So we bomb Germany rather than Japan, then. (I believe that was the plan, originally)
I wouldn’t bomb a city just because somebody in it said something I didn’t like.
Looking at the black dots on the glum London sky, Kaiser Wilhelm IV was worried.
Two years ago, he had assumed that the cession of Savoy, Navarre and Geneva to the Premier Camarade Lebeuf Eclair of France would have settled the issue. Yet France had invaded Spain, striving to spread their worker’s republic to that land. The Russian Soviets had stood by them, guaranteeing another two front war. The German public, tired after the horriffic sacrifices needed to bring down France the first time, had been less than enthusiastic, and the Quadruple Monarchy of Wien had broken into its usual factional indecisive chaos within hours of the announcement.
A telephone conversation with his cousin George V of Hannover had clarified that the British were determined not to let any more of this French revisionism go unchecked.
War had been declared, yet neither Austro-Rumano-Slavo-Hungaria, nor England, nor the German Empire did anything for the first 6 months, while the French destroyed all Spanish opposition, not even when they overran Gibraltar.
Germany was hoping to hold the revanchist French communists at the von Traubmann line in Alsace, but in May 1940, Petain’s Leopard Armored divisions marched across what had been thought to be impenetrable land in the Ardennes and struck at the industrial core of Germany in the Ruhr. With a simultaneous attack by Trotsky’s forces in Ukraine, German morale, already low, collapsed immediately. It turned into a rout.
British Expeditionary forces just barely made it out, with a great evacuation at Hamburg. French and Soviet troops met uneasily somewhere in Poland, and moved south, making quick work of the Quadruple Monarchy.
The Battle for Britain was about to begin. Already French submarines were sinking astonishing amounts of British merchant shipping, but President Hoover, now in his third mandate, had promised to continue the Lend-Lease program.
I think Aferim is The Man in the High Castle.
Had Germany won the war, the world would be inconceivably different…
- Ottomon Empire (Turkey) would dominate the world. With over 70% of the world’s oil reserves, Turkish oil would account for 5% of the world’s GDP even if it did not use its monopoly leverage. BUT it would have. Using other similar cases, by 2000, the price of a barrel would be up around $500, and, reinvesting this would put Turkey at around 40% of world GDP, so, with that sort of leverage…
- Turkish in Arabic script not English in Roman script would be the world"s foremost language.
- The Turkish flag would have been planted on the Moon by about 1940.
- Izmirwood film celebrities are splashed across all the tabloids which are of course in Turkish with the latest CGI flick based on HG Wells War of the Worlds staring Muhammed Cruise subtittled badly in English dominating the box office whilst the Americans run out out a couple of low budget art film dramas about life in the Bronx with wobbly scenery a couple of times a year.
- CNN (Constantinople News Network) is the biggest news channel, but if you want English programmes, you can sometimes get them on the speciality stations for minority channels at about 3am in the morning.
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Mexico - Before 1930, US occupied Mexico became the 49th state of the Union. Had Germany looked as if it were going to win, offered assistance by Germany, Mexico would have joined Germany’s side. Result? No matter how many guns the Germans could have given the Marines would ahve been in Mexico City in under a month, and caring nothing about the Mexicans, the Germans would have happily sold the Mexicans down the river to secure a great peace settlement for themselves.
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Sweden and Spain would have been on the winning side. Spain was keen to join Germany’s side and Sweden missed joining Germany by only the narrowest of margins. Concern that Germany was not obviously winning held them back. Had Germany slowly, obviously ground down France early on, Spain would have stormed into southern France and Sweden taken Finland. Result? A rump France at the end of the war, with a new buffer Basque state cut out of southern France. Also, with Spain taking much of French African possessions, most West Africans today would be speaking Spanish.= and Finland would just be a province of Sweden.
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Belgium - At best cut into a couple of pieces, dominated by Germany, but the longer the victory would have taken, the more likely total takeover by Germany.
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Russia - With a French collapse, and Germany scooping the pool there, there would have been no need to allow Lenin to cross to Russia and no need to strip Russia of every nickel to fund its war effort. WIth a quicker collapse of the Tsar who just would not give up, the Provisional Government would have turned Russia into a modern, but poor democracy, accepting the loss of Poland to Germany.
