What if no German Unrestricted Sub Warfare, Zimmerman Note intercept, US DoW on Germany in 1917?

OK – so Germany is going into January, February, March, 1917 operating its ground and naval forces consistently. No new crisis with the USA, and bam! we have the February Revolution in Russia overthrowing the Tsar.

In April 1917 we have the Nivelle Offensive and then mutinies by French troops.

I will go ahead and make another interpretive leap. The Entente will figure out how to survive 1917 financially and economically.

There are some thoughts they could not, and they were running out of backing collateral in North America for loans. And indeed, the Wilson Administration was advising lenders not to make unsecured loans to overseas borrowers.

Certainly, without declaring war, which is not happening, the US government is not guaranteeing Entente loans or granting unlimited credit. Nor can it present a "Liberty Loan" as a patriotic duty or sell war bonds for US defense or Entente purposes. And there were internal British memos about running out of financial liquidity at some point in spring 1917.

However, these British memos were likely based on maintaining certain fiscal and trade orthodoxies and assumed non-imposition of different types of austerity and rationing that Britain's coalition government would have been willing to do rather than lose the war, even if the measures would have been anathema to an Asquithian Liberal government following its 1914 and beforehand principles.

Additionally, while American creditors could in theory start calling British and other Entente loans short, and strictly to account, and then seizing British-owned collateral for non-payment, causing a run on that, resulting in its liquidation and a drying up of credit, that may not be the most likely thing to happen. Banking and industrial concerns were not as strictly separated then, and big lenders would know abruptly pulling credit, rather than extending and stretching out repayment terms, could kill export markets expected for the quarters ahead instantly. So some concerns with cross-ownership across different sectors may literally continue to bank on British and Entente victory, having sunk so much business and investment in them already, convinced they will win, and counting on them as product markets in the near-term.

In any case, the British do still have their shipping resources, untapped, as-yet-untaxed resources and even if running into difficulty getting credit for purchases in the US, can still make vast food and raw material purchases and some light manufacturing purchases from their Dominions and to some extent Latin America.

Now British and Allied shipping should still face a hard time from the German U-Boat campaign, even as it remains under restrictions. It should get worse from them through June-July-August, even if never as bad as it got in real history. And I would expect the British would start convoying by the time they need to, when they calculate that is the more efficient and sustainable overall alternative.

In any case, in real history, and in this timeline, Germany and Austria and the Ottomans were *utterly unable* to go over onto the offensive on *land* against the western powers at any point between August 1916 and March 1918 (a whole 20 months!) or against Italy between August 1916 and October 1917 (14 months) and I don't see what would make that change here. From August-December 1916, all the Central Powers could accomplish on land in Europe was holding off the Brusilov offensive, mounting a counterattack to it, and counterattacking the Romanians and squeezing them out of Wallachia and Bucharest. Any other successes by the Bulgarians and Ottomans were defensive stalling, and in Anatolia/Caucus, the Turks were failing at that.

In 1917, the Central Powers, despite the rot and end of discipline and motivation in the Central Powers and the mutinies against senseless offensives in France, were unable to mount any land offensives from January through August of the that year. And they had to fend of persistent British assaults in Flanders from May or June through November, the brief French Nivelle offensive in April, some Italian offensives in the summer, a feeble sally from Salonika that year, a successful British advance in Mesopotamia, and British gains in southern Palestine and Jerusalem by the end of the year along with Arab Revolt actions.

And this was all in our timeline before US troops were really in the trenches in any quantity. So the absence of US forces from the war and the trenches through August 1917 does not look at all like it provides Germany or the Central Powers a war-winning opportunity in that time.

What Germany was able to do in 1917 was mount a defense and counter-attack that manhandled Russia's June Kerensky offensive, and sent Russian morale further plummeting.

Then, in September, taking advantage on ongoing rot/melt of Russian forces, the Germans took Riga.

Then in October-November, the Germans and Austrians together battered the Italians at Caporetto and threw them out of much of Venezia back to the Piave.

Without America in the war, there's not an apparent opportunity for the Germans to advance to an enemy capital in 1917 to claim a victory, but things can't be better for the Allies either. The Allies' offensives are failing.

