The Great and Grand Alternative History Discussion Thread.

This thread is for all the people here like me who enjoy boring the rest of the internet with guessing (which may or may not be wild) about what might happen if such and such a historical event did or did not happen. Maybe William got his loaf sliced instead of Harold at Hastings, or Svend of Denmark jumped him while his army was recovering and England became part of Denmark instead.

Keep it polite, and please, before posting anything, if you're discussing another country try to talk about it as if it were your own country. In other words, sympathetically. Everyone can feel strongly about issues relating to their countries history, especially the parts we're none too proud of, but other people feel just as strongly about theirs, so post with respect and objectivity. (That doesn't mean criticism isn't allowed but look at the facts and motivations first.)

Anyway, the question which made me spawn the thread is as follows; what would have happened if World War One had started, but had been stopped quickly and a white peace declared early on, maybe in 1915 on the recommendations of the Austrian emperor? (historically he was laughed down for the very sound proposition that they simply forget about it all and go home.)

edited 6th Apr '12 4:49:15 AM by GameChainsaw

Why would they listen to him NTL, though? The tensions had been building since the turn of the century, if not earlier (haven't refreshed my memory on the period's history recently, so not positive), and just the relatively minor bit of bloodshed at that point, wouldn't do all that much to relieve the tensions.

Well I was thinking that maybe the leaders might realise just how bad the war was going to get, recognise that the whole mess was an unnecessary mistake, swallow massive amounts of pride, and arrange for the war to be declared over. Armistices do happen on occasion if both sides realise that whatever they were setting out to do at the start of the war is simply not worth the amount of bloodshed involved.

As I recall from my starting to read Martin Gilbert's The First World War (never finished, got about 1/4 through before my interest waned), at that point many of them were still thinking that it'd be over relatively quickly. The real bloodshed didn't really kick in until a year or so afterward, so it's not like they had much evidence of the carnage.

(Well, other than the American Civil War, but I don't recall them giving much thought to things outside the Continent beyond colonial stuff.)

Well, one of the most obvious consequences of no World War I would be no World War II, since the second war derived from tensions created by the war and its end.

It's not so much an absence of world war 1 as a truncated one where people sort of step back from the brink. Maybe if it had ended in 1916 after the Somme or something.

I don't know. I can just so see a stepping back from the general mobilizations, but even that is difficult. From the war? I don't think so...

The French didn't want to stop till they thrashed Germany back into the City States that had formed it

None of them really wanted to stop. Not until the casualty count skyrocketed.

No WWI means the Great Depression would have occurred perhaps 10 years earlier. Labor unrest would have been even worse than it had been, overthrowing Monarchies and installing Communist/Socialist regimes in their place. Fascism never develops, and the "Great War", when it comes, is takes the form of an invasion of capitalist Great Britain by a Soviet-backed France.

The rise of the Bolsheviks and Soviet Union was incredibly improbable. While I agree that Russia would have had a revolution or at least major reforms, I very much doubt Lenin would have risen to power.

Lenin only rose to power because the Germans helped him out by sending him to Russia on a train.

Best Wunderwaffe ever

Yeah, the Bolsheviks succeeded in no small part due to their support for getting out of WWI. If no WWI, the Bolsheviks probably wouldn't have been as powerful. In fact, the entire revolution might not have happened, but if it did happen it'd be over with the first round and not have to go into Communist Overtime.

But then the French run into the same problem that the Germans had in Actual WW 2: the nigh-impossibility of militarily crossing an English Channel whilst the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force are still in play.

What if Most of the countries agreed to peace, but the Russian Czar refused, and the war was just the Eastern front? That could be interesting.

Imperial Germany and the AHE would have steamrolled the Russians

@Pagad: No WWI, no development of interceptor aircraft. There wouldn't be an air force.

@Ultrayellow: The Soviet revolution occurs in Germany, not Russia. Lenin is a minor figure in that. Karl Liebknecht becomes the first Chairman of Socialist Germany. Under him, first France is overthrown by revolution, and then the invasion of Great Britain begins.

Not seeing how the 3rd Republic is going to fail to be honest.

I am not sure you can take this for granted. Even if aircraft development was retarded by some years by the lack of the innovations that war tends to bring, that doesn't mean that peacetime military development of them is going to stop altogether.

And even if aircraft don't get developed, it's still almost irrelevant. That just means that the Royal Navy is going to be more powerful than ever.

How would no bloody warfare make a Communist revolution more likely?

edited 6th Apr '12 2:44:37 PM by GameChainsaw

Airplanes were coming, ww1 or not. But, without the development of incendiary rounds, zepplines might have survived a while longer.

I don't see how Germany would have a revolution. They were pretty damn satisfied before WWI. Sure, Kaiser Wilhelm was kind of an idiot, but the economy was great.

They might have eventually become socialist, but a revolution seems really unlikely.

I'm proposing that the Great Depression comes even earlier, and causes even more damage, without the public sector spending of WWI. The Depression was essentially caused, at least in part, by the speculative lending that was going on in the twenties. That's why Germany's economy had been expanding, but obviously that couldnt last.

I shouldn't have said that aircraft development would stop, I should have said aircraft production would. They might understand the principles behind single wing, metal skinned, air-cooled engines, but they wouldnt have built airforces out of them.

Aircraft or no, the UK would still have the Channel and the Royal Navy. Without control of the seas (or at least the ability to deny control to others) troop transports are little more than gunnery targets for the other side.

The notion does bring something to mind, though: In this alt history, did the Allies carry through with the Gallipoli Campaign (25 Apr 1915 to 9 Jan 1916, with an attempt a few months prior to that to force the Dardanelles with a force of older battleships considered too outdated to face the German High Fleet)? That particular cluster-[fornicate] shook up a lot of pre-war politics.