What if the Congo Basin is assigned to Italy and not to Belgium in the Berlin Conference? These are my fast speculations on the topic:
That would butterfly the Ethiopian war, because with the Congolese diamonds there is no motivation for war. The Italian Colonial Empire ITTL owns Congo and Eritrea, maybe have a protectorate over Somalia. The WW1 can be butterflied, as the Balkans instability which led to the Sarajevo murder and to the war was generated from the two Balkan Wars, the First erupted when Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria discovered the weakness of the Ottoman Army from the Italo-Turkish War of 1911. But this war was made for the control of Lybia. ITTL, Italy won't attack the Ottoman Empire for a sandbox when owns the rich Congo, so all this war spiral is butterflied away. If the WWI went as OTL, and Wilson take the 14 points at Versailles, Italy will gain the same OTL territories, with Tripolitania instead of Oltregiuba and Licia, and the Fascism will still rise in Italy. But the 1936 Ethiopian War is butterflied, for the same reason of the 1896 one. So there are no SoN sanctions, Italy remain filo-britannic and a German enemy. In 1939 Mussolini declares war to Germany alongside with France and Great Britain, and invade Germany from the south. Alpins conquer Austrian Alps. The German counterattack is left to reach the border, where Mussolini has continued to build the Vallo Littorio, while the Italian invasion troops tight Germans in a vise, making it a Stalingrad battle in the Alps. Giovanni Messe, the greatest Italian military leader of the 20th Century, is the Chief of Staff of Army and with brilliant strategies manage to invade mainland Germany. France ends the Phoney war and invades the Ruhr, because the French government didn't want to leave Germany to the Italians. Hitler calls for total war and begins the Holocaust in 1940, but with a three-front war (France from west, Italy from south and Poland from east, because the compulsory moving of the army to the Western and Southern fronts left Poland alive and free to counterattack). Berlin is caught from Italian troops. At this point the Allied troops can attack the USSR to defend Poland, or make a peace treaty. In the first scenario USSR will be defeated and there will be a cold war between Europe and Japan (if there is no Pacific war) or between USA and Europe (if there is the Pacific war). In the second scenario we'll have a Cold War between Europe and USSR, with the USA supporting European Allies and the Japan forming a third pole, if the Pacific war is avoided. I can't make previsions over decolonization, maybe there are more Commonwealth-like actions from Italy, France, Spain and Portugal.
What do you think about this POD?