It is a legitimate question if the Russian Provisional Government even *attempts* an offensive. In our timeline, the Provisional Government was being prodded forward and pep-talked into not only keeping in the fight, but attacking by the mission of American Elihu-Root, who made clear that American financial largesse was on offer for Russia *if* it fought for victory, but "no fight, no loan". Without the Yankee carrot, the British and French alone might not have enough to offer the Russians to motivate a real offensive from them, even if the Russians would not yet be ready to make a separate peace. Indeed, if Wilson is still on the outside, not wanting a German victory, but not wanting *anybody's* victory, and supporting a negotiated peace, Wilson might be finding the Russian democratic socialist parties, with their presence in the Petrograd Soviet and in some Provisional Government posts, with their talk of" no annexations and no indemnities" among the most receptive among any politicians in any belligerent state.

*Without* the US having declared war on the Central Powers, and that being noted as a growing danger for them, it is an open question whether or not the Center and Social Democratic parties in the Reichstag voice support for a negotiated peace in July 1917 as they did in our timeline. It is also an open question whether Pope Benedict is moved to offer is August 1917 mediation proposal, which some have interpreted as motivated by the danger to the Catholic Habsburg monarchy by this point in time.

I imagine Britain's blockade would continue to tighten around Germany, although be little less airtight, a little more leaky, with the USA not a belligerent. It would still get harsher.

But unless things change to somehow produce a negotiated end to the war by November 1917 – not absolutely impossible, but still requiring a near-miracle, and highly unlikely, we would likely have a Bolshevik Soviet revolution pulling Russia out of the war by this point in time.

That would probably ease pressure in Germany for unrestricted submarine warfare, though it still wouldn't be ruled out, and even though the blockade would be stinging.

The persistent effects of blockade, even without American participation in the war and prospect of ever-growing numbers of American troops, probably would *still motivate* Germany to invest in a spring 1918 do-or-die offensive in the west.

This would have to follow a punishment expedition in the east to stop dilly-dallying and get the Bolsheviks to sign the Brest-Litovsk peace.

By March 1918, we do have some questions about how the Allies have postured themselves defensively, not having American troops in France or on the way.

Q1: Have the French raised significantly greater numbers of colonial troops from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Indochina, trained them, armed them, and put threm in the battle-lines in France or at least in the fields and factories of France in numbers far exceeding our timeline?

Q2: Have the British sent significantly more of their own men, Dominion men, and possibly men from non-white colonies like India, the Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa to fronts in the Middle East, Salonika, and France?

Q3: Is that helping keep manpower in terms of battalions comparable to our timeline or not?

If not, why not?

Q4: Have the British or French in any manner found something sufficient to bribe Japan with to send a Japanese Expeditionary Force (JEF) to Europe to fight with them? Has it even been discussed? Has Japan mentioned a price? Did the Allies turn away horrified at the price or think about it? –Ultimately, I think any such bargain is really unlikely.

Given the technology of the time, and the tactics, I don't think a decisive breakthrough and exploitation of Allied lines, gaining either the Channel ports, or Paris, is likely in 1918, and failure to meet these objectives will be devastating to German morale.

However, there is an important question remaining.

Q4: Would the British and French need to pull back and abandon peripheral fronts, or starve them, to survive the 1918 German offensive?

For example, pull out of Salonika, dismount the troops in Marseilles or the Channel ports, and head to the lines. Pull back any troops sent to Italy after Caporetto. Strip the forces in the Mideast fronts, Palestine and Mesopotamia, to the bare minimum, and get them back to France?

Q5: [Also, would none of the British, French, nor Italians have any troops to spare to intervene in Russia to guard supplies or help the White Russians? I would not see the Americans involved in Russia, even in Siberia, if they are not already in WWI. This leaves only the Japanese to possibly involve themselves.]

Possible implication 1) If the Allies have to do this to survive, they stop the Germans, but they are too exhausted to immediately launch non-stop counter-attacks beating the Germans back. The Allies have to cut off the most threatening forward positions, build up colonial reinforcements and supplies, build up gas and tanks and aircraft, keep up the blockade, and be ready to have a go in 1919.

Possible implication 2) And thanks to withdrawals in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Italy, the Central Powers of the Ottomans, Bulgarians, and Austro-Hungarians will be under less pressure along with Germany and they'll all make it through another nasty winter and New Year.

Possible implication 3) – If on the other hand, the Allies are able to halt the Germans in the west through external/colonial/home reinforcements, German logistical over-reach, while *not* stripping down the other fronts, it is a different story.

