Lovely morning for a shitpost.
Pretty sure the U.S. was building nukes basically non-stop once they started.
The time traveler thing to do would be to tell Stalin how to make sure the USSR stays on track (and doesn't split from China) after he dies, tell FDR to resign when Henry Wallace was his VP (or at least fight to keep him on the ticket), and give Churchill one of those cigars the CIA tried to give Castro.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.2968/066004008
I'm assuming the 2 in 1945 were the ones they used (and not the remaining inventory), but I'm not 100%.
Neat source; I'm going to have to read through all that later.
I think the first few bombs took a long time to produce (we'd produced at least three in 1945, counting the Trinity test), but then we kept up a steady pace and ramped up production soon after (at least nine in 1946 by this source).
I think WW2 definitely still happens, but instead of appeasement and then fighting the Nazis in North Africa, it's a more clearly defined struggle between the socialists and the capitalists. Hard to say if it happens earlier, later, or at about the same time, though.
But a war not happening also hinges on the capitalist world not attacking first. In our reality they backed out of the Russian Civil War after invading and failing - but if Germany goes red, a much more developed and much closer country, I could see the calculus of world leaders being different.
the entente wouldn't leave the spartakists alone if they became successful, and there's not much the french left could do to prevent the (possibly autonomous) movement of entente occupation forces already in germany against it. they were unwilling to start a protracted war, but not averse to strangling a revolution in the cradle
If Germany goes red, the fact that the frontlines of the previous, incredibly unpopular war, would be returned to may just be enough to push those same soldiers over, especially given some good propagandizing on the revolution's behalf. I imagine it degrading into a European wide Civil War/ Revolution
idonut kno histry im litrly a brd covrd n shet thnxu 4 leson y ez thes tho
I don't disagree with the premise but the US and western powers did a whole lot diplomatically and economically to support Franco as well. Removing Germany from the equation would have made a republican victory more likely but not necessarily a foregone conclusion. Definitely would have shaken up the sides in the coming world war as well and who knows how that would've played out
I thought the Spartacus Uprising was when all those slaves claimed to be Spartacus in solidarity.
Edit: Seriously though, TIL. Neat.
Asktually, the correct name is the Spartacist uprising or January uprising :debate-me-debate-me:
eh. I mean, if we're really going there, the time machine itself is so powerful that changing historical events probably isn't even necessary. but I guess there's an implicit assumption of like "you only have enough power to use it once" or something?
Still, I think the most effective thing would ultimately be to enrich yourself, take power, and then use that power to establish global communism.
If we further assume that you can't "play the protagonist", like, you get half and hour to talk and then you're back to your own time... idk... I would probably try to give them enough knowledge to skip the Capitalism stage and move from Feudalism to communism by getting to post-scarcity without going through capitalism first?
Yeah. You'd pretty much have to literally give Rosa a couple of Gundams for things to work. The Freikorps had them so ridiculously outnumbered and outgunned there wasn't going to be a military victory.
Broke: Making the Spartacist Uprising succeed
Woke: Going back to 70 BC and tipping the Third Servile War in favor of Spartacus and his rebels, ending the Roman Empire centuries early and altering the course of history.
Idk why, but the “he has no nukes left” hits different :stalin-shining:
People have HOI4 brain. nukes or not, Stalin going past Berlin wasn't gonna happen. Stalin was right to not suicidally march millions of Soviet people into WW2.5 against much richer and better-armed Western powers. Especially since the head of those Western powers, the USA, lied across the atlantic Ocean and had plentiful resources gotten through the primitive accumulation phase of slavery with which to arm their Capitalist European allies. Also, it wasn't Stalin's call. Believe it or not, there was a Soviet government outside of Stalin whose opinions mattered.
Vijay Prashad has the right take on this in Washington Bullets
also
Even if the USA had zero nukes after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they still had the technology and resources to rapidly produce more. If Stalin wasted his time attacking everyone between Germany and Ireland, and annexing these regions into some kind of Socialist super state, it would only be a matter of time until the top dog across the ocean got their nukes together and started dropping them everywhere socialism was ascendant.
