TL-191 Fridge Logic thread:

To be specific, I'd wager that Custer was being kept alive to serve as the Hindenburg analogue, and maybe being told to pick McSweeney as VP before going entirely senile.

I think the USA was supposed to go fascist and the CSA communist. With Canada acting as the equivalent of the Western democracies and Mexico as whatever exotic country parallelism called for at the moment. And I shit you not, Imperial Brazil sort-of acting as the United States analogue, coming late to help the Entente win the war after both the CSA and Russia were taken out, rather than to the CPs side as in the books.

I even made a series of maps in the old computer where I went full-on with the parallelism and beyond, that I never came to post here. But I don't know if this is the place to talk about them.
 
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To be fair there's no reason to believe that what I tend to dub the 'King's Party' (aka Edward VIII, Winston S. Churchill and Oswald Mosley) are working any more smoothly than one might expect - after all we only hear about their Government via radio broadcasts which are unlikely to be based on insider information!

With that in mind it is reasonable to imagine that the working relationship between the Tories and the New Party 'Silver Shirts' degenerates over time - if I were to suggest a plausible reason that it never entirely disintegrates then it would be that Mosley new QUITE gets all his ducks in the row for a coup and simply loses his nerve when contemplating the uncertainty of his success in such an endeavour Vs the certainty of retaining a considerable degree of power and influence as 'Deputy Prime Minister' (for one thing Labour might well be willing to team up with the Tories to scotch Mosley should he get too uppity, if nothing else).

Especially if he were to secure a particularly sharp hook with which to make it very inconvenient for Churchill to show too much resistance.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showpost.php?p=11045087&postcount=1430

^At the other end of the link which I have taken the liberty of posting, I posit that between the Wars the British Government would have been very foolish not to reach out to the US Government in the interests of creating an agreement establishing a 'Special Relationship' between the US and the UK equivalent to (but less Mephistophelean than) the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

The two major problems with this happy inspiration would be that the Politician most likely to be spearheading this initiative is Winston S. Churchill (vulnerable to accusations and insinuations which might deal a fatal blow to The Kings Party by virtue of his own half-American heritage) and the fact that there would be significant power blocs in both countries which would require considerable finessing to 'Sell' on the whole business.

The sort of PR Operation that is difficult to pull off if, say, some little worm were to be fed information by a Snake at a crucial point in the delicate process of negotiations (if this information were to balance out plans for an Internal Coup by Mosley, I could imagine the Kings Party deciding to muddle along for just long enough to recognise a golden opportunity to sink Domestic Rivalries beneath a flood of popular enthusiasm for a Foreign War).

I hope that I have given some idea of how a Churchill-Mosley alignment might last JUST long enough to help trigger the Second Great War (basically each one would REALLY like to get rid of one another, but can't quite afford to); One would like to imagine that as the UK is obliged to acknowledge the defeat brought about in part by the Churchill-Mosley antipathy, Winston would publicly broadcast his acceptance of the Vote of No Confidence quite possibly being used to legitimate a behind-the-scenes coup by the Opposition (so that he might obliterate Mosley's chances of retaining any legitimacy) and then proudly obliging his would-be captors to consign him to the ranks of those 'Shot while resisting Arrest' for the very simple reason that "We will NEVER surrender" he said "and we REALLY meant it!" (bonus point if Winston is expressing his defiance with a Tommy Gun in addition to the memory of soaring Rhetoric).

Does HT ever state when the coalition occurs? I have been thinking about it a fair bit and I honestly can't see Mosley have too much power before the 1940 election. It made sense to me that by 1940 the New Party had eclipsed the Liberals for third place, and given their revanchist sentiments they would naturally join the War cabinet, alongside the Liberals probably, and if possible Labour (but as this is an offensive war, probably just a handful of Labour politicians who are enticed to defect, the party as a whole would probably stay in opposition).
 
Except that it IS funny and is about the only logical explanation for having so many USA-Germany parallels in the first few books before doing a complete about face.

But what book did he mention that Italy stayed neutral in? I have always thought that that, which meant a very serious reduction in the Allies' capabilities in Europe was the sign that the CP was going to win the War.
 
