MotF 86: The Pen is Mightier

Krall

Banned
The Pen is Mightier


The Challenge
Make a map showing a world where a conflict that happened in our timeline, or in the canon of a fantasy/sci-fi world, was avoided peacefully through diplomacy.

The Restrictions
There are no restrictions on when your PoD or map may be set. Fantasy, sci-fi, and future maps are allowed, but blatantly implausible (ASB) maps are not.

Fantasy and sci-fi canons do not need to be notable or published, but they do need to be established (i.e. presented and codified somewhere where it's publicly available) - so works unique to AH.com may be used.

If you're not sure whether your idea meets the criteria of this challenge, please feel free to PM me.

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The entry period for this round shall end on Saturday the 26th of October.

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THIS THREAD IS FOR ENTRIES ONLY.

Any discussion must take place in the main thread. If you post anything other than a map entry (or a description accompanying a map entry) in this thread then you will be asked to delete the post. If you refuse to delete the post, post something that is clearly disruptive or malicious, or post spam then you may be disqualified from entering in this round of MotF and you may be reported to the board's moderators.

Remember to vote on the previous round of MotF!
 
My entry. Which, of course, is part of the same timeline as the last four of my entries to the contest. This one comes earlier chronologically then all the others, and shows the first very significant changes - the avoidance of WWII through diplomatic means, helped by the existence of a less reckless Germany.
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"To Secure, Contain, and Protect" - motto of the SCP Foundation



Despite the name the Grand Alliance was never a true pact, nor even an informal one, but rather a series of interlocking alliances and commitments which began to evolve in the 1920s and coalesced in the late 1930s, with the purpose of restraining the resurgent Germany.

This of course meant that the grouping - if indeed it can be considered as such - was, at the best of times, discohesive and slow to act. The various conflicting interests of its members, and the general unwillingness to fight another conflict so soon after the bloodshed of the Great War, meant that genuine co-operation was rare and difficult to achieve.
Even the goal of containing Germany was understood in different ways. Many governments among the western powers tended only to think in terms of preventing German expansion westwards, which of course stood at odds with the expectations of Poland and Czechoslovakia, and to a lesser extent Italy. The USSR meanwhile pursued an agenda completely of its own, which just happened to roughly align with the Alliance's primary goal. This should be taken into account before dismissing the Alliance as a failure. Despite all its' undeniable weaknesses, its success in restraining Germany for almost a decade was in fact a great achievement on the part of France and Britain, which played a dominant role in organizing the Alliance.

If asked to pinpoint a specific date of the Grand Alliance's creation, most historians will point to the year 1935, when the Stresa Front was formed and the USSR became integrated into the emerging alliance system through its pacts with France and Czechoslovakia. It is a very rough estimate, but the Grand Alliance's very nature makes it impossible - and indeed futile - to try to point out a specific date. Many of the component treaties which jointly made up the Alliance were signed in the 1920s, although the lapses of the French treaties with its allies following the Treaty of Locarno is often considered to have effectively dissolved them even if continuity might have existed on paper.
While German remilitarization was not, in the end, prevented, it was nevertheless delayed by several crucial years. The threat of Allied action was such that Germany only made its first significant action in 1942, when it suddenly remilitarized the Rhineland at a carefully chosen moment. But although it caused panic in many European capitals, the Alliance failed to make a decisive reaction, farther emboldening Berlin. Germany would then proceed to create a series of subsequent crises which in turn gave the Alliance a certain amount of motivation to continue its' resistance.

In 1943 Germany set its sights on absorbing Austria, only to meet swift and co-ordinated protests. Somewhat dismayed by this unexpectedly determined reaction, the German government agreed to negotiations which would take place in Copenhagen. Despite their greater strength, the informal and varied nature of the Alliance would prove to be a hindrance, since few (if any) of the Allies were actually willing to go to war over Austria. Out of the many incidents and disputes within the Allied coalition, one in particular stood out. Foreshadowing things to come the USSR stated its intention to conduct certain "mutual defense" treaties with Estonia and Latvia. While the western powers and Czechoslovakia did not really care about the fate of the Baltic States, this met with violent Polish protests which threatened to farther undermine the military cordon surrounding Germany. In the end the Allies prevailed upon Poland to agree to "nonintervention in the bilateral issues between the USSR and Estonia", but the damage was done.

