After hearing people meme about how the wrong side won WWII for years, it finally got me wondering; assuming the war was an inevitability, how would the world be different if the Belgians didn't resist the Germans at the outset of the war? What if Von Schlieffen's Plan had been successful in crushing the French military before they could mobilize and forced the French and British to sue for peace?
I'd argue yes for several reasons:
- It would have prevented the appalling casualties incurred by both sides on the Western Front
- Britain and France wouldn't have over-expanded their colonial holdings by tearing apart the Ottoman Empire
- The Soviet Union is never formed and, arguably, no major world governments end up Communist
- Continental Europe would have a clearly dominant power, which would help to ensure stability
- The British and French don't have the opportunity to completely cock up the Middle East's borders
- The Japanese are not emboldened to continue seizing Chinese territories beyond the ones they grabbed from the Germans
- The peace terms would almost certainly be less harsh due to the shorter duration of the conflict
- You don't end up with the Treaty of Versailles, which guarantees a Second World War
- Israel doesn't exist because the British and French don't promise Palestine to (((them)))
Thoughts?
The Imperial houses of Europe would still fluctuate and some would still dissolve, most likely now through direct involvement of the Germans or through the institutional issues that pre-existed during the war.
While the time scale is longer, some of the results are still the same.
The Ottoman empire either democratizes or is preserved in a reduced size as Arab uprisings cause the fall of the middle east.
The Austro-Hungarian still breaks apart due to weak leadership and a bolster nationalism among the Magyar speaking populations, and so the house of Hapsburg still exist, but is now expressly Austria's imperial house.
The French Colonial Empire would cease as the territory was ceded to German control completely or within a very reduced and demilitarized France, where all colonial holdings would be ceded to Germany.
Britain would probably suffer some territorial exchanges in parts of colonial Africa.
Russia would likely still have a civil war or internal conflict, though due to German territorial expansion and annexation of Russian territory such as the Ukraine for the it and it's East European allies, diminishes Russia's power immensely. It still is under the threat of communism, and other uprisings as the instabilities existed before Russia joined the Great War.
Romania and Bulgaria are bigger countries, as they annex the remains of Serbia that the Hapsburg's don't take for themselves.
China still suffers from Japanese intervention, though this is still seen as a force for good by some, as the Japanese are fighting communism, they still likely crash out of the league of nations.
America focuses on South America and following the Monroe doctrine.
Major differences.
German trade is still the major competitor to a now reduced American industrial output. (War prep wasn't needed, so industry in USA is not as organised.)
The houses of Hohenzollern and Hapsburg are guaranteed to continue to be in power. German speaking settlers would continue to expand into Eastern Europe.
The British Empire has to deal with a reduced navy and war reparations but continues to be one of the three great powers, as it's not strapped with as much war debt. The Irish would get home rule, which means that the ROI remains part of the UK. Other colonial holdings of the Empire would not be given independence. (fueled by war debt and weak adminstration.) Britain would keep India, and the Suez Canal. It would also have to deal with social upheavals at home, as workers and socialist movements that agitated for labor would come to the political front and center.
Africa and Asian ends to colonialism takes much longer possibly mid 80's if they ever do, (loss of all European colonial power came from pressure from national movements, the US and war debt) as well as the potential for a Korea and most of China dominated by Japanese administration. (It used China for opium trading as Manchuko was outside international conventions.)
France is the biggest loser. Dispossessed of it's future and colonial holdings, with a crumbling economy and limitations on it's army size, plus a zone where there is no military allowed, would go through massive periods of economic instability and hardship, blaming Germany. (basically mirroring Weimar Germany.)
And somewhere in all of this an Austrian corporal in the German Army stays in the Army after the war long enough to get a nice discharge with a pension and a Captain's rank, he eventually eschews his career in the army for one in politics and stands as part of a moderate conservative movement that wants a constitutional monarchy and an active house of government in Germany.
He is a great orator, but is removed from the party for his radical views on Jews, and his more revolutionary leanings towards socialism.
He takes the failure on the chin and moves in 1923 to Argentina to try and make it there as an artist and landscape painter.
In 1930 he reads in the German newspaper that Herman Goring is elected the first chancellor of the new German parliament, answerable only to the Kaiser himself, and wonders what could have been. In 1960 he dies from Parkinson disease in an Argentine hospital surrounded by his wife and children. A few of his works will survive into the new millennium though they aren't worth a lot as he was an artist of little note.
Edit: Further thoughts
The Ottoman Empire or Secular Turkey is likely to become a stronger world power if they don't cede the territory in the middle east, as once oil exploration shows the vast quantities of crude reserve, the Ottomans/Turkey exploits that wealth for itself and not the separate Arab gulf states. What effects this would have on world politics who knows, as either the oil hungry countries of the world including Europe would either seek to exploit alliances or fuel separatist movements in order to exploit oil.
Though with the retention of oil interests in SE and Canada for the British and Africa for other European powers means that the middle east doesn't reach the level of importance it has post war, as the nations that became heavily dependent on oil are less so. (The war fueled the expansion of automobile and other modernization, these would still likely happen but at a slower rate of expansion.)
Also as an interesting aside Churchill in this alternate timeline would likely have fulfilled (in his own words) his ultimate political ambition of becoming Viceroy of India. He doesn't suffer from the political set backs caused by the failure of the Galipoli, and thus the political exile and fighting that followed throughout the 1920's. Also Kitchener survives the war, and so has an effect on world politics in this way.
would also still exist as a movement that would try to incite revolutions and uprisings wherever possible. and in the east, japanese imperial ambitions would be mostly untouched by the situation in europe. while russia would be more up to the challenge, there would still be nothing preventing the japanese from invading and conquering large parts of china and nearby pacific territories."
