Czechslovakia was the only democracy in Central Europe in the 30s, and it treated its Germans well. They deserved much better treatment than they got. Poland had quite a bit of unpleasantness before and during WWII, but that doesn't excuse the treatment they received--let alone being "obnoxious."
Nobody ever deserves human rights abuses, period. Having said that, you may still have more or less sympathetic victims of an atrocity. My greatest sympathies go to the Jews and homosexuals, which were utterly innocent and blameless, then to the peoples of the USSR, who were trapped in a tragic loss-loss choice between two genocidal regimes as overlords, and least of all to the Poles and Czechs, that gave a significant contribute to Versailles merry trampling on the self-determination of Germans, which in turn fed the rise of Nazism mightly.
Having said that as well, if we talk about what everyone "deserved" in Central Europe, nobody certainly deserved Nazism nor Leninism-Stalinism. Just to use a quick and easy PoD, hand me a TL where a stray bullet claims Caporal Hitler, a sane neo-Wilhelmine regime is the next most likely outcome of Germany's 1930s crisis (if you remove Hitler and hence Nazism but leave Versailles and the Great Depression into place, saving Weimar would typically require nullifying either by much more difficult, complex, and wide-ranging PoDs, even if there is the ever popular Strasemann lives PoD), it strongarms Czechia and Poland in giving back their ill-gotten gains in Sudetenland and the Corridor (Danzig and the pre-1919 German majority areas in southern West Prussia that formed a viable land connection between Pomerania and East Prussia) then leaves them alone, sane Germany helps contain Stalin (or lends an large contribution to defeat him when he goes on an expansionist rampage) and it gradually spreads its economic influence over Central Europe by peaceful means as old animosities die out (or as a result of fighting anti-Soviet WWII), fostering economic development to everyone's benefit. That's more or less what everyone "deserved" (well, Hungary deserved some serious border revision as well, but that's another matter). If this turmoil somehow also would end into a Polish-Lithuanian confederation, and/or a German-Czech confederation, it would have been in the long-term benefit of all parties, for economic and strategic reasons.
Russia won. Victors get what they want, and considering what Germany did to Eastern Europe I don't think any of us are in a position to contest that.
Might makes right rules the world in the end, very true, but even so, you may make a value judgement about how a settlement may be in the greatest long-term benefit of everyone involved, or not. Germany did not "deserve" to be cut back to anything more than the pre-Munich borders minus East Prussia, just like a Russia that had lost WWII would not have "deserved" to to be cut back to anything more than the Brest-Litovsk/1991 borders. Anything more was/would be harmful overkill, and hence "unfair" in a utilitarian sense.
I do believe that the EU is possible because of US/NATO military hegemony, so I guess we're largely in agreement here, except that I don't see why we have to be in such a hurry. The EU is what it is and it has to follow its own trajectory. It's too successful to self-destruct at this point.
A political trajectory (say the EDC/EPC gets off in the early 1950s, or Britain does not join in the 1970s) where the "Carolingian" core of the EU gets a clear federal imprint from the start, before the Euroskeptic would-be stonewallers get a veto right, and the Euroskeptic periphery are left free to get a looser confederal association, and join the core at their own pace if ever, would be much superior to the current state. It is my fondest hope that sooner or later the EU returns to such a more efficent tiered framework, which would be much better for all parties involved.
Here's something you'll probably agree with: I think the EU should admit Turkey and then start working its way around the Mediterranean. The Middle Sea should be a bridge, not a border.
Very true about Turkey (as soon as Northern Cyprus is given up), and true in the very long term, but honestly the only other non-European country that is fit to join the EU before the next generation is Israel (as soon as a sensible "Clinton Parameters" peace is signed with Palestine). Morocco is still decades away from the level of Turkey, the rest of North Africa is not remotely at the same level (well, maybe Tunisia may grow close in time) and anyway Ukraine deserves to join later than Turkey, but well before any other non-European country. There is also the very real concern that admitting any North African state creates a large land border with the remaining basket case area of the global community, subsaharian Africa, with all the illegal immigration mess that would arise.
It may be done, but it's still very far away in the future.
A U.S. that absorbs the indigenous peoples is one of a remarkably different character from OTL's.
I would love this alternative scenario. Something like that makes up Brazil's national narrative. There's a lot of ugliness it glosses over, but the end result is a nation where everyone is Brazilian, not simply those whose ancestors came from the Old World.
I think we are in full agreement about this. When I talk about a more successful "Manifest Destiny" USA as a preferable outcome, it must perforce be rather more inclusionist than early OTL, or it would never go that way. This would not only include the native peoples but propel the USA on a trajectory where it's willing and able to integrate Latin America as an equal partner instead of a quasi-colony. Imagine a Latin America which enjoys First-World status and democracy as a result of USA integration since late 19th-early 20th century, and there is no Chavez, Castro, Pinochet, Somoza, or Videla because everyone is voting for their US senators and governors. I cannot be regard this as a huge improvement for the world.
