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Double What If: What if Versailles didn't Become the Treaty of Damnation

The OP

Aaron Fox

SB's Minor Junker Descendant and Hunter of Nazis
Author
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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
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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?
 
Starting things out!
Here's the thing about the Great War of Resistance and the Treaty of Damnation. They had produced so many ripples in general that you can give only in rough generalizations.

For example, in Adolf Hitler's Memoirs "My Struggle: The Memoirs of the Great War of Resistance (Mein Kampf: Die Memoiren des Großen Widerstandskrieg)", he outright stated that he was something of a hard-ass racist bigot before the events of the Great War of Resistance and that the war changed his perceptions greatly. This is in addition to the arguments that he got into with Quentin Roosevelt when he was in the hospital being treated for broken bones related to shell concussion, which planted some of the seeds of his political and social outlook.

In Chapter 24, which was specifically about Egon Spengler, got into what he and Egon were going to do after the Great War of Resistance. Egon's banner would later be taken by Hitler himself -who would later overcome his laundry list of problems thanks to his father- after he got bored with being an architectural artist and the promises he made to Egon scratched furiously in the back of his mind.

Another example would be the mass mutiny on Christmas Day in 1924 during the Great War of Resistance within the French and British armies, which would repeat in Christmas of 1946 on the Eastern Front. The Germans repeated the 1914 Christmas Truce and when German High Command discovered the full scale of the mutiny, allowed the French and British soldiers to go home without their weapons (reasoning was that before this point, fanatical units tried a few 'we surrender suckers' attempts, most of them didn't get anywhere because their saner comrades killed them for doing so themselves but a few that did succeed made High Command worried). This bout of human mercy allowed the combined German-American forces to rush to Paris -where the last major stronghold of resistance of Poincare loyalists- with little resistance. A little known french officer named Charles de Gaulle would lead a coup against Poincare in March of 1925 as Paris fell around Poincare.

Then there is the aptly named Miracle on the Rhine during the beginning of the Great War of Resistance. Between men and women of all ethnicities and political ideologies fighting to make sure that the Rhine didn't fall and the German Askari fighting off the Sikhs... Germany didn't fall. I mean Call of Duty: The Great War of Resistance had a scene that perfectly depicted the rousing speeches** that happened during that time.

* said:
"... I remember when I first saw the initial elements of our 'former' Askari come to help us fight against the Franco-Anglo Alliance, I thought we're were going to be pulling the majority of the weight in Cologne. My comrades and I were quite surprised that they made even the most professional German soldat look like rank amateurs! Sure they had to be trained in the use of a few weapons that they never seen in their front and what the Americans brought with them, but they took to it like a fish to water. When the fieldworks surrounding Cologne fell and the British Sikh regiments started to pour into the mostly-evacuated city, the Askari bellowed some unrecognizable battlecry and made the Sikh pay for every inch they took. The Sikh -famous for their ability in being able to do things that are outright insane to our ears- were repulsed and forced out of the city. I hadn't seen anything like it. They made the impossible... possible..." -a German officer at the Siege of Cologne
** said:
"Welcome to Cologne, kamaraden; today we start the greatest fight for survival that humanity has undertaken in its recorded history. There are many men and women, just like you, crossing the Rhine to defend the Fatherland. Raymond Poincare has lost hundreds of armor and planes while King George the Fifth's hordes of colonial conscripts climb over mountains of their own dead bodies. It now falls upon us, a mission given to us by the Kaiser and the Fatherland, to not let the enemy reach the Rhine and defend the city of Cologne! No matter our political affiliation, no matter what people we hail from, we must ensure that the Rhine doesn't fall! For the Fatherland, our great country, not one step back! Do not count kilometers, do not count days, count only the number of Frenchmen and Britons you have killed! Kill the Frenchmen, this is your mother's prayer! Kill the Briton, this is the cry of your German earth! Never let up kamaraden, this is the cry of the sane across the world! Now show the invaders where the iron grows kamaraden! Show them that while they can take our land, they will not take our spirit!" -a common paraphrase of the speeches given to soldiers reaching the Rhine Front during the Great War of Resistance, author unknown
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OOC: If anyone wants to produce Wiki-whatever-they're-called for this, feel free to help out.
 
