POD:
1918: Ludendorff correctly accesses his Allies to be fragile. Wants no offensives from them in 1918, just asks for 4 good Austrian divisions for the southern part of the western front. These 4 Austrian divisions frees up 3 German divisions, two German division for the Balkans, one for the front and one in reserve, 1 German division is left in Italy as a reserve. The Allies are just to bar the door in the South while the Germans win in the west.
The western front goes as OTL, German attacks, Allied counter attacks, 100 days. etc.
With German divisions handy the Balkan front holds in 1918, Without an Austrian June 1918 attack and the Balkan front happening the Italians remain passive. The Turks are crushed as OTL, losing Syria and Iraq but are still in.
November 1918: No desperate fleet order happens, no revolution happens, the German army retreats to the German border, shortens up its line. The Allies are content to build up overwhelming strength over the Winter, German attempts at an armistice are rebuffed (only terms offered are as harsh as OTL), The Allies launch a May 1st 1919 offensive on all fronts, with loads of tanks, planes, strategic bombers. Austrian, Bulgarian and Turkish morale is awful, German morale is weak. After two weeks of hard fighting the Allies are largely racing ahead unopposed.
At sea, the mine barriers have become so effective by March 1919 losses are high, on May 20th a couple of u-boats refuse to sail, when ordered to sink the mutinous u-boats the rest of the German fleet munities too. Communist revolution sweeps Germany hard and fast. Chaos reigns, the Kaiser is arrested. No traditional German government is around to make an armistice and the Allies don't want to deal with groups of communists.
On the other fronts, the Austrians make an armistice May 18th but collapse into the various entities sort of like OTL 1918, Bulgaria and Turkey make surrender armistices like OTL.
Lettow-Vorbeck's force diminishes across Zambia and is trapped and surrenders trying to reach and destroy the Katanga copper mines in the Belgian Congo late January 1919.
So what happens now:
Do the Allies occupy all of Germany and put things in order?
Do the British land at German ports to seize and secure the German warships?
What is the reaction of the German civilians to the Allied occupation (the Allies try to the best of their abilities to feed people)
How far do they go, would the French or Americans send a division or two into Warsaw to help the Poles as a blockade against the communists?
How would this ending effect a Versailles treaty?
What are the effects of a continuing German occupation in Russia and the Caucasus through May 1919?.
A large American army has been committed, larger and there longer than OTL, with more losses and really won the war for the Allies. What are the political effects?
In this time line the German submarine force was utterly defeated and the Allied air force reigned supreme, attacking strategic targets deep in Germany, and ravaging the retreating Germans, Allied light tanks reigned ahead almost as cavalry crushing the retreating enemy, what are the effects on post war weapons development?
What sort of German government would appear postwar?
Is militarism destroyed in Germany forever (kind of like after WW2)?
What happens to the Kaiser in the hand of communist militants as the Allies close in on Berlin?
What are the effects of a longer war on the pandemic?
1918: Ludendorff correctly accesses his Allies to be fragile. Wants no offensives from them in 1918, just asks for 4 good Austrian divisions for the southern part of the western front. These 4 Austrian divisions frees up 3 German divisions, two German division for the Balkans, one for the front and one in reserve, 1 German division is left in Italy as a reserve. The Allies are just to bar the door in the South while the Germans win in the west.
The western front goes as OTL, German attacks, Allied counter attacks, 100 days. etc.
With German divisions handy the Balkan front holds in 1918, Without an Austrian June 1918 attack and the Balkan front happening the Italians remain passive. The Turks are crushed as OTL, losing Syria and Iraq but are still in.
November 1918: No desperate fleet order happens, no revolution happens, the German army retreats to the German border, shortens up its line. The Allies are content to build up overwhelming strength over the Winter, German attempts at an armistice are rebuffed (only terms offered are as harsh as OTL), The Allies launch a May 1st 1919 offensive on all fronts, with loads of tanks, planes, strategic bombers. Austrian, Bulgarian and Turkish morale is awful, German morale is weak. After two weeks of hard fighting the Allies are largely racing ahead unopposed.
At sea, the mine barriers have become so effective by March 1919 losses are high, on May 20th a couple of u-boats refuse to sail, when ordered to sink the mutinous u-boats the rest of the German fleet munities too. Communist revolution sweeps Germany hard and fast. Chaos reigns, the Kaiser is arrested. No traditional German government is around to make an armistice and the Allies don't want to deal with groups of communists.
On the other fronts, the Austrians make an armistice May 18th but collapse into the various entities sort of like OTL 1918, Bulgaria and Turkey make surrender armistices like OTL.
Lettow-Vorbeck's force diminishes across Zambia and is trapped and surrenders trying to reach and destroy the Katanga copper mines in the Belgian Congo late January 1919.
So what happens now:
Do the Allies occupy all of Germany and put things in order?
Do the British land at German ports to seize and secure the German warships?
What is the reaction of the German civilians to the Allied occupation (the Allies try to the best of their abilities to feed people)
How far do they go, would the French or Americans send a division or two into Warsaw to help the Poles as a blockade against the communists?
How would this ending effect a Versailles treaty?
What are the effects of a continuing German occupation in Russia and the Caucasus through May 1919?.
A large American army has been committed, larger and there longer than OTL, with more losses and really won the war for the Allies. What are the political effects?
In this time line the German submarine force was utterly defeated and the Allied air force reigned supreme, attacking strategic targets deep in Germany, and ravaging the retreating Germans, Allied light tanks reigned ahead almost as cavalry crushing the retreating enemy, what are the effects on post war weapons development?
What sort of German government would appear postwar?
Is militarism destroyed in Germany forever (kind of like after WW2)?
What happens to the Kaiser in the hand of communist militants as the Allies close in on Berlin?
What are the effects of a longer war on the pandemic?