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What's the most Cringeworthy Alternate History you've ever read?

Teen Spirit said:
From what I understand McClellan was an example of the "A Father to his men" trope taken to an unhealth degree. Since he was so protective of his soldiers it made him way to overcautious. Where as Grant was willing to spend soldiers like currency if it got him the victories he needed.
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I think with Grant it wasn't so much spending with currency as recognising that all the effort and time training and caring for soldiers is to get them ready for the moment they might be killed, in order so that you achieve victory.

Grant's genius was in his relentlessness, his ability not just to engage an enemy force but to destroy it.

He wasn't cruel or heartless, far from it. Rather he recognised very clearly and exactly how war is won.
 
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Sulemain said:
I think woth Grant it wasn't so much spending with currency as recognising that all the effort and time training and caring for soldiers is to get them ready for the moment they might be killed, in order so thag you achieve victory.

Grant's genius was in his relentlessness, his ability not just to engage an enemy force but to destroy it.

He wasn't cruel or heartless, far from it. Rather he recognised very clearly and exactly how war is won.
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This, basically. What separated Grant was that he didn't let Lee's Marble Man voodoo shit psych him out ("Stop wondering what he's going to do to us and start worrying what you're going to do to him") - he recognized that the advantage (in men, materiel, logistics, etc.) was on his side and that he could press the attack even if he "lost". Lee's hot streak was built on the fact that despite his inferior numbers the Union commanders were so thrown by his tactical genius they just folded. Once you had a General in charge who wouldn't get rattled at the first sign of trouble (and Grant was famously unflappable), the game was up.
 
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Arthur Frayn said:
This, basically. What separated Grant was that he didn't let Lee's Marble Man voodoo shit psych him out ("Stop wondering what he's going to do to us and start worrying what you're going to do to him") - he recognized that he had the advantage (in men, materiel, logistics, etc.) was on his side and that he could press the attack even if he "lost". Lee's hot streak was built on the fact that despite his inferior numbers the Union commanders were so thrown by his tactical genius they just folded. Once you had a General in charge who wouldn't get rattled at the first sign of trouble (and Grant was famously unflappable), the game was up.
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He didn't play the man, he played the army/country. Grant was very much a modern general like that.
 
Teen Spirit said:
From what I understand McClellan was an example of the "A Father to his men" trope taken to an unhealth degree. Since he was so protective of his soldiers it made him way to overcautious. Where as Grant was willing to spend soldiers like currency if it got him the victories he needed.
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Yeah, and I'd also argue that he started buying into his "Little Napoleon" hype - before his first battle there were scores of people telling him he was The Savior Of The Union and that he should straight up coup Lincoln and install himself as dictator. Given his later career in politics (his Presidential run and his governorship of New Jersey), I don't think it's that wild to assume that he was also scared of ruining his sterling reputation.

After all, you can't lose battles you don't fight.
 
To build on what I said earlier, the modern insight Grant had was that in the end, it doesn't really matter who loses the most soldiers. So long as your casualties don't prevent you from achieving your operational and strategic objectives, then who has the objective at the end of the day is the victor.
 
Sulemain said:
To build on what I said earlier, the modern insight Grant had was that in the end, it doesn't really matter who loses the most soldiers. So long as your casualties don't prevent you from achieving your operational and strategic objectives, then who has the objective at the end of the day is the victor.
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The thing is, and this is where Memetic Grant* deviated from Real Grant... Grant would stop when the casualties were preventing him from achieving his objectives. He made a few major mistakes in the 1864-65 campaign, such as the night attack at Cold Harbor, but he wasn't just drowning Lee in bodies.

*(Memetic Grant is in part a creation of Lost Causers trying to portray him as the sociopathic brute who crushed their hopes and dreams by smothering them in bodies, sort of like how Memetic WWII Soviets and their drunken human wave attacks corseted by commissars with machine guns are in part a creation of German generals trying to excuse defeat)

Teen Spirit said:
From what I understand McClellan was an example of the "A Father to his men" trope taken to an unhealth degree. Since he was so protective of his soldiers it made him way to overcautious. Where as Grant was willing to spend soldiers like currency if it got him the victories he needed.
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Sulemain said:
I think with Grant it wasn't so much spending with currency as recognising that all the effort and time training and caring for soldiers is to get them ready for the moment they might be killed, in order so that you achieve victory.

