(Easier to get a short war for either side than preventing it, to be honest.)
Passports won’t be much of a thing as the Belle Époque continues—great news for literally everybody.
Passports won’t be much of a thing as the Belle Époque continues—great news for literally everybody.
Open Green Fields
Banned
Have each nation become a full democracy give each person 18 years or older full and equal voting rights.
OR
Make each royal family member in each nation fall into a coma that they never wake up from.
That way you prevent ww1.
You can however delay ww1 by many ways.
Here is one, having Austria-Hungary fight Serbia and no one helps either country out directly, just material and financial aid, but no actual fighting.
OR
Make each royal family member in each nation fall into a coma that they never wake up from.
That way you prevent ww1.
You can however delay ww1 by many ways.
Here is one, having Austria-Hungary fight Serbia and no one helps either country out directly, just material and financial aid, but no actual fighting.
Well, killing off Wilhelm II in 1900 would definitely help to at least moderate international tensions at the start of the century. No Morocco Crisis, no Kruger Telegram, no Daily Telegram blunder, and no inferiority complex towards British cousins leading to the Anglo-German Naval Arms Race would go a long way to keeping Britain and Germany from getting on opposite sides in a war, which in itself shortens or butterflies away a Great War in the 1910s. Plus, Wilhelm II pushed Nicholas towards war with Japan, which helped destabilise Russia and turned both the British and Japanese against Germany (since the British were increasingly viewing Germany as a unbalancing factor in the balance of power, between all the diplomatic crises and naval buildup). Crown Prince Wilhelm was rather unlikely to make quite as many missteps as his father, mostly since Kaiser Wilhelm II had a gift for being absolute garbage at being diplomatic, thanks to his upbringing and the unfortunate combination of a thoroughly Anglophilic liberal mother, conservative German mentors, court politics, and general mental illness.
Whether that prevents the Great War altogether is hard to say but, at the very least, World War scale conflicts would be pushed back quite a bit.
What that results in? Well, no Russo-Japanese War means the Russian monarchy's not quite as boned in terms of popularity and economics and no Lenin being sent back during a disastrous war might mean Imperial Russia hobbles by long enough for someone competent to take the throne and prevent the rest of the century being a demographic nightmare for one of Europe's fastest growing powers. Japan not being the undisputed hegemon of East Asia in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War keeps them from being quite as explicitly aggressive in the interwar period, not having racial equality outright rejected means Japan stays on better terms with Britain and the rest of the West, and most likely keeps Sino-Japanese relations fairly decent (Russia influence in Manchuria means China and Japan are united against a common threat, so Pan-Asianism doesn't die quite so early).
Whether that prevents the Great War altogether is hard to say but, at the very least, World War scale conflicts would be pushed back quite a bit.
What that results in? Well, no Russo-Japanese War means the Russian monarchy's not quite as boned in terms of popularity and economics and no Lenin being sent back during a disastrous war might mean Imperial Russia hobbles by long enough for someone competent to take the throne and prevent the rest of the century being a demographic nightmare for one of Europe's fastest growing powers. Japan not being the undisputed hegemon of East Asia in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War keeps them from being quite as explicitly aggressive in the interwar period, not having racial equality outright rejected means Japan stays on better terms with Britain and the rest of the West, and most likely keeps Sino-Japanese relations fairly decent (Russia influence in Manchuria means China and Japan are united against a common threat, so Pan-Asianism doesn't die quite so early).
You are aware that the "Democratic peace theory" requires more than voting rights and is "a bit" contentious? And failing that, that the UK and the German Empire did have roughly the same standards of "freeness" at that time?
As to the OPs question: Alter the austrian demands so that the serbs accept or something minor. WW I was - far - from deliberate, so altering a few small things will suffice. Wilhelm II went jachting (and got none of the usual "hints" that this may be a bad idea) after he thought the crisis resolved - is that the behaviour of a state/person who has the biggest war looming? That would squelch the flashpoint of Sarajevo.
To minimise danger of an alt-WWI, you'll need:
- End of various "strategies" of the great powers, i.e.
- "balance of power" by the UK
- And sack double-dealing Grey while you are at it.
- panslavism by the Russians
- Hostile diplomatic encirclement/exclusion of the germans by the french
- This is important, since as long as this is running the Germans are unlikely execute the point below
- "balance of power" by the UK
- The Germans must resume their role as "satiated honest broker" (as with Bismarck) in the middle of Europe (This would be helped by getting rid of Wilhelm II)
- Create some sort of early EEC - mayhaps as a consequence from 1871
BlondieBC
Banned
Many thousand of POD prevent WW1, we are far too deterministic in our views of history. History only come inevitable in hindsight.
BlondieBC
Banned
Germany was more free, so unless you are blaming the war on the lack of democracy in the UK. Anyone using democracy as the causality causing WW1 is just not correct.
As to minimizing the danger of alt-WW1, you need to shift the belief that wars will be short (Franco-Prussian of 1870) to long (Napoleonic Wars).
Max Sinister
Banned
* Oberst Redl is caught before he can tell the Austrian war plans to the Allies - without that advantage, they may hesitate to make war
* Germany isn't so stupid to decline Britain's offer of an alliance
* War stays local, between A-H and Serbia
* Franz Ferdinand isn't assassinated
* A-H doesn't make that ultimatum
* Germany isn't so stupid to decline Britain's offer of an alliance
* War stays local, between A-H and Serbia
* Franz Ferdinand isn't assassinated
* A-H doesn't make that ultimatum
No formation of Germany (or at least a much weaker one)*, as the creation of a new major (and growing power) in central Europe (along with a lot of baggage by dint of being late in the great power race) meant things will come to a head at some point after that, one way or another...