The Allies without the Americans would probably have too thin a manpower buffer to prosecute the OTL 100 days offensive of hammer blows in the west. But the men in the west who survived the German onslaught and building up for 1919 will be cheered a bit by good battle news in the fall in September from the Middle East, and then the Balkans from Vardar Macedonia, as in October and November the Bulgarians, then Ottomans, and then Austro-Hungarians collapse.

To the surprise of almost all, the decisive campaigns entering German soil over the winter months of 1918-1919, and compelling German surrender and setting off German revolution are not on the western front, they are rather the efforts led by Armando Diaz crossing Austrian Tyrol, Austria proper, Vienna, and Salzburg, to advance to Munich, and parallel advances by Franchet D'Esperey's L'Armee D'Orient of Frenchmen, Serbs, and Greeks, riding the Austro-Hungarian rails, soon joined by Czech and Polish volunteers, collecting in Prague, advancing into Saxony and Silesia, and then on to Berlin and Brandenburg from the south. The role of the hard-worked western front armies is to keep contact with and pressure on the German western front forces and collect increasing numbers of PoWs.

In Germany's increasingly desperate situation, there are attempts to shift forces to close the wide open breach in the south and east at the tail end of the war, by transferring troops and units from the western front via the rails to Bavaria, Saxony, Brandenburg. However, success is limited. Because of the late start, Allied forces are reported breaching the Reich borders at Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, before much in the way of any transfers have been completed. Some local commanders who haven't lost faith resist redeployments, not wanting their sectors in the west to break. Other units embarked on the rails and roads, "get lost" on their way to the other fronts as soldiers desert and wander home to check on family rather than stay in order or mass on the other border. Some troops resort to minor self-wounding, self-maiming to avoid further duty. Others in more exposed positions, especially as bad news from the southeast spreads, surrender to the nearest Allied forces to get rations and a dry cot.

These forces all add up to total disintegration of the German position before the winter is over, possibly before the end of February, definitely before the end of March, 1919.

In the meantime, here is a more detailed projection of how things may go, during the war and through 1920:

A few summary points, four days into this thread:

Based on feedback and my own consideration, I will make some "calls" on how I think some major things would have likely gone down in this scenario.

1917

Despite American continued neutrality, and lack of financial incentivization of Russian belligerency and offensives in 1917, and American applause for the statements of the Petrograd Soviet and later the Provisional Government disowning "Annexations and Indemnities" as war aims, and Wilson's continued overtures at peace mediation, Russia will remain committed to the Entente and launching a summer 1917 offensive.
The Russian summer 1917 offensive will be a dismal failure like in OTL, and plunge Russia into political crisis, and further erode military discipline and order.
Despite the lack of unrestricted submarine warfare ROE, the simple increase in German U-Boats on station operating according to prize rules and sharpened rules in some cases against armed Allied merchant ships and in certain waters like the Mediterranean will lead to steady increases in sinkings of Allied merchant tonnage from February through August 1917, perhaps even into September or October 1917, just not by as much as OTL. The Entente merchant fleets will bleed from it a few months longer before deciding that adopting convoys as a response is worth the cost, after which merchant losses will abate.
Wilson applauds and encourages the general concept, if not all the particulars, of Papal Peace mediation effort of August 1917. He also permits in the fall, American Socialists to travel to Stockholm for the international Zimmerwaldist Socialist peace conference, while Entente countries block their Socialist delegates or pressure them to renounce intentions to attend.
The Germans will drive the Russians from Riga in September 1917
The Austrians and Germans will batter the Italians back through Friuli and Veneto with the October-November Battle of Caporetto.
The Bolshevik Revolution will occur basically on time in November, per the western calendar, followed by a CP-Bolshevik Russian armistice in December 1917. Wilson will applaud the fact of armistice but encourage general talks between all belligerents and encourages "Peace without Victory". Likewise, his endorsement of Bolshevik peace policy is qualified, it is not endorsement of their revolutionary methods or the chaotic and unparliamentary actions after their coup.
The Germans/CPs more and more start to consider Wilson a "useful idiot" with his peace talk, thinking they can insulate their own forces and people from it by battlefield victories over opponents one-by-one.
The Entente powers are more and more irritated with Wilson and his peace talk, worried it affects parts of their public too much, and is a stalking horse with middle-class liberals, progressives and non-radicals for Bolshevik peace propaganda. The counter-propaganda the center-right Entente governments hasve to offer is based on "unmasking" imperial and domineering German ambitions for why peace cannot be had without victory over Germany first, insisting on national rights and claims for their own countries and gallant allies, bemoaning and condemning the perverse combination of Bolshevik social disorder, political tyranny, and dishonorable and unfaithful defeatism, and promises of domestic reforms, and social security for veterans and the average citizen making the home country "a land fit for heroes".
While Wilson is considered a naive irritant in Entente circles, America is a land of useful and necessary, idiots for the Entente, whose exports and financial markets are essential for Entente war efforts, and who leaders think will be important for postwar reconstruction.
The Entente powers also play up German and CP villainy in occupied countries like Belgium, occupied France, Serbia, Poland, Greece, and try to sway international opinion with measures like the Balfour Declaration and by highlighting Turkish atrocities against Armenians, other Ottoman Christians, and expulsions of Palestinian Jews.
Over 1917, the Entente countries ask for more naval aid from Japan in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean against the U-Boat threat.
The Entente blockade and economic constriction of the CPs will still tighten, despite lack of direct American support/participation.
In November-December the Palestine campaign finally yields the prizes of Jerusalem and Jaffa.

