ALTERNATIVE HISTORY

[Greg]

We should have joined germany in WW1.

[center]W H Y ?[/center]

Because they were the good (if politically inept) guys? To defend victims of aggression? To avoid becoming an even bigger dog (after the UK) being wagged by the French tail? And that never does anybody any good....

Because Yogi may be on to something with those side effects of the way WWI actually turned out?

Edit: Oh, and thought of another good one.

If Woodrow Wilson was in favor of it, it was probably the wrong thing to do.

[Jericho941]

The Salvation War. Basically Heaven & Hell are real, and JVH has decided that we've peed in his Wheaties one time too many and he's taking his ball & going home, and turning us over to the demons of Hell. This does not go as planned when we fight back...

"I know this book. Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan."

The writing is also absolute garbage, where all the demons and whatnot are set up to make them as easily kill-able as possible, i.e. flying demons are full of hydrogen. Wait, aren't they supposed to be from hell? Anyway, yeah. Don't get me started.

[John_in_Longview]

We should have joined germany in WW1.

If Annie Oakley had shot Kaiser Wilhelm instead of his cigarette, we wouldn't be having this discussion.....

[Highspeed]

We should have joined germany in WW1.

[center]W H Y ?[/center]

Curiosity. No hitler, no soviet russia, no israel, no middle eastern conflict

I don't follow, except -maybe- for the no Hitler part.

1) How would a German victory in Europe have prevented the Russian revolution ?

2) Israel was ( re ) created as a deal between Chaim Weizmann and the British government, unless you are going to invade Britain prior to 1917 then you can't stop that happening

3) No Hitler is a good point. But Italy and Spain both embraced Fascism in the 30's and a long list of other countries came close. None of them had their version of the Treaty of Versailles as an excuse. Mainland Europe can't be made immune to Fascism quite that easily

[Greg]

[center]W H Y ?[/center]

Curiosity. No hitler, no soviet russia, no israel, no middle eastern conflict

I don't follow, except -maybe- for the no Hitler part.

1) How would a German victory in Europe have prevented the Russian revolution ?

Depending on when German victory became clear to everyone, there may never have been a February Revolution, a Provisional Government, or an October Revolution. Lenin may never have been released. Even if Lenin were released, leading to Russian collapse and withdrawal from the war, a victorious Germany would have enforced the terms of Brest-Litovsk. Russia would have been smaller, weaker (rather like after the breakup of the USSR) with Central Powers occupation troops right on the border. The Russian Civil War may very well have played out differently.

2) Israel was ( re ) created as a deal between Chaim Weizmann and the British government, unless you are going to invade Britain prior to 1917 then you can't stop that happening

And how is Britain going to give away territory that it never gets its grubby hands on? If Germany wins big, it's likely the Ottomans don't collapse and have their empire stripped away. The brief decades of British and French possession of the Arab lands taken from the Ottomans weren't good for anybody. Hey, in this scenario we also have no House of Saud! Good times.

3) No Hitler is a good point. But Italy and Spain both embraced Fascism in the 30's and a long list of other countries came close. None of them had their version of the Treaty of Versailles as an excuse. Mainland Europe can't be made immune to Fascism quite that easily

Fascism is an odd, mutated sibling of Communism. WWI was a victory of Leftism that paved the way for Communism and all kinds of other corruption. WWI was a Right/Left war, and the Central Powers were the Right. The Left won, and became the wave of the future. I can't imagine a Central Powers victory in WWI strengthening Leftism in Europe.

As I said in the other thread, something terrible was still going to happen in Russia but it wouldn't have been Communism as we knew it. There was also likely to be something like Nazism (aggressively nationist Leftism, full of irrational hatred) but it would have been French, and being rooted in a fundamentally weaker nation, less able to do damage to all of Europe.

[Highspeed]

There's a lot of 'mission creep' there though Greg

[Greg]

There's a lot of 'mission creep' there though Greg

That's kind of the point of alt-hist, to think through the consequences of actions that happened to be different from what actually transpired. Is an interesting exercise, gives you opportunities for analysis, and maybe helps you better understand the real history and how it led to the actual present.

You could go on for days just on the consequences of the Western Allies not taking over the Ottoman Empire's Arab lands, and therefore not being able to spend several decades fucking them up. If nothing else, not spending decades educating the local elites in Socialism after 1918 would have made the world a better place after those countries became independent (if they did).

[Highspeed]

There's a lot of 'mission creep' there though Greg

That's kind of the point of alt-hist, to think through the consequences of actions that happened to be different from what actually transpired. Is an interesting exercise, gives you opportunities for analysis, and maybe helps you better understand the real history and how it led to the actual present.

I agree completely, but I think it needs defined limits to be really useful because otherwise the discussion becomes too difficult to follow and pin down to any kind of conclusion.

[Yogimus]

Lets assume America joins the war at the same time as in traditional history.

How long till Britain pulls from the war? Could the US convince Britain to turn neutral?

[Greg]

There's a lot of 'mission creep' there though Greg

That's kind of the point of alt-hist, to think through the consequences of actions that happened to be different from what actually transpired. Is an interesting exercise, gives you opportunities for analysis, and maybe helps you better understand the real history and how it led to the actual present.

I agree completely, but I think it needs defined limits to be really useful because otherwise the discussion becomes too difficult to follow and pin down to any kind of conclusion.

Ah, I can see that. Then if we're going to talk about consequences of the US joining the Central Powers in WWI, we'd have to agree on when that would happen. It would give us a better handle on what might happen in Russia, when, because Russia's collapse happened in stages.

As for the other bits, the Right/Left thing still holds no matter what, and being on the winning side (as opposed to the losing) would certainly help give the Ottomans a leg up on keeping their empire.