My timeline features an alternate Great War which is pretty similar to our own but with some very big differences in the alliance systems. The Central Powers in this timeline are known as "the Bund" so it is the Bund vs. the Entente. The Bund is composed of Germany, Austro-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, Italy and Sweden while the Entente is composed of France, Britain, Russia accompanied by the "Little Entente" of Belgium, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Montenegro as well as Japan in the Far East while China remains neutral. Belgium is occupied by Germany and also Montenegro and Albania are quickly occupied by Austro-Hungary and Italy at one point in the war.
Bulgaria joining the Entente is wholly implausible. For one thing they aligned their policy with the Ottomans: they joined the war after them and, had they stayed neutral, would have stayed neutral. For another thing, Bulgaria is packed to the gunwals with revolutionary terrorists from the IMARO advocating revenge for the Balkan Wars. They basically run Pirin and Thrace as a state within a state and exercise a great deal of political influence. The Bulgarians might have been pacified by Sazonov's mumbling about Vardar, but it certainly wouldn't inspire them to go against the Ottomans.
Also, Romania still joins in 1916, right? Romania's king until that date was born and raised a German and kept the lid on his irredentist public. He would never have gone to war with Germany.
Italy chooses to enter the war on the side of its "Triple Alliance" allies in 1915 or '16 while Sweden (thanks to a POD introduced to me by General Zod) enters the war around the same time after a naval skirmish with the Russians. America keeps its neutrality throughout the war. German agents are successful in carrying out the
Hindu-German Conspiracy and it succeeds in splitting the Indian subcontinent in half between the
Ghadarite Republic to the north and the British Raj to the south.
I'm not really an expert on Italy but I do know that national enthusiasm was focused on the line of the Alps. Gains from France would be very much a consolation prize and it would take major changes in the CP's favour
before Italy's historical entrance to dissaude them, never mind reverse their decision.
Nor am I an expert on the Ghadarites and really have no settled convictions whether they were a real threat. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, though, they'd kick us from the south as well. This has ginormous butterflies for all colonies everywhere.
Events in Russia and Eastern Europe transpire in much the same way as in OTL ending with Bolshevik Russia seeking peace with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk. The Western Front ends when offensives similar to the OTL Spring Offensives and Operation Michael, break the stalemate and the German Army enters Paris and the Italians manage to breakthrough to Menton. Events in the Middle East and East Asia end in the same way except that the Ottomans manage to regain all their lost territories in the peace settlement, plus some more territories in the Caucasus. Afganistan joined the Bund after the Indian revolt and so does Persia after a civil war between the pro-Bund Colonel Pesian and the pro-Entente Reza Khan. (Thanks to Germaniac for introducing me to Col. Pesian)
Is convergence to this extent plausible? The balance of forces has been altered drmaatically in the CP favour early on. Austria, without an Italian front to concern it, can commit more forces to the east, for instance. I'd imagine an earlier peace, and the Bolshevik coup in Russia could be avoided (yeah, I admit I do ahve something of a personal stake there...).
The peace settlement imposed upon France is extremely harsh, much like Germany in OTL. Belgium is occupied while Britain is left with a much less harsher settlement but London is forced to recognize the new independent Indian state and give up its gains in the Middle East. Germany experiences a revolution (similar to the OTL November Revolution but much more mainstream), that takes back power from the Hindenburg-Ludendorf dictatorship and which ends with Germany transforming into a fully liberal democratic, parliamentary, constitutional monarchy overnight. (thanks to rast for introducing to me the possibility of quick constitutional reform in Germany, I originally envisioned Germany to become a full democracy only by the 1950's). Austro-Hungary experiences a civil war, mainly against its Hungarian constituents, when it attempts to reform and federalize. With German help, the Hapsburgs eventually defeat the rebels and secure their dominion and a new order incorporating wartime gains in the Balkans, is established, known as "Greater Austria". German investments in Ottoman petroleum fund an age of prosperity and liberalization in the Empire under Grand Vizier Kemal Pasha.