Sucks but it's true. I think I agree more with the people pointing to the German Revolution as the last possible inflection point.
I think the situation is more nuanced than to say that the US would just start another war in Western Europe just after the Nazis had been defeated
replace US with soviet in this sentence and you're making the exact same point I was making. However, the US had way more surplus resources to go on waging war since they started out with so much more and sacrificed so much less than everyone else in WW2.
:ohnoes: I should have brought Stalin some Star Trek weaponry then.
The Red Army outnumbered the West by ~50%. I thought it was more.
Surely a bunch of people in the Soviet government were also saying to march past Berlin (without a time machine) but after barely surviving a genocidal war I could imagine a lot of troops just wanted to go home
but after barely surviving a genocidal war I could imagine a lot of troops just wanted to go home
yes
I know, but it's still funny to say Stalin shouldn't have stopped at Berlin.
We can resolve this contradiction by giving Stalin a Gundam and letting him take the West on all by himself. He can do it. I believe in him.
I'd imagine they'd have to tape down the two hemispheres around it and then launch it to leave a supercritical ball of plutonium angrily sitting out in a field. It'd probably kill the loader and whoever got close to it. Theoretically a extremely expensive, ineffective and most likely unreliable piece of area denial.
a extremely expensive, ineffective and most likely unreliable piece of area denial.
this sounds like a job for the military industrial complex :porky-happy:
Theoretically a extremely expensive, ineffective and most likely unreliable piece of area denial.
Didn't stop nerds from fantasizing about using that Davy Crockett nuclear mortar thing
Some DoD brain genius thought that would be a good way to deliver a nuclear blast?
Clearly they need another forfty quajillion dollars
a big internet thing
Is the word "meme" no longer a big internet thing? I'm out of touch.
Great meme, but a big Ole :doubt: on the Redditor having a girlfriend.
Nah, that is definitely someone he kidnapped. Crusaders were like that.
It seems likely that someone else would have made their way to America from Europe I'd colombus hadn't. They already had the technology, and even if it took an extra century they'd still show up eventually
Yeah, it was already suspected that there might be more landmasses out there, and people like Amerigo Vespucci was hot on his heels. If the Spanish crown lost Columbus to some unfortunate accident, they'd just hire someone like Amerigo
amerigo mit hav ben evn mor competnt 2. columbussy wuz so vylent evry1 evn en span wuz lik “dud wat tf ez wrung w/ yu”
Exactly! And vaccines and pack animals and maybe some cookies as a treat
yis!! thy culd do wakanda 4 reel (wakanda ez originaly namd aftr a Siouan god called Wakanda)
indigenous ppl alredy had tht tbh (vry advncd tech & socity) thy jst culdv usd halp 2 defnd et frm th violenc & plags uv blech daemon colonizrs
So what you're telling me is that historical events are determined more by material conditions than by individuals? :stalin-pipe: Interesting idea
If you're going to take a time machine to talk to Stalin, the real move would be to go to the battle of Warsaw and tell him to follow his goddamned orders and be there in reserve for Trotsky.
crusader-jak wouldn't even survive to be shot by a syrian he'd croak after trying the water and immediately developing dysentery
Could get shot between the eyes while shitting his brains out.
I would tell him to kill krushchov, that mofo ruined it all
This makes me want to write a book about a communist using a time machine to create global communism, and the CIA agent with their own machine sent to stop them
Spoiler: The CIA agent realizes the error of their ways and falls in love with the communist, becoming one themself. They're both gay. They end up successfully creating a totally communist timeline where the CIA never existed and they live a long and happy life
Make the framing story the CIA agent writing their memoirs at the end of their life and their kids teasing them about how absurd concepts like "poverty" and "starvation" are and how that would never really happen.
