tenthring
Banned
A while back I remember being surprised at just how much land Germany acquired upon the Russian's agreeing to the Brest-Litovsk. Germany almost doubled its size and A-H did the same. This was also prime crop land and an enormous population gain to boot. Yes, those newly acquired subjects might well be a tad... restive... under the Kaiser's rule but they'd also be vastly better off than they were under the Tsar's tender mercies.
The scenario I envisioned was Germany's offering terms to the Entente in the Spring of 1918. They did so in OTL but the terms weren't smart enough and the offensives eventually petered out such that the Entente had no compelling reason to accept them. The POD here would be more generous terms and/or more success of those offensives which culminated in a peace that was too good to say no to for the Entente.
I don't think that would've taken much on Germany's part. The B-L treaty just got Germany a huge boon and largely obviated its need for overseas holdings or commerce to enrich itself. That land gained also "validated" the whole point of the Kaiser's taking the nation to war and would justly be seen as proof of victory. To make that peace offer more palatable - and much harder to resist - the Germans would offer up Alsace-Lorraine back to France. Gaining that territory was one of the key goals for the French in the war. And the offer of finally getting it back would knock the wind out of those in France who'd argue for continued fighting.
I think such a move - particularly if the proposal was made before the Spring Offensives had started and thus their threat couldn't be disproved by any battlefield failures - would be compelling indeed. With the sacred soil of Alsace-Lorraine once again part of France the rational to continue the war simply wouldn't be there for the French. With Germany offering to end the slaughter before it got any worse, there'd be less rationale for the UK to remain in the fight as well. Also, no reparations. So, no brutal peace with tribute being exacted from the downtrodden.
No, such an agreement would NOT be in the Entente's long term interest as it would leave Imperial Germany the dominant power on the Continent and that would surely make for hell to pay later on. But, that "later on" would be off in the far, far distance and hard to discern amongst the charnel house that was the battlefields of western Europe. Popular sentiment to "end the war now" would be pretty overwhelming within the Entente. And if that stuck, then Europe - and the world - would be a very different place.
With that peace agreed to, a truce more actually, there'd be no long term success of Communism in Russia. Germany's focus would be eastward. For one, it's newly acquired territory is to the east. For another, it would have no desire to risk renewing conflict with either France or Britain by trying to further encroach into their existing imperial holdings. Also, the militarists clearly recognized the pestilence they'd loosed in Russia in their efforts to knock it out of the war and they clearly intended to set that right. So, they'd be gunning to overthrow and destroy the Bolshevik regime in Russia once they'd secured the peace with the Entente in the west. Again, they'd likely either ally themselves with the Whites against the Red's threat or orchestrate their "being invited" to deal with those Communists. Either way, Communism in Russia would not be long for this Earth once World War I had ended. That alone is worth twenty to forty million lives spared directly. And counting the genocidal frenzy of the Communist regimes the Soviets spawned, that's at least 100,000,000 in total otherwise spared.
On the western end, there would be immediate hell to pay for the various powers that be in the Entente. Yes, they'd just achieved an end to the war and they'd even pried loose that sacred soil of Alsace-Lorraine. There's no way the peoples of the UK and France could view that as having been worth the six million or so who died in the war. And they'd take that out on the politicians and political parties that got them involved in it to start with. So there'd be huge changes within the body politic of the UK and France. And Italy too.
But, life would go on. At war's end both Britain and France would still have their respective empires. And in this ATL there'd be no revolutionary ideology in power in a sovereign nation state to spread its toxins against them. The imperialist and colonialist systems would have remained intact. Germany's colonial ambitions would've been blunted and its focus for the next decade - at the least - would be entirely eastward. First, to assimilate its new found territory and then to deal with the vermin it had loosed in Russia. So Germany could afford the luxury of ignoring the Great Game while it sorted all that out. Britain and France would be occupied with recovering from the war and tending to their empires. The US would most likely sour on any further foreign interventions and look quite dimly on trying to get rich again via war material sales to Britain or France.
I think for the 1920s that would mean a much "calmer" and more "introspective" time in Europe and that would continue into the 1930s. There'd be neither the mass murdering absolutist ideology of Communism threatening the world's order from the east nor would there be the mass murdering absolutist ideology of National Socialism being in power in Europe either. Sure, there'd be militants and extremists and fanatics in every country but in this ATL, I just can't see any of them coming to power sufficiently to implement their fanaticism to the same degree as they did in OTL.
If I'm the Entente all I need to do is drag on peace negotiations until the Americans arrive. That is a matter of months. I don't think there are enough trust on either side at that point for such a complex deal.