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Alt History ideas, rec and general discussion thread

Alane1 said:
Ah General Bulter the war profiteer who sold war supplies to the confederates and only escaped being put on trial for his crimes by the general amnesty at the end of the war. Would he even be free and able to run for office after he helped supply the confederate war effort?
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Honestly he wasn't even the worse one, there was that guy that thought that blowing up a shack outside a fort would mean the fort would just blow up, and everybody agreed.

Incompetence wasn't in short supply in the US army during the Civil War.
 
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Neal Caffrey said:
Honestly he wants even the worse one, there was that guy that thought that blowing up a shack outside a fort would men the fort would just blow up, and everybody agreed.

Incompetence wasn't in short supply in the US army during the Civil War.
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Butler was sort of amazing in spite of things like trying to exploit seized southern cotton and sugar for his family business to selling war supplies to the enemy for profit, using federal it's amazing how he managed repeatedly to worm out of trouble and that is without getting into him managing to cause diplomatic incidents with the Netherlands, France and Great Britain all around at the same time.

He only managed to fully torpedo his command career in spite his powerful friends in congress after he claimed fort fisher was impregnable after two days of trying after which he bravely ran way much to the disbelief of the navy admiral also overseeing the siege which led to him finally being removed by grant for yet again disobeying orders.

He then disobeyed the president's orders to report to a post away from the front (which wasn't the first time he did so) to instead testify before congress how impregnable fort fisher was only for the news to arrive that his successor had taken the fort in two days after Butler testimony.

When Butler was commander of the Army of the James there were 100,000 dollars a day in supplies being sold to the confederate military by Bulter, that is the modern equivalent of 1,828,294.48 dollars of military supplies a day, which directly prolonged the length of the war as said supplies were going directly to General Lee's army in Petersburg and used to fight Grant's siege of Petersburg.
 
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How long could Mussolini last as Prime Minister if the Nazi never come to power, but Spain is still under Franco?
 
Mazeka said:
How long could Mussolini last as Prime Minister if the Nazi never come to power, but Spain is still under Franco?
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As with most "Mussolini doesn't Yolo into WWII" hypos, probably he can last about as long as Franco did, and for the same reasons. Even OTL, the US was quite willing to work with former Axis members to lock out the Reds from Europe; fascist Italy is frankly not substantially worse than dictatorships such as the likes of Franco, Pinochet, 1970s South Korea/Taiwan, or the Saudis, all of which were major US allies.
 
Does anyone know any good alternate US timelines that include the following?
  • Better treatment and relations with Amerindians
  • Expanded borders
  • Earlier end of slavery
  • Better reconstruction and outcome for Afro-Americans (they get their five acres and no Jim Crow)
  • Doesn't get involved in the World Wars
 
It's not even that hard to imagine Mussolini being an Allied leader in WW2; the Germans, after all, did support the Ethiopians, and the two nearly went to war over Austria.
 
PT12 said:
Does anyone know any good alternate US timelines that include the following?
  • Better treatment and relations with Amerindians
  • Expanded borders
  • Earlier end of slavery
  • Better reconstruction and outcome for Afro-Americans (they get their five acres and no Jim Crow)
  • Doesn't get involved in the World Wars
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This doesnt fulfill the last point (the US very much gets involved in the World Wars), but everything else is fulfilled by "Separated at Birth: America and Drakia". Yes, it's a Draka timeline, but don't let that turn you off. It's a good timeline.
 
RealLifeLore's geography videos are some of my favorite videos on YouTube, and recently they basically did a geography video on India. It's not called "Why India's geography sucks/is good" like there other geography videos, but its basically a geography video.


View: https://youtu.be/GM-OI7HcCeU

So a scenario I thought up after watching the video, what if the east and west coastal plains of India weren't scrunched up against the Ghat mountains? It wouldn't put them on par with the Indo-gangetic plain (even today, probably the best farmland in the world), but it would make the lands more valuable.
 
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PT12 said:
Does anyone know any good alternate US timelines that include the following?
  • Better treatment and relations with Amerindians
  • Expanded borders
  • Earlier end of slavery
  • Better reconstruction and outcome for Afro-Americans (they get their five acres and no Jim Crow)
  • Doesn't get involved in the World Wars
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Until Every Drop of Blood is Paid is an in-progress Civil War timeline in which the Union becomes more radical due to a combination of different political developments and worse performance in the war. Reconstruction will be thoroughly enacted once the timeline reaches that point.

These Fair Shores is a timeline in which New England stays loyal to the British Empire, resulting in a more southern-focused United States and the British Empire continuing up to the present day. The United States gains the Louisiana Purchase later and continues the French colonial policy of leaving indigenous peoples to their own devices, which when combined with other factors like no Trail of Tears means the Native American population is much higher.
 
In the many many WWII scenarios involving Operation Downfall, writers often have the POD be the failure of the atom bomb or the success of the Kyujo Coup.

However, would a POD where the Showa Emperor is accidently killed in early 1945 - either by a downed B-29 dumping its payload near the palace grounds or by unexploded ordnance during his tour of Tokyo in March - work as well?

Akihito and Masahito would be but eleven and nine years old respectively. For prince regents, Yasuhito would be invalid from TB, and both Nobuhito and Takahito were distrusted by the militarists.
 
