David Frum: What If the Allies Had Lost World War One?

[Josquius]

Is it really right to call any side in WWI "allies"? The allies vs the axis were the parties in the WWII. The WWI was about the entente cordiale vs the central alliance.

Yep.
In WW1 it was the allies vs the entente.
The allies did lose WW1 (so did the entente really but... You know)

[garbon]

Is it really right to call any side in WWI "allies"? The allies vs the axis were the parties in the WWII. The WWI was about the entente cordiale vs the central alliance.

Yep.
In WW1 it was the allies vs the entente.
The allies did lose WW1 (so did the entente really but... You know)

As was already noted though, in practice, it generally isn't the Central Powers that one is talking about when one says the Allies of WW1.

[Warspite]

If the Central Powers win in 1917 I would have bet you still get a re-run mid-century.

Austria-Hungary still falls apart, only on a different timeline.

[Norgy]

If the Allies lost WW1, we would have a half-functioning united European economical zone dominated by Germany and hindered by various national petty differences and half-baked policies.

That's probably very close to the truth.
Niall Ferguson edited a book about counter-factual history. The title escapes me.

The article about "Mitteleuropa" after a German victory in WW I in typical British fashion sees it as almost an early EU. I think that's probably well too optimistic.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

If the Central Powers win in 1917 I would have bet you still get a re-run mid-century.

Austria-Hungary still falls apart, only on a different timeline.

An uglier, bloodier, more drawn-out timeline.

As to the re-run, I wonder what would have happened to the likelihood of that if WWI had ended before it went chemical.

[Tamas]

If the Central Powers win in 1917 I would have bet you still get a re-run mid-century.

Austria-Hungary still falls apart, only on a different timeline.

An uglier, bloodier, more drawn-out timeline.

As to the re-run, I wonder what would have happened to the likelihood of that if WWI had ended before it went chemical.

The nasty war propaganda was full swing well before the gas attacks.

That re-run would probably had seen a nazi-ish humiliated France trying and magnificently failin to take revenge on Germany, while nazi-ish Britain looked at it with neutrality.

[Valmy]

France would probably burn itself out in a brutal civil war with the left and the right blaming each other for the sufferings of the war and defeat. I see no reason the the right would necessarily win and even if it did Fascist Italy would be more similar to it than Nazi Germany.

[Warspite]

France goes through political turmoil even as a victor; no reason Germany wouldn't either.

[derspiess]

Oh, it's The Atlantic.

And David Frum.

[Norgy]

If the Central Powers win in 1917 I would have bet you still get a re-run mid-century.

Austria-Hungary still falls apart, only on a different timeline.

An uglier, bloodier, more drawn-out timeline.

As to the re-run, I wonder what would have happened to the likelihood of that if WWI had ended before it went chemical.

The nasty war propaganda was full swing well before the gas attacks.

That re-run would probably had seen a nazi-ish humiliated France trying and magnificently failin to take revenge on Germany, while nazi-ish Britain looked at it with neutrality.

I don't think Britain really has room for fascism.

Wait. They had Thatcher. 
Yes, people, this time it was a joke.

[derspiess]

 

[Queequeg]

If the Allies lost WW1, we would have a half-functioning united European economical zone dominated by Germany and hindered by various national petty differences and half-baked policies.

And millions of dead Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians.   And then as the cold war with the US heats up, Germany would inevitably go further down the Pan-Germanic route to Nazism until you end up with much of the apparatus of the Third Reich, only they're already firmly entrenched across all of Europe.

Nope.  Just nope.  The Hapsburg Empire was a rotten carcass that deserved to be torn apart, and the Ottoman Empire was hampered in its proto-Nazi ambitions only by its incompetence. I am infinitely fascinated by and love Imperial Germany, but it's really the only worthwhile state in the entire Central Powers.

[Valmy]

I am infinitely fascinated by and love Imperial Germany

Why? It is just a modern state hamstrung by archaic nonsense.

The Hapsburg Empire was a rotten carcass that deserved to be torn apart

Deserving has nothing to do with anything. It represented the hope for a united and prosperous multi-national state. The Habsburgs needed to be made powerless figureheads though. Weird that you attack the Ottomans for their crazy nationalist ambitions but you support them in the case of the Habsburg Empire.

[Warspite]

On the plus side, we don't get Sykes-Picot, and my work today is a lot easier :p

[Valmy]

On the plus side, we don't get Sykes-Picot, and my work today is a lot easier :p

Maybe. As in maybe your work today is easier not that you still might get Sykes-Picot