Re: New Reality Seeds
 

It requires a lot of lead-up (possibly starting before WWI), and probably someone unusually charismatic and multilingual. The earlier the PoD, the easier it is to justify it.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Germany was weaker and less organized militarily than most people are aware of in 1938. If Czechoslovakia and Poland had both attacked Germany at the same time in 1938 Germany could be caught off guard and have trouble organizing. Add a small piece of good luck here or there, and Germany could stay on the backfoot.

The other nations in Central Europe might join in an Intermarium not from hope but from fear. Fear of a German victory.

If you set this up as an Infinite Worlds setting, I could see Homeline aiding Intermarium and pulling strings to get them aid from the West. Centrum would be most interested in keeping the USSR out of the war. WWII might have wounded the British Empire, but the Cold War killed it. A Russia uninvolved in the outside world is better for their personal vision.

It would be a very different WWII.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

The Bigsby series of worldlines are fully acknowledged and as open as any similar worldline might be. It's just how Homeline got their coordinates which is top secret. If asked, the joke is that the coordinates were dropped off by a friendly leprechaun.

What they have in common is the standard WWII alternate scenario, but all of them are very unlike homeline's history.

Bigsby-1 is the most explicable worldline. This was technically an Axis victory. However, the ascendant power in this case was Italy, which has the other two axis powers (among others) as economic appendages. In the present year of 1964, The Soviet Union and Nationalist China are embroiled in a war of mutual annihilation, but fortunately neither side has access to atomic weapons and their collective industrial capacity is _dropping_ every year. The USA never fixed its torpedo problems and generally performed very poorly in the pacific war. The combination of momentum, technology, strategy, and pure luck which drove Italy's forces to take out France early in the war and then dominate the African front while German forces were bogged down in interminable fighting in the east have all faded. Everyone sees the cracks and the flaws, but they look to the starving, eternally-embargoed Britain or the flatly mad death cult that Germany became, and think themselves in the best possible world.

Bigsby-2 at first seemed more reasonable. French diplomacy with Belgium went through a catastrophe in the decades before the war. The alliance fell through, and France extended the Maginot line all the way to the sea. While they were at it, there was substantial improvement to its technology and the organization of defensive troops. The fascists in Germany still believed in French weakness; in this worldline it was fatal overconfidence. Not only was the initial attack repulsed, the sheer affront galvanized the French population to put an end to Germany's warmongering. This would in any other worldline have been absurd, but here, French élan prevailed alone, and the legions stopped only when they reached the Soviet border in Poland. Western Poland was restored, and the iron curtain fell 400 miles due east. Old Germany was split into a grid of regions 150km on an edge and the population forcibly migrated to break up social networks. Nazis were purged; as in OTL, they responded to their impeding defeat with pointless atrocities, and an already furious France faced no outcry.

The shattered Germany had no identity left; the German remnant states were more-or-less openly forced into being economic and political subunits of a wider France, along with German colonial holdings. Following an economic slump in the UK over the following decades, this left France with the majority of the industrialized world in its direct control. Political reform within and without has resulted in a modern 1975 where French is, once again, the Lingua Franca, and Paris is the effective center of a global hegemon. It is only the tense and bitterly cold war against the USSR which makes a question of French domination of the world.

Bigsby-3: By now you know what sort of nonsense you're getting into. Bigsby-3 saw the safe receipt of the Zimmerman telegram. In any sane world, Mexico would have declined the invitation to suicide. However, Bigsby-3 saw a somewhat different (and itself very strange) itebellium period in Mexico, leading to an ambitious and united military staff in Mexico, rather than the midst of a civil war. Though the political leadership declined, a quiet coup in the following days lead to a response telegram accepting the terms and, further, coordinating with Japan.

Mexico's new military government realized its hold was tenuous. They built a careful casus belli, helped by some useful allies in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. This allowed Mexico to build forces on the border while claiming they were to protect against American attack. Skillful handling of the inevitable conflict allowed Mexico to launch a full-scale invasion of the USA not long after Japan began their attack.

