WI This Treaty of Versailles

AltoRegnant

AltoRegnant

Alt. Versailles.png

OTL, the Treaty of Versailles and the construction of Post-WW1 Europe was a complicated affair. Germany was the only Central Power to survive as a major player on european politics, but felt it was betrayed and treated unjustly, despite not actually losing that much land or power. Italy didn't see the gains it was promised returned, and various other issues. Now, I don't think you can prevent the revanchism that gripped Germany without it winning the war, so I'll admit hindsight went into how i treated the German Empire- probably bad form, but I think Germany got off fairly lightly otl.

A summation of the changes to otl
  • France and Belgium each got expansions on their eastern borders, but Germany still has substantial power in the Rhine.
  • Poland gained some Silesian land in order to strengthen an industrial base
  • Italy got her adriatic claims, at the cost of Yugoslavia
  • Hungary kept more of its prewar land.
  • Greece gets Instanbul and more of Thrace,
I didn't really have a PoD for this, but i have to imagine America didn't enter the war, allowing france to be a bit more aggressive in the negotations. This also butterflies the LoN. I think the Nazis would still rise, but that France and its allies would rearm sooner to protect their gains, and that Italy would keep leaning to the entente do to getting their gains
 

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Truenorth14

Like you said revanchism is inevitable however I think the best way to handle Germany is to neuter it, have France and Belgium get a Rhenish protectorate and Germany is severely weakened, this would also provide a buffer between Belgium and Germany.
 

David T

As it was, Lloyd George thought Poland got too much of Upper Silesia. Remember that a majority of the population of Upper Silesia voted to stay with Germany, and yet the partition ultimately arrived at left Poland with "76% of the coal production, 22 out of 37 blast furnaces and 9 out of 14 steelworks." (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1957 edition, vol. 18, article "Poland", p. 146.) Yet you seem to be proposing to give Poland all of Upper Silesia and overwhelmingly German Lower Silesia (e.g., Breslau) as well. This was thinkable after World War II (when memories of Hitler's conduct in Poland were still very fresh and when Poland had to be "compensated" for the territory the USSR took in the east) but not in 1918. Indeed, as the Germans and Lloyd George noted, unlike Posen and Danzig and the Corridor, Silesia had not even belonged to Poland for centuries before the Partitions.
 

Help

Hungary owns land that is Romanian while Romania now has a Hungarian minority. Also, why would you give them Austrian land? If you are keeping Hungary larger, I would just have them keep Slovakia.
As for the German cessions, I feel like France taking land that had never been French aside from Napoleon would not be very accepted. I doubt Wilson and Lloyd George would be fine with this. Germany would not accept the treaty if it was too harsh, and losing ancestral German land might be too much.
As for Italy, that could work, but the Entent gave them Turkey by treaty which it later couldn't hold, so I just don't get your reasoning.

Edit: I just saw the US didn't enter, but I think that without the US it would have a weaker hand?
 
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Deleted member 94680

Is that meant to be a British Protectorate over Albania?
 

Deleted member 94680

Help said:
I don't think so. I believe Italy occupied that at one point when it was being wooed into the Entente, so it must be independent.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, it’s just the same colour as Britain and Northern Ireland as well as Cyprus (which was a British Colony at the time) so I thought I’d check
 
Aghasverov

Aghasverov

Would eventually cause the same problems as the Peace of Paris did in OTL... besides, there were more issues with the treaties than just territorial re-arrangements.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
This is what the area looked like before the Serbian Ethnic Cleansing before the Balkan Wars, on Moslem and Albanian Christians
803px-Balkan_1912.svg.png

1914
file-20180418-134691-1u4m8j0.jpg
 
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MUC

No greek zone around Izmir and Greece getting Istanbul is going to have alot of butterflies,
Possibly no Greek-Turkish war 3 years later
 
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