I'm a bit surprised that this POD isn't more frequent
(or maybe I'm not really very good at searching this forum?)
Anyways, I spent too long on this not to share it with you
Pt 1 - 1914-1929
Sarajevo 1914
POD: Someone tells Franz Ferdinand's driver that rhe Archduke wants to visit the wounded soldiers from the earlier attack in hospital. Thus he drives by the corner café where Princip is sitting without taking that wrong turning.
There is still the matter of the bomb thrown at the Archduke's car. An ultimatum is sent to Belgrade, toned down by Franz Ferdinand after a discreet talk with Russian diplomats [so not as far-reaching as OTL's]. Serbia has no option but to swallow its medicine and institutes a violent purge of the Black Hand.
Albania
The international force charged with making the Albanians accept Wilhelm zu Wied as their king spent several years in doing so. Nevertheles by the '20s Ahmed Zogu [OTL's king Zog] had become the strongman behind the throne.
Britain and Ireland
The Irish Home Rule bill is passed in Sept. '14. Several days later the Ulster Volunteers rise in rebellion. At first the rebellion enjoys great success - the opposing Irish Volunteers being outnumbered and badly organized - gaining control of most of Ulsters nine counties. The Protestant-seized territory remains pockmarked with Catholic-held enclaves where it takes the UVF considerable time and effort to winkle out the defenders. In the process there are some ugly incidents - well publicized by the Liberal press - involving the killing of women and children and unarmed prisoners, which cost the UVF a good deal of sympathy among British public opinion.
The London government orders the Army to suppress the rebellion, stressing its duty to protect unarmed civilians, but the Army drags its feet. Dublin is allowed to draw on British arsenals to arm its own troops, now called the Irish National Guard. This helps to stall the UVF's advances, together with regiments sent over from Britain to the northeast of Ireland (notably to Belfast, Newry and the Antrim Downs) and the movement of units of the Army in Ireland - however reluctantly - in blocking positions in southern Ulster.
The London government in the meantime is replacing the more obstreperous regiments and officers of the Army in Ireland, including its CO, which results in it getting serious about fighting the rebels. At the same time Asquith proposes to exempt Ulsters nine counties from Home Rule for six years, during which negotiations are to be held. Meanwhile he is facing dissension in his own ranks, with ministers resigning. Two weeks after the start of it all the House of Commons - horrified at the bloodshed - passes a vote of no-confidence.
New elections are announced. The Conservatives call for a stop to the fighting. The Army imposes an armistice, leaving a frontline running through eastern Donegal and from Donegal Bay through Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan and Armagh to Newry, Co. Down, with a largish enclave in eastern Tyrone and small ones in Belfast and the Antrim Downs.
The Conservatives win the elections hands down. There is immediately a wrangle about how many MP's Ulster is entitled to - Redmond's Nationalists want the reduced number provided for under Home Rule, the UVF insists on the pre-Home Rule number - the latter gets its way on this point.
The talks about the future of Ulster soon boiled down to discussions about the terms of the plebiscite in the North. Carson wants a vote by county (which he hopes will give him a six-county Nortern Ireland), Redmond one by parish/municipality. Redmond also insists that people get the right to vote in their old homes. Redmonds views prevail - by now, after six years, the Irish National Guard has the whip hand in terms of numbers and quantity of arms. The ensuing plebiscite results in a hoseshoe-shaped part of Ireland remaining in the UK, comprising Antrim, Down without Newry, north Armagh, and a strip of territory from Londonderry deep into Fermanagh.
