The OP
Double What If: What if Versailles didn't become the Treaty of Damnation?
Alright, before we begin, I'll have to lay down the ground rules for this thread. First, this is a concept that I've borrowed from Alternate History dot Com. The basic idea is simply have members post as if they were in the alternate timeline and were posting about the possibilities of what would happen if things went along our timeline. Any comments that are not relevant to the timeline are to be posted with the letters OOC in capital letters. Separation from the 'IC' portion of the post in the form of some kind of line break is recommended and encouraged.
Now the timeline that'll be Double What If-ing today is where France and Britain have decided that a united Germany is impossible to control and thus tried to shatter it.
Now the basics are:
- Everyone but France and Britain don't want to enforce this treaty due to the implications that this would have.
- The years between 1920 and 1925 would become known as the Great War of Resistance, with the primary belligerents being the US, Germany and Japan against Britain and France.
- It is during this conflict that what would become the Iron Army -an army of foreign volunteers- would be formed. Eventually the Iron Army would be led by a George S. Patton Jr.
- King George the Fifth would be forced to sign the treaty at gunpoint and be put under house arrest by Churchill and his posse within the British government.
- King George and the House of Windsor would eventually escape Britain with the few loyalist elements of the Royal Guard… and once on Belgian soil, King George the Fifth would reveal that Churchill and his posse had forced him to sign the treaty at gunpoint and he didn't sign numerous laws.
- This reveal would cause a severe determent to Churchill's to continue the Great War of Resistance, eventually leading to the London Uprising in 1924 and the discovery of just how despicable Churchill and his posse were to ensure British Supremacy.
- This included the reveal that the Lusitania was stocked to the gills in munitions and the Tilleman Telegram was actually a carefully faked telegram… all of which is to ensure that the US would be effectively forced on the side of the Entente through manufactured outrage.
- This reveal would cause a severe determent to Churchill's to continue the Great War of Resistance, eventually leading to the London Uprising in 1924 and the discovery of just how despicable Churchill and his posse were to ensure British Supremacy.
- King George and the House of Windsor would eventually escape Britain with the few loyalist elements of the Royal Guard… and once on Belgian soil, King George the Fifth would reveal that Churchill and his posse had forced him to sign the treaty at gunpoint and he didn't sign numerous laws.
- Raymond Poincare would utilize French revanchism to his advantage to push this treaty, much to the dismay to the French Left parties.
- The French Right conscripted colonial troops to fight the Great War of Resistance.
- During the later stages of the war, the majority of the French army mutinied, leaving only a handful of die-hard formations left to fight the combined steamroller of Germany and the United States.
- Despite massive amounts of money -including the rebuilding of the Eiffel Tower after it's destruction during the Battle of Paris- poured into mending ties with the French, Revanchism would be a major problem leading the overthrow of the Fourth Republic in 1935.
- Woodrow Wilson, despite being such a decisive character, would politic several concessions like taking former German colonies as payments to their war debts.
- Woodrow Wilson suffered another heart attack when he received the Treaty of Damnation in 1919, which led him to be bed-ridden for more than a week. Wilson then decided that he couldn't take the stress of the presidency and stepped down due to ill health. Thomas R. Marshal -Wilson's vice president- would become the first Vice President that became President via the President resigning.
- Woodrow Wilson would be a major figure in the Great War of Resistance in his fundraising tours, but the stress of these tours would be so much that he eventually died of heart failure in 1922.
- Despite attempts to keep out of the greater conflict, the Royal Navy fired upon a US supply convoy in February of 1920, sinking the USS Chester and damaging several other US cruisers on escort duties. The High Seas Fleet -still awaiting their final fate at Scappa Flow- managed to make a daring escape and rescue the convoy.
- One of the few treaties that Woodrow Wilson managed to sign before he resigned was the American-Japanese Mutual Pact, which was a remarkable treaty as it allowed Japan to have the naval force that it wanted (the limit was Japan gets 75% of the US's naval strength, but the Great War of Resistance expanded the USN to such heights that Japan would be actually broke if it tried) with the usual defense pact provisions.
- Kaiser Wilhelm the Second and many of the Imperial German leadership were persuaded to return to Germany after word spread about the Wiemar Republic representatives signing -although unbeknownst to the world they were forced to sign it at gunpoint and committed suicide in Paris, but not before setting up the connections necessary to keep Germany in the fight- what would become known as The Treaty of Damnation.
- Kaiser Wilhelm the Second pushed some terms, particularly that he would be able to resign after the Great War of Resistance and his son Frederick would be the next Kaiser.
- Wilhelm the Second would become known as 'Wilhelm the Flawed' and would start the Wilhelm Endowments of the Sciences and Arts, allowing for numerous projects to receive funding despite how outlandish they were, leading to the discovery of numerous breakthroughs including biological polymers -which caused the African Commonwealth to get fabulously rich- alongside the predecessors of modern integrated circuits and modern electronics.
- Wilhelm the Second would sign the Treaty of Versailles in 1925, ending the Great War of Resistance. It didn't ask for respirations or taking of territory just for the sake of it, it simply ended the war and put the blame on the regimes instead of simply the nations.
- One of the things that the Treaty of Versailles did was gave a rebirth of the German Empire with Austria and the Czech Sudetenland voting to join and rejoin the German Empire respectively. In addition, it returned the Franco-German border to pre-1914 lines.