To be specific, I'd wager that Custer was being kept alive to serve as the Hindenburg analogue, and maybe being told to pick McSweeney as VP before going entirely senile.

I think the USA was supposed to go fascist and the CSA communist. With Canada acting as the equivalent of the Western democracies and Mexico as whatever exotic country parallelism called for at the moment. And I shit you not, Imperial Brazil sort-of acting as the United States analogue, coming late to help the Entente win the war after both the CSA and Russia were taken out, rather than to the CPs side as in the books.

I even made a series of maps in the old computer where I went full-on with the parallelism and beyond, that I never came to post here. But I don't know if this is the place to talk about them.

Thank you for the info. I'm not sure I agree that the CSA was supposed to go communist though, seems implausible. but it would have been a little more unique and interesting. I could totally buy the CSA falling to Huey Long and a sort of Chavez style non-racist populism.
 
But what book did he mention that Italy stayed neutral in? I have always thought that that, which meant a very serious reduction in the Allies' capabilities in Europe was the sign that the CP was going to win the War.

All I can find doing a search on the GW books is the scene in Breakthroughs where Galtier hears the countries recognizing the Republic of Quebec in 1917. Italy is one of them, and he notices that it was neutral for the past three years despite being allied to Germany and the US.

That's the third GW book that is all about the collapse of the Entente, so obviously, at this point Turtledove has already changed his mind and decided on a CP victory (according to the "Turtledove changed his mind" theory).

I could swear there was something with a soldier complaining about Italy's neutrality keeping Germany+Austria from launching a southern attack on France, but I wonder if that was just someone making shit up on the Turtledove Wiki, or was actually something in the GW2 books (where Italy is also neutral). If it was in the first two GW books, however, it could be a reference to the OTL Italian neutrality in 1914 and not being indicative of anything.

Thank you for the info. I'm not sure I agree that the CSA was supposed to go communist though, seems implausible. but it would have been a little more unique and interesting. I could totally buy the CSA falling to Huey Long and a sort of Chavez style non-racist populism.

Bear in mind, before Russia became the USSR, it collapsed in multiple countries, and the same could happen to the CSA if every state went their own way. In the maps I did, the bulk of the *CSSA was the Black Belt and a lot of middle/upper class whites there fled to a "Republic of Appalachia" covering Kentucky, Tennessee and other mountain areas, where they defended successfully against the Reds and later served as an analogue of Austria (with the CSA down, many want to join the USA, but the Entente don't let them until Appeasement kicks in). Cuba was the Finland analogue (with the Reds losing to the "Whites" there and the Winter War analogue featuring a battle at Bay of Pigs for added irony) and Texas was Poland (with Oklahoma being annexed after being promised independence as a sort of West Ukraine/Belarus analogue). Nowadays, I'd probably decide that this made the *CSSA too weak to survive the early years and would have it stretching all the way to Sonora, with Texas simply acting as the last stand of the "Whites" like Siberia/Yakutia in the Russian Civil War.

Another little plausible thing was that "Deseret" gained independence as an Entente imposition, covering Utah and areas with significant Mormon population in eastern Idaho and SW Wyoming, and was entirely surrounded by a demilitarized USA. It later became the Czechoslovakia analogue when the Canadians decided they could do nothing to defend it.
 
That's the third GW book that is all about the collapse of the Entente, so obviously, at this point Turtledove has already changed his mind and decided on a CP victory (according to the "Turtledove changed his mind" theory).
If Turtledove changed his mind than it would be before he put the final two paragraphs in the prelude of Breakthroughs. The ones about sooner or later the USA getting European allies.

Actually, I don't think he chaged his mind. Having the USA lose three wars in a row might be good history (see Carthage), but it makes poor fiction. Besides, in the case of Carthage, the Romans decided to finish Carthage off once and for all. In the Great War, the CSA was merely supporting its allies. It was not going for one final push to finish off the USA.

From then on Turtledove writes a OTL WW2 analogue, albeit with some poetic licence. One of these is the large number of successful superbomb programmes. Whilst I can credit the USA and Germany having successful ones, I think that is pushing the boundaries for Britain and the CSA as well.
 