Austria-Hungary
Franz Ferdinand became the new emperor in 1916. Bosnia was made a separate kingdom. Franz Ferdinand then proceeded to push through universal male suffrage (as it already existed in Austria) in Hungary. This produced a protracted political crisis which as the existing parliament used every form of procrastination and obstruction that had worked before (as in Franz Josef's attempt of 1907) with the more extremist of Magyar nationalists talking of armed secession. However when the Socialists entered the fray, mounting several large demonstrations in Budapest and a national strike that shut down (inter alia) the railways. Realizing that labor union control of the railways scuppered any chance at armed rebellion made cooler heads prevail. The Hungarian parliament caved in but did obtain a better position for Magyar in the Army and the right to set up a separate Hungarian National Bank. They also reiterated that changes to the constitutional position of peoples within Austria (i.e. the Czechs) were unacceptable. They also acceded to Franz Ferdinand's demand to have joint sessions of the delegations of the two parliaments (now three including Bosnia) to discuss matters pertaining to the Empire as a whole, alternating in Vienna and Budapest.
The first Hungarian elections under universal male suffrage produced promptly a coalition of socialists and minorities that implemented land reform an education reform that gave all ethnic groups the right to use its own language (as in Austria), which started their slow emancipation (again as in Austria).
Later, in the '20s Galicia was split in Upper Galicia (western, Polish) and Lower Galicia (eastern, predominant Ukrainian).
Germany
By 1916 the Russian railway-building program had advanced to the point where the German general staff had to do a rethink on its strategy - since the Russians could now mobilize fast enough to make the Schlieffen-plan impractical. That necessitated an enlargement of the army budget. However the government failed repeatedly to get it through the Imperial Diet, where the Socialists proved too strong. Something had to give which was the naval budget. When the [Washington] Naval Treaty was negotiated [for much the same reasons as in OTL: budgets weren't up to it] in 1923 Germany accepted a 3:5 ratio to Britain.
Virgin Islands
The Danish Virgin Is. remained Danish. [that is the US didn't buy them]
New Hebrides
Treaty's in 1916 and 1919 divided these islands [modern Vanuatu] between France and Britain.
The Ottoman empire
The Young Turks remain in power. Domestic policies are little different [from Atatürks]. However the more extreme forms of westernization, as the introduction of the Sunday, do not occur. Veils and fezes remain, though veils by the later '20s are no more substantial than the voiles which western ladies still wear on occasion.
There are recurrent anti-Armenian pogroms. The heavy emigration of Greeks, Armenians and Christian Arabs that started following the Young Turk revolution continues.
When zionist immigration into Palestine starts to cause trouble with the Palestinians (ca. 1920) the sultan puts a stop to it.
Ibn Saud had seized the Hasa (the stretch of Persian Gulf-coastline between Kuwait and Quatar) in 1913. The Turks tried at first appeasing him, then backing his Arab rivals with arms and then troops, till by 1920 they'd gotten involved in a full-scale guerilla war against the Wahhabi's which lasted till their complete defeat at the hands of Kemal Pasha in 1926/27 and the Ottoman annexation of central Arabia. German companies get to exploit the Hasa's oilfields.
Persia
The country is in a state of chronic civil war, necessitating repeated interventions by Russia and Britain to keep the shah on his tottering throne. One Russian intervention, in 1919, results in the Russians annexing Persian Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The last, joint, intervention in a division of the country in two protectorates and the annexation by the British of the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan and the port of Bandar Abbas.
Both powers set up native forces to enforce their rule, The Persian Cossacks in the North and the South Persia Rifles in the South.
Anglo-Afghan war
This started in 1919 [as in OTL] over Afghanistan's right to conduct its own foreign relations. British public opinion demands that the British Indian army marches into Kabul [Britain isn't war-weary]. The war lasts well into 1920 and ends with Afghanistan conceding defeat and the restoration of the status quo ante [unlike OTL].
