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Here is a timeline that I have been working on for a while now. It involves a point of divergence in 1918, with the Russian Revolution and the Treaty of Versailles. Well, here goes....

The Second Great War, 1935
The World on the Eve of War
Great Britain- the British Empire in the 1930s under Stanley Baldwin is a very tumultuous sector of the globe. Major riots occur almost daily in India, where Gandhi’s Free India movement is riding a wave of not entirely non-violent protests. The British Government has created the new dominion system, by which India has been granted pocket home rule, in exchange for more military commitments in case of a war. Back in the British Isles, Ireland remains part of the British Empire, and few plan to establish an independent Eire anytime soon. In the Orient, things are looking bad for the British as well. In 1931, a Baathist coup in Iraq replaces the pro-British government with a right-wing, German backed one. This severely cuts into British oil supplies, and more deals are made with Holland about the extraction of oil from the Dutch East Indies. In the Hejaz, the successor to Prince Feisal rules the region under British protection, in exchange for access to Red Sea oil. Despite these problems, the British Empire remains committed to the Entente, and these problems help to solidify public opinion against the Germans.

France- During the 1934 right wing activity in Paris, the Parti Social Français (successor to the Croix-de-Feu League) was able to establish a government through an unlikely alliance with the Socialists, Liberals, and the Radical Centrists against the much larger, more radical Communist party. Marshal Henri-Philippe Pétain, riding on the title of ‘Héros de Verdun,’ became the new Premier of the French Fourth Republic. The new form of French government created a more powerful executive, and instituted a policy of dirigisme over the French economy. The far-right felt alienated from the new ‘Populist National Front,’ and Albert Lebrun was made president under Pétain, with Colonel François de la Rocque as prime minister. The Colonel was soon forced to co-operate with his new allies, and Léon Blum and Édouard Daladier became co-ministers in the new alliance. Although initially shaky, the Populist National Front has emerged as the strongest government France has seen since that of Adolphe Thiers. The government, a mixture of moderated right-wing nationalism and left-wing populism, has the support of most of the French population by 1935, through promises to restore France’s national glory and power, while helping the working classes through social legislation. With a Nazi Germany next door since 1923, France has taken a harder line towards Germany, and as such has increased her military power- both on land, sea, and air- through innovation using the tank and airplane.




The French Aircraft Carrier Béarn in 1935

Germany- the German Reich is led by Anton Drexler, cofounder of the Nazi Party. He came to power in 1923 with the successful Beer Hall Putsch, after the death of Adolf Hitler during the coup d’état. While less fanatic than Hitler in this timeline, he is still anti-Semitic and authoritarian, and he uses propaganda and secret policy extensively. The German Jews are subject to discrimination, but most are allowed (forced) to leave the country. The people of Germany, less enticed with Drexler than with Hitler, support the government and the leader nonetheless who led them out of the humiliation following the Versailles Treaty. The government still operates with the use of the SA, under Ernst Röhm.



Anton Drexler, Chancellor of Germany in 1935

Versailles Treaty- the Treaty of Versailles is notably different than in our timeline. The territorial lines remain relatively unchanged from our timeline (with the notable exception of Prince Wilhelm’s land, the only colony Germany was allowed to retain), but the economic sanctions imposed on Germany were much more lenient, with guarantees by Germany that they would repay their reparations by contributions to the European economy and to help repair the damages inflicted on the Entente. In Germany, Paul von Hindenburg was established as the president of the Weimar Republic on 23 November 1919. He ruled somewhat effectively, but discontent over the territorial losses to Poland, Belgium, and France helped the Nazis establish control with the Putsch. Hindenburg remained nominal president until his death in 1933. The treaty did not limit the size of the German military, so the Nazis were allowed to begin reconstruction and restructuring. This has proved a double-edged sword for Germany though, as many of the strategies of the previous war have not been thoroughly revised, and innovation has been stalled by matérial from the last war.