Grant's genius was in his relentlessness, his ability not just to engage an enemy force but to destroy it.

He wasn't cruel or heartless, far from it. Rather he recognised very clearly and exactly how war is won.
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To extend what I said above, the thing about Grant is... well, look at the Overland Campaign, the one where he squared off against Lee properly. The one that began in spring of 1864 in the Wilderness and ended with Lee besieged in Petersburg.

Over and over, Grant tried to use his superior numbers, not to just crush Lee with frontal assaults (though he tried some, when he thought he had an advantage that would make it work), but to outflank Lee. To pin him in place (which required intense fighting) and then march a "spare" army corps off, typically hooking around Lee's eastern flank to hit him from the side.

It almost worked a few times, too, though one time the plan failed because Lee went "OH SHIII-" and sent a corps rushing to forestall Grant from taking Spotslyvania Court House, and another time because the guy commanding the flanking corps was Ambrose Burnside, and he Ambrose Burnsided.
 
Simon_Jester said:
The thing is, and this is where Memetic Grant* deviated from Real Grant... Grant would stop when the casualties were preventing him from achieving his objectives. He made a few major mistakes in the 1864-65 campaign, such as the night attack at Cold Harbor, but he wasn't just drowning Lee in bodies.

*(Memetic Grant is in part a creation of Lost Causers trying to portray him as the sociopathic brute who crushed their hopes and dreams by smothering them in bodies, sort of like how Memetic WWII Soviets and their drunken human wave attacks corseted by commissars with machine guns are in part a creation of German generals trying to excuse defeat)

To extend what I said above, the thing about Grant is... well, look at the Overland Campaign, the one where he squared off against Lee properly. The one that began in spring of 1864 in the Wilderness and ended with Lee besieged in Petersburg.

Over and over, Grant tried to use his superior numbers, not to just crush Lee with frontal assaults (though he tried some, when he thought he had an advantage that would make it work), but to outflank Lee. To pin him in place (which required intense fighting) and then march a "spare" army corps off, typically hooking around Lee's eastern flank to hit him from the side.

It almost worked a few times, too, though one time the plan failed because Lee went "OH SHIII-" and sent a corps rushing to forestall Grant from taking Spotslyvania Court House, and another time because the guy commanding the flanking corps was Ambrose Burnside, and he Ambrose Burnsided.
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I like that Ambrose Burnside is now a verb
 
Which reminds me of another problem that George Washington as commander in chief during the revolution and Lincoln as president during the civil war ran into at times, problematic subordinate generals that were difficult to deal with because of the political connections they had.
 
Byzantine said:
Details? I'm curious.
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Basically, Grant sent Burnside's corps hooking around the northeast flank of Lee's positions at Spotsylvania Court House, just as Lee was finally getting most of his troops into position and while the battle lines were still forming up. There was essentially nothing standing between Burnside and just taking the key road junction that Lee would later form up his position around, the road junction the battle was fought over in the first place... But Burnside, well... Burnsided. Unfortunately he did the Cautious Burnside thing, not the Marye's Heights Burnside thing of ordering a totally reckless assault against prepared defenders over open ground.

Arawn_Emrys said:
Imma assume they mean the Crater.
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No. Well, okay, that time too (DAMMIT BURNSIDE), but that wasn't the time I meant.

Though the Crater instance was more the fault of... mixed.

First Meade and Grant decided not to send in the black troops as the lead wave of the assault, even though they'd been training for it for weeks. Grant later told Congress that the reasoning was that if the attack failed horribly, people would say "you only tried that because you didn't care if the black troops died," whereas if they led with white troops, that wouldn't happen.

But the first problem was that the white troops weren't prepared to move correctly around the Crater and break through the Confederate lines, nor equipped properly with some of the field engineering equipment the black troops had received. So even when the white troops got to the crater, they started digging in like it was a giant rifle-pit, which was exactly how NOT to exploit having a hundred-meter hole blown in your enemy's front lines during trench warfare.

The second problem was that Burnside picked which white division would lead the attack by drawing straws.

The white division in question was commanded by a drunken bozo who had gotten promoted when the previous divisional commander was killed in battle. Ledlie (?) the drunk fuck, had given reckless orders to his brigade in a previous battle in the Overland Campaign because of his drunkenness, but this had been mistaken by higher authority (Burnside and maybe Meade and Grant) as courage, so he got the promotion.

