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1912 - [A Collaborative Timeline]

Right now, no-one's claimed for 1917. If anyone wants to, they're welcome to, but if no-one claims by tomorrow morning EST (around 10 hours from when I post this), I'll claim 1917 and I should have it out within a day or two.

November 7 - Charles Evans Hughes defeats Roosevelt in the election, but the Republican party only have minority control of Congress. The Progressive Party remains the largest opposition party, the Democrats in third place.

ITTL, Roosevelt managed to get the Republican nomination, so he's still a Republican and never had to form a Progressive Party.
 
1917
Europe:

January 1: Italy officially leaves the Triple Alliance, as it begins to court a relationship with Britain.
January 18-19: Grigori Rasputin, a mystic who had gained favor with Tsar Nicholas II, tries to supplant Grand Duke Michael as Regent. However, his unpopularity, especially among Russian nobles, leads to the foiling of his attempted coup. However, the coup will lead to a boost in popularity of the ruling regime.
January 22: Rasputin is executed by firing squad for treason.
February 12: A year after unrest started, Grand Duke Michael declares that the unrest in Russia is "over", as things begin to return to a "normal" state in Russia.
April 8: Thousands of Estonians gather in Petrograd to demand national autonomy.
April 12: Russia, hoping to avoid further unrest, decides to grant Estonia's demands, creating the Duchy of Estonia.
June 10-11: In a coup, nationalists take control of the government of Greece, reinstating Constantine I to the throne to serve as a puppet state. Once the nationalists are in firm control of the government, they begin to build up the Greek military.
August 15: To show a warming of relations between the two nations, France and Germany agree to hold a referendum in Alsace-Lorraine five years from now (1922), to determine whether it will return to France or stay with Germany.
October 13: The Miracle of the Sun is reported at Fatima, Portugal, in which three children claim to have received visions of the Virgin Mary.


Asia:

September 4: Under the reccomendation of Foriegn Minister Arthur Zimmerman, Germany decides to ally with China, since its interests lie with France and against Britain.

North America:

March 7: President Thomas Marshall is sworn into office as the 29th President of the United States.
March 31: The US takes possesion of the Danish West Indies, which will become the US Virgin Islands.
September 25: Enrico Gonzalez, a desperate member of the failing FPRN, manages to assassinate President Marshall. Vice President John Burke succeeds Marshall, and in response the US sends an expeditionary force under John Pershing to help Mexico crush the FPRN. The Socialist Party loses much support for their support of the FPRN, and some local authorities threaten to arrest Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs, although this never comes into fruition.

Middle East:

May 1: Several other groups in the Ottoman Empire, seeing the example of Palestine's independence, begin to agitate for independence of their own. Sporadic armed resistance occurs throughout the year, but the Ottoman Empire manages to defeat most of these revolts.
October 16: After defeating a group of Armenian rebels, Ottoman forces discover a cache of hidden Russian weapons hidden in the Armenian rebel headquarters. Although both powers seem to come to the brink of war, the Ottomans relent - they believe that they would lose any war they would fight with Russia one-on-one.
 
Are you sure about that?

@Redolegna would know better than I do about how likely or not that is from the French point of view, but from my research:

1. Referenda was not a common way of determining important matters of state in Europe at the time.
2. If there is a warming between France and Germany (which, given 1870-1914 OTL, strikes me as a bit of a stretch), then I'm finding it hard to see how either the French or the German Governments would allow an unpredictable referendum to potentially mess up any agreement they come to.
3. I note that Germany was, in 1914 OTL, undergoing a massive internal split between Prussia (which dominated the legislature with Traditional Views) and many of the other northern states, which had a much wider plebiscite resulting in a much more Socialist view. This split showed up in the 1912 German elections, where the SPD won a lot of seats but, because of the veto rules in the Bundesrat (14 votes required to block any laws passed by the Bundestag; Prussia held 17 votes), Prussia could ensure that Traditional Laws remained dominant, leading to rows over education, workers rights, extension of the franchise. I'm finding it hard to believe that the Prussian Junkers, who ensured that less than 10% of the adult population of Prussia could vote in Prussian elections, would allow a referendum on the prospect of allowing Alsace Lorraine to return to France, just because the people who lived there might want that.

If you do go down the road of France and Germany agreeing to allow the local people to decide which country they want to belong to, then I would imagine the consequences for the internal politics of Germany is going to be significant.

It's already been established that a Franco-German rapproachment began in 1916, and from the way I see it, that would be very hard with the conditions that were in place in 1912. I reasoned that one way to help facilitate that rapproachment would be a solving of the Alsace-Lorraine crisis - if that problem was settled, it would do wonders for any Franco-German relationship. The only thing I could come up with that would be a peaceful solution suitable to both sides was a referendum. In addition, it sets up for any future turns that may be taken.

While the workings of the pre-WWI Bundestag (or pre-war Germany in general) are certainly not my area of expertise, it appears that elections for the Bundestag took place roughly every 4-5 years, which means that if we're assuming that the average election cycle takes place with no large war, the next election would take place in 1916-1917. If the SPD was already gaining ground in 1912, I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that they may be able to keep up the momentum in the next election.
 
I claim 1918, let a "short" "sharp" war commence.
 
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