The Mozambique war
In 1922 Wilhelm II decides the time has come to extend his East African colony with a piece of Portuguese-held Mozambique (according to an existing agreement-of-partition with Britain). The ham-fisted approach of his representatives lead to a Portuguese rejection of the German demands, a German declaration of war and invasion of Mozambique from German East Africa and of Angola from German South West Africa. A taskforce from Kamerun seized Sao Tomé and Principe. Rhodesia and South Africa pressure London to be allowed to help themselves to the share of Mozambique allotted them under the aforementioned agreement-of-partition. London is only prompted to act when a German fleet sails in the direction of the Azores. They can't let this strategically-located island group fall in German hands, so a British naval force is sent with sealed orders for a pre-emptive seizure of the islands and pressure is brought to bear on Lisbon to settle things. Berlin is not interested in settling, the British occupy the Azores, Portugal declares war on Britain, the British seize Goa, Daman and Diu, the Cape Verde Is. and Macao, the Rhodesians advance on Beira, The South Africans on Lourenco Marques and the Australians seize Portuguese Timor. The German fleet, thwarted of the Azores, sails for Madeira, where takes place the only naval battle of the war with most of the Portuguese navy sunk. The Germans also grab Portuguese Guinea. The war is concluded in 1923, Portugal parts with all of its overseas possessions, South Africa gets Mozambique south of the Limpopo, Rhodesia Mozambique between the Limpopo and the Zambezi as well as Tete province, and Germany the rest and all of Angola.
Spitzbergen
Was annexed by Russia in 1924 over Norwegian objections.
North Africa
Italy's war against Libyan resistance lasts till 1926/27. [In OTL this lasted from 1922 to 1932/33. WWI and its aftermath caused Mussolini's forces to start virtually from scratch.]
France's conquest of Morocco ends in 1932/33 [rather than 1936/37, as in OTL, again because of the interruption of WWI]
The resistance of the so-called "Mad Mullah'' in British Somaliland lasts longer [than in OTL, because of the relative underdevelopment of air power].
Russia
The tsarevich died aged 19 in a motoring mishap insignificant to anybody nor a hemophiliac.
Lenin dies an obscure revolutionary, in Swiss exile
China
Nothing much changes until Sun Yat-Sen's death. [In OTL the Comintern provided staff and especially funds for the Whampoa Academy which gave Chiang Kai-shek the professional army that enabled him to overcome the local warlords in and around Canton.] The Kuomintang army is unable to overcome the Canton warlords and Chiang turns in a minor warlord in the neighbourhood of Hongkong.
Mao Tse-tung raises the peasants of the Jiangxi-Fujian border area in the name of the Chinese Socialist Party. His success [in OTL the Comintern's insistence on urban tactics seriously cramped his style. Here he gets started earlier] attracts increasing numbers from the left wing of the KMT, notably Wang Jinwei. By 1929 the CSP controlled liberated areas in Jiangxi-Fujian (the biggest), southern Hunan, northern Anhui, north and south of the Yangtze gorges and around Yenan in the northwest.
The Russian-Chinese war
In 1929 a dispute over the precise extent of the Russian railway concessions in Manchuria leads to the outbreak of fighting between Russian forces and those of the Manchurian warlord. The Russians win clearly but Japanese diplomatic intervention prevents them gaining anything beyond getting their view of the extent of their concessions recognized.
They do however invade and annex Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang to the Chinese).
This in turn impels the British to declare a protectorate over Tibet.
This produces a wave of violence against Britons (and Russians) in the cities along the Yangtze.
General
Economically the economic growth of before 1914 continued. Russia especially boomed. The state share of the economy remained low and welfare legislation in abeyance [The war boosted tax rates. After the war tax rates remained high and the revenue was used to finance welfare like Britain's old-age-pensions]
Culturally the Roaring Twenties weren't quite as roaring. The establishment remained very much in charge [unshaken by the shocks of WW I]. Hemlines for instance failed to go up in the middle of the decade. There was no 1926 general strike in Britain.
St Petersburg became Paris' rival as the world's cultural capital, the Kaiser's Berlin was rather more staid as its Weimar counterpart.
Radio and aircraft technology lagged some 10 years behind [compared to OTL]. The desert guerilla wars (Italy's in Lybia, Britain's in Somaliland, Turkey's in Arabia) see the first decisive application of air power.
