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Alt History ideas, rec and general dicussion thread

revisiting my earlier joke TL of Henry VIII effectively partitioning his kingdom out amongst his children (more that he fobs them off with titles/lands commensurate with their place in the pecking order behind Edward) and accidentally causes a celtic revival:

I know Anne Boleyn and courtiers allied with her were on the reformation sympathy train; but if Catherine, Habsburg HQ and Rome all sign off on the annulment provided Mary's rights are assured; when is the next occasion that Henry would break with Rome, or would such a split be left to Edward's regents?
 
I have this idea for an AH TL where a revanchist Germany under the SPD allies with the Soviet Union and China against France, Britain, and Japan. This is probably really unlikely but still would be fun to explore. :V
 
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king of hybrids said:
revisiting my earlier joke TL of Henry VIII effectively partitioning his kingdom out amongst his children (more that he fobs them off with titles/lands commensurate with their place in the pecking order behind Edward) and accidentally causes a celtic revival:

I know Anne Boleyn and courtiers allied with her were on the reformation sympathy train; but if Catherine, Habsburg HQ and Rome all sign off on the annulment provided Mary's rights are assured; when is the next occasion that Henry would break with Rome, or would such a split be left to Edward's regents?
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An attempt under Edward might be interesting given I don't think Edward or more pointedly his regents had near the capability of Henry the seventh and would be dealing with religious and secular catholic powerbases being unbroken by long years of Henry's military and political actions bloodily crushing all those who wouldn't go along with his break.

As I recall with years of Henry's efforts there were still major revolts in the north and west of England as well smaller revolts elsewhere in England like in in East Anglia so I imagine Edward's regents trying to instate a protestant reformation would likely end up with even more serious conflict.

And then of course there is historical enemies like France and Scotland who would have every reason to take advantage of such conflict arising.
 
The idea of George Patton entering politics, perhaps being "drafted" instead of Eisenhower, had he avoided his OTL death is occasionally floated in discussions about alternate US presidents that never were.

I am curious how that would play out.... given how much of a complete and utter fucking disaster that would be....
The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European but an Asiatic and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese and, from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of a bitch, a barbarian, and a chronic drunk.
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The stuff in the papers about fraternization is all wet... All that sort of writing is done by Jews to get revenge. Actually the Germans are the only decent people left in Europe. It's a choice between them and the Russians. I prefer the Germans.
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Berlin gave me the blues. We have destroyed what could have been a good race and we are about to replace them with Mongolian savages. And all Europe will be communist.
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I also wrote a letter to the Secretary of War, Mr. Stimson, on the question of the pro-Jewish influence in the Military Government of Germany. I dared do this because when I was in Washington, he showed me a great deal of correspondence he had had with the Secretary of State and Mr. Morgenthau prior to the Quebec Conference.
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I had never heard that we fought to de-natzify Germany – live and learn. What we are doing is to utterly destroy the only semi-modern state in Europe so that Russia can swallow the whole.
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I am frankly opposed to this war criminal stuff. It is not cricket and is Semitic. I am also opposed to sending PW's to work as slaves in foreign lands where many will be starved to death…
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Patton being drafted to run for office is just so unlikely the man had negative charisma as far as public relations but if a party did so the other party would most likely draft Ike and Ike would demolish Patton, admittedly anyone would but Ike would be even more crushing.

Though I suppose that would make for an interesting alternative history whatever party drafting Patton getting utterly crushed in a landslide election and the fallout from that over time.
 
I will admit I didn't know Patton was antisemitic, but now that I do a part of me wants to punch the schmuck in the face. Although perhaps it would be more appropriate to slap him.

With that said, assuming Patton survived what would his post-war military career be? Would he have been sent to Korea, and if so would he have been better or worse than MacArthur?
 
Rhaegar I said:
With that said, assuming Patton survived what would his post-war military career be? Would he have been sent to Korea, and if so would he have been better or worse than MacArthur?
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Just as likely to go off on his own and ignore orders but with none of the charisma. You do the maths.

EDIT: And more racist apparently. Just imagining Patton in charge of the military administration of Japan sounds like a horror waiting to happen based on the quotes above.
 
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Reading the TL 191 books there's a lot of interesting content Turtledove has to gloss over due to his tight focus on the US and the Confederacy.