The two coordinated, with Mexico proceeding eastward along the gulf while Japan claimed the west coast. Due to (this part of the historical record is damaged) signed the surrender of the USA to Mexico, with the world's longest and most heavily armed border now being drawn along the Sierra Nevada mountains. In Europe, the iron curtain fell along the french border. This left Japan standing to fight the USSR into the ground in China.

A technical win for Mexico, who exited the war dramatically expanded and with a continental fortress. At the present date of 1970, California through to Washington are restless occupied states, while Mexico administers what else is left of the USA. Most of the rest of the planet (except, of course, for South America) is still fighting the insane and chaotic war that somehow lead to Carranza accepting FDR's surrender.

*Disregard 3. I was not in my right mind when I wrote it.

Bigsby-4 Poland won. Classed cosmic top secret. It is hinted that however this happened, it's got something to do with what Van Zandt told the UN.

Bigsby-5 Somehow, the Ottoman Empire exited WWI stronger than they entered it. It is believed the PoD might have even gone back to the late 1700s. Regardless, the Empire moved from strength to strength (known for a time as "the strongman of Europe,") and while the Great War was seen as a loss, it resulted in further revitalization of the Ottoman military and an excuse to clean house of certain radical internal movements.

The war of the '40s was not really like WWII in many respects, but nonetheless had many of the same figures. By the time the dust settled, the Empire bordered the English channel.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

The Zimmerman telegram was WWI not WWII. In WWI Japan was a member of the UK, France, and Russian Alliance, that the US later joined. If Mexico, and Japan attacked the US at this time, the UK, primarily using Canada would have taken part of the US as well. Heck, if this starts before the Russian Revolution, Russia might have moved on Alaska. The President to surrender here would have been Woodrow Wilson.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I remember reading tha tone of Italy's problems was they were the first nation to realize that technology advances made WW I equipment badly obsolete. So they rearmed. Which meant they had WW I.5 equipment and couldn't afford to replace everything again.

So if they bet a war won't break out for a while and keep doing R&D and then rearm just before WW II so they are ahead of the rest they would do better.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

They could still suffer from cowardly and incompetent officers, though - one of the British errors during the war was in building up a successful deception about where they were going to attack Italy's East-African colonies. They were expecting the Italian Army to build up forces in the region that they didn't want to hit first, so they could just roll over the forces that were left; instead, the Italians mostly left the area that they thought was going to be hit, and the British had 'some slight resistance' in the area that they had planned to hit (since that was where the Italian Army fled to), but won anyway (because the Italian officers in the region were really that bad, on top of having obsolete equipment).

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Yes. but if you want to explain Bigsby-1 you need to make Italy better. So you also then need some divergence where a couple of senior officers reform the culture of officer selection to get better ones. Did Italy have military academies back then? The right person in charge of that could make a big difference. Or maybe introduce a academy 20-30 years pre WW I.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

This is what I get for writing prompts after I take my melatonin.

But reconsidering this, I think that we still want to start the PoD with an accepted Zimmerman telegram. Mexico gets its desired land, and the USA is humiliated and forced to address the possibility of further Mexican expansion. This leads to an eastward contraction and weakening of the US economy, compounding the dust bowl. The USA sees a stronger socialist tilt, while Mexico's already alternate strong military power group embraces cartelism and invites foreign capital.

An already weakened USA is unable to stem the tide of fleeing industrialists heading for warmer southern shores, further advancing the technological might of Mexico...

Japan still takes the pacific northwest all the way up to Canada. Russia solidifies its hold on Alaska. Yeah, this is starting to become still insane but less factually incorrect (I hope).

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

No worries these things happen.

It is worth noting how small the US military was at this point in time, while they were producing a lot of material for the war in Europe, once our men got their, the US had to borrow a lot of equipment, like machine guns and aircraft from France.

If the US was being invaded by Mexico and Japan, the UK could very well take part of New England "to protect needed war material production."

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Another possibility from a US Mexican conflict would be a defeat of Mexico. The bad blood that a 1917 smackdown of Mexico would leave would have serious knock on effects through the 20th century. Especially in warping the "Good Neighbor Policy" and complicating the Cold War.