The end result of the Copenhagen Conference was a stale compromise which nobody truly liked. Austria would be allowed to enter a customs union with Germany, a very significant gain. But the Alliance nevertheless prevented full annexation, and prevailed upon Germany to respect the demilitarization of Austria and refrain from any military support. Despite having managed to gain major concessions, this was an embarrassment to Germany which had openly proclaimed that it would soon annex Austria. Despite its discohesion the Grand Alliance was realized to still be a formidable bloc, which lead to a certain reasessment of Berlin's foreign policy.

But while Germany was able to adapt, the Alliance was not. The underlying tensions and contradictions within it were too many to remove and therefore remained unaddressed, continuing to undermine it from within until the breaking point was inevitably reached...

[1] Which was somewhat more of a success then in OTL
 
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Decided to put the description in another post because of the width of the map. And the map itself (didn't expect it to get this cluttered):

grand_alliance_by_mapsbyzaius-d6rytme.png


ERRATUM: It should say French-Czechoslovak alliance (1920), not (1935). Knew I had messed something up. Will be correcting it before long.
EDIT: Since the time was not yet up, I did the revision and a tiny edit to make the map's style a bit more consistent with my previous ones.
 
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A slightly more favourable *Treaty of Waitangi, signed at Taupo, for the Maoris. New Zealand is split up into provinces where local tribesmen have some sort of say in how things are run. There is still a Governor of New Zealand in Wellington, and British diplomats in the capital and major towns of provinces to keep an eye on things, etc.
This timeline averts the overwhelming majority of Anglo-Maori Wars in the 19th Century, saving thousands of lives.
 
Following the Napoleonic Wars, King William I was placed in charge of a United Kingdom of the Netherlands. This presented a problem as the South was nearly all Catholic, and Half French-Speaking; so in response, The King extended freedom of religion to Catholics. He also made separate Language Areas within the Kingdom: Dutch, [Netherlands, Limburg, Flanders,] and French, [Wallonia,] (Luxembourg was trilingual, but was not part of the UKoN, rather in a personal union with it.)

By the time of the Modern day, the Language Areas were constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. (Similar to the countries within the KoN IOTL.)

Not pictured: Dutch Guiana, Dutch Antilles, and Dutch New Guinea.

1815-VerenigdKoninkrijkNederlanden.png
 
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Die Bündezeit (1777-1837)

The Unions Era (1777-1837)


Fredrick the Great having ruled Prussia for many years, died as he fell down the stairs in Potsdam on Christmas Eve 1777. Only a few days later died also the Elector of Bavaria, Maximillian III Joseph, and with him the Bavarian line of the House of Wittelsbach.
The rightful heirs of Bavaria, the Palatinatian Wittelsbach, and the Habsburgs agreed to partition Bavaria. The Elector of Palatinate kept only a small part of the former Bavarian electorate north of Munich and gained in exchange the Austrian possesion in Swabia.
The Prussian King Fredrick William II who was unsure about how to act in this situation decided finally to try improve the relationship with Austria by staying calm and not going to war over the Bavaria. The Austrians accepted in return the Prussian rule over Silesia and promised to support Prussia in their Polish ambitions.
The German middle states, especially Saxony, became worried by the fact that the Prussians and Austrians obviously tried to divide central Europe into zones of influence.
Fearing the faith of Bavaria Saxony and Hesse-Cassel joined into an alliance to counter weight the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns and gaining support by the French.
The instabilty of France in the early 1790s worried the Geman middle states even more. Without a mighty ally they could fall prey to the Austria or Prussia.
Saxony, Palatinate and Hesse-Cassel were succesful by getting the Emperor to give the vacant Bavarian Electoral seat to Hesse-Cassel in 1798.
This was one of the ambitions of the ruler Hesse-Cassel who wanted in the end to be crowned King of the Chattians. This became the obssesion of Electors of Hesse for the next decades and their final goal.
Under the leadership of Electoral Hesse and the support of other mediumsized states the reorganiasation of western and southern Germany begun around the year 1800.
The princes tried to form new alliances, go new ways and modernise. A coherent state became the goal in this era.
The Elector of Hesse tried to get rid of exclaves and enclaves by exchanging territory with other princedoms and duchies. This lead by 1811 to the etablishment of the Chattian League of Princes, including all territories of the House of Hesse and also the imperial city Wetzlar and the pridedoms of Nassau, Solms, Wied and Sayn. The princes choose in Wetzlar Elector William I as their protector.
The Palatinatian Electors who began around the same time to feel cheated over by the Austrian began to consolidate their rule over large chunks of south-western Germany. They bought lands on the Rhine and in Swabia and exchanged Palatinate-Zweibrück for Baden, connecting their possessions at the Switzerlandish border with their corelands around Heidelberg and exchanging Prussian Franconia for Berg and Jüllich.