We know there's general war in South America in both Great Wars, presumably Germany kept and expanded their African colonies at the end of the Great War and there's a significant African front but not in the Maghreb. Russia is presumably led by the Black Hundreds or some sort of reactionary military regime. China is hardly mentioned but Japan has the Philippines and Indonesia.
 
Hmm I am not sure that would even be possible during the Reagon administration to be honest, you'd likely need decades of underlining issues to build up for that to happen rather than just a extremely bad presidency.

The Soviets had internal issues build up for decades for before it broke up as well as regions it had forcible invaded and annexed like the Baltic states and Mordovia.
 
Hello SV, I'm here to rec two stories. The first is McGoverning, an absolutely brilliant TL where George McGovern manages to, by the grace of George Wallace and Chuck Colson, win the presidential election of 1972. It shows us, among many things, how McGovern and his crew react to the situation the US finds itself in, the Vietnam war, the Oil Shock of 1973, Soviet Detente etc. It also goes into how the reactionaries in the darkest depths of american politics react to the personification of everything they hate becoming President.

The other TL I'd like to rec is The Third Coming of Nixon, where the man in question, like a Pheonix made of the fires of hell, rises from the ashes of Watergate. David Frost makes a minor fumble during his interviews, leaving space for Nixon to make an earlier rehabilitation of his image and make his grand return to Washington. It's sadly dead but what's there is amazing in how it almost makes you root for Nixon, if only because his main victim is President Reagan and all the rest of the Republican Party.
 
FiskenIsFishy said:
I have this idea for an AH TL where a revanchist Germany under the SPD allies with the Soviet Union and China against France, Britain, and Japan. This is probably really unlikely but still would be fun to explore. :V
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I don't think you would get as far as a world war, but I think that scenario isn't that unlikely in parts. Germany never accepted it's Eastern borders as it did at Locarno with it's Western borders. The SPD had very close ties with the Republikaner Schutzbund in Austria, and the Austrian-German customs union predates Hitler taking power. An attempt at Austrian annexation was probably going to happen no matter what. And while I don't think an SPD government would tried to take the Sudeten lands, it was very much part of the long term plan of the DVP-SPD-DDP to eventually get a revision of the Polish borders diplomatically.

As for the latter, the KMT and USSR did have close relations, and it's not hard at all to imagine the 1939 Khalkin Gol fighting to expand into a broader war.
 
If 1940s Switzerland was surrounded by hostile communist nations and had pro-fascist refugees within its borders, could it potentially fracture?
 
FiskenIsFishy said:
I have this idea for an AH TL where a revanchist Germany under the SPD allies with the Soviet Union and China against France, Britain, and Japan. This is probably really unlikely but still would be fun to explore. :V
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Oh. Funnily enough I had similar ideas once. Since Soviet-German and Sino-German cooperation both already were a thing, as was German opposition to the former Entente powers, of course, I don't think it is that unlikely. Germany could take deepen that cooperation, and take part in general anti-imperialist rhetoric - I mean, hey, if nothing else, if you don't have colonies yourself anymore, anti-colonialism makes geopolitical sense.
 
I thought of a take on Fuherreich that is similar. Valkist Germany, which i am interpretting as a pseudo-SA regime that rises from the ashes of a failed military-monarchist regime, failed liberal turn, a failed communist insurrection not in that order in a Germany that was more punished by the First World War, allies with a weaker Soviet Union against a strong Little Entente and creeping French power.

Germany is anti-colonial in a "Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, Europe for Europeans" way out of pragmatism and better at international outreach like a charm campaign against the Islamic World.
 
What if Quebec voted Oui to secede from Canada in 1995 and it bleeds into the 1996 US election as NAFTA becomes a scapegoat for Canada's issues?
 
I don't think there's really a way to do a anti-colonial right wing Germany without jettisoning basically everything that characterized right wing German thought. The Drang Nacht Osten basically underpinned the whole German right since the existence of Germany as a concept in the middle ages. That's a colonial project. German cooperation with the KMT in reality wasn't really ideological - while the KMT was a little fascist*, it's cooperation with Germany was because China was a market for German weapons, and Germany wanted to get Chinese resources. And while there really wasn't such a thing as a liberal in the Reichswehr, Hans von Seeckt and Alexander von Falkenhausen were about as close as you could get. (In that they were both volkisch right wing nationalists, but they didn't want to actively overthrow the Weimar state. Falkenhausen more then Seeckt, but this is a very low bar. The Reichswehr were not good people.)