1918

Feeling a tightening blockade and worsening economy and knowing its Central Powers partners are feeling it just as badly, the Germans are resolved to concentrate a maximum effort on a spring 1918 western front offensive and do mass troop transfers from the east to support it.
The Germans and Austrians, sick of Bolshevik dilatory negotiating tactics, launch a February offensive against the Bolshevik Russians to force them to a settlement. They brush aside ineffective and unwilling Russian forces and seize vast amounts of territory rapidly, setting up ethno-national administrations throughout western Russia. This operation compels the Bolsheviks to sign away vast territorial cessions and in-kind contributions in the early March humiliating Peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
The Western Allies condemn both sides for the Treaty, the Germans for cruelly imposing it on the "Great Russian people" and the Bolsheviks for swallowing these unpatriotic terms and "feeding the insatiable Teutonic beast". But they are in many ways elated by settlement since as a political/propaganda matter, and troop transfers had been occurring in great numbers already. The humiliating treaty is a great cudgel against domestic radicals and pacifists at home and abroad, allowing Entente government leaders to vigorous illustrate the price of defeat, indeed the price of failing to win.
Wilson condemns the Germans/CPs for the Treaty in more unmixed, sincere terms, for German/CP rapacity and acquisitiveness territorially and economically. His interactions and correspondence with German/CP interlocutors cool considerably, and with Entente interlocutors he wishes them luck defending themselves.
The sequential German offensive against the Channel, then Paris, are lacking in focus and burn up the Storm Troops at prodigious rates, and overrunning Allied trenches where it occurs both raises and depresses morale, because while it provides a sense of accomplishment and yields good loot, it reveals the great superiority of the Allied supply situation compared with German.
The pressure of the German western offensives from March through July compels the Allies to suspend offensive actions on peripheral fronts like Italy, Salonika, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and suspends any force and supply build-ups, but does not compel any retreats or abandonment of positions.
The German offensives are checked, their offensive impetus spent, by late July, with increased numbers of German PoWs and deserters collected from then onward. The Entente powers adopt a policy of gradually pushing back the enemy from the salients he created, and straightening lines by eliminating enemy positions from forward high-ground and seizing control of some of the nearest lateral railways in enemy hands through cautious, meticulously prepared, methodical campaigns, over the autumn months of 1918.
From late July, the "peripheral fronts" outside the west are getting more reinforced and resupplied more generously, in preparation for offensive action before the winter sets in. It is also notable the submarine threat is considerably abated. This is a consequence of continued improved and more efficient Entente shipbuilding, reduced losses from convoying, and accumulated attrition to U-Boats and U-Boat crews.
Campaign-level offensives are launched after a couple months of build-up and preparation in Macedonia, Palestine, and Macedonia in September 1918, with Entente forces rapidly breaking out into the Vardar Valley, forcing the Bulgarians to capitulate, liberating Serbia by the end of September, and crossing the Danube and frontiers of Hungary in October. Meanwhile in October, a portion of the Macedonia campaign force turns east towards Thrace and invests Constantinople. Forces from central Palestine and the Jordanian desert leap ahead to seize Haifa, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, while forces in Mesopotamia reach Kirkuk and then Mosul. These broad advances, combined with the reduction of Constantinople's defenses, cause the Ottoman Turks to sue for peace by the end of October.
In October, trying to beat winter weather, Armando Diaz leads the Italians on a massive offensive against the Austrians, which regains all the ground lost since Caporetto, and then pushes on in early November into Trentino and Istria, as the Austrian Army begins to fall apart.