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Israel - With Turkey as strong as an ox, Britain would have gone ahead with “Plan B” for creation of Israel which is well documented. The star of David would now be fluttering over Nairobi, Israel would have fought various wars for survival against it beligerant neighbours of the Congo and Ethiopia and the world would wag its finger at Israel’s treatment of its Kenyan minority groups on the Occupied Ugandan Territories on the East Bank of Lake Victoria.
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Britain does not like to lose, so it would have done a deal on keeping the overseas territories it took off Germany early in the war, kept a rump Belgium in existence as part of the deal and then left France to be swallowed alive by Germany, blaming “French Intransigence” for Frances demise, saying that it achieved what it sought to in the war, but was not there to aid a “French Vendetta” against Germany.
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USA - With an apparent deafest, USA becomes extremely isolationist. Unexpectedly, losing the creates a boom. WIth skyrocketing Turkish oil prices driving up Texas light crude, and Mexico in its back pocket to become a new state of the Union, American experience record low unemployment and fabulous lifestyles by the 1930’s as a result of bilateral trade with the Ottomon Empire.
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Germany - A bitter sweet victory. Gaining Poland and most of Belguim, soaring oil prices and the cost of bringing Poland and Belgium into the 20th Century weigh heavily on Germany. it feels as if it lost the war. There is no outright recession, but a persistent low growth and a feeling that its leaders have provided a county “not fit for heroes”. Anger grows with the Ottomon Empire as Germany feels it suffered the heavy loss of life, yet it is the Turkish “Economic Miracle” where life is good. Flooded with German immigrants, Turkey imposes strict quotas to keep out unwanted German illegal immigrants.
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France - Crushed and with much of the south ceded to Spain and huge war reparations to pay, France becomes a banana republic. With thousands of starving French fleeing to the USA, by the 1930’s, pandering to the French Vote has come to dominate US Politics and unless you have a French sounding name, you have no hope of being elected to Senate, Congress of President in the USA.
There are several times that the Germans came ultra-close to winning…
- 1914 - During the first invasion, the Germans were within striking distance of Paris. Had they kept going, they could not have been stopped, BUT Von Moltke lost contact with his front line, so he sent the message to stop until they could report in their positions. During that most brief of stoppages, the British were able to alunch a flank attack with anything that they could rally and forced a retreat. Had they not been order to stp, that was curtains for France.
- 1914 - The first major naval engagement at the Falklands. The Germans had the technology to produced ammunition without natural nitrates, the British did not. Had they won at the Falkland, they could have F**Ked up Britains supply of bird droppings upon which its entire ammuniton supply depended. Given that, Britain could well have bowed out early with a backdoor deal made to look like victory, such as keeping the overseas territories that it had grabbed in the first few days and a guarantee for some form of future independent Belgium whilst leaving France to its fate.
- By 1916, overtures weere made between Germany and the Allies through the King of Spain. THey nearly called the whole thing a draw with the British seriously diplomaticly wavering, but in the end, the Allies pressed on.
- 1917 - Had Zimmerman denied sending his telegram as everyone at the Press Conference expected, there would not have been to requisite votes in Congress for the USA to join. Given that and the total collapse of French morale by 1918, it is hard to see how France could have made it though the Summer of 1918 without a sudden collapse of the line or a Russian style mass revolt amongst French troops that would have totaled the French war effort and forced a call by France for an Armistice.
- During the 1918 German Spring offensive, the lines Allied lines effectively ruptured. General Petain insisted that France call for Armistice if the railhead at Amiens was threatened without realising that the British had just ordered the retreat of their last troops in the way. HOWEVER’ a lone Australian Captain ignored direct orders to retreat and dug in with his men, THe losses were astronomic - almost none of the Anzacs came out alive, but they halted the entire German Army for a few hours, enough for the British and French to send in troops to plug the gap.