I like Ottomans to, but Kemal Pasha wasn't overly fond of them. I don't really see why an outrageously westernising fascist should be put in charge of a confidently eastern liberal empire.
Also, I really don;t see where this liberal revolution comes from. Germany achieving full democracy by the 50s without much unpleasentness, and this being after the SIlent Dictatorship ahs already happened... that is in itself optimistic.
An ultra-revolutonary "Second Paris Commune" is founded and Soviets are set up in Glasgow and Edinburgh. The Scottish soviets are mostly peaceful affairs, put down without any violence but the "Second Commune" is a bloody episode in French history and is put down by government troops after six brutal months, with significant help from the "Camelots du Roi" which became the most popular veterans group in France. The heroic deeds of the Camelots and the popular disenfranchisement led to the election of the extreme reactionary Action Francaise to power in 1924 and the subsequent dissolution of the Third Republic and the establishment of the Kingdom. (Thanks to Bmao and Zocane for developing the idea of a Second Paris Commune.) India adopts a policy of rapid industrialization and modernization while Sun Yat-Sen asks the Germans instead of the Soviets for help in reforming his organization.
Action Francaise were rather a joke, with their crazy monarchism (speaking of which, "du Roi"? These veterans were under the tricolours, you know...). there are better places to look for fascist France. Also, Edinburgh? Why? As an Edinbugger I can cofirm that we're a more moderate place, possesed of less heavy industry and less Irishmen, thinsg which have given Glasgow its famous ambience. Liverpool has them. Why not Liverpool?
(If you invoke any form of Scottish seperatism, you'll be shot and thrown in the river.)
The Action Francaise takes power in 1924 and with some covert aid from the British and in cooperation with the Soviet Union, begin a grand rearmament program. As the German Army spends the 20's and 30's crushing Bolshevik, Promethean and Anarchist partisans in the forests of Poland and Belorussia, their army develops into an infantry based counterinsurgency force where tanks are mainly used in support of infantry (also because of this helicopters are developed much earlier) while the French begin to invest and develop heavily in their tanks. Soon the idea of "guerre ecclair" or lightning war is conceived and used with brilliant efficiency by Charles de Gaulle in suppressing the Algerian revolt. Meanwhile, French society is radically transformed by the AF as rival political parties are banned, civil rights are curtailed and Maurrasist reactionary principles begin to dominate every aspect of life as they are imposed upon the French. But the worst to suffer are the "four confederates" of what Maurras calls "Anti-France", Jews, Freemasons, Protestants and the "Meteques", who are persecuted mercilessly by the state. This culminates in the early 30's when large numbers of Jews, Protestants, other religious minorities, political dissidents and peoples classified as "undesirable" are forcibly deported to settlements in North Africa.
I don't like all this Nazi convergence. France isn't Germany. Anyway, blitzkrieg doesn't work on guerillas, nor is it meant to. How can you puncture lines that aren't there? How can you attack the enemy's weakest point when he's everywhere? How can you cut him of from supply if he's fed by the villagers?
In German Africa, effective
German colonial policy, which includes free education and health care for native subjects, begins to dramatically raise the continent, physically, economically and socially from the squalor and suffering that had characterized oppressive Entente colonial rule. By 1940, statistics will reveal that a great majority of African children in German colonies will be literate, healthy and fully fluent in German. The universities set up in Kaiser Wilhelmstadt (Kinshasa) and Lettow-Vorbeckstadt (Dar-es-Salaam) would grow to be the greatest educational institutions in the African continent.
As noted earlier, even a liberal Germany (which hasn;t been adequately explained) would be neither this benevolent nor this rich.