Ledlie (?) neglected to order his men to attack hard on the heels of the blast, giving the Confederates valuable time to respond and start patching up the hole before the Union forces could arrive, and also greatly reducing the amount of time the Union would have to take advantage of the crater before dawn. Then Ledlie (?) also did not accompany the attack himself, but instead spent it hiding in a bunker half a mile or so behind the lines, drinking whiskey.

When the white troops, in this leaderless and poorly prepared/organized state, started getting slaughtered, the black troops were sent in behind them and also got slaughtered.

So, fuckups all around.
 
McClellan I think did have a very MacArthurness to him in that in his mind he probably did think of himself in the third person, the famous McClellan. He pumped himself up as the one grizzled action hero that was going to hold the world together as the second coming of Atlas. That's part of where his charisma came from and how much trust and confidence he was able receive from his circle of politicians, subordinate officers, and journalists, his overwhelming self-narrative pouring out of his eyes and ears made a lot of people just fall in love with the idea of him (especially ones that were grasping for a quick and easy victory to preserve the Union only and try and put the slavery genie back in the bottle). But at the same time, this unbridled self-confidence and his genuine experience observing the Crimean War meant that when he was right he was Right and when he was... not right, then it was a hopeless cause without a solution. Remember the McClellan era was in the 60-62 kinda mediocore level of skill in the armies of both sides, and McClellan, transfixed by the brilliance of his genius in creating a glorious modern European host out of the raw clay of the entire rest of the Union war administration, was low-key always fritting away at his "half-formed" army marching out of the barracks. America needed the war to decisively end yesterday, and McClellan was convinced that the Union could only win with a proper professional military meeting French and British standards, and yet McClellan could not see how to solve this paradox and thus constantly demanded that the war be put on time out until he had everything exactly where he wanted it. Because of this, fundamentally McClellan was never really going to turn into a successful battlefield commander.

For an actually redeemable dashing Napoleonic gloryhound, I would say that Joe Hooker would be the one to turn to. Chancellorsville was a defeat snatched out of the jaws of victory true, but I think a couple more months practicing wielding armies instead of a single corps and "Fighting Joe" could have generally kept his mistakes far less fatal to his command and the Union's campaigns.
 
What do people think of "For All the Marbles" and its various iterations?

For those that aren't familiar or who need a memory jog: For All the Marbles (going by various titles at various points) was a sorta-TL on AH.com that, disappointingly, never really got to flourish, as the author had a tendency of writing the first few chapters and then getting bored/unsatisfied and rebooting it every year or so. The premise is that the best and biggest historical figures from Earth history are summoned by aliens to fight in a giant...well, a giant game of civilization, basically. The rules: our guys are dropped on a medieval world (inhabited by humans, the rivals are also humans, there's a whole backstory but we don't need to get into here) and are directed with gearing up, fighting the other "teams" for control of the planet, getting into space, and fighting yet more teams for control of the Solar System, with the winners being admitted to the cool super-advanced federation that's running all this shit. That's an awesome premise, and was unfortunately never seen through to the conclusion it deserved - the last version was years ago and there's been no sign of a revival.

Anyway, the main attraction, so to speak, was the List, the actual, uh, list of the people in question who are chosen by aliens to represent Earth as the statesmen, commanders, and engineers of a new society.

Well. The List had some problems. I'm rather sympathetic to the author because at some point you just want to pick some big pop history characters for the sake of audience interest, rather than actually picking people because they were the best in their fields. But there's some stuff that hasn't aged well. Speer is on the list. So is Rommel. So was Robert E. Lee. Well, you could make an argument for drama, and in pop history circles they may even be expected, but...well.

There was also a noticeable lack of women and people outside of Europe or the Americas. And well, balancing that is admittedly hard, Africa has certainly produced great scientific minds, but few that were in a position to influence world history, as Einstein, Newton, or Edison have. Likewise, men simply put have dominated most fields, so there's some reason the lineup would be tilted. And to the author's credit later versions were marginally more diverse. But...well.

So, not sure it would pass over into complete cringe territory, just a rather mundane sort of flawed.
 
