What's the most successful that the Central Powers could have been in WWI?

Right, Serbia was only intended to be a puppet kingdom run by Habsburg picked royals, probably putting back in power the royal family that the Black Hand purged in 1903 (if I remember the year right). No one wanted more Serbs in the Empire, just to wipe out the Black Hand and Serb nationalist threat. Bulgaria would get Macedonia though. That would shore up the southern border of the Empire and render the Balkans a Habsburg domain, as they would be then the power than ran it.

In 1918, the Habsburg government planned to place Archduke Maximilian (Karl's brother) on the throne of a puppet Serbia, but they made no final decision. The pre-1903 Serbian royal family was down to one bastard son who does not seem to have been seriously considered.

The "moderate" faction in the Austro-Hungarian leadership wished to annex a northern Serbian border strip; then expel its population and replace them with colonists to avoid having more Serbs in the empire. The "maximalist" faction wished to turn the whole of Serbia and Montenegro into Austro-Hungarian colonies. In both cases, Bulgaria would get Macedonia and the eastern half of Serbia.
 
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