Under Ferdinand's butterfly effect, 1914 passed without incident. History had reached a turning point here—the world war that had originally erupted in 1914 had been postponed!
Thanks to Bulgaria's rise and its partition of Serbia with Austria-Hungary, the powder keg of the Balkans was like one soaked through with water, its fuse snuffed out on the spot!
Serbia had been annexed by Austria-Hungary for more than a decade. Its internal resistance and nationalism had been almost entirely crushed. Under the butcher's blade, the people's will to resist was always fragile!
Of course, even if the "Sarajevo Incident" broke out now, it would be useless. That would merely be an internal matter of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Entente could at most stand by and watch the show; they would never step forward on behalf of the Serbs.
Every nation was making its final preparations for war. The most conspicuous sign was the explosive growth in battleships, launched like dumplings dropped into a pot. In 1914, every major European power had battleships entering service. What Ferdinand had not expected was that even the Russian bears, who had always merely been making up the numbers, had commissioned four Dreadnoughts.
With British and French assistance, Russia completed four Dreadnoughts by the end of 1914—the Gangut, Petropavlovsk, Poltava, and Sevastopol—and assigned them to the Baltic Fleet.
Well, the Russians had begun designing and building their Dreadnoughts in 1908, yet they were not completed until the end of 1914 and did not enter service until early 1915. That shipbuilding pace could probably only compare with the Italians' previous record of taking eight years to build a ship!
Naturally, dragging things out for so long brought severe aftereffects. The longer it took, the greater the outside influence. As far as Ferdinand knew, the Russians had revised this