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POD: During the Battle of Verdun Falkenhayn sticks to attrition, rather than trying to take the salient's outlying fortresses. The French Army mutiny happens sooner, Falkenhayn's allies among the Empire's political class do not commit to unrestrained submarine warfare and when the Tzarist empire collapses the result lacks an offensive on the Western Front, rather a more active role in the Russian Civil War and other theaters, with the effects being seen on the Greek and Italian fronts.

Yet Attrition is transforming society, the defensive warfare with no prospect of overall victory spurs the development of international socialism on a far greater scale than in our timeline. The Spanish Flu of 1918, combined with socialist revolts in Italy and Hungary, prompt a localized truce which soon spreads to include all incumbents. The truces and agreements are sealed by the Treaty of Geneva (Also known as the treaty of Nations), in which the powers agree to a ten-year truce with a subsequent treaty. Across Europe, coalitions of Monarchists, Centrists, Liberals and moderate socialists are formed to resist the growing power of the Internationalist left, as the British Empire and United States seek to isolate themselves from the alarming rise of Socialism in their respective spheres of interest. The arrangement holds, for a time.

The Wall Street Crash reinvigorates the radical socialists, who capitalize on the widespread poverty and become the largest party in several prominent European countries. In Germany, the crumbling National Coalition seeks to tame the International Socialists by accepting them into power, yet within a year the mechanisms of government are at the whims of the untamed radicals. In Italy, Benito Mussolini blends Nationalism and Socialism and ties himself to the German and Russian socialist states: Together, they form the Axis, and commit themselves to promoting socialism worldwide, beginning with the Spanish Civil War and all three sending considerable expeditionary forces to the conflict, the French commitment and international volunteers falling short of winning the war. Within Britain Winston Churchill and Conservative grandees call for re-armament, yet while their calls are not heeded, Britain expands the RAF and Navy, Guaranteeing the nations of Europe opposed to the Axis.

Europe prepared for war. In a series of conferences the Axis were determined to wear down their opponents through asymmetrical means, then strike on all fronts and prevent a coordinated counter-attack. The Soviets signed a non-aggression pact with the Siberian Republic, setting several frontier issues after a significant victory in 1939, while stirring up socialist revolts in Ukraine, the Cossack State and Belarus. Socialist Germany slowly picked apart the successor states of its' old ally Austria-Hungary, annexing Austria, supporting a Socialist Hungary into the Axis and moving into the Sudetenland. When the French government backed its' guarantee of Bohemia and a column of Bohemian soldiers were ambushed en-route to a frontier fort, the Second World War was about to begin.


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