New Reality Seeds

[Bill Cameron]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Bill Cameron raises some interesting points about Emir...

Thanks. It's nice to read a response to a reasonable critique that isn't the equivalent of someone sticking fingers in their ears and chanting nah nah nanah nah...

...what I wrote is about as far as I can get with linear and logical extrapolation, and so it's time to get creative.

You can be creative and still be plausible or you can just make **** up because it's "kewl". Your initial idea was both creative and plausible, why not keep it up?

This America would be rather more interested in North African territory; France has something to pledge that will keep the money flowing, if they think it's that or be conquered.

That's a very interesting idea. After all, the US bought Denmark's possessions in the Caribbean in 1916 due in part to fears that Germany would seize them. (Let's all note that the negotiated sale and treaty which finalized it all occurred before the US entered WW1.)

Sadly, the idea also ignores the fact that Algeria has legally been part of metropolitan France since 1848, that representatives from Algeria sit in the National Assembly, that colonial corps from Algeria are fighting on the Western Front, that northern Algeria is an important grain supplier, and several other things.

France could be interested in selling colonial possessions. Algeria is a department and not a colony. More importantly, the French of the time see Algeria as a department and not a colony. France selling Algeria in the early 1900s would be like the US selling a state today.

More likely, though, even if the Germans manage to get a peace treaty that says they are the winners and are entitled to reparations from France and Russia (there is zero chance of the British Empire paying them a penny under any circumstances, or ceding territory), Wilhelmine Germany is an ambulatory corpse.

Forgetting the looming Russian collapse, aren't we? Lenin is on that train in April of '17, the Kerensky offensive will still fail in July, and whether the Reds take over in November or not, something like Brest-Litovsk or worse is sill going to be rammed down Russia's throat by the Central Powers.

Couple a late 1917 victory in the East with a lessening of Entente efforts in the West, Middle East, and Balkans thanks to credit drying up and the Central Powers are in a better position than they were historically.

The German people have died and starved for four years for the promise of glory and future wealth; there is no glory, there will be no wealth, and the hunger keeps going after the peace treaty is signed.

No. Don't look at the situation as someone living in 2014, look at the situation as someone living at actual the moment. German morale only collapsed after the various Kaisesrchlacht offensives failed between March and July of '18. Unlike 1916/17, no "turnip winter" occurred in 1917/18 due in part to a rationalization of the economy and the loot being returned from the East. It was the dichotomy between winning it all in the East and the increasingly certain prospect of losing all of that plus more due to fighting in the West which destroyed morale in the armies and at home.

They'd won and now they were going to lose it all.

In your timeline, the Russian collapse will still occur and the western Entente's ability to both fight in 1917 and resist a German offensive in 1918 has been fatally compromised. In your timeline Germany has won and will most likely win by the end of 1917. With Russia knocked out and no US monies and materials available, the western Entente needs to get out with the best deal they can. The longer they fight the worse the conditions will be and they know that.

In your timeline Germany beat a continental coalition and is now the European hegemon. That's glory enough to make up for the 3 or maybe 4 years of fighting.

In your timeline Germany will be fed too. It's Russia and France who will starve. Reparations will see to that.

Any junker who can't run fast enough is going to be dead by, say, 1923, and the Kaiser is a junker. It's not impossible for Berlin to become acquainted with the guillotine before a peace treaty is signed either.

Please. If the guillotine wasn't set up after Germany's historical defeat, we aren't going to see it in your timeline's victory. Yes, the Social Democrats are going to agitate and agitate successfully for political reforms and, yes, the power of the Kaiser, junkers, and army will be curtailed but suggesting there will be a Terror after continental victory which has made Germany the European hegemon is asinine. You can do better than that.

In short, the lack of a successful British campaign will be very helpful to the Ottomans...but they aren't going to be getting any help from their erstwhile allies.

They'll get help. Not entire armies, but plenty of advisers, "volunteers", and materials. Just think of the artillery alone the Ottomans could "inherit" from the Wstern front.

What would people find more interesting, a USA with a Caliph-in-residence who many people regard as a joke, or a world in which the USA has a close relationship with a surviving Ottoman Empire while leaving Europe in its ruins and rationing?

Both are equally plausible in your timeline.

Sixty years on there could be a Caliph in the US thanks to a postwar secularization push (and the political infighting it requires) which sends a big chunk of the faithful into exile. You could very well have two Caliphs much like the Avignon/Rome Papal schism in the 14th Century with the "traditional" caliph in the US and the "progressive' caliph in the Ottoman Empire.

And sixty years on Europe could be in ruins and rationing thanks to the next war when the losers of the first one decide to take on Germany again. Your timeline doesn't need a "Hitler" to get a second general European war after this first one. Hegemons always get dragged down.

[Bill Cameron]

Originally Posted by SimonAce

Divergence Point, around 1775... WW1... Soviet Union... USSR... Communist...

Has anyone ever explained the concept of the butterfly effect in alternate history to you?

[Xenarthral]

Originally Posted by PTTG

I hope you don't mind this deviation. It's not really a world, but it is a group of interest for the IW setting...

The Alternatives

*engaging snark mode*
So... the Swagmen without the cool, fun or interesting bits?

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Bill Cameron

Has anyone ever explained the concept of the butterfly effect in alternate history to you?

That's a valid method, but it doesn't mesh completely with the "great man" theory.

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by Bill Cameron

Has anyone ever explained the concept of the butterfly effect in alternate history to you?

Obviously it was a rough sketch of a worldline.

Instead of blatantly attacking, maybe you can explain how the USSR and Communists could not exist in a world where the early US forbid slavery?

