Victory for Germany!
After years of fighting, the united efforts of Britain, France and Russia against the might of the Central Powers came......
.....to an end with the official surrender of the allies.
In this alternate timeline,
the German Empire, along with the Central Powers,
won the Great War in a stunning victory against the Allies.
It was not an easy victory...
And it was not a quick one.
But it was one which redefined the history of the modern world.
Conflict has a way of reorganizing the stage along your own terms.
This was seen in our timeline when the Allies forever neutered the Germans and Austrians from European politics.
The reparations shrunk Germany's economy and territory,
making it already fragile once the depression hit,
and the war saw the death of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
By now, you probably know of the ramifications of this.
It was this initial defeat that immediately stopped the Germans' rise to power
that had been occurring for the past half-century.
A united Germany under Prussian rule was a formidable force.
It wasn't a colonial power like Britain, France or Russia,
but it was still one with growing potential.
When the Great War ended and the Kaiser fled,
this rise was finished.
Germany went down the path of Nazism,
which would only destroy it further,
and led it into being split between two states for five decades, until the 1990s.
This was eighty years of being mostly subjected to foreign powers.
Today, just two decades later, Germany is once again the economic power of Europe,
through a democracy.
But it's not difficult to see that a unified Germany probably would have gone down a different path in those lost years.
This is part two.
When we left off, the Central Powers are victorious against the Allies.
The Russians have been driven to civil war,
and due to the territory acquired in the Brest-Litovsk treaty,
which doesn't completely collapse,
Germany is now left with a sizable portion of Eastern Europe.
You may have flashbacks to World War II,
but keep in mind it's not like the Third Reich-style conquering the East for "Lebensraum."
As per the treaty agreement,
the Russians allow for the birth of new nations in the Baltics,
and an independent Ukraine,
as well as the creation of the Kazakh and Crimean states as well.
The Germans begin the redrawing of the map.
While these Baltic and Ukrainian states are technically independent,
they're loyal to the German economy and the financial system.
Almost like another entity we all know and love.
But these states, all in all,
are German puppets,
with the German minority in each state being the highest class,
including the rulers.
This is Prussians after all.
Poland never really is discussed, so their future is muddled.
And probably violent.
Speaking of which,
the Russian civil war is still, of course, happening,
and plans get muddled in war.
It's easily foreseeable the conflict in Russia blends into the plans with the Germans,
as the conflict spills over.
Communists versus non-communists
fighting in many areas in Eastern Europe.
The stability of Russia is of utmost importance to the Germans,
as a Soviet state on their border is a catastrophe to the traditionalist Prussian culture.
The White Army receives vast amounts of funding, support and men to the front lines,
from almost every Western state.
From Britain, France, Germany and America.
With this aid from the powerful German empire,
the Whites succeed,
and the Soviets are crushed.
The Soviet Union never arises.
Which, if you want the full scenario on that, check out this video.
Germany, while the dominant army on the continent,
was just that.
On the continent.
It was always limited by the superior British Navy, and compared to others,
always had a lackluster number of overseas colonies.
Going into the war, Germany always had the ambition of stripping much of these colonies from their enemies.
Had they won,
nothing would have stopped this exchange.
In this alternate timeline, what we see is something called "Mittelafrika,"
or "Middle Africa."
The German empire seizes British, French and Belgian territory all throughout Africa,
effectively taking over most of the continent.
It was basically connecting the three existing German colonies,
allowing for one large swamp of land across the African equatorial, jungle and savanna.
A direct empire across much of Africa
and an economic dominant force in Eastern Europe is...
Always a possibility.
Rebellions would be put down hard.
The likelyhood of Germany succeeding at such a huge endeavor across so much land,
is hard to say,
as the Germans lost against South Africa in our timeline.
The Great War is over,
and to the victor goes the peace,
but the peace is only won if the victor is competent,
which leads us to discuss the black sheep of the bunch, the Kaiser,
Wilhelm the Second.
During the war, he was mostly a figurehead,
but when he made decisions, they were usually based on emotion,
and harmed Germany in the process.
For Germany to have a successful peace,
it would have to figure out the exact role the monarchy would play in this new Germany.
The war showed that the Kaiser didn't need full authority,
as his generals ran the country effectively by themselves.
So, the traditional role of the Kaiser wasn't entirely needed,
even if Germany won.
It's possible, due to Wilhelm's general incompetence,
the German government would slowly begin shifting his power away from the monarchy,
and into the hands of the military or government.
This isn't to say a democracy, but it's a step away from an absolutionist monarch.
In the West, there isn't so much a cultural change,
but a shift in its potential.
In our timeline, we went down one path,
led by Britain, America and France.
In this timeline, that culture is Germanized.
As I said in the last part, without the defeat of Germany being a nail in the coffin to prominent monarchies in our timeline,
The legacy of monarchs and empires is less black and white.
Monarchies prove they can be semi-relevant in the 20th century.
The main change here is Germany's legacy in the world.
Before the war,
Berlin was one of the main centers of finance, education and art in the entire Western world.
After the way, the legacy of Germany was a nation surrounded.
And after Hitler,
a nation that was too dangerous to be allowed to continue.
But in this alternate timeline,
that legacy never exists.