Teen Spirit said:
From what I understand McClellan was an example of the "A Father to his men" trope taken to an unhealth degree. Since he was so protective of his soldiers it made him way to overcautious. Where as Grant was willing to spend soldiers like currency if it got him the victories he needed.
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bookwyrm said:
McClellan, transfixed by the brilliance of his genius in creating a glorious modern European host out of the raw clay of the entire rest of the Union war administration, was low-key always fritting away at his "half-formed" army marching out of the barracks. America needed the war to decisively end yesterday, and McClellan was convinced that the Union could only win with a proper professional military meeting French and British standards, and yet McClellan could not see how to solve this paradox and thus constantly demanded that the war be put on time out until he had everything exactly where he wanted it. Because of this, fundamentally McClellan was never really going to turn into a successful battlefield commander.
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I lean more towards @bookwyrm here. I've always gotten the impression McClellen was like one of those guys who rebuild some classic car to cherry condition then refuse to take it out of the garage for fear it will get a scratch, only applied to an army.
 
Sulemain said:
People underestimating Lincoln was something that happened constantly.

They really didn't like that this backwards country lawyer was the smartest guy in the room.
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It's just astonishing that there are still people who still view Lincoln this way. It's been what, well over one hundred years since Lincoln has been an international liberal icon for his heroism, especially in Britain. How on earth does someone think Lincoln was inferior to shitty generals?

67th Tigers and the rest of the McClellan Clique are basically 1860s High Tories if they were ISOT to today, right down to being giant Teaboos.
 
Sulemain said:
I think with Grant it wasn't so much spending with currency as recognising that all the effort and time training and caring for soldiers is to get them ready for the moment they might be killed, in order so that you achieve victory.

Grant's genius was in his relentlessness, his ability not just to engage an enemy force but to destroy it.

He wasn't cruel or heartless, far from it. Rather he recognised very clearly and exactly how war is won.
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Not just that, what really separated him was he kept moving no matter what. After the Wilderness a lot of the Union thought they were going to retreat like they had so many times before in defeat. Instead the jubilation and morale boost that Grant caused by keeping the army moving South was like a lightning bolt.
 
Indicus said:
It's just astonishing that there are still people who still view Lincoln this way. It's been what, well over one hundred years since Lincoln has been an international liberal icon for his heroism, especially in Britain. How on earth does someone think Lincoln was inferior to shitty generals?

67th Tigers and the rest of the McClellan Clique are basically 1860s High Tories if they were ISOT to today, right down to being giant Teaboos.
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Wasn't Lincoln also kinda good at military or is it just a legend? Because I have heard that he was kinda competent at military stuff and his descision to ban Habeas Corpus seems like something that hints at that.
 
Neal Caffrey said:
Wasn't Lincoln also kinda good at military or is it just a legend? Because I have heard that he was kinda competent at military stuff and his descision to ban Habeas Corpus seems like something that hints at that.
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Lincoln was competent as a war president, but probably not personally good at warfare given his very very minimal military experience (he was elected captain of a militia company during an Indian war, never saw combat, and mustered out after three months).
 
Off topic question, pardon for that, but related to the above I had a question. Generally speaking, what makes a good War Time Civilian Leader? Like me as generic politician with no military background who is now president or prime minister and stuck in a war scenario, what would make me a good leader?
 
Neal Caffrey said:
Wasn't Lincoln also kinda good at military or is it just a legend? Because I have heard that he was kinda competent at military stuff and his descision to ban Habeas Corpus seems like something that hints at that.
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Impossible to say for certain, but he did put in the effort to do the book learning about war and military strategy, because there was a time before Gettysburg he was considering taking direct leadership of the Army of the Potomac because of the lackluster leadership. He was certainly conversant about the subject in his role directing the war effort, but that's different from commanding troops in the heat of battle
 
ScottishMongol said:
What do people think of "For All the Marbles" and its various iterations?
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I remember when they were first writing it, it was relatively well written and the concept was interesting enough. I remember a scene with Alexander the Great, or someone like that, just not being able to understand why he wasn't in charge of the whole thing and was instead just supposed to be a cavalry commander which was a pretty unique take on how to deal with so many huge egos in the one room. The choices, obviously, were pretty much white male westerners with a little bit of flavour and the overall premise basically assumes "Great Man Theory" writ-large but it was decent enough. Flawed for sure.
 
Why this one? Why did you choose this one out of all the Russian-language timelines?
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