them either.

We certainly need to allow for real people to act as badly as they did, they might learn but still need the lessons to change.

I do not see much more than deeper sanctions against Sweden, and that just cements them to Germany, played smart they try to ignore Sweden and lure them back from alliance with Germany. It certainly puts Russia in a bind and opens a wound within the Entente, at some point Russia might realize they are being used to beat Germany.

Ultimately everything is narrative, I chose to steer away from dystopian choices, faced with forks in the road the author needs to choose, we have no science in changing history. In my own drafting I wanted to let things parallel OTL, I keep the Franco-German rift moving forward with bouts of rapprochement, Britain kinda sorta appeases Germany, attention is on Russia and Asia, the USA is important but mostly a hands off actor, lurking off stage more than it should, the 1930s are dominated by economic shifts, that sets up a frosty fractured world with stunted trade.

We could discuss the actual war at length, but generally the French must attack, and if Germany can fortify its lines that will be costly, it took both sides several years to perfect the tactics to break those lines, here I am putting the war's climax just at that moment or a little before, thus the war still ends under the cloud of hopelessly stalemated. France is in many ways ruined by the war despite not being occupied. I think that gives us the same cautious and defensive France, maybe with more obvious angst.
 
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