Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Carnifex
WWI happens much differently (if at all), and the Prussian Empire survives to be much stronger.
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You have to switch much more than the Franco-Prussian War (and Germany couldn't even pretend to get more land than it did; the only reason it got what it got was that Elsaß and Lothingren were German-speaking) to stop the Great War. The immediate cause—assassination of Franz Ferdinand—happened due to conflicting interests in the Balkans, Austro-Hungarian and Russian (Serbia had a coup in 1904 that brought to power a pro-Russian monarchy). The Habsburgs didn't want their non-German and Hungarian subjects breaking off as the Ottomans were having happen (great powers just hate independent actors), and the Russians wanted free access to warm-water ports by controlling the Bosporus and Dardanelles. (In the end, Josef Stalin and Nicholas Romanov had the same basic foreign policy: control Eastern Europe, control Turkey) The powers almost came to a head after the annexation crisis in 1908; they all were just cruising for a bruising by the end. A.J.P. Taylor had it best: the last date to stop the Great War was to not reverse the Treaty of San Stefano, which let there be a pro-Russia Greater Bulgaria in the Balkans.
Again, Germany wins the Great War, or somehow unifies along the lines England and France did. The Kaiser wins the Investiture Controversy, perhaps?