alternate 1923: Central Powers un-victory

Aaaaaaannnd here's what really happened to my Central Powers. This timeline's Great War ends in a draw after the Central powers get a little luckier: Germany avoids total exhaustion March-July 1918, and keeps holding up August and September; after an early-October solidification, Ludendorff (who doesn't have his "Hundred Days" breakdown since the Bulgarians fend off Franchet d'Espèrey at Kavadarci) Blitzes towards Reims, but then Cambrai and Ypres fall to the Entente. He considers evacuating Belgium early November, but manages a fabulous Autumn-Offensive encirclement (since a lot of artillery's been saved). The Americans are green but well-led, whereas the British and French are dirty, hungry, and half-asleep. France's food and logistics problems combine with leaks of secret peace talks to undercut Entente front lines and "home fronts." The British and Americans have some frontline troubles, but the French see near-mutinies for armistice. Boulogne, Étaples, Glasgow, Limerick, Lyon, Manchester, Missy-aux-Bois, Paris, Sheffield, Soissons, Tours, and Turin see general strikes and then workers'-and-soldiers' councils (hey, they can do pre-revolution as well as any Germans!): Ireland would get hotter than OTL. Come Nov. 11 Germany has sort of a position of strength on land, but the British blockade continues until Versailles is signed.

Elsewhere in Europe Bulgaria holds off the French until November, keeping the Brits out of Constantinople altogether. The Ottomans manage to hold Damascus instead of breaking and running; Austria-Hungary also avoids rout at Vittorio Veneto. These are all a late turning points, but not too ASB. With neither defeat nor victory on either side, alternate!Versailles--still produces something very status quo ante and revanchist. Weimar Germany agrees to plebiscites in disputed areas, heavy Army and Navy restrictions (there's still a smaller Scapa Flow), "possible" (i.e., mandatory) demilitarization of the Rhineland, stiff reparations, and a 6-year League mandate over its colonies. Trieste, Fiume, Memel, and Tangier become international cities: Jerusalem and Danzig get Versailles administrators (Allenby rather than Wingate) in addition to their German, Polish, and/or Ottoman ones. Fascistic adventurers take Trieste and Zara from Austria-Hungary in 1924.

Germany: Plebiscites split off Northern Schleswig in 1920, Upper Silesia in 1921, and Alsace-Lorraine (after France blatantly manipulates the vote) 1921. Both East and West Prussia remain German, though Danzig is Poland's free port and there's roads and trains "under seal." It's the Saar, not the Ruhr, that gets invaded by France TTL 1923 to force demilitarization (yes, it backfires, and much harder than OTL, though the München Putsch fails). Malmünd remains German even after WWII. Hitler rouses 33% of his non-homeland with tales of Jewish exploitation and domination, civilian betrayal of the 1918 boundaries and of Germany's "victory" (i.e., its chance at Continental dominance, buffer states, and high-seas naval parity), and Polish and Czech "persecution" of Prussian, Silesian, and Sudeten Germans (who're better off under ethnonationalism-kiboshing Vienna than Prague). TTL's Weimar Germany's still dominated by Putsches, Preußenschläge, Freikorps and even more Freikorps, Black Reichswehre, Social Democrats no better than Mussolini, revanchist veterans, declining aristocrats, fearful shopkeepers, Spengler and Nordau, cults of war, occult establishments, and rule by decree.

Austria-Hungary (still together because never routed, but not federalized or too devolved) is industrialized, well-educated, into ethnic mixing and Art Deco, and allows both the Reds and the Austro- and Szeged fascists to run around: the "Austrian School" no doubt has gotten chased out (presumably fleeing to another country that doesn't recognize the peril). It's an Austroslavic Social Catholic corporatist dynastic state under a Kaiser balancing all the ethnicities, heir to a universal spirit that'll lead to a United Europe (so Habsburg propaganda says). The military is unified to administer a conservative peasantry, giving Adm. Horthy plenty to do; I'm guessing Tisza gets gunned down sometime 1920-2. Vienna's very friendly to Piłsudski (who snapped up Galicia now that Poles had their own republic, no matter how Kaisertreu they were during the war) and balances Germany with British and French alliances. Vienna also quietly gives up the Great-Power status that had let no insolence by lesser countries go unanswered. Magyar elites have lost their serfs and privileged position once the Diet reconvened under male suffrage (at bayonet-point) in 1919: the magnates turn to opportunities outside A-H--running criminal rivieras and leading mercenary wars. Bosnia gets dumped to Serbia for "goodwill purposes" 1921, the Croatians do not want to join the Serbs (however relabeled), and the Czechs are more afraid of Germany than they are of anyone else. For the "minorities" there's a political and economic ladder to climb now, softening the late-WWI nationalism. A-H has avoided economic reduction into small states, and can trade en bloc with its buddy Germany. Why would it join a Greater Germany, let alone one led by a chunky expatriate hailed as the new Bismarck? That sounds Lutheran!. Hitler forces the "Staatsanschluß" start of 1939 and makes "mongrel" Vienna give up Gorizia, Gradisca, and Trento to Germany's new friend, Italy. He then propagandizes the German Austrians that they're surrounded by Italians, Romanians, and Slavs ready to dismember Germanic rule via their co-ethnics in Austria Minor; German Austrians are disproportionately represented in the SS (as in OTL).

The Ottoman Empire provides room for Indiana Jones-style adventuring and spy-fights; minorities do rather better (especially since Mehmed VI likes having someone around to play off against the Turks and Arabs) with the genocidaires wiped out and the Three Pashas fleeing with a caliphal price on their heads. Ottoman!Kemal is left just another clever dealer, rubbing shoulders with Inönü, Kazim Karabekir, Ismet Bey, and Sultan al-Atrash. I'm guessing that reforms can actually go slower than the Tanzimat: Romanization never happened, instead I took bits from Arebica and Kurdish (ڄ for ts, ﭺ for ch, ﮊ for zh, ڭ for ng, ڵ for ll, ێ for e, ۆ for o, ۆُ for ö, and ۉُ for ü.) Mehmed VI--neither dead nor running a rump state within a rump state--can now work on turning Arab, Armenian, Druze, Kurdish, Jewish, Maronite, and Turkish nationalisms into dynastic, "convivial" Ottomanism (like IRL Jordan but far stronger--and with oil!). Porte and Army--not UK-backed Bedouin dynasts--are the ones encouraging Arabs to be officers, officials, parliamentarians, and Premiers: this holds out until the pressures of upward mobility and then Nasserism start causing problems in the 50s and 60s. The Empire's only occupier is Greece 1919-22, and there's still mass murders, "population transfers," fires, and rapidly-evolving pan-Turkism lurking in the wings. The Ottomans and Bulgaria also occupy Budjak and Northern Dobruja on the Black Sea until 1923.

The big Christmassy red-green striped zone in northern China is the Christian socialist Guominjun (KMC), which I made stronger TTL.

History mostly goes on the same as OTL after this period, outside China (not as natalist) and the Middle East (united and led). We still get Iran-Contra (boo) and Cartoon Network (yay).