The Italian offensive continues into Austria proper in November and into early December, while the multinational offensive continues into Hungary over the same period while the Dual Monarchy suffers from ethnic and social mutinies and uprisings. Romanian forces largely gone to ground for most of 1918 since Brest-Litovsk, also rise up, re-enter the war, and attack Hungary. These developments compel both parts of the dual monarchy to sue for peace by December 5th, 1918, and to throw open the use of their transportation and communication networks to the Allied powers.
One notable deviation from OTL is that there has been much less Entente military involvement, and zero American military involvement, in the Russian Civil War and on behalf of the White Movement, reducing the maximum footprint those armies ever achieve.
The British, with some Canadians and other foreign contingents have a small force guarding Entente supplies around Archangel in far northern Russia that establishes a perimeter around the port and supplies but does not really connect with White Armies in the Ural country, Siberia, or Caucasus and southern Russia. "Dunsterforce" and Norperforce (Northern Persia Force) are small British forces that operate out of northern Persia and briefly intervene against Turkish and Bolshevik forces in Baku before retiring back to Persia. The British presence distracts the Bolsheviks for a period and slows their concentration on other White forces, but does not ultimately save them. Stories of the successful Czechoslovak mutiny and takeover of the Trans-Siberian railroad get out and the Allies wish to help them, but only the Japanese have troops to spare for the job in summer 1918. With a moderate level of exclusively Japanese commitment, the Czechoslovaks and Japanese, upon contact, quickly agree on promptly extracting the Czechoslovaks through Vladivostok for shipment to Europe's fighting fronts via the Pacific and Indian Oceans and Suez Canal to the Italian front, where they can come into contact with their Austrian archenemies and fight their way home. Despite some Western Entente and White Russian Generals advocating Japanese and Czech retention of the TSSR and advancement to the Urals in support of Whites for reconstitution of an anti-German eastern front, the western Allies are in no position to back this up, the Czechs primary commitment is to getting home, and the Japanese are reluctant to commit themselves into the Russian landmass west of Lake Baikal. The end result is to leave the Bolsheviks much less pressured by combined White/Entente resistance on their eastern/Asian front for a shorter amount of time compared to OTL.
The Turkish capitulation opens up the Black Sea to anti-Bolshevik interventionary operations, but operations bringing about Austro-Hungarian, and then German defeat, the latter of which extend through March 1919, preoccupy the French as the leading power, and leave the French and their Balkan Allies too exhausted to intervene and local southern Russia/Ukrainian Whites and Cossacks in poor shape to benefit from help.
Armando Diaz's final winter push before the Italians need to take a several weeks pause sees the Italians, using cavalry and also highways and Austrian rail, cross the Austro-German border to occupy Berchtesgaden, and then advance element occupy Munich and Bavaria up to the Danube, while other advance elements occupy Vienna. Exuberant repatriated Czech forces attached to the Italian theater leap ahead of general Italian lines to make it to Bohemia by New Years 1919
Meanwhile the French-led, but Balkan polyglot L'Armee D'Orient sets up a winter quarters at Buda at the bend of the Danube before pausing.

1919

The Germans attempt some reshuffling of forces to plug the wide-open breaches on their southeastern frontiers between December 1918 and March 1919, but it is not too effective. Western commanders want to keep their forces in order as they slowly give ground. Released troops often desert and get lost in transit. Germany faces escalating riots, strikes and demonstrations, in addition to ethnic uprisings in Polish-majority areas.
On March 1st, the Allies end the charade, opening up a combined offensive across the whole front prepared with hurricane and gas bombardments, breach trench lines in several places, bag tens of thousands of prisoners, and push back the front 100km in less than 5 days, at which point the German revolutionary government sues for peace.
German capitulation in March allows British penetration of the Baltic, and British coordination with Estonians, and Latvians that helps them remain independent.

Postwar -

The altered timing of the end of the war, and the fact that the USA was never mobilized, and altered and probably reduced spreads of Spanish (likely Kansas) influenza, changes some of the patterns of postwar recession, recovery and depression in the immediate postwar years.

