WI: Restored Kingdom of Naples in a CP Victory scenario?

How realistic would a restoration of the Kingdom of Naples or Two Sicilies be in a CP victory? Maria Sophie of Bavaria, the wife of Francis II, presided over an informal Bourbon court-in-exile and supported the Central Powers in the hope that they would restore the Kingdom of Naples upon an Italian defeat, and rumours claimed she was involved in sabotage and esponiage against Italy.
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
A Napolitan restoration IMO is very sensible.
It weakens Italy, creates a flank for it to be attacked if it is "naughty", and puts the western side of the Otranto Strait in friendly hands.
 
Depends on how and why the central powers win, and whether they want to (or even can) so fundamentally remake the map of Europe.
 
A Napolitan restoration IMO is very sensible.
It weakens Italy, creates a flank for it to be attacked if it is "naughty", and puts the western side of the Otranto Strait in friendly hands.

And it's realistic like any Entente plan to undo the German unification; any Kings of Naples will have in practice no legitimancy and will survive only with A-H or German troops litteraly occupy the place and the moment they go so go the Kingdom
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
And it's realistic like any Entente plan to undo the German unification; any Kings of Naples will have in practice no legitimancy and will survive only with A-H or German troops litteraly occupy the place and the moment they go so go the Kingdom
I'm not Italian/Napolitanian - but as the reunification/anschluss had happened (only) 55 years previously - and there was some resistance to it - I will push the idea. :)
Is it really condemned to fail?
A Borbon Napoli restoration in 1916/18 would be on "CP bayonet point" of course but - if the King plays it smart - wouldn't the dynasty be able to (re)build support?
Is this guy a jerk?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Alfonso,_Count_of_Caserta
If yes, then maybe using his age as an argument - he would be in his 70s - install his eldest son:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Ferdinand_Pius,_Duke_of_Calabria
No spring chicken either - in his 50s. With six daughters (latest from 1913, by 41 y/o waifu).
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
And it's realistic like any Entente plan to undo the German unification; any Kings of Naples will have in practice no legitimancy and will survive only with A-H or German troops litteraly occupy the place and the moment they go so go the Kingdom
Actually an Entente plan to partially undo German unification would have a much better chance of succeeding than breaking apart Italy because Germany still had sub-monarchies in place. If the Entente had left A-H partially intact, they could have broken off Bavaria from Germany and Bavaria could probably maintain it's independence from Germany through establishing good relations with the rump A-H, France, and Poland. The Wittelsbach dynasty had a lot of popular support.
 
Actually an Entente plan to partially undo German unification would have a much better chance of succeeding than breaking apart Italy because Germany still had sub-monarchies in place. If the Entente had left A-H partially intact, they could have broken off Bavaria from Germany and Bavaria could probably maintain it's independence from Germany through establishing good relations with the rump A-H, France, and Poland. The Wittelsbach dynasty had a lot of popular support.
Except that Bavaria was in two pieces connected only by the rest of Germany.
 
It's either that or Bavaria annexes Baden and Wurtemberg.

Or you just have an East Prussia situation. Really, though, its not that huge of a lose to Bavaria if the Entente forces them to sign it away.

Be that as it may, A restored Naples is PROBABLY not viable; its position would be too vulnerable unless you've thoughly dismembered the rest of Italy, and even then the mainland is integrated enough into Italy and its economy by this point (And the Adriatic is garbage on the Italian side), with Naples far too close to Rome. But I could certainly see an independent Sicily, which was alot more isolated and conservative as well as defensible. Maybe in a deal with the Mafias.
 
And it's realistic like any Entente plan to undo the German unification; any Kings of Naples will have in practice no legitimancy and will survive only with A-H or German troops litteraly occupy the place and the moment they go so go the Kingdom
Could the Bourbons gain support among the people if they were to implement land reform and abolish the latifundia, portraying themselves as liberators of the southern peasantry and emphasising the legacy of Carmine Crocco and other resistance to Italian unification? The South Italian nobility did betray the Bourbons during the Resorgimento after all.
 
I thought this was one of the sillier recent World War I "what ifs", and an aristocrat believing it was possible does not make it less silly.

Italy was pretty far down on the list of important World War I fronts, and while throughout the war there were proposals floated on both sides that making a big push there could accomplish something, the basic facts of geography always prevailed. There also doesn't seem to have been any plans in Vienna to restore any part of the Hapsburg hegemony over northern Italy. And in the event they didn't get past the Piave.

So the only way you can get something like this is a complete internal Italian collapse. Treating this as a AHC, the only way I can get something like this to happen is something like this:

a) Italy joins the losing side (either one)
b) Italy does poorly in the war and sues for peace, about the time that its allies do
c) A bolshevik revolution happens. Maybe Mussolini tries to seize power and chaos erupt
d) The winning coalition in the war sends forces into Italy to stabilize the situation and get a co-operative government out of it
e) A south Italian separatist movement sides with the intervening forces
f) The central Italian government in Rome remains bolshevik or whatever, but the Allies/ CP settle for breaking off parts of the country and installing friendly governments

To get this I've used OTL Turkey as my template, borrowing liberally from OTL Russia. I'm assuming a neutral Italy won't work since they do too well trading with both sides.
 
Note that you didn't get a breakaway southern Italy even with World War 2, when Italy really did join the losing side, there were actual Communist partisans, and for a period the south did operate as a separate country because that was the only part of the country the legitimate government controlled. This tells me that the twentieth century really is too late for a restored Two Sicilies.
 
Could the Bourbons gain support among the people if they were to implement land reform and abolish the latifundia, portraying themselves as liberators of the southern peasantry and emphasising the legacy of Carmine Crocco and other resistance to Italian unification? The South Italian nobility did betray the Bourbons during the Resorgimento after all.

The Bourbons are probably one of your worst options to put on an Italian throne; any stable South Italian polity is going to need to build a unique regional, fiercely independent and proud identity separate even from their cousins to the North. Putting a French monarch as their great unifying symbol would fail utterly at this. I'd assert a far better option is to either pick a local who has the backing of a lot of the Mafias; creating a kind of paternal oligarchy/ Catholic-Traditionalist corperate state (Basically, proto-Facist), or get the support of the Church by offering the Pope an escape from his "prison" in the Vatican
 
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