Promises Kept, Battles Won

The write-up will follow tomorrow. Right now just know that the premise involves Italy honoring the Triple Alliance, the Ottoman Empire joining the Entente, and a Christian Socialist movement taking over Italy (inspired by Kurarun and his recent La Bandiera Bianca/fav.me/dbgfk5k)

EDIT: Here's the write-up. I'm sorry if it's a bit ramble-y, I'm still not great at doing these.

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The Triple Alliance has been standing firm since 1882 but when those fateful shots were fired in Sarajevo on Archduke Franz Ferdinand Italy's support for the alliance had been gradually waning. However after weeks of intense negotiations, despite many doubts by members of the Italian general staff, Rome honored the Triple Alliance and declared war on the Entente states, albeit belatedly. Romania, the secret fourth member of the Triple Alliance, stayed out of the conflict for the first two years... And ultimately would side with the Entente after being promised both southern Dobruja (held by Bulgaria, which had joined the Triple Alliance in early 1916, prior to the outbreak of the war) and Transylvania.

Just like Italy and Romania, the Ottoman Empire was torn between both sides of the Great War. One one hand Istanbul saw Austria-Hungary as a key ally in keeping the Balkans stable and Germany invested a lot into Ottoman infrastructure, but less than three years ago the Porte and Italy had been waging war over Libya, which also led to the loss of the Dodecanese to the Italians. On the other hand the United Kingdom meanwhile was an important trading partner, having recently sold several warships to the Porte, and Britain had continuously honored the special Ottoman-Egyptian relationship despite London's control over the Khedivate. France too was a major trading partner and the Christian communities within the empire looked primarily towards Paris. Russia meanwhile had been an Ottoman rival for decades. So both major alliances included a member state which had been hostile towards the Ottoman Empire, which made neutrality appealing. But ultimately a British delegation swayed the Porte towards the Entente: despite the loud misgivings by the influential MP Winston Churchill the British and French were offering the Porte substantial debt relief, offered Italian Somaliland and the Dodecanese as Ottoman spoils, and promised a revision of the Russo-Ottoman border in exchange for the caliphate's troops and call for jihad against the Triple Alliance... And considering the limited access of the Triple Alliance to Ottoman territory, this offer seemed to provide little drawbacks. With some reservations the Ottomans did declare war upon the Triple Alliance in late 1915, a move which according to military historians later dragged the opportunistic Bulgarians into the Triple Alliance the next year.

The Great War proved to be a human slaughterhouse. The trench warfare along both the Franco-German and Franco-Italian border was slow, grinding, and deadly; the Balkans were originally overrun by Triple Alliance forces but thanks to Ottoman and Romanian involvement were slowly turned around towards the end of the war; the fighting between Russia and Germany & Austria-Hungary was marked by sweeping offences and counter-offences. On the side of the Entente about 36 million soldiers fought; for the Triple Alliance about 28 million. About 9 million of these soldiers died during the war... And if the United States hadn't decided to pick a side, the war would not have ended in the late spring of 1918 and the post-war world would likely have been more chaotic than it turned out.

Germany, the de facto leader of the Triple Alliance, was stripped of its colonies, Alsace-Lorraine, and significant amounts of Prussian territory, most of which was ceded to the newly created Republic of Poland. Social turmoil led to the end of the Kaiserreich and the drafting of a republican constitution closely modeled on the American one, albeit with a parliamentary system. Austria-Hungary, whose military intervention in Serbia escalated the diplomatic crisis of Sarajevo into an outright war, lost vast amounts of territory to Romania, Poland, Serbia, and the newly created Republic of Czechia, however the nation itself survived despite French aspirations to dismantle the empire completely. Thanks to Ottoman and British pressure the rump empire was transformed into a monarchist federation based on ethnic lines.

Italy, like Germany, lost its colonial possessions, as well as a border strip that was ceded to the French. But it was also allowed to gain the territory the Triple Alliance had promised the government in Rome in exchange for continued loyalty: the last west of the Isonzo River and the area surrounding the Tirolean city of Trento, both areas with an Italian-majority population. But the biggest consequence for the Italians was internally. The war had caused a surge among anti-war socialists and pro-French Catholics with leftist leanings to cooperate peace rallies and out of this cooperation the Italian Socialist Party gained a Christian Socialist undercurrent which by the end of the war eclipsed the historic Reformist and Maximalist wings of the party. In 1922 Socialists from all over Italy marched towards Rome with copies of a new republican constitution in their shirt pockets and red and white flags waving among the masses. After several days of protest in the capital and cities like Milan, Naples, and Florence, Victor Emmanuel III abdicated the Italian throne after declaring Giacomo Matteotti, one of the Christian Socialist leaders, as the new prime minister, who quickly proclaimed a new Italy based on ideas such as Christian charity & compassion, government accountability, and worker solidarity.

The Entente, while victorious, was not immune to social change either. While France, Britain, and the late-comer of the United States did not suffer immediate changes, the Russian and the Ottoman Empire certainly did. Russia had effectively collapsed towards the end of the war and after a series of revolts and conflicts the Soviet Federal Republic of Russia emerged to replace the old imperial system by which Russia had been governed by for almost 200 years, although the Soviets did not manage to subjugate all of the former Russian Empire and were kept in check by primarily Turkestani and Polish forces. A state still claiming to the Russian Empire still survived, too. While the Russian Civil War saw the death of the mainline Romanovs Kirill Vladimirovich, first cousin to Tsar Nicholas II, survived and joined the military government that had managed to hold onto Crimea. From there he still claims to represent all of Russia as Emperor Kirill I.

The Ottoman Empire did not see revolution like the neighboring Russians, but the war still highlighted problems of the Porte. Lackluster loyalty and minor revolts launched by ethnic minority leaders limited the war effort and the Young Turks who effectively led the Empire saw the opportunity for reform. In an effort to unite the various people groups of the empire Arabs, Armenians, Greeks, and Kurds were all elevated to the same status enjoyed by the Turkish ruling class and while Turkish was made lingua franca minority languages were allowed to thrive and religious taxes were abolished. While the move did not satisfy some radical Greeks and Armenians, it did enough to secure stability for the Porte and along with efforts to strengthen the parliament the Ottoman Empire revitalized itself.