"Here's how general lee could still win " I insist as my face reaches maximum soy
Republicans skim the first four sentences of a Wikipedia article and find out about the Spanish Civil War and forever declare themselves to be the true anti-fascists
If you gave General Lee the General Lee, he would ascend to the Godhead and we'd all be fucked by him and his infernal Dukes of Hazzard
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.
A lot of it is a way to bring your favourite revanchist fantasies to live more so than imagining scenarios.
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.
Soviet victory in the Battle of Warsaw
It that had happened we might literally be living under communism right now.
Damn poles.
I am way more fine with pro napoleon fanfics, because the sentiment of "Fuck Britain" is one I can always subscribe to.
Oh yeah, absolutely. Bad guys won the Revolutionary wars.
(Incidentally, all I want in the entire world is a pro-French Regency Romance, and I cannot find one. Where are my dashing Revolutionaries?)
I had the same notion as you, that Germany could have won WW2 somehow, until I saw this
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 :(
Man in the high castle at least acknowledges that the nazis were monstrous. But in the process it whitewashes the fuck out of imperial japan.
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:
Fallen London/Sunless sea/Sunless skies could be so cool if it wasn't the grindiest thing in the fucking universe.
Hitler had old computers. The IBM provided IT support for the Holocaust.
What if the EU suddenly ditched the USA and aligned with China to bypass the Thucydides trap.
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.
Honestly outside SE Asia and Algeria France has been far more successful than Britain in maintaining imperial power. West Africa is still basically controlled by French interests, as Sankara pointed out (and was shot for his trouble)
Francafrique has become much less of a factor since then. Not that its not a thing, but its less of a thing.
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?
I wish there was an alternate history if the German Revolution succeeded and the communists took power.
When I was like ten, maybe eleven years old I read an alt-history book where some guy went back in time and gave the Confederacy AK-47s.
Wish I could remember the name of it, it was hilariously bad even to a pre-teen.
Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South, don't ask me how I know this, after it succeeds the revolution can execute me for the words I am about to type. I read his books about an alien invasion starting during WW2. It had a moment where a Nazi and a Jew had to work together to fight the aliens. Ugh. Also, I read one or two of his books about WW2, but in a fantasy universe, because the cover had a nice painting. People had like magic ray gun tubes instead of guns. And dragons instead of bombers.
Used to be a huge Turtledove fan in my youth, the WorldWar series was so ridiculous and lib I absolutely devoured it. Remember when the aliens were addicted to Ginger? Like, the cooking spice made them so high and lucid parts of their army start deserting and joining the humans. I really liked the multiple perspective style he used, and I thought his Chinese POV's were pretty cool and nuanced and not automatically 'China Bad' but I may be misremembering.
He wrote another sci-fi book I read later about the first Human expeditions to an alien planet where the aliens were bizarre slime constructs that still used stone spears and shit. It got really weirdly horny at the end.
The official "China Bad" policy is new in the US if you go back a few decades media is going to be a lot more favorable towards China
His Worldwar series was by far his best work. Goofy, but fun, and played to its rules. Unfortunately, once he found success in that vein he then has done multiple iterations of WW2, including one in which the South won the Civil War (Lee's instructions weren't lost at Fredericksburg), Lincoln becomes a socialist, and by WW2 the South is doing a Holocaust on all the black people.
I don't know nothin' about that! I do remember he has a short story about like primitive aliens who have muskets, but also spaceships, and how they try to conquer Earth, but it turns out that Earth's technology is super advanced—except when it comes to spaceships. Like, human weapons are advanced, but...agh...forget it, I sound so stoned when I talk about Harry Turtledove. People also made fun of me for reading him entirely because of his name.
I like alt history a lot but it’s so hard to find good ones. One of the most popular ones on youtube is literally a nazi.
Sure, but 90% of everything is crap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law
I wish there was an alternate history if the German Revolution succeeded and the communists took power.
Searching "World War 2" on the My Little Pony fanfiction website returns 81 results. Surely this doesn't imply 8 of them aren't crap?
alt history is a good guarantee that the person doesn't understand anything about history or reality and subscribes to white hero worship
I don't know about actual published Alt-Hist books, but I do enjoy reading what is basically Alt-history fanfiction.
Until Every Drop is Paid - Republicans become more radical during the civil war
Blunted Sickle - The Allies have a mobile reserve, France doesn't surrender.
Sons of a Harlot Empress- The Tusculani become Kings of Italy and Western Roman Emperors
