"Here’s how general lee could still win " I insist as my face reaches maximum soy
What we need are the chad questions like “what if gunpowder was exactly twice as expensive to make” or “what if arabic numerals were in base 11”
I don’t read a lot of alt history but I imagine most of it is people trying to find the laziest causal relationships possible in order to get the outcome they think is the most interesting. Dude what if the Union had nuclear bombs in the Civil War? Dude what if Mexico joined the Axis. And it’s always about WWII or The Civil War, in the US at least. Dude what if WWII happened during the Civil War and Japan joined the Union but the South joined Britain and Hitler had old computers but the US had a playstation.
Most of it is a little better than that. Soviet victory in the Battle of Warsaw is a favourite for instance.
Alternatehistory.com generally curbstomps the “what if Napoleon pursues and captures Blucher in the Six Days Campaign?” idiots with “Then he gets fucked up two weeks later by a Russian army.” , but yes, a lot of it is what they call FSB or “flying space bats”.
Sometimes even that isn’t too bad though, everyone loves a good Sunset Invasion.
I am way more fine with pro napoleon fanfics, because the sentiment of “Fuck Britain” is one I can always subscribe to.
I kinda doubt Germany could have had total victory in WWII, Man in the High Castle level shit where Nazis rule the world was never gonna happen.
Now if Hitler drove the Soviet Union into Siberia, I could maybe see them managing to hold onto most of Europe save Britain. This would require the fascists to give up on their endless expansionism, but if they did I imagine there’d be a Cold War between a Euro Fascist bunker state and a the Imperialist US-UK alliance.
Aw shit just realize I did an alt history :(
Why settle for allegorical Flying Space Bats when you can have the real thing?
FYI: if you’re not down with the Liberation of Night you’re a :LIB:
Probably more than a decade ago I stumbled on someones alt history blog and they had one which was like “what if Robert Clive successfully committed suicide?” and India was never colonized by the British. It’s great man shit (though the actual history of Indian colonization is insane) and I’m pretty sure it made France the global empire which is ridiculous but it was definitely unique.
I’m pretty sure it made France the global empire which is ridiculous
Is France not a global empire? There’s french colonies and ex-colonies all over the world.
France was kinda shitty at doing imperialism by the decolonization period. They couldn’t let go of their colonies, but they also couldn’t win against them. They lost Indochina and Algeria to resistance movements because they were a crippled country after ww2. So honestly, by the late period at least, France was very much trying to hold onto their “global empire” completely unsuccessfully. Uk was strong until the end, unfortunately, and crushed many movements in places such as Malaysia.
1632 is the great leftist “fuck it, it’s magic” alt-history series. A West Virginia mining town gets transported to 1632 in Germany during the 30 Years War, and the UMWA becomes the armed leader of a coalition including the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus (who is saved from his historical death by a pair of eyeglasses).
Sadly, it’s not that well written, at least the early books (I bowed out after three of them), and it’s very “let’s collect every historical figure from that period”, including a couple randomly adopting the future Baruch Spinoza. But the main conceit is kinda cool - what if a blue collar town with a strong labor history gets the “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” treatment?
