May I ask why you have choosen the year of 1906 for your POD ?What do you think would happen.
Well, he also had less of his fathers intelligence (though the latter was unable to focus it AND ... keep it focused on a theme for more than a/the moment) and definitly much less of a backbone.If Kaiser Wilhelm II had died in 1906, Crown Prince Wilhelm would have succeeded to the throne. The latter, while poorly supplied with tact, was less of a loose canon than his father. He was also less interested in naval matters.
So, we would have seen less in the way of funding for the German Navy and more for the Army. This would have reduced tensions with Great Britain. It may also have led France and Russia to be a little more circumspect when dealing with Germany while, at the same time, adding more in the way of resources to the build up of their respective armies.
We might also have seen better coordination among the diplomats, senior soldiers, and the senior sailors. There might even have been some sort of formal body for such consultation. This would have improved the quality of German strategy and may even have led to alternatives to the Schlieffen Plan.
If Kaiser Wilhelm II had died in 1906, Crown Prince Wilhelm would have succeeded to the throne. The latter, while poorly supplied with tact, was less of a loose canon than his father. He was also less interested in naval matters.
So, we would have seen less in the way of funding for the German Navy and more for the Army. This would have reduced tensions with Great Britain. It may also have led France and Russia to be a little more circumspect when dealing with Germany while, at the same time, adding more in the way of resources to the build up of their respective armies.
We might also have seen better coordination among the diplomats, senior soldiers, and the senior sailors. There might even have been some sort of formal body for such consultation. This would have improved the quality of German strategy and may even have led to alternatives to the Schlieffen Plan.
As @NoMommsen says, why 1906?
Other than that, your best hope would be Wilhelm III becomes a “ceremonial monarch” and concentrates on his... private life. This, then, allows diplomacy and military affairs to be run by the professionals.
Problem is, by 1906, Germany’s course is fairly well set. You would probably avoid the 2nd Morocco Crisis but the Kaiser’s (Wilhelm II) visit that precipitated the 1st Crisis (Tangier) has already happened. If WIII disavows WII’s actions, that becomes a massive German climb-down. Although clearly the sensible course of action, does there exist the support for such a volte-face in German foreign policy so early in WIII’s reign?
In 1906, the UK was driving tensions by doing things such as threatening to do "Copenhagens" in the press and holding full fleet exercises in the Baltic practicing invading Germany.
Disavowing his WII action is very unlikely. And it not a sensible course of action since the UK is driving more of the tensions than Germany. We have obviously butterflied away OTL WW1, and we may not even have a major war.
I’ve seen this mentioned a few times recently on this board, by no means doubting it by the way, but do you have a source for this? I’ve tried finding a list of the locations of fleet exercises, but so far no luck. I know Royal Navy Fleet planning involved operating in the Baltic, but I’ve not seen anything about exercises in the Baltic. As for the “Copenhagening” of the German Navy, that’s (as you say) in the press, so hardly to be construed as British policy.
Have we? That’s a bold claim. Also an interesting way to analyse the Moroccan Crises as the British driving the tensions.
On part two of your query, it is clearly how the butterflies and the human brain work. I would recommend reading books by Daniel Kahneman and Nassim Taleb. It is a complicated topic on why are brain see patterns where there are not and why our brain removes luck, but these two authors do a good job covering the topic. The only down side to their work is that the topic of assigning casuality and inevitablity where it does not exists is not the main focus of their books, so the material will be spread out over about 15 hours of audiobooks.
War planning and strategic development in the Royal Navy, 1887-1918
Grimes, Shawn
It goes over about 300 pages of British War Plans. If you read the actions of the British, you can clearly see the shift to an anti-Germany policy.