What's the weirdest possible lineup you could plausibly get for the Axis and Allies, respectively? Italy on the Allies and the ROC as an Axis power seem relatively easy to imagine.
 
comradepitrovsky said:
What's the weirdest possible lineup you could plausibly get for the Axis and Allies, respectively? Italy on the Allies and the ROC as an Axis power seem relatively easy to imagine.
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Are the Nazis still in charge of Germany? Because you can get really weird things to happen if someone else is in charge. Continued German-Soviet cooperation for example.

But if the Nazis are still in charge there are a limited amount of countries that would side with them. Maybe Spain if Franco was less cautious. I feel Greece will be on whatever side Italy (or Turkey if they get involved) is not on. And Sweden joining Finland in the war against the Soviet Union seems perfectly plausible.
 
comradepitrovsky said:
What's the weirdest possible lineup you could plausibly get for the Axis and Allies, respectively? Italy on the Allies and the ROC as an Axis power seem relatively easy to imagine.
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You could possibly have half of South America as part of the axis in a giant cluster fuck of invasions and civil wars, fascist rethoric was unfortunately very popular around that time.
 
UK, France, Japan and Germany against Spain, Italy, the Soviet Union and the United States is possible.

Improbable, maybe, but possible.
 
I wonder what it would take to have a WW1 between an awkward US-Japan-China alliance and UK-France-Germany-Netherlands. Maybe a closer First Sino-Japanese War and the Filipino Insurrection shifting America towards a more vassal/alliance-based sphere?
 
Probably not the weirdest, but a weird one:
Axis Berlin-Warsaw-Budapest
vs
Franco-Soviet Alliance + Little Entente (with Italy opportunistically joining in because Mussolini is still pissed at Germany over the Anschluss)
 
An attempt at a World War 1 peace talks simulation we did in high school resulted in US+Japan+Italy vs. Britain+France+China. Germany (heavily US-Japan-Italy aligned) and the USSR were conducting a proxy war in eastern Europe. The Weimar Republic survived, Italy was under an irredentist asshole but not a fascist, the US was under FDR but FDR was a bit further left (I was one of the people playing the US), and Japan didn't go crazy, while Britain, France, and the USSR were basically under the same governments as in OTL.
 
Random Member said:
Probably not the weirdest, but a weird one:
Axis Berlin-Warsaw-Budapest
vs
Franco-Soviet Alliance + Little Entente (with Italy opportunistically joining in because Mussolini is still pissed at Germany over the Anschluss)
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I could see that.

Munich conference, the French reach out to the Soviets (who wanted to intervene but were blocked by Poland), Britain pulls out, Poland freaks out and side with Germany, things escalate to war.

Then Hitler proceeds to lose in spectacular fashion because the German army was hilariously unprepared for a world war by Munich.
 
How long would a second war between USA and CSA last if waged in 1885? I've heard estimates as low as 6 months.

For context, the North's industry far outstrips the Confederacy, the borders states (except Indian Territory) are still with the Union, and abolition is law, but the pro-"peaceful coexistence" politicians are vocal. Meanwhile, the CSA has a small regular army cadre, but they have alienated Europe and are at high risk of statewide slave rebellions.
 
Mandemon said:
True, but here is a thing: so was everyone else. Entire point of Munich agreement was to buy everyone time.
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The idea that Munich was a deliberate and planned attempt at buying time rather than at appeasing Hitler is an extraordinary claim in need of extraordinary evidence.

Even if that's true, the sheer scope of German rearmement is hard to compare to the allies' efforts. Germany started much lower and ended up much higher. The Czech also had some serious fortification efforts and industries they were forced to surrender by the agreement, which bolstered German build up.

The truth is that the allies wasted a prime opportunity to stop Hitler because they couldn't see how this was different from WW1, not because they were planning how to have the most optimal showdown later.
 
I am plugging away on my slow but in progress Monarchist America novel - it's set in the 1880s, with the southern branch of the House of Washington, having fled to Brazil after losing the civil war, attack in a Jacobite style attempt to retake the throne and restore slavery. Lots of dead-eyed southerners with crazy beards and lots of racism to get killed by our heroes. Our heroes, incidentally, are the Princess of the House of Washington, Duchess of Philadelphia, Protectrix of Northern Mexico, etc etc, and her bodyguard from the all-black Freeman's Legion, formed in the alt!civil war. Anyway, in the story, among the soldiers for the good, northern branch of the House of Washington are Seminole and Comanche hussars, who are sort of like Cossacks, for the Kingdom of the United States. What would be a good name for these alt!Cossack style Native American units? Because, well, I can't call them Cossacks. The Native Guard is my working name, but it lacks panache.

(In this world, the first reservation treaties were actually honored, and the Five 'civilized' Tribes and the Comanche were a key part of the North actually winning the alt!civil war. But that's just backstory, not important details.)
 
the Lighthorsemen, after the tribal police and basically gendarmerie of the Cherokee and the other 'civilized' Nations, their mission organically expanding from executing anyone trying to sign away more native lands into aiding the yankees in enforcing treaties and wild west law as they become tied more and more into the structures of the ATL American state?
 
Nice, that can work. They're the ones who charge to save the day after our heroes get the message out that the coup is occurring, so they need a cool sounding name, after all. Like I said - panache.
 
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