How does Europe evolve if France and Germany switch roles?

JJohnson

Banned
Let's say that Germany in the latter 19th century gets Kaiser Heinrich I rather than Wilhelm II (he doesn't survive birth, gets born a girl, or whatever). This Kaiser nurtures closer relations to the British government, doesn't antagonize them with naval build-ups and there is no Moroccan Crisis I and II. This Germany sides with the UK after the Russo-Japanese War, which finds France siding with Russia. Kaiser Henry also takes Victoria, instead of Irene as a wife, avoiding haemophilia in the German royal family. Also, Boulangerism takes hold as a widespread movement in France after 1871 and well into the 20th century.

For the sake of argument, let's say that WW1 sparks almost exactly like OTL, but it's France and Russia vs. Germany and the UK and the other allies, with the US joining late in the game to help out near the end. How do you see this version of WW1 going? Who sides with whom? How would the peace settlement work out for France if they get blamed for the whole thing? Do we see a later revanchist war if France gets an analogous Versailles Treaty placed upon them? How does Europe shake out here map-wise?

And fast-forward to 2012, how do you see Germany today? What kind of country is it? Its royal family? How does Europe look in this version of reality? Poland? France? What kind of foreign relations do France and Germany have with the UK and USA? And what about French and German-Americans? How do you see them in 2012?
 
As Xgentis said, also, there is no way that France and Russia will get dragged into a war against UK, Germany, AH and the OE if they are all allied. Politicians are not that stupid. And Germany won't want to help Germany. It won't be hostile, but they will never be friendly with the continental hegemon (you know, the country that beat France and AH, that had a large population and industry).

That's the biggest problem german wankers can't see : a powerful germany can't be allied with the UK, as it threatened UK Hegemony. And also, why the german don't do any naval build-up ?
 
I get the strangest deja vu I've seen that exact post before...Spooky.


The UK will stay neutral if Princip kills the Archduke. See while some people will claim that the Great War was 'inevitable' because Europe at the time was a militarised tinderbox just waiting to burst into a conflagration, the point is a tinderbox will only burn with the right spark out of several.

If you break the alliance blocks up, or alter them in principle, preceding WWI then instead of having a 'Great War' you end up with simple national wars that are far less likely to go on for quite as long and with such a cost of life.

Indeed, that makes the 'for sake of argument' line of thought null and void, since because you've broken the way the alliances were set up, the your highly unlikely to get the Great War with a different orientation of Great Powers.

It is better to start with the point of divergence, and then work out the perturbations, rather than try and start with a scenario and work backwards. Furthermore it is dangerous to work with pivot points in history like the murder of the Archduke because that in itself was not a 'trend in the making' that was an individual single act...in much the same way 9/11 was a single act. Without any prior knowledge you would have had no reason to suspect that the assassination was going to happen then, and with such results (debatable to some ¬.¬).

Hence my suggestion is that history would be altered such that we cannot say anything definitive about what the world would have been like should your course of events come to pass in an AH. It departs too much from OTL to be analysed as a perturbation, and instead better belongs in the world of fiction.
 
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