Was Karl Marx the child of a rich slave holder? Did the October Revolution feature a number of Irish immigrants that instead went to the US? How does an alternate US change the world so very much that European history cannot allow a similar track? Or maybe, and this is a wild guess, Marx had little to no connection to the US and would have been born and followed a close parallel to his Homeline self? An alternate USSR is entirely possible as well, maybe with slightly different players (no Stalin, or a different homicidal megalomaniac in charge), but basically the same stance - communistic, authoritarian and a challenge to the capitalistic, liberal West.

Your posts might get more respect, and readership, if you did not tie them up with personal attacks. None of us here are professionals, this is just fun.

[Astromancer]

Romanov-Number Not Yet assigned

Try this idea, the Czarist millitary decides that they've got one shot in 1914, throw 2/3s of their millitary at Berlin while the Germans hit France and the other third is sent to the Caucasus region to attack Turkey overland.

Realistically the Germans couldn't turn around, they admited as much. The sudden flood of Russians in Prussia heading for Berlin collapses the Imperial German war machine. Germany is out of the war by Christmas. Turkey is smashed before Easter 1915. Austria sues for peace as well.

It's late summer 1915. Everybody is out for blood at the "Peace" Conference.

I'd make this a Q6 world. The possibilities for intrigue and skulldugerry with or without the Centrum/Homeline struggle are pretty good.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Romanov-Number Not Yet assigned

Try this idea, the Czarist millitary decides that they've got one shot in 1914, throw 2/3s of their millitary at Berlin while the Germans hit France and the other third is sent to the Caucasus region to attack Turkey overland.

Realistically the Germans couldn't turn around, they admited as much. The sudden flood of Russians in Prussia heading for Berlin collapses the Imperial German war machine. Germany is out of the war by Christmas. Turkey is smashed before Easter 1915. Austria sues for peace as well.

It's late summer 1915. Everybody is out for blood at the "Peace" Conference.

I'd make this a Q6 world. The possibilities for intrigue and skulldugerry with or without the Centrum/Homeline struggle are pretty good.

Hmmm...

The ATL Great War is a much shorter war than what happened in OTL, with fewer men killed (though that massive Russian push on the Eastern Front seems likely to kill a lot of men on both sides, and the Western Front will still claim many lives).


Tsarist regime comes out of the war in a much better position, though still facing problems at home.


No sealed train; Lenin probably remains in exile.


No American intervention, so little American influence. Wilson's idealism, for whatever it is worth, counts even less in this timeline.

...


I like that you set the current year with the peace conference/carving up party.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea, a nuclear war in the early 1950's. At that time the USSR had very few bombs (later durring the time America was up set over the "Missle Gap" the "Gap" was overwhelmingly in the West's favor). Assume that the Soviets collapse. A very likely senario.

Doubtless everybody would still demonise and resent the USA, but if Russia reforms in this world as in out own, the Europe of the 1960's might face a new Imperialist Crony Capitalist Russia. That would skew the culture in interesting ways.

You might end up with something like four big power blocs/alliances:


US and clients/allies


France and Britain and clients/allies


Russia and clients/allies


"Non-Aligned"/post colonial group (Arab Socialist regimes, India, Ghana, etc.)
This last one is probably the loosest "bloc", but might still be important.




Maybe Nasser would not attempt to nationalize the Suez Canal, but if he did still do so, without the Soviet pressure in addition to American pressure, perhaps the French, Brits, and Israelis would tell Uncle Sam to stuff it?

That could harm US relations with France and Britain even more than the real Suez Crisis did.


What happens in China and in various parts of Latin America should also be interesting...

[somecallmetim]

Originally Posted by Bill Cameron

Has anyone ever explained the concept of the butterfly effect in alternate history to you?

Infinite Worlds has the concept of a "High Inertia Parallel," where the initial POD has very limited butterflies. What AH.com calls a "butterfly net." Since the goal of IW is to provide settings for role playing scenarioes, the need to provide familiar points of context sometimes outweighs the need for rigorous historical analysis. Certainly Ezcalli or Nergal woud be laughable as academic counterfactuals, but that isn't going to make me deny my players the chance to fight Celtic cannibal pirates!

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Romanov-Number Not Yet assigned

Try this idea, the Czarist millitary decides that they've got one shot in 1914, throw 2/3s of their millitary at Berlin while the Germans hit France and the other third is sent to the Caucasus region to attack Turkey overland.

Realistically the Germans couldn't turn around, they admited as much. The sudden flood of Russians in Prussia heading for Berlin collapses the Imperial German war machine. Germany is out of the war by Christmas. Turkey is smashed before Easter 1915. Austria sues for peace as well.

It's late summer 1915. Everybody is out for blood at the "Peace" Conference.

I'd make this a Q6 world. The possibilities for intrigue and skulldugerry with or without the Centrum/Homeline struggle are pretty good.

But Russia did invade Germany in August 1914 full tilt with two armies, with the conquest of Berlin being the explicite objective of the exercise. (What do you think happened instead?) This was a good deal sooner than the German leadership had expected, by the way, but it seems that Russia had already begun to prepare for the war in secret, even before their official general mobilisation. Germany had to divert troops (the German 8th Army) to confront this threat (possibly leading, definitely contributing to the failure of defeating France in the West), and although greatly outnumbered, it was managed to defeat the Imperial Russian warmachine in a series of battles, most notably the (inappropriately named) Battle of Tannenberg in late August, where the 2nd Russian Army under Samsonov was destroyed, and, at least as important, the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes, in which the 1st Russian Army under Rennenkampf was crushed in early to middle September. Please do note that the use of the "imperial" terminology is much more appropriate this way around, since Germany, being actually a Confederation (its official name was "The German Realm"), was an Empire in name (and somewhat misleading English translation) only, whereas Tsarist Russia (official name: "All-Russian Imperium") was an Empire in every sense of the word, absolutism and despotism included.