OOC: I have no interest in participating in this thread. It's an Axiswank timeline where Hitler, Imperial Germany and Japan get whitewashed beyond recognition and somehow become orders of magnitude more ethical at colonialism than their contemporaries. I dispute the economic and morale abilities of the powers to recover from WWI enough to fight a war on that scale. I have no reason to think King George would need sign it, since dividing german was in the british empires national interest and there was historical presence for a divided germany. I also call BS on the lack of taking territory since the entire war lead to the dismantling of the British and French Empires with their territories being sold at gunpoint, which would lead to inevitable revanchism from two powers. And it also makes people rebelling against Churchill bizarre, since the anti-British American-Japanese had torn up balance of power naval treaties with the retrospective pre-meditated goal of devouring the british empire and had spent the last few years doing so, with the loss of India taking place the very same year the rebellion happened. Not taking Alsace Loraine is similarly bizarre, because Germany has taken everything else France had and subjected them to such humiliating terms and economic ruination that a second war was inevitable.

And that's not getting started on China not making sense. Japan would not let China fall outside it's sphere of influence, and neither the post-war USA of Imperial Germany would have the desire to change this. They were to exhausted to annex India, let alone engage Japan in a massive war over it. Japan doesn't want China to become a peer power, thinks of them as a vassal due to the time period and because of the Iron Pact the only potential obstacle Germany, which lacks the ability to project force into the region at the time. China lacked the ability to "get it's shit together" IOTL, and there is no reason for things to be different here. And letting an asian country modernise outside their control ruins Japans entirely ideological justification for empire building, and empire building was their entire motivation IOTL and should be unaffected by the POD.

As further aside, your supposed to leave the audience room for creative on both timelines. And making "My Struggle", written by a good adolf hitler a core part of the setting is massive turn off.
 
Inspiration of timeline
OOC: The timeline is based upon this:
George the British Space Bat comes to the conclusion that the horrors of WW2 can only be avoided by a harsh peace at Versailles. Thus he decides to posses the French and British delegations and the German signatories at Versailles. He ensures that the current Entente political and military leadership will have the will to enforce the harsh conditions on Germany, and that the current German leadership will accept the terms. He gets a bit carried away, and the treaty winds up looking like this:

versailles-on-steroids-png.340366


  1. Loss of colonies as usual.
  2. France gets the A-L, the Saarland plus a few bits of German soil
  3. Denmark get's some of it's old territory back
  4. Belgium gets a "border adjustment" in the East
  5. Lithuania gets that strip of East Prussia as in OTL.
  6. Poland gets the corridor plus Danzig
  7. All Germans residing in ceded land are to be expelled immediately by force.
  8. Independent French puppets formed in the Rhineland and Bavaria (which includes parts of Wuttemburg). Both of these are forbidden to raise armies, are subject to indefinite Anglo-French Occupation, and are required to pay reparations.
  9. Independent Polish puppet in East Prussia, same conditions with Rhineland and Bavaria (with Polish troops expected to occupy it once they raise an army).
  10. Germany is forbidden from ever unifying with Austria, Bavaria, East Prussia and The Rhineland. Any attempt to do so will be considered an act of war.
  11. Germany gets twice the OTL Reparations. Failure or refusal to pay them will be considered an act of war.
  12. Germany gets the OTL arms restrictions... plus being forbidden from having a navy and air force, ever.
  13. Germany may not have an army exceeding 80,000.
  14. All territory within 40 miles of the border is a demilitarized zone. Moving troops into it will be considered an act of war.
  15. Germany is forbidden from ever joining the League of Nations. Any request for membership is to be ignored and/or rejected.
  16. Any violation of the Treaty no matter how "minor" will result in an immediate invasion by Entente forces.
So with this cartoonishly over the top treaty in place, what happens next post-versailles?
... sorry for not putting this in.
 
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