This has nothing to do with the morality of Imperial Germany itself, just mere geopolitics and power dynamics.
*look at the other great unification of a country in that era, Italy: it was never powerful enough to threaten the interests of the old great powers club, and thus was mostly just there doing their own thing...
This has nothing to do with the morality of Imperial Germany itself, just mere geopolitics and power dynamics.
*look at the other great unification of a country in that era, Italy: it was never powerful enough to threaten the interests of the old great powers club, and thus was mostly just there doing their own thing...
Obviously if Franz Ferdinand is not assassinated, then the OTL WWI does not happen. Likewise if Wilhelm does not give A-H the "blank check" things go differently. In the early 1900s an industrialist named Norman Angell wrote a book and led a theory of thought that international economies were too interdependent and industrial war was so costly that such a war was simply impossible. So much for that theory. IMHO all sorts of history up to 1914 as well as competing Great Power interests was building up the pressure in ways that were going to blow a lid off sooner or later. Preventing "the" WWI is relatively straightforward, simply have Gavrilo Princip go to a different cafe or have the chauffeur not get lost driving the Crown Prince and his wife around. preventing a major war between Great Power alliances between 1910 and 1925-30 at the latest, don't see it.
Personally, and your mileage may vary, the only reason we have not had a major war between 1945 and the present is the loosing of the ole demon "Atom". Nuclear weapons have finally justified Angell's claim that war would be "too expensive". Were somehow all nukes eliminated by the ASBs, never to be rebuilt, we would see a return to wars between major states rather than the proxy of brushfire conflicts we have seen since 1945. As nasty as all those conflicts have been, whether conflicts like Vietnam or Afghanistan where a major power was one of the players; Korea, where both sides had major players but there were limits; or the various Arab-Israeli or India-Pakistan wars where second tier powers faced each other, nothing escalated in to a full on conflict between two major power blocs. Things came close at times either from bellicosity or mistakes, but fear of the mushroom cloud helped sanity reign.
IMHO a PoD that prevents not only OTL's WWI but some analog of it at a later (or earlier) is going to require something that makes Great Power war unthinkable. Making one country (take your pick) a hyper power that even a coalition can't attack is one possible way, you can think of others. Of course, all empires eventually fall...
Personally, and your mileage may vary, the only reason we have not had a major war between 1945 and the present is the loosing of the ole demon "Atom". Nuclear weapons have finally justified Angell's claim that war would be "too expensive". Were somehow all nukes eliminated by the ASBs, never to be rebuilt, we would see a return to wars between major states rather than the proxy of brushfire conflicts we have seen since 1945. As nasty as all those conflicts have been, whether conflicts like Vietnam or Afghanistan where a major power was one of the players; Korea, where both sides had major players but there were limits; or the various Arab-Israeli or India-Pakistan wars where second tier powers faced each other, nothing escalated in to a full on conflict between two major power blocs. Things came close at times either from bellicosity or mistakes, but fear of the mushroom cloud helped sanity reign.
IMHO a PoD that prevents not only OTL's WWI but some analog of it at a later (or earlier) is going to require something that makes Great Power war unthinkable. Making one country (take your pick) a hyper power that even a coalition can't attack is one possible way, you can think of others. Of course, all empires eventually fall...
There's been a few timelines...
But the most plausible ones to me are ones that posit some lesser conflict in its place. The pressures for war were too great, the institutional and cultural obstacles too enervated, to easily avoid ANY great power conflict. In this vein, I highly recommend Carlton Bach's outstanding Es Geloybte Aretz - a Germanwank, which uses an untimely death of Wilhelm II in 1888 to butterfly in a Russo-German War in 1906-08 - a terrible and bloody conflict, but obviously not so terrible as one which involved all the Western powers (France, Britain, America, Italy).
Losing Wilhelm II earlier on enough certainly removes one major source of tensions (especially from Anglo-German relations) from the scene, no question.
But many basic underlying conflicts and mindsets will still remain. Odds are you still get *some* war, but perhaps not the Great War.
I do agree with you. I was trying to get Open Green Fields to think about his claim - which is basically the democratic peace theory in its most crudest and plain wrong form. That is not to say the theory has no merit at all, just that in the form presented it is as you write.
Cryhavoc101
Donor
An easy POD is KWII does not give the AH a diplomatic blank cheque with regards to their dealings with Serbia post FF and wife killing.
The AH is therefore obliged to tone it down and their demands are reduced to something that Serbia can actually accept
The AH is therefore obliged to tone it down and their demands are reduced to something that Serbia can actually accept
Exact results depend how bad it gets - but yes, it *will* prevent an OTL-style WW I. The caveat in this case is, that without Russia "on the table" the UK will - contrary to the mixed messages sent OTL - align with France in order to "contain" Germany as per their "Balance of Power" doctrine. This in turn may prompt France to strike when there is an opening, especially if the Germans look like they are making gains in eastern europe when deciding that a bunch of allies in formerly russian territories is better than a set of war-torn states. This scenario would put France "on the clock" because when the Germans manage to consolidate their gains they'll be unassailable by virtue of having enough allies to simply outlast any enemy, so they'll try to strike as long as the Germans are yet distracted. Or rather, that would be the contemporary logic in the french halls of power.
Of course, having hindsight, such a scenario may play out with the French either bleeding white in A-L or the Central-Eastern Powers mobilising everything between the Rhine and the Don and then steamrolling over the French. Of course if the French declare war, this will be seen as 1871 redux with the attendant reluctance of the Dominions to sacrifice blood and treasure .
In many ways WW1 was the result of strategic imbalance. Germany and AH had war on two fronts to worry about. Britain, France and Russia didn't