By the year 1837 Prussia-Poland and Austria are allied in a rather weak alliance and Hesse, Palatinate, Brunswick-Lüneburg and Saxony in a counter alliance.

ENJOY


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Sonnino's Gamble

In 1915, WWI was approaching a stalemate in the Western Front and both sides tried to court the Italian government to open new fronts to diverge troops from the main front. The Italian government at the time, perpetually unstable was led by the conservative Antonio Salandra. In London, the British convened a secret meeting with the Italians, the Serbs and the Montenegrins, the objective of which was court Italy by promising her most of her irredentist claims. The meeting was extremely contentious in Italy, neither Salandra nor his Foreign Minister, Sidney Sonnino consulted the Cabinet nor the Parliament nor the King. However and despite Salandra’s reticence, Sonnino consulted General Cadorna and Giolitti, leader of the parliamentary left (even if he was not in parliament any more) and onorevole. (PoD, OTL, they consulted neither, a huge breach, because Giolitti was into everything)

Both warned Sonnino against the war, citing the bad state of the Italian finances and military and the poor showing of the armed forces against the Ottomans merely 5 years ago. However, Salandra was determined and had the backing of the interventionist lobby and Sonnino attended. Italy was convinced by the concessions and entered the war, these concessions, unknown to TTL people were slightly more reduced than those OTL in part because Sonnino felt less safe about Italy’s position and so was willing to exchange the possibility of controlling northern Dalmatia in exchange of Fiume.

WWI continued as OTL with the Italians providing a valuable albeit mediocre service to the Entente. After the war and during the peace of Paris, Italy obtained most of her demands stipulated in the secret treaty of London: most of the Austrian Littoral, Trent, recognition of sovereignty over the Dodecanese islands, the cities of Valonia and Zara and a protectorate over Albania. As a result, the Italian delegation, now led by Vittorio Orlando never walked out of the conversations in Versailles and were capable of slightly influencing the negotiations, although only in the Balkans, where they had interests by trumping Wilson’s plans for a larger Albania and a smaller Yugoslavia and giving Greece the Northern Epirus.

Down the line, the 1920s were just as unstable in Europe as OTL, if not more: A revolution in Spain in 1923 against the ordenanza ciervista under the new king (Alfonso XIII dies due to the Spanish flu) that established a republic, the terrible social conflicts in Italy where the old establishment parties were displaced by the new popular forces (fascism not among them), the right-wing agitation in Bavaria resulting in the attempted takeover of Bavaria by a little known far-right Austrian war veteran who was later deported from Germany, the conflicts in France between left and right, the rise of Labour in Britain and the unstable National government, the dictatorships in Poland, Portugal and the Baltic countries, and a long etc.

In 1929, an economic depression furthered the social troubles in Europe, although by 1932 it would be more or less over and Europe moved onwards, as the 1920s had been a time for great conflict, the 1930s were a period of healing, Germany slowly consolidated its democracy and became more assertive in foreign policy by exploiting Britain’s (wrong) sense of guilt about the conditions imposed on Germany and France and Italy’s lack of decision against it. The great moment would come in 1945 when Germany would finally absorb Austria, much to France and Czechoslovakia’s fears.

The map we see dates back to 1950, a period of prosperity in Europe after the long years of instability of the 20s and 30s. Europe’s new bogeyman no longer is Germany, which has slowly become more responsible when dealing with foreign policy and has slowly approached France. Instead there is a fear of a war against the Soviets.

[[Author’s note: I know having the Italians not screw up something so important is borderline ASB but bear with me :p ]]

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