The victorious Entente powers still standing, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, dominate the peace conference, with the USA having no more than an observer role. Germany and the Central Powers are there to be dictated to, not negotiated with.

Instead of a League of Nations, Eurasian/world affairs is dominated by the former Entente, the Quadripartite alliance (London-Paris-Rome-Tokyo). "The Quad" makes key decisions.

In the interest of Quad harmony, in the peace conference, China is not given any platform to protest Japan's inheritance of German rights in Shandong. Just as well, as China never became a belligerent or abandoned neutrality. The Chinese cry in their beer in Washington, and later in Moscow when the Bolsheviks start deciding to host normal diplomats. Understanding the importance of the Quad to hold Germany down without Russian support, nor American support, Britain and France concede the Italians everything granted by the Treaty of London, and they can get away with seizing Fiume too, if the Rome government tries it. The Italians have earned it, being the first power to breach Germany, and the Serbs/Yugoslavs should be glad they were rescued even as their original Russian rescuers fell to pieces.
The Peace Conference agenda sticks to pragmatic and territorial issues, so there is no real occasion for the Japanese to bring up a racial nondiscrimination proposal, which the Dominions signal they want *off* the agenda regardless. There is no mandate system set up, former German colonies are simply redistributed in trust and compensation to the victors. Even without the mandate system in the Middle East there are bilateral public declarations between the British and French and Arab and Jewish parties about self-rule or long-term intent for independence, because that's what local politics and diplomacy demanded. In Oceania and Sub-Saharan Africa, such pledges are not really necessary.

In Europe, new nation states are set up from territories of the defeated, with acknowledgement of their national rights, simple recognition of the facts on the ground established by peoples and factions themselves, and acknowledgement of their ties and loyalties to the victors.

In America, the Wilson Administration has not alienated many domestic supporters with wartime measures. He kept the country out of war, and catastrophe did not come, for the USA. He is visibly and audibly critical of the peace, but proud of his own country and his own values. Citizens are mainly relieved. Politically, there is an aspect of "I told you so" he can use against wartime hawks, and he can still correctly say America is continuing to build a fleet second to none, and he kept peace through strength, as well as principles, by standing up to Germany on the submarine issue. There will be a quick postwar recession as Allied orders quickly drop-off but then there will be a recovery.

The Democratic Party may not be badly positioned for the 1920 Presidential election. The voters may have some party fatigue or an 8-year itch, but they will not have war-related acrimony or letdown. The timing of recession and recovery will probably not be so that it is particularly bad in summer/autumn 1920.

The victorious powers of the Entente will be glad to see the back of Woodrow Wilson personally. They'll find his preachy brand of foreign policy annoying and unhelpful, and they won't like their debt bill. But they will have to weigh carefully their behavior relative to the USA, because of their desire for US market access and for US credit finance into the future for reconstruction.

While there will certainly be an anti-revolutionary Red Scare to some extent, because of dislike of radicalism in general, it won't be as bad as OTL, without its threat to a war effort. It could well be, especially if Wilson has a Democratic successor, that once Bolshevik Russia gets over its initial revolutionary exuberance and starts the NEP and pragmatic diplomatic deals and trade treaties like Rapallo, that it will establish diplomatic relations with the USA in the early 1920s.

Yes, and I got this idea from you, because you persisted in mentioning the possibility, and there is a certain logic to it, because estimated origin points for this influenza virus are these days suspected to much more likely be troop training camps in Kansas, and a secondary theory of origin in China (when in doubt, always a safe bet to blame for any virus), rather than "Spain" or any European location.



On changes to the European map, and France pushing....successfully, for a separatist Rhineland protectorate, the difficulty that I do not see going away, even if the USA is not a belligerent, Big Four Peace Conference leader and military occupier of part of the Rhineland is twofold: a) just as in OTL, French efforts to find indigenous support for Rhenish separatism fell entirely flat, and b) Lloyd George and Britain thought Rhineland separatism and excess territorial harshness of weakening of Germany was a bad idea...indeed they seemed to feel this way with even greater passion than Wilson and the Americans.

Now I suppose the absence of the Americans still weakens the "front" of anti-punitive participants. But in terms of who is "carrying the load" for the absent Americans, while both the French and British are doing some of that substituted labor, resourcing, and sacrifice, I suspect the British Empire will be doing the lion's share and getting a commensurate phantom "inheritance" of influence that would have been American.