I don't blame them for Germany's lebensraum, I blame them for America's lebensraum. Genocide in the name of racial superiority isn't wrong when it's impractical, it's always wrong. The result is millions dead and cultures destroyed. It's troubling that you don't see a problem with this.
I see the big problem about the millions dead, but if I'm given the tough choice between no America and OTL, I have to deem the latter is in the overall greater benefit of the world. The existence of the USA makes a big improvement for many more people than the natives in continental US. Having said that, a USA that integrates native peoples is far better.
We are still powerful enough to save you in the twentieth century if we don't make it to the Pacific coast.
Bah. This is very questionable. And it is rather more plausible to imagine a PoD that makes Americans more willing to integrate the natives from the start than one that makes them have a change of heart when they are mid-way across the colonization fo the continent. Besides, why the Sioux and the Apaches would deserve the break that the Mohican and Seminoles never got ?
Fair enough. It might also mean that Rome goes and wipes out New World peoples sooner as well. But you'd call that a good thing, wouldn't you?
Rome had a very consistent record about successful assimilation of peoples and cultures, and only resorted to (admittably very harsh, but consistent with standards of its age) "scorched earth" counterinsurgency when it was faced with bullheaded continuing resistance to its rule, and only used force to the degree necessary to accomplish conquest. They never ever practiced genocide or even discrimination for racist reasons, to them every people and culture was equal once politically integrated, and they only suppressed cultures and religions that became a real public order or national security problem. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that a Roman conquest of the New World would have treated Sioux or Taino any different from Gauls or Britons. At most, it is very likely that they would found the Aztec bloodthirsty religion abhorrent, and gone to all ends to wipe it out, but frankly, is the world a worse place if a religion based on human sacrifice is wiped out ?
The Native Americans would have been treated as equal members of Romanitas the moment thay had accepted it, more or less.
One thing the people on your list have in common is an obsession with unity at any cost.
What they truly have in common is that they built regimes that had no foreseeable chance of keep standing in the long term without ongoing extreme brutal cohercion, and practiced gratuitous mass atrocities for no better gain than fulfilling lamebrained political theories.
The beauty of globalization culturally is not that it destroys cultures, which alas it sometimes does, but that it lets cultures influence one another and create new and beautiful things of their synthesis.
To a degree. There is also a strong element of Darwinist competition when different cultures come into contact, with various degrees of two-way synthesis/hybridization and one-way assimilation/substitution being into play. This is a process that has always been true in history, but globalization greately magnifies the process. However, a civilization like Rome practiced a balance between synthesis and assimilation that was rather close to what would happen spontaneously, when peoples and cultures were integrated into a greater political unity. In that, it was not radically different from modern globalization.
A globalization between three world-spanning empires rather than two hundred nation-states would be hideously boring.
Who bloody cares ? I would trade much greater and earlier world peace and efficiency in dealing with global problems like the environment centuries early for 180 less cultures any day. The sum total of human cultural creativity remains the same whether it's expressed through 3 different outlets or 200. Movies, novels, etc. get written anyway. Besides, some degree of cultural diversity may survive within the empires, only what feeds separatism and hampers administrative and economic unity needs to be suppressed.
I don't recall the Muslim empire feeding its Christians and Jews to lions for sport.
Muslim empires
exterminated rebels with the same ruthless efficiency that has been the standard till the late 20th century. The lions were nothing different from public execution of criminals and rebels, which was used to amuse and intimidate the masses and make justice a public show as recently as late 19th century pretty much everywhere (e.g. public hangings in the Old West). Unfortunately for them, Jews under Rome had a knack for making their national religion a rallying banner for bloodthirsty rebellions, and got the scorched earth treatment that rebels got in any ancient empire, accomplished with Roman efficiency, but enjoyed tolerance the moment they gave separatism up. Christians under Rome looked and sounded like subversives that refused proper allegiance to imperial authority and threatened public order. In part, this was the result of an unfortunate tragic misunderstanding; in part, given the atrocities that Christians enthusiastically practiced when they got the upper hand, one may regard Rome's attempt to snuff them out as foreknowledge of the danger they represented.
E.g. if Rome had colonized the New World instead of Christian Europe, the native peoples would have been spared a lot of bloodthirsty intolerance. The Romans would have just suppressed the religions that were dangerous to public order (the Aztec one) and left the others be.
I must confess I don't know as much about Napoleon as I should. I acknowledge that he had his moments and Metternich his flaws. But choosing between those two I'd go with Metternich. He was one year away from a century of unbroken European peace, no small feat. No offense, but you guys loved war back in the day.
If Napoleon had won, the wars would have ceased and peace ruled on the continent just the same, but Napoleonic rule was comparatively more liberal and enlightened.