With new victories in the east,
and harsh treaties against the British and French,
the Germans set themselves up to be economic masters of this new order.
Just as the United States used World War II and the economic boom
to spread its own culture across the world,
so too does Germany.
When you have a victor though,
there are certainly losers.
The defeat at the hand of the Central Powers affects every Allied nation differently
following the signing of the Treaty of Paris and Treaty of London.
Britain, while bitter,
would be quick to adapt commercial ties with the Germans.
Tensions still exist, however, due to Germany's new influence in Belgium.
The British Empire is diminished in Africa,
as the Germans take all of middle Africa.
Among imperialists, this is incredibly horrendous.
The Frenches, well... Aren't so forgiving.
They would have lost two wars by then with the Germans,
and a national call for revenge is prominent.
It's likely the Treaty of Paris is harsh,
just as Brest-Litovsk was against the Russians.
and new reparations are forced upon the French this time too.
Now, if this seems like just a switch of what happened against Germany in our timeline,
it's not.
After the loss against the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian war, in our own timeline,
the French were enraged,
and mass anarchy and instability reigned.
The Paris Commune was one such event,
where radical socialist troops took over the city
for months.
France was subject to disaster if it lost another war.
Which, in this scenario,
it does.
It's likely nationalism and socialism rise in the country
as it faces what to do against its enemy to the east.
No matter what,
this bad blood between the two nations doesn't go away,
and most likely results in another war.
Britain and France would become incredibly bitter after this loss.
Speaking of allies,
I never discussed Germany's, Austro-Hungary and the Ottomans.
Both countries themselves were the sick men of Europe,
and it's unlikely they'd survive much longer throughout the twentieth century.
Yet, we don't care about that.
What was most important was how they died.
Demographics are a main issue in the area of Ottoman control.
The Great War and the decade following saw a huge population shift in Anatolia.
Following the war and the collapse of the empire,
the chaos which followed saw a population exchange between the Greeks and Turks.
In this alternate timeline,
the Armenian Genocide still occurs;
there's deportation, murder and genocide on a large amount of the population.
The Ottoman empire, a victor in the war, doesn't collapse.
At least not yet.
And so the Christian minority stays within the region well into the 20th century.
Yet, there is still ethnic tension within the empire
as its grip weakens.
If the empire does collapse,
history of ethnic civil war probably stays as it was in our timeline.
That's just how it is.
As for the Arabs to the south,
the Middle East isn't simply divided into artificial states like Iraq or Syria after the war.
When the Ottomans do collapse,
the Arabs unite under larger, more natural states.
Iraq is nonexistent,
and instead is divided between Shia and Sunni Arabs.
The Kurds have their own nation as well.
Wars between the groups still happen,
but destabilization between groups into civil war, like in our timeline, rarely are such an occurrence.
Israel simply doesn't exist in this timeline,
but there is a much larger Jewish population within Europe.
Especially, unsurprisingly, in Poland.
There is never a British Palestine,
and never even Hitler,
so the holocaust never forces Jews to flee to a new land.
Could fascism still rise?
Possibly, but obviously not in the manner of our timeline.
It would be harder, having to rise in countries with histories of democracy.
As a whole, we see a Western civilization far more socially conservative than our own.
Without World War II,
which created such a societal shift,
generations don't become disinterested in the old order.
Imperial might,
empires,
and colonies remain a desire because that was Germany's main prize for victory.
Britain and France want their colonies back.
America wants to be like Germany.
Speaking of which...
What is America doing?
They never got involved in the war, and so the American public is largely neutral to a German victory.
Of course, being culturally and economically closer to Britain meant that while the Allied loss was an issue,
It wasn't catastrophic.
What's done is done.
And to the Americans,
relationships had to be made with the victors
and to mend ties.
Being uninvolved in the war,
the United States tries to reach across the aisle.
It's not a global military leader,
but economically, it's strong.
If the German economic plans worked,
then they'd be a valuable partner.
The millions of German immigrants across the Midwest don't have to abandon their heritage so quickly.
In our timeline,
the reason Germans assimilated so quickly
was because of anti-German sentiment once America became involved in the war.
They were discriminated and hated, abandoning their culture to fit in.
Without a war, many can continue to speak their native language,
even entire isolated towns in the Midwest.
As a result, the United States has a far greater Germanic influence
mixed in with its English population.
Throughout the twentieth century,
this influences financial and diplomatic relationships with the new power across the Atlantic.
Because so much would be shifted by this victory,
I can't account for exact specifics going into the rest of the twentieth century.
Any event could randomly change the course of history,
even if Germany did win.
The Great Depression certainly causes upheaval for countries across the world.
But as a whole,
simply following our own timeline, whoever won the great war forever shaped the twentieth century in their image.
Had Germany won, it has an immediate head start on this new age.
Its Prussian influence,
its economic might,
and huge population
means that the twentieth century easily could have been the German century.
This new era could look very similar to the old one
as European empires still fight for land,
mentalities remain the same,
and for a little while longer, even if the Kaiser eventually fell out of favor,
Germany still benefits from this war,
even if its allies did not.
And perhaps German as a culture is far more influential across the world,
spreading three entire continents.
Of course, this is simply one scenario,
an exercise of alternate history.
But it's fun to theorize.
This is Cody, of AlternateHistoryHub.