- This didn't stop revanchism from rearing it's ugly head in Britain and France however...
- Wilhelm the Second would die in the Battle of Koenigsburg during the early stages of World War 2.
- Kaiser Wilhelm the Second pushed some terms, particularly that he would be able to resign after the Great War of Resistance and his son Frederick would be the next Kaiser.
- Adolf Hitler would lead what would be known as the 'Hitler Strikers' -a motley crew of Jews, Germans, Old Prussians, and other ethnic groups in Germany with a reputation to 'out Lottow-Vorbeck Lottow-Vorbeck' and succeeding in gambles that should have been failures- and turn Adolf Hitler from a bigoted racist to a generally nice man who became known as a masterful politician of the Progressive Sozialistische Partei Deutschlands (translated: Progressive-Socialist Party of Germany) and an architectural artist of some renown.
- Adolf Hitler would become friends with a German Jew named Egon Spengler, who would become his XO. Egon would later be killed in combat in 1924, taking a bullet meant for Hitler.
- After the war, Adolf Hitler would meet one Walt Disney… leading to a friendship. Walt and Hitler would exchange artistic techniques for the short time they were together, this improved Hitler's ability to make his works not seem unsettling dead among other things.
- The Great War of Resistance would end in March of 1925 with German-American forces marching through Paris after fierce house-to-house fighting, giving the first recorded use of Rattenkrieg or 'War of the Rats' in reference to urban combat.
- It should be noted that Wilhelm the Second made a call to all Germans -be of the various ethnic groups or political factions- to defend the fatherland, and this is notably followed through.
- During the Great War of Resistance, Lenin would see that a certain level of coexistance can be achieved with capitalist and communist nations, leading to the creation of the 'Gardening' variation of communism. Sadly Trotsky and Stalin would betray Lenin and tried to stomp out the Gardening school of communism (which wasn't successful, which would play into the USSR's surrender in World War 2).
- China, once word of the Treaty of Damnation reached them, quickly got to work getting it's collective shit together (with some exceptions) with the help of the US and Japan.
- Imperial Germany, after the war, would also help China in it's struggle in becoming a modern nation.
- Korea would become something akin to what would become of the Philippines during the Great War of Resistance, being a close ally of Japan with numerous trade and military agreements.
- Vietnam and much of French Indochina would declare independence with the help of the United States, many nations in former French Indochina would become independent entities and many of them would join what would become known as the Iron Pact.
- India -with the assistance of the US and Japan- would become independent in 1924, but would suffer a civil war between Indian communists, Indian Republicans, and Indian Constitutional Monarchy factions. The Commune of India would be founded in 1927 and would begin a series of programs that would force-march India into moderarity.
- It should be noted that the independence movement suffered an immense setback with the public execution of Mahatma Gandhi and many of his high-level allies. This single event is so powerful that it became a major point of departure in several alternate history timelines including Turtledove's Collapse of Empires series.
- The Commune of India would become a major belligerent in the Second World War, opening the Indian-Pacific front. With a British Union controlled Britain, a Fascist France and Italy, and a Stalinist Soviet Union being the others.
- Quentin Roosevelt didn't die during his tour in WW1, but was a prisoner of war and was treated for his injuries alongside one Adolf Hitler -who was being treated for some broken bones via the concussion of an artillery shell- due to the lack of proper medical facilities for Quentin's injuries.
- It should be noted that Quentin absorbed Theodore Roosevelt's "Put a [African American] and a White in the same situation politically and economically, you'll get the same results" via shear osmosis, and when Quentin heard a bigoted rant that Hitler made about several ethnic groups, Quentin shut him down with what his father believed. Hitler stated that this helped plant the seed for making the 180 of his ways during the Great War of Resistance.
- Quentin Roosevelt would become the leader of the Progressive Party -better known simply as the Bull Moose Party- in the United States after he returned home in late 1919 when he was cleared by medical professionals.
- A major change from pre-War politics is that the nations that would become the Iron Pact would invest heavily in various nations to improve standards of living and economic activity. This led to the formation of the African Commonwealth -made up of German colonies and colonies bought from Britain, France, and other colonial powers- and the improvement of various nations.
- This wouldn't be completely successful as a series of conflicts known as the 'Pigmy Wars' would erupt across the planet.
- It also didn't help that in France and Britain, revanchism was on the rise, causing them to elect governments that are hostile to the nations of the Iron Pact.
- Thomas R. Marshal and his colleges would explain the immense amounts of money invested in various nations as preventative measures to stabilize a world that went through two destabilizing shocks.
- For the most part this was a good call on Thomas R. Marshal's part, despite a few hiccups like France and Britain.
- World War 2 would start in 1945 and end in 1950 and was between the Iron Pact -the US, Germany, Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Siam, Brazil, Mexico, Poland, among others- and the Communintern-Fascist Alliance, ending in Operation Downfall after the Commune of India refused to surrender after two nuclear strikes.
It is well known that powerful elements within the French and British governments of World War 1 decided that the only way to secure peace in Europe was to shatter Germany, leading to what is known as the Treaty of Damnation. This would lead to the Great War of Resistance and changing the landscape forever.
Now what if the British and French governments weren't so batshit crazy and didn't create the Treaty of Damnation in the first place? How would things fare for the world then?