Another possibility may have been possible had Theodore Roosevelt managed to gain the Republican nomination in 1912 and thus win the Presidential election without dividing the GOP. TR always advocated American involvement in the First World War, so had he been been President there may have an American intervention three years earlier than in reality. While America would take a bit to mobilize, with America on top of all the Allied powers, Germany would not be able to fend off its enemies for long causing World War I to end a year or two earlier than in reality. This means a less bitter peace treaty without the millions of casualties caused by four years of trench warfare, Russia remains a monarchy without the February Revolution or the Germans sending Lenin back to Russia, and German’s monarchy probably just reforms rather than be overthrown. Thus we’d avert the rise of both Communism and National Socialism and without some of Woodrow Wilson’s more naive ideas about self-determination, the Allies may be less insistent on breaking up the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, which would do wonders for stability in the Balkans and the Middle East.
There’s a reason the Ottoman Empire was called the sick man of Europe. It had long been in decline and was in many ways a backwards nation. The Arabs where all of this oil was located weren’t particularly fond of being part of the Ottoman Empire, but much more importantly very little of the world’s oil supply came from the Middle East until after WWII. That the Ottoman Empire was sitting on 70% of the world’s oil reserves didn’t do them any good from 1914-18 because they didn’t know they were sitting on 70% of the world’s oil reserves. In 1940 the US was the largest producer and exporter of oil, producing 1.35 billion barrels a year in 1940, 63% of world production. Even assuming Texas and California sank into the ocean in 1918 and the Ottoman Empire discovers and exploits the oil in the Middle East 30 years ahead of schedule, I don’t see how this gets the Ottoman Empire to the moon by 1940.
Plus, winning a world war doesn’t necessarily mean you get to keep your empire. Just ask the British or the French.
This is a really interesting thread!
I’d like to offer a new take on it. People have raised questions about nukes, and I think that’s the key point in all of this.
I think the key question is this: Is there a point at which mankind learns that wars like WWI and WWII can’t be allowed to happen and therefore devises a world in which they can’t happen?
If that is not possible, then the whole question of what would have happened if Germany had won WWI is irrelevant. Eventually, we would have fought another big war. Eventually, we would fight another. And eventually, we would fight one with nukes. Then another. And so on. We would keep doing that forever until we destroyed the planet (or just our species) or evolved into a species that didn’t keep fighting in that way.
The belief that we would eventually learn the lesson seems implicit on both sides of the argument. The question then is what the cost would be and when would we pay it?
If we have not learned that lesson by this point in time, then our future is bleak. We will eventually have a nuclear war, and I can’t imagine that the world would be better for it. So my hope is that we have learned the lesson already, and large-scale war in which both sides know they will take heavy, civilization-altering damage is obsolete.
Thus, I think the question comes down to this: Could a German victory in WWI have gotten us to this point with less loss of life? Or was WWII, as bad as it was, the better bet? As one poster suggested, perhaps it was best that we learned our lesson about nukes with just two cities destroyed instead of a lot more.
My guess is that a German victory in WWI would have been a better bet. The reason is that the Nazis did almost the maximum imaginable amount of damage they could have done. Further, if the rise of the Soviet Union and Communist China could have been prevented, that would have saved another 50 million or so lives caused by famine, etc. I don’t know what would have happened in China, but no Stalin happening is a good bet if Germany had won early in the war.
The only scenario I could imagine that would be worse is a cold war between the various powers after WWI in which both sides built up a ton of nukes, which turns into a hot war with the world being blown to Kingdom Come. This, however, was only narrowly averted in the Cuban Missile Crisis anyway, so I don’t think it’s necessarily more likely in the alternate world we are imagining.
Further, it’s probably that nukes could actually have been tested more before being used in actual war. We could possibly have learned the lesson that “these things are bad” without actually using them on people.
I think the calculus is pretty simple in this case: what actually happened is almost the worst possible scenario, so any gamble on an alternate scenario is preferable.
There is another thing that people do not seem to have considered: that an early victory by Germany could have simply made WWI not that big a deal. I think the Russo-Japanese War is a case in point. It was pretty horrific, and Japan and Russia hated each other’s guts afterward, but they did not formally go to war ever again, even when WWII happened (yes, I know they fought that pretty bad skirmish around that time–I forget the name). It’s possible that a war fought on that level between Germany and France could have ended the same way without turning France fascist or anything of the sort.
It seemed before WWI that the world was on the dawn of a new peace, and civilization was about to flourish. From my reading, that is what people believed. I think it’s possible that that was one possible path for our species, and we could have “learned our lesson” based on things like the Napoleonic Wars, the US Civil War, the Russo-Japanese War, and be where we are today at an earlier point in time.
