Victory at Gallipoli

A not very ambitious one, in which the Allies pull off a victory at Gallipoli - the Ottomans bow out with at least a little of their territory still in hand, and a strong Balkan front plus a better-supplied Russia makes the difference in bringing the Germans to cry uncle without the US getting involved. Unfortunately, although Czarist Russia survives, its still politically a mess, and eventually a second world war must be fought against the Black Block of *Fascist Russia, Italy, Japan, Hungary, etc., a war which eventually brings in the US and France (after much dithering about whether to help _Germany_, they decided they really didn't want Fascist Russia on the Rhine).

A shrunken Austria-Hungary managed to hobble on after WWI, but did not survive WWII. Germany, although nearly half its territory was overrun, managed to hold on until the US tipped the balance, and the Ottomans joined in in hopes of regaining Constantinople. China, essentially divided in two by Japan and Russia in the 1930s, emerged from the war with no real functional government and about a dozen contenders for the Mandate of Heaven: currently a hard-left offshoot of the Guomindang and a hard-right grouping led by a ruthless military man are fighting it out, and nobody really likes the notion of _either_ winning.

The right-winger might get more support OTL, but Communism looks like less of a menace in this TL: the Syndicalist Spanish republic that emerged from a civil war even longer than OTL is hard-left, but hardly a Looming Menace, and the coming into power of copycat regimes in Latin America simply seems to mark off "Syndicalism" as a Wacky Latin Junta kinda thing. The influence of Syndicalism on Colonial independence movements is still only a tiny cloud on the horizon, no bigger than a man's hand...

The post-war occupations and democratizations and economic rebuilds are occuring under the aegis of the World Council, a UN-equivalent developed in the aftermath of a second bloody world war (there was no League of Nations in this world). Since unlike the Western Powers and the USSR all the victors are more or less on the same page, the Council actually is capable (so far) of some actual muscle-flexing, and many idealists see hope for a World Government of sorts. The current squabbling over influence in Europe between France and a revitalized Germany is, however, not a hopeful sign...