(or maybe I'm not really very good at searching this forum?)
Anyways, I spent too long on this not to share it with you
Pt 1 - 1914-1929
Sarajevo 1914
POD: Someone tells Franz Ferdinand's driver that rhe Archduke wants to visit the wounded soldiers from the earlier attack in hospital. Thus he drives by the corner café where Princip is sitting without taking that wrong turning.
There is still the matter of the bomb thrown at the Archduke's car. An ultimatum is sent to Belgrade, toned down by Franz Ferdinand after a discreet talk with Russian diplomats [so not as far-reaching as OTL's]. Serbia has no option but to swallow its medicine and institutes a violent purge of the Black Hand.
Albania
The international force charged with making the Albanians accept Wilhelm zu Wied as their king spent several years in doing so. Nevertheles by the '20s Ahmed Zogu [OTL's king Zog] had become the strongman behind the throne.
Britain and Ireland
The Irish Home Rule bill is passed in Sept. '14. Several days later the Ulster Volunteers rise in rebellion. At first the rebellion enjoys great success - the opposing Irish Volunteers being outnumbered and badly organized - gaining control of most of Ulsters nine counties. The Protestant-seized territory remains pockmarked with Catholic-held enclaves where it takes the UVF considerable time and effort to winkle out the defenders. In the process there are some ugly incidents - well publicized by the Liberal press - involving the killing of women and children and unarmed prisoners, which cost the UVF a good deal of sympathy among British public opinion.
The London government orders the Army to suppress the rebellion, stressing its duty to protect unarmed civilians, but the Army drags its feet. Dublin is allowed to draw on British arsenals to arm its own troops, now called the Irish National Guard. This helps to stall the UVF's advances, together with regiments sent over from Britain to the northeast of Ireland (notably to Belfast, Newry and the Antrim Downs) and the movement of units of the Army in Ireland - however reluctantly - in blocking positions in southern Ulster.
The London government in the meantime is replacing the more obstreperous regiments and officers of the Army in Ireland, including its CO, which results in it getting serious about fighting the rebels. At the same time Asquith proposes to exempt Ulsters nine counties from Home Rule for six years, during which negotiations are to be held. Meanwhile he is facing dissension in his own ranks, with ministers resigning. Two weeks after the start of it all the House of Commons - horrified at the bloodshed - passes a vote of no-confidence.
New elections are announced. The Conservatives call for a stop to the fighting. The Army imposes an armistice, leaving a frontline running through eastern Donegal and from Donegal Bay through Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan and Armagh to Newry, Co. Down, with a largish enclave in eastern Tyrone and small ones in Belfast and the Antrim Downs.
The Conservatives win the elections hands down. There is immediately a wrangle about how many MP's Ulster is entitled to - Redmond's Nationalists want the reduced number provided for under Home Rule, the UVF insists on the pre-Home Rule number - the latter gets its way on this point.
The talks about the future of Ulster soon boiled down to discussions about the terms of the plebiscite in the North. Carson wants a vote by county (which he hopes will give him a six-county Nortern Ireland), Redmond one by parish/municipality. Redmond also insists that people get the right to vote in their old homes. Redmonds views prevail - by now, after six years, the Irish National Guard has the whip hand in terms of numbers and quantity of arms. The ensuing plebiscite results in a hoseshoe-shaped part of Ireland remaining in the UK, comprising Antrim, Down without Newry, north Armagh, and a strip of territory from Londonderry deep into Fermanagh.