Russia- With the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, it seemed to the world that a communist power would soon emerge on Europe’s eastern frontier. However, the 1917-1926 Russian Civil War progressed differently than in current history. Instead of leaving Russia in 1918, Alexander Kerensky was able to pull together enough of the disparate White forces into an opposition government and military against Lenin and Trotsky. Officially recognized as the only government of Russia, this White front managed to secure Ukrainia, most of Siberia east of Omsk, and the region around Murmansk and Archangel with Entente, American, and Japanese assistance. The Bolsheviks were confined to European Russia, where they attempted to expand to the west to counter their fortunes in the east. The 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet War saw the first use of highly mobile warfare since 1914, with both sides advancing and retreating several hundred miles in the course of several weeks. By 1921, the Poles had defended Warsaw from two attacks (the latter of which involved Soviet use of chemical weapons on the city), and had pushed the Soviets back to Smolensk. The war then turned to Central Asia to decide its fate in the civil war. The Soviets initially held most of the territory, but a British Expeditionary Force from India helped the Whites evict the Reds from most of Central Asia by 1922. With the situation looking grimmer for the Bolshevik cause, a major power struggle played out in Moscow. Lenin was killed in a street mob fight, while Trotsky left the city for the south, where he gathered the remaining Soviet forces around the cities of Rostov and Volgograd. Here, the war continued until 1926, when French forces and Cossacks from Ukrainia; Whites, Americans, and Japanese from Siberia; and British, Poles, Czechs, and Italians from Poland surrounded Volgograd. The city held in a 5 month siege before falling due to famine conditions in the city. Trotsky was discovered to have fled internationally through the port of Odessa, while most of the other Soviet leaders were held trial for treason against the Provisional Government in 1917. Several dozen of the remaining Bolsheviks were shot, and the new Russian Republic (co-incidentally with the same borders as the Soviet Union) was formed in 1926 in Moscow, with Alexander Kerensky as head of state. Kerensky, with his effective leadership during the civil war, was re-elected 3 times, so he remains as president of Russia in 1935. The Russian Republic is sympathetic to the Entente, but is not in an economic or military position to aid it. Several military purges were conducted in the late 1920s-early 1930s to root out Bolshevik loyalists.

United States- In 1935, the United States is under the capable administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the 1928 election, Roosevelt was elected to the position of Representative from New York, and later that year, made Speaker of the House following the hasty resignation of Nicholas Longworth (son in-law of Theodore Roosevelt) after a notorious bootlegging scandal came to light. In June 1929, only 6 months after his inauguration, Herbert Hoover resigned as President in response to the public outrage over the stock market collapse earlier than year. When several other top administration officials were forced out from public pressure, Roosevelt, a popular Democrat, was sworn-in in 1930. His New Deal policies of the early 1930s helped him to sweep the 1932 election, and with more reforms granting better economic stability, Roosevelt looks to easily take the ’36 election as well.

The Americas- With less opportunity for investment in the German economy during the 1920s, American investors instead turned to South America. The slightly right-wing governments became enthralled in endless supplies of American money, and quickly ran up debts into the tens of billions (In 1928, the Summer Olympics were held in Buenos Aires, built with money taken from American banks. They were heralded as the most extravagant and lavish games ever.) This economic pyramid of sand was occluded by the fact that the American economic system was based on high speculation on the New York Stock Exchange. America in the 1920s experienced an even more intense ‘Roaring Twenties’ than in our timeline, while Europe, with much less American investment, remained less frivolous. By the time 1929 rolled around, however, the time for play was over. The stock market lost an estimated $ 40 billion of its worth in one day, in what would later be known as ‘Black Monday,’ on 18 March 1929. During the New Deal and Recovery, the Federal Government took control of significant sections of the U.S. economy, instituted major public works projects, set price controls, and introduced a permanent system of economic interventionism into the previously-liberal American economic system. The near-total collapse of American international investment led to the bankruptcy of several South American nations within a week, and a South American ‘World War’ broke out in 1929 and lasted until 1931. The war was ended by Entente brokering and German incentive-giving, resulting in the nations of Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, and Ecuador becoming allies of the Entente, and Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, and Venezuela leaning toward (and on)Germany. With new sources of resources available to supply growth, Germany furthered its military re-arming and economic re-invigoration.



Floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Black Monday, 1929

Italy- Italy after the Great War progressed much as it did in our own timeline, with Benito Mussolini and the fascists coming to power in 1922 with the March on Rome. Mussolini continued to lead Italy effectively through the mid-twenties, even remaining with the Entente. A critical failure, however, occurred in 1931 with the attempted colonization of Ethiopia. At the Second Battle of Adowa, the Italians were completely routed by the Ethiopians under the emperor, Halle Selassie. The crisis forced Victor Emmanuel III to ‘fire’ Mussolini and replace him with Alcide de Gasperi. Some of the Fascists resisted, but a relatively bloodless month in 1933 led to the removal of the Fascists from all but the fringes of society. Italy renewed its alliance with France and Britain in the 1934 Stresa Agreement, committing all three powers to checking the growing German power on the Continent.



Alcide de Gasperi, Prime Minister of Italia

The Entente- the Entente was the direct descendent of the Triple Entente in the Great War. Italy remained in the Entente instead of joining Nazi Germany, and several South American states have joined the Entente. At the outbreak of war in 1935, several other European states and others around the world joined the Entente in war against the Central Axis.