If Turtledove changed his mind than it would be before he put the final two paragraphs in the prelude of Breakthroughs. The ones about sooner or later the USA getting European allies.

Obviously, it would be between writing Walk in Hell and Breakthroughs at the very last. Nobody is expecting Turtledove to suddenly change a book's subject in the middle of writing it.
 
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All I can find doing a search on the GW books is the scene in Breakthroughs where Galtier hears the countries recognizing the Republic of Quebec in 1917. Italy is one of them, and he notices that it was neutral for the past three years despite being allied to Germany and the US.

That's the third GW book that is all about the collapse of the Entente, so obviously, at this point Turtledove has already changed his mind and decided on a CP victory (according to the "Turtledove changed his mind" theory).

I could swear there was something with a soldier complaining about Italy's neutrality keeping Germany+Austria from launching a southern attack on France, but I wonder if that was just someone making shit up on the Turtledove Wiki, or was actually something in the GW2 books (where Italy is also neutral). If it was in the first two GW books, however, it could be a reference to the OTL Italian neutrality in 1914 and not being indicative of anything.



Bear in mind, before Russia became the USSR, it collapsed in multiple countries, and the same could happen to the CSA if every state went their own way. In the maps I did, the bulk of the *CSSA was the Black Belt and a lot of middle/upper class whites there fled to a "Republic of Appalachia" covering Kentucky, Tennessee and other mountain areas, where they defended successfully against the Reds and later served as an analogue of Austria (with the CSA down, many want to join the USA, but the Entente don't let them until Appeasement kicks in). Cuba was the Finland analogue (with the Reds losing to the "Whites" there and the Winter War analogue featuring a battle at Bay of Pigs for added irony) and Texas was Poland (with Oklahoma being annexed after being promised independence as a sort of West Ukraine/Belarus analogue). Nowadays, I'd probably decide that this made the *CSSA too weak to survive the early years and would have it stretching all the way to Sonora, with Texas simply acting as the last stand of the "Whites" like Siberia/Yakutia in the Russian Civil War.

Another little plausible thing was that "Deseret" gained independence as an Entente imposition, covering Utah and areas with significant Mormon population in eastern Idaho and SW Wyoming, and was entirely surrounded by a demilitarized USA. It later became the Czechoslovakia analogue when the Canadians decided they could do nothing to defend it.


In terms of Italy, I distinctly recall an Austrian officer whining about how he would like to teach the Italians a lesson and wouldn't have any problem fighting them too, I think it was Morrell in the Rockies. On the HT changed his mind theory, I am quite certain that I read that Settling Accounts was supposed to be the fourth book of the Great War series, but that could just as easily have been intended to be a Great War version of In at the Death.
 
Yes, that is. Bit clunky how Dietl goes "boy how I'd love if the Italians joined the war against us" almost out of nowhere. Not to mention the oversight of having Dietl being Austrian and not Bavarian. No mention of "wish they'd let us attack France through them".

This is Walk in Hell (1916). The same book mentions Verdun falling to the Germans.
 

ZGradt

Banned
Here's something I was thinking about...and it kind of bugged me.

Robert Gould Shaw OTL was born into an abolitionist Quaker family. He fought as colonel of the all-black 54th Massachusetts and died with his men while storming Fort Wagner.

ITTL, he's a racist elderly guy. So unless I'm missing something here, why would the Union losing the Civil War make Shaw do a 180 on everything he was taught?
 
Here's something I was thinking about...and it kind of bugged me.

Robert Gould Shaw OTL was born into an abolitionist Quaker family. He fought as colonel of the all-black 54th Massachusetts and died with his men while storming Fort Wagner.

ITTL, he's a racist elderly guy. So unless I'm missing something here, why would the Union losing the Civil War make Shaw do a 180 on everything he was taught?

Like so very much ITTL, Author's Prerogative:rolleyes:
 
Does it explicitly state that the poor fool who rants against The Cook in Chapter I of 'American Front' was Robert Gould Shaw? (I admit that one would prefer to imagine this as some other fearsomely disappointed Idealist).
 
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