Austria-Hungary
Franz Ferdinand became the new emperor in 1916. Bosnia was made a separate kingdom. Franz Ferdinand then proceeded to push through universal male suffrage (as it already existed in Austria) in Hungary. This produced a protracted political crisis which as the existing parliament used every form of procrastination and obstruction that had worked before (as in Franz Josef's attempt of 1907) with the more extremist of Magyar nationalists talking of armed secession. However when the Socialists entered the fray, mounting several large demonstrations in Budapest and a national strike that shut down (inter alia) the railways. Realizing that labor union control of the railways scuppered any chance at armed rebellion made cooler heads prevail. The Hungarian parliament caved in but did obtain a better position for Magyar in the Army and the right to set up a separate Hungarian National Bank. They also reiterated that changes to the constitutional position of peoples within Austria (i.e. the Czechs) were unacceptable. They also acceded to Franz Ferdinand's demand to have joint sessions of the delegations of the two parliaments (now three including Bosnia) to discuss matters pertaining to the Empire as a whole, alternating in Vienna and Budapest.
The first Hungarian elections under universal male suffrage produced promptly a coalition of socialists and minorities that implemented land reform an education reform that gave all ethnic groups the right to use its own language (as in Austria), which started their slow emancipation (again as in Austria).
Later, in the '20s Galicia was split in Upper Galicia (western, Polish) and Lower Galicia (eastern, predominant Ukrainian).
Germany
By 1916 the Russian railway-building program had advanced to the point where the German general staff had to do a rethink on its strategy - since the Russians could now mobilize fast enough to make the Schlieffen-plan impractical. That necessitated an enlargement of the army budget. However the government failed repeatedly to get it through the Imperial Diet, where the Socialists proved too strong. Something had to give which was the naval budget. When the [Washington] Naval Treaty was negotiated [for much the same reasons as in OTL: budgets weren't up to it] in 1923 Germany accepted a 3:5 ratio to Britain.
Virgin Islands
The Danish Virgin Is. remained Danish. [that is the US didn't buy them]
New Hebrides
Treaty's in 1916 and 1919 divided these islands [modern Vanuatu] between France and Britain.
The Ottoman empire
The Young Turks remain in power. Domestic policies are little different [from Atatürks]. However the more extreme forms of westernization, as the introduction of the Sunday, do not occur. Veils and fezes remain, though veils by the later '20s are no more substantial than the voiles which western ladies still wear on occasion.
There are recurrent anti-Armenian pogroms. The heavy emigration of Greeks, Armenians and Christian Arabs that started following the Young Turk revolution continues.
When zionist immigration into Palestine starts to cause trouble with the Palestinians (ca. 1920) the sultan puts a stop to it.
Ibn Saud had seized the Hasa (the stretch of Persian Gulf-coastline between Kuwait and Quatar) in 1913. The Turks tried at first appeasing him, then backing his Arab rivals with arms and then troops, till by 1920 they'd gotten involved in a full-scale guerilla war against the Wahhabi's which lasted till their complete defeat at the hands of Kemal Pasha in 1926/27 and the Ottoman annexation of central Arabia. German companies get to exploit the Hasa's oilfields.
Persia
The country is in a state of chronic civil war, necessitating repeated interventions by Russia and Britain to keep the shah on his tottering throne. One Russian intervention, in 1919, results in the Russians annexing Persian Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. The last, joint, intervention in a division of the country in two protectorates and the annexation by the British of the oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan and the port of Bandar Abbas.
Both powers set up native forces to enforce their rule, The Persian Cossacks in the North and the South Persia Rifles in the South.
Anglo-Afghan war
This started in 1919 [as in OTL] over Afghanistan's right to conduct its own foreign relations. British public opinion demands that the British Indian army marches into Kabul [Britain isn't war-weary]. The war lasts well into 1920 and ends with Afghanistan conceding defeat and the restoration of the status quo ante [unlike OTL].