Central Axis- consisting of Nazi Germany, plus the puppet state of Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania , and the Turkish State. In 1932, Lithuania, in response to the 1921 establishment of the Foch Line as the Polish-Lithuanian border, joined the Central Axis on a promise from Germany for a Greater Lithuania. This crisis nearly led to war, but quick management by the League of Nations led to a resolution which changed the border little, but led to Poland fully joining the Entente camp. The Turkish Empire, led by Kemal Pasha (the Ottoman Empire was carved up into new states by the Allies after the Great War) has re-unified Anatolia and several former Ottoman territories in a 1924-1928 war with the French, British, White Russians, Greeks, and Italians. The new state consists of most of Turkey except a small area around Smyrna (the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne granted Turkey all of its former European and Anatolian territories, except for the small Smyrna exclave), along with Armenia, Kurdistan, and parts of northern Mesopotamia. The new state of Transcaucasia, declared independent from Russia in 1926, quickly organized a right-wing government of Georgia and secular Azerbaijan against the Muslim conservatives (quite a miracle in this scenario.) In Finland (one of the few nations in Europe to receive major American investment), the economic collapse led to a turn toward the right, and the government is funded, supported by, and influenced by Nazi Germany.

Japan- A member of the original Great War Allies, the Empire of Japan has not entered the imperialistic phase experienced under Tojo and the military clique. The government has remained cordial with China, and seeks to expand its economic, not imperialistic, dominance over Asia. That said, it still wishes to expand into the Pacific, and is ready to do so at Germany’s expense (Germany has kept all Pacific territories, even Prince Wilhelm’s Land.) Heavily industrialized and a major producer of military and non-military matérial, Japan’s membership in the Entente would be key to a major conflict where large quantities of supplies can be produced away from a major front. The largest buyers of Japanese goods are China, the United States, Europe, and the Entente in South America.



The emperor of Japan in the Showa Period, Hirohito

Causes for the War- German revanchisme in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s led to a general remilitarization across the Continent. The European nations on the Entente side; France, Italy, the Low Countries, Greece, Great Britain, Portugal, Poland, Esthonia, Latvia, Denmark, Yugoslavia, and Norway; are all members of a secretive military exchange of arms and military officers. The Entente also planned a strategy of holding the Germans at a line between Antwerp, Liége, the Ardennes, and the Maginot Line in France; a Trieste-Trent-Swiss border line in Italia; the Metaxas Line in Greece; Poland east of Warsaw; the Kattegat of Norway; and a zone east of the Amsterdam-Rotterdam Line in Holland. The Central Axis, with only a narrow corridor between Austria and Hungary to link Germany and the rest of the axis, looked for ways to improve their long fronts and strategic weaknesses. They found it in Yugoslavia.

Yugoslav Coup- On 12 April 1935, the German SA, operating secretly in Sarajevo, assassinate the Yugoslav Prime Minister Džafer-beg Kulenović ,while he is on a state visit. A new government is declared the next day, under the leadership of the Croatian Ante Pavelić and the fascist Ustaše movement. The new government, under heavy influence from Berlin, leaves the Entente and joins the Central Axis on 18 April 1935. The Entente Council, meeting in Amsterdam, declared the new Yugoslav government forfeit, and presented an ultimatum to Germany. If the Germans do not withdraw all forces from Yugoslavia, restore a legitimate successor government to the assassinated Prime Minister, and have Yugoslavia leave the Central Axis, then a state of war would exist. Drexler, confident in his nation’s military capability, shot back a scathing reply demanding the return of all pre-Great War German territory in exchange for leaving Yugoslavia. The French, not even bothering to send a reply, began mobilization on 1 May, 1935. When the first French divisions entered the Saarland, the Germans declared war. The Entente collectively declared war on the Central Axis, followed shortly by a declaration by the Axis. Ironically, the Second Great War was triggered in the same area as the first had been.
Major Nations of the Entente.........................................................................................................................Major Nations of the Central Axis
France...............................................................................................................................................................Nazi Germany
Great Britain.....................................................................................................................................................Kingdom of Rumania
Kingdom of Italy................................................................................................................................................Kingdom of Hungary
Spanish Republic..............................................................................................................................................Kingdom of Bulgaria
Kingdom of Belgium.........................................................................................................................................Albania
Holland.............................................................................................................................................................Nazi Austria
Esthonia...........................................................................................................................................................Turkish State
Latvia...............................................................................................................................................................Lithuania
Poland..............................................................................................................................................................Finland
Hellas..............................................................................................................................................................Ba’athist Iraq
Portuguese Republic.......................................................................................................................................Transcaucasia
Denmark..........................................................................................................................................................Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Norway............................................................................................................................................................Argentina
Republic of China............................................................................................................................................Paraguay
Kingdom of Iran..............................................................................................................................................Uruguay
Empire of Japan..............................................................................................................................................Peru
British Raj of the Empire of India...................................................................................................................Venezuela
Chosŏn
Kingdom of Egypt
Empire of Ethiopia
Liberia
Union of South Africa
Australia
New Zealand
Arabia
Kingdom of Yemen
Brazil
Republic of Chile
Panama
Bolivia
Ecuador
Colombia
Costa Rica
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Mexican Republic
Dominican Republic
Dominion of Canada
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