On the other hand, the British, in a world where the Americans simply *never* came off the fence and fought by their side, and remained an aloof combination of hypocritical merchants of death but preachers of peace, may feel compelled to value their alliance with their French partners, and their French partners' opinions and desires, much more than in OTL. So just maybe the British end up deferring on a French-backed puppet Rhineland.

But, I think the British would draw the line at letting their own troops be used to *enforce* that, which would make enforcement and the occupation of the whole of the Rhineland by an exclusively Franco-Belgian force, with no British nor American help, a pricey proposition for Paris.

With the collapse of Austria-Hungary would borders other than Italian gains be roughly as OTL? Yes - and the Italians, if they dare a grab for Fiume could probably get away with it, though it was not promised in the London Treaty. Do states like Slovenia and Croatia become at least formally independent? I do not see why they still would not be suckered, conned, not find it expedient to take part in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, or Yugoslavist movement.... US involvement was not key to the concept of South Slavic federalism or unity.

The border with Germany and Denmark should be pretty much the same, it was decently linguistic. On the German-Polish border, perhaps it varies from OTL. Perhaps if relevant fighting continuing through the winter and into March 1919 spreads that far and units L'Armee D'Orient actions with Polish risings it could affect things. Mere US absence has no clear pro-Polish or anti-Polish effect, because on almost all postwar German-Polish boundary questions in OTL, the general tendency was for France to take the most generously pro-Polish interpretation, Britain to take the most generously pro-German interpretation, and the USA to split the difference in the middle. Here the US isn't present to split the difference in the middle, so the British and French need to do it among themselves.

I think we can safely assume an Austro-German union is still banned, and that Wilhelm is a goner. The Germans will want him gone nearly as much as the Allies. Chaos/regime change in the throes of defeat will likely bring about the end of the Hohenzollern monarchy as an institution even though, this world won't have Wilson dictating it as a condition of peace, but I would not rule out perhaps the dynasties persisting at the levels of the individuals states, and titles of nobility and princely ranks being retained.

"If there's going to be an attempt to split up Germany, or at least Prussia might other changes be made to strengthen other German states at Prussian expense? For instance the restoration of Hanover as a state - whether as a monarchy or republic, trying to hive off the eastern Rhineland - which contains so much of Germany's industrial base and possibly Saxony being restored to its 1814 borders which would make it stronger and Prussia weaker. It's something that might be considered."

----the Germans will probably surrender before there would be an actual occupation to enforce such a change to German structure. Would there be support to have tommies and poilus continue to fight and die longer to keep marching well past the Rhine into Hanover to establish its separate statehood?

Or are you envisioning Germany not split up into true separate sovereignties, but just reorganizing its states, to reduce Prussia's weight internally?





I mentioned Estonia having its independence thanks to British support, but in reality, Finnish independence and the victory of Finnish Whites was guaranteed earlier by German support, and there is no reason that should change. And initially in OTL, before German capitulation, it was German troops and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty that was keeping Bolshevik rule out of the Baltics, not the British, and even post armistice, in much of Lithuania and Latvia or at least Courland, German Freikorps remained active and held off Bolsheviks, with Allied toleration, until they in turn were deposed by local nationalists, who were also anti-Bolshevik.

So at this point I am probably sounding like a naysayer, because I am saying a lot of things do not have to be different from OTL, although many things could be. And I admit, that is a little bit of a bias on my part. I am not inclined to add extra little random small changes to the map if that is not the main focus of change in the scenario, if things could have as easily gone the same as OTL.




Maybe - Although the Japanese had their own reasons, fiscal and social, to keep their commitment limited and that the commitment was unpopular. Like they might want to get British financing- which London couldn't afford--to do a high level of effort. And the lack of direct US involvement in some ways might make it seem less *relevant* to Japan's defensive needs. Their clients were fairly lame unpopular bandits too.

But sure, I could imagine Japan's intervention in the Russian Far East, and certainly northern Sakhalin dragging on much longer. I doubt they would spend much time in a perimeter as far as Lake Baikal. Their furthest perimeter west for more than a year or 18 months would probably only go up to the Amur river itself on the mainland, thus only comprising the maritime province (which they left in 1922 I think). And northern Sakhalin is easy (they left it in OTL 1925).