The Mozambique war
In 1922 Wilhelm II decides the time has come to extend his East African colony with a piece of Portuguese-held Mozambique (according to an existing agreement-of-partition with Britain). The ham-fisted approach of his representatives lead to a Portuguese rejection of the German demands, a German declaration of war and invasion of Mozambique from German East Africa and of Angola from German South West Africa. A taskforce from Kamerun seized Sao Tomé and Principe. Rhodesia and South Africa pressure London to be allowed to help themselves to the share of Mozambique allotted them under the aforementioned agreement-of-partition. London is only prompted to act when a German fleet sails in the direction of the Azores. They can't let this strategically-located island group fall in German hands, so a British naval force is sent with sealed orders for a pre-emptive seizure of the islands and pressure is brought to bear on Lisbon to settle things. Berlin is not interested in settling, the British occupy the Azores, Portugal declares war on Britain, the British seize Goa, Daman and Diu, the Cape Verde Is. and Macao, the Rhodesians advance on Beira, The South Africans on Lourenco Marques and the Australians seize Portuguese Timor. The German fleet, thwarted of the Azores, sails for Madeira, where takes place the only naval battle of the war with most of the Portuguese navy sunk. The Germans also grab Portuguese Guinea. The war is concluded in 1923, Portugal parts with all of its overseas possessions, South Africa gets Mozambique south of the Limpopo, Rhodesia Mozambique between the Limpopo and the Zambezi as well as Tete province, and Germany the rest and all of Angola.
Spitzbergen
Was annexed by Russia in 1924 over Norwegian objections.
North Africa
Italy's war against Libyan resistance lasts till 1926/27. [In OTL this lasted from 1922 to 1932/33. WWI and its aftermath caused Mussolini's forces to start virtually from scratch.]
France's conquest of Morocco ends in 1932/33 [rather than 1936/37, as in OTL, again because of the interruption of WWI]
The resistance of the so-called "Mad Mullah'' in British Somaliland lasts longer [than in OTL, because of the relative underdevelopment of air power].
Russia
The tsarevich died aged 19 in a motoring mishap insignificant to anybody nor a hemophiliac.
Lenin dies an obscure revolutionary, in Swiss exile
China
Nothing much changes until Sun Yat-Sen's death. [In OTL the Comintern provided staff and especially funds for the Whampoa Academy which gave Chiang Kai-shek the professional army that enabled him to overcome the local warlords in and around Canton.] The Kuomintang army is unable to overcome the Canton warlords and Chiang turns in a minor warlord in the neighbourhood of Hongkong.
Mao Tse-tung raises the peasants of the Jiangxi-Fujian border area in the name of the Chinese Socialist Party. His success [in OTL the Comintern's insistence on urban tactics seriously cramped his style. Here he gets started earlier] attracts increasing numbers from the left wing of the KMT, notably Wang Jinwei. By 1929 the CSP controlled liberated areas in Jiangxi-Fujian (the biggest), southern Hunan, northern Anhui, north and south of the Yangtze gorges and around Yenan in the northwest.
The Russian-Chinese war
In 1929 a dispute over the precise extent of the Russian railway concessions in Manchuria leads to the outbreak of fighting between Russian forces and those of the Manchurian warlord. The Russians win clearly but Japanese diplomatic intervention prevents them gaining anything beyond getting their view of the extent of their concessions recognized.
They do however invade and annex Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang to the Chinese).
This in turn impels the British to declare a protectorate over Tibet.
This produces a wave of violence against Britons (and Russians) in the cities along the Yangtze.
General
Economically the economic growth of before 1914 continued. Russia especially boomed. The state share of the economy remained low and welfare legislation in abeyance [The war boosted tax rates. After the war tax rates remained high and the revenue was used to finance welfare like Britain's old-age-pensions]
Culturally the Roaring Twenties weren't quite as roaring. The establishment remained very much in charge [unshaken by the shocks of WW I]. Hemlines for instance failed to go up in the middle of the decade. There was no 1926 general strike in Britain.
St Petersburg became Paris' rival as the world's cultural capital, the Kaiser's Berlin was rather more staid as its Weimar counterpart.
Radio and aircraft technology lagged some 10 years behind [compared to OTL]. The desert guerilla wars (Italy's in Lybia, Britain's in Somaliland, Turkey's in Arabia) see the first decisive application of air power.