No chance in hell. Civilizations just don’t change that rapidly. Before that happened, the rest of Europe would have combined and broken up the Ottoman Empire. LONG before any of that came anywhere even close to happening. A Prussian/Russian alliance to crush Turkey would have been cemented, with the rest of the world cooperating.
Agreed. And we still don’t know the answer to this question! Which way will we go? Will we let the demon out of the bottle? Or have we actually changed the way that world history is forged? Will brinksmanship continue to be the game of empires? “I can get closer to world catastrophe than you can…without actually going there!” What a damn foolish game!
But Einstein was right: “Everything has changed except for our way of thinking.”
When a U.S. Congressman can say, “We should nuke Iran” (to be fair, he said it in context of a war with Iran, and not that we should just up and do it today) then it’s painfully clear that the world’s leadership has learned nothing from history.
I don’t think it’s all leaders who are that stupid. At least, I hope not.
I think it comes from old-school Manifest Destiny-type thinking where you think you’re in the right, and so God is somehow going to make things come out OK. Eventually, the United States as the Good Guy will kinda-sorta control everything, and we’ll be in a Final State with one just Hyperpower, and things will just continue like that until Christ comes again.
I wish this were hyperbole, but I really think that’s how these Republican idiots think that. Heck, I thought that way when I was a child propagandized in the 1970s (as a Catholic, not an Evangelical, but it was mostly the belief in the inherent rightness of the US, which was just in the air), and that’s the level they are stuck at.
True… But when it involves the U.S. Congress, even one nuke-happy war-crazed apocalyptic buffoon is too damn many. Until we get to a stage of history where that kind of thinking is, well, unthinkable, we’re still in dire peril of a flame-out of human civilization.
The fact that we still have any racists, bigots, sexists, anti-Semites, etc. in Congress is a damning sign that not enough has been learned from history.
I’m a bit amused at the idea of the Ottoman Empire establishing something call CNN( Constantinople News Network.
The Ottomans and present day Turks view the term “Constantinople” as an insult and get offended when people refer to Istanbul as Constantinople.
You might as well have the IRA referring to “Londonderry” or Black South Africans refer to “Rhodesia”.
I still think that the world would never have had WWII. Germany would have to occupy a sullen, resentful France. as they did in the 1870 war, the Germans would have imposed severe reparations on France, and I think that Kaiser Wilhelm would have demanded France’s African Colonies (French west Africa, Equatorial Africa). This would have relieved France of a big expense (the colonies were virtually worthless).
My guess would be that Germany would find “victory” financially unendurable, and the German taxpayers would revolt-possibly even ousting the Kaiser.
Robert Conroy just published an AH novel based on the idea of Germany winning a short war in 1914. In 1920: America’s Great War, Germany follows up its victory in Europe by forming an alliance with Mexico and invading the United States.
But we might very well have had some other globe-spanning war with tanks, aircraft carriers, long range bombers, and possibly even nuclear weapons. The division of the world into competing spheres of power and interest would not have ended: it would just have been a different division.
Interesting thread, but one thing either seems to have been missed or gotten short shrift, and that’s the sociological and demographic effects brought on by World War I.
If Germany had won an early victory in 1914 or 1915 (say, the French hadn’t been able to stop them on the Marne), the horrendous casualties that occurred through four years of trench warfare wouldn’t have happened. It’s been said that many of the best and brightest were killed in the trenches of World War One. How different would the countries participating had those potential scientists, scholars and statesmen survived to play a part in the futures of their countries? And by proxy, how much different would the world have been?
And if that doesn’t make your head spin - factor in the loss of life and the resulting loss in potential from World War Two, assuming it or something very like it didn’t occur because there was no precipitating First World War.
The short answer is, of course…it’s impossible to say. History shows us how much even one person can change the world, for better or for worse. Throw a few million potential wild cards into the deck…my head hurts just thinking about it.
Apologies if someone has already made this point. It’s late, and I was just skimming this thread before crashing for the night.
Huh. Why the heck does Mr. Conroy say [fictional] Germany does that?
I think it’s a great point!