The United States is drawn out of its isolation when it's forced to face Japan in a war that lasts from 1937-1942. The Pacific War ends with complete American dominance over East Asia. However Americans and Japanese will have to shed some more blood as a stubborn Japanese resistance makes occupation of the Home Islands a difficult and bloody affair. Meanwhile, exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky is swept back into power as senior adviser to the revolutionary regime of Gilldardo Magaña. Eventually, he becomes the de facto leader of the regime and while America is busy fighting the Japanese and the rest of the world on the verge of a second Great War, in 1938, with the same brutal efficiency he possessed as Lenin's War Commissar, Leon Trotsky leads the Mexican army south into Central and South America spreading world revolution. By 1945, Trotsky had won himself a new Soviet Union from Baja to Bogota. While in India, the Nizam of Hyderabad declares independence from the British in order to spare his realm from possible Ghadarite invasion as the shadow of a another Great War grows ever taller over the subcontinent (Hyderabad will play a big role in the future of this TL).
I don't think Leon would have the capacity nor the stupidity to invade other countries. OTL, while he was in Russia, his advocated foreign policy was very sober. It was only in exile that ideology led him to go on about "world revolution".
The Second Great War in Europe breaks out in 1941 when France, Britain and Russia gang up on Germany and her allies. French tanks roll through Iberia, Italy, the Low Countries and the Rhine frontier, dominating Western Europe in a few months. Britain invades Denmark to get to Germany and Scandinavia to take out German ally Sweden. The Soviets invade Eastern Europe and attempts with some initial success to break apart the Hapsburg Empire by supporting Tito's partisan campaign. The Soviets also invade the Ottoman Empire threatening the Bund's precious oil supplies. De Gaulle meets Rommel in the sands of North Africa and a new generation of Askaris rises to serve and defend German Africa. Also in India, the Ghadarite Republic goes to war with the Dominon of India with each side fighting for complete dominance over the subcontinent.
I don't see France being such a menace. The harsh territorial losses, presumably in Lorraine, that were suggested earlier would make it hard for France to have a modern war machine to compete with germany on this many fronts. An easy way to swing the balance would be too have Italy on the other side. I mean. why is it even with the Bund? And where is the British Raj going to find any Indians willing to fight for it against their own nation?
By 1944, the tide has turned with much of Western Europe liberated, de Gaulle defeated in North Africa, the Soviets pushed back into Russia and the British driven off the continent and off of India for good. German armies have stalled on the Russian border and have entered France. It is the beginning of the end for the Entente. However, the worst atrocity is saved for last as Jacques Doriot, chief of the Camelots in Africa opens the extermination camps and sends millions of Jews, Protestants, dissidents and POW's, West Africans and Algerians into their deaths in the form of gas chambers. By the time German and Ottoman armies liberate West and North Africa, it was too late for the four million dead. By the end of the year Paris is taken and atom bombs are dropped over Moscow and Leningrad. The USSR collapses. Charles Maurras, Maurice Pujo, King Jean III, Charles de Gaulle, Admiral Darlan and other French leaders are tried for warcrimes at the infamous Nantes Trials.
Convergence, convergence, convergence...
Also, those nukes are just plain mean spirited. There's absolutely no need to nuke either city, militarily speaking. France isn't Japan. It can't be a hundred million shattered jewels. Germany can,
must destroy its conventional warmaking capaicty.
Please be aware that I intend all my critcism to be constructive and helpful, and don't be at all discouraged. Anyways...
1) Turtledove syndrome. You've flipped the positions without really considering how France is a differant place from Germany or for that matter Japan.
2) Utopian protrayal of Germany. I say this as an honorary member of Ze Germans: after 1916 the Kaiserreich was a repressive military dictatorship run by a scoundrel and German's colonial record in Africa is pretty abysmal.
3) Concerning the war, butterflies, Russia, and my personal issue: things could be made a lot more plausible were Russia to make peace earlier on in WW1 under whatever government and thus only surrender Poland, Lithuania, and Courland, leaving a much more formidable power. A power, in fact, which OTL did the better part of defeating Germany by itself.