*By which I mean, late period Sun and Chiang would have absolutely liked to have been, they never had enough power to make that happen. As much as people like to talk about the Blueshirts, it's important to remember that the KMT fascists were purged not once but twice, and even then, those groups looked to Italy, not to Germany, as ideological models.
 
FiskenIsFishy said:
I have this idea for an AH TL where a revanchist Germany under the SPD allies with the Soviet Union and China against France, Britain, and Japan. This is probably really unlikely but still would be fun to explore. :V
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comradepitrovsky said:
I don't think you would get as far as a world war, but I think that scenario isn't that unlikely in parts. Germany never accepted it's Eastern borders as it did at Locarno with it's Western borders. The SPD had very close ties with the Republikaner Schutzbund in Austria, and the Austrian-German customs union predates Hitler taking power. An attempt at Austrian annexation was probably going to happen no matter what. And while I don't think an SPD government would tried to take the Sudeten lands, it was very much part of the long term plan of the DVP-SPD-DDP to eventually get a revision of the Polish borders diplomatically.

As for the latter, the KMT and USSR did have close relations, and it's not hard at all to imagine the 1939 Khalkin Gol fighting to expand into a broader war.
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Maybe also have Left-KMT end up on too? Don't really see that scenario happen much.
 
comradepitrovsky said:
I don't think there's really a way to do a anti-colonial right wing Germany without jettisoning basically everything that characterized right wing German thought. The Drang Nacht Osten basically underpinned the whole German right since the existence of Germany as a concept in the middle ages.
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That's just silly broad strokes historiography. This is en par with saying Russia is autocratic because Golden Horde. In truth, there are no such national arcs of thought that last for centuries. What matters are in fact details - and as for this scenario, it wouldn't even require a right-wing German government to begin with! As well, "colonialism" in the public mind is about possessions in Africa and Asia, not territorial disputes in Europe. In truth, of course, American and Russian expansion (e.g.) were also colonialism, but it is entirely possible for our hypothetical alliance to condemn "imperialism", targetted at oversea possessions, while engaging in imperialism "at home" on their own - see, in fact, OTL USSR and China.

As I have said, it would be less about ideological conviction and more about geopolitical calculus anyway. I think the Cold War gives people a warped perspective about how broad international alliances have to be about ideology, when that was a rather exceptional phenomenon in history. But even with "impure" motives, it would still a bloc against (overseas) colonialism.
 
Alane1 said:
An attempt under Edward might be interesting given I don't think Edward or more pointedly his regents had near the capability of Henry the seventh and would be dealing with religious and secular catholic powerbases being unbroken by long years of Henry's military and political actions bloodily crushing all those who wouldn't go along with his break.

As I recall with years of Henry's efforts there were still major revolts in the north and west of England as well smaller revolts elsewhere in England like in in East Anglia so I imagine Edward's regents trying to instate a protestant reformation would likely end up with even more serious conflict.

And then of course there is historical enemies like France and Scotland who would have every reason to take advantage of such conflict arising.
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I would imagine that if Henry remains in communion with Rome that the Papacy might grant him the right to confiscate the lands of the monasteries, if not actually dissolve them.

I kind of have 3 PODs in mind 1. Catherine agrees to take orders in exchange for Mary keeping her legitimacy/place in line of succession and Ireland for her life, 2. Henry Fitzroy lives and Henry VIII makes him Duke of Cornwall as a back-up to Edward VI and Elizabeth as Princess of Wales and 3. Richard de la Pole lives long enough to rock back up in the chaos following Edward's death to claim a catholic northern england while Jane Grey and the Tudor siblings are battering each other.

It's not a serious time line i'll admit; it's mostly a joke attempt to make a new heptarchy for the British isles (but where the 7th nation is somehow Brittany)
 
So what would you realistically expect would have been the impact on both the United States and Mexico if the US had gone farther with it's annexations after the Mexican-American War?

Ignore Cuba
 
Given the sheer tiny size of the US peacetime miltary and congress sheer resistance to increasing its size there is no way they would be able to hold that much teritory. I don't think they could even if they tripled the size of the army which I sverely doubt they would.

And how exactly did they manage to get Spanish Cuba?

Because I can't imagine they could have defeated the Spanish military of the era of the war against Mexico even assuming Britain didn't decide to get involved to protect their own interests.
 
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