Speaking of WWII, I can't help but wonder if the Nazis' brains were exposed to lead.
I wonder if 1950s suburbanization was an attempt to escape from behavior caused by lead.
Interesting AH ideas that aren't commonly used
- Thread starter lerk
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- alternate history
McPherson
Banned
Believe me, the allies were doing their best to insert "lead" into as many Nazi brains as possible.
Postpone the invention of radar. I think Britain still defeats Nazis in the air but it takes longer.
No, in any Lw wins BoB it's not what they do better, it's what the British do worse - and no radar would be a big disadvantage for the RAF.
In 1975, Jim Callaghan as British Foreign Secretary flew out to Uganda to discuss freeing a British prisoner David Mills who was sentenced to death by firing squad for criticising Amin. Amin freed him giving the bizarre reason that Callaghan was MP for Cardiff and that Amin had once trained in the Cardiff swimming pool. On the way back to the airport Amin insisted on personally driving Callaghan there, but they took a detour, with Callaghan and officials worrying that he had been kidnapped, although it was only to visit Amin's mother.
William Henry Harrison lives, and as a result, the National Bank is re-established.
It's...complicated. According to multiple sources one of the Goldsboro bombs was one arming switch from detonating, but there's still some dispute over that. From what I can gather, the Mark 39 bomb had four safety mechanisms, one of which was only in place when the bomb was in storage (wild guess...probably either the tritium/deuterium booster or the neutron generator), and two of the other three failed, leaving one extremely basic ARM/DISARM toggle switch as the only thing preventing it from going off. By the sound of it, the safeties were sequential and did things like deploying the parachute and charging the neutron generator capacitors and only the final switch interrupted the firing process. There's also one guy who claims that even if the final safety had failed, the arming process apparently didn't run properly and the primary would've either fizzled or just fissioned itself without triggering the secondary, which would have made one hell of a mess but without a full ~4Mt blast.
On the subject of nuclear errors, I'm currently reading Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is fascinating. I've got to the part where the Nazis have kicked out all the Jewish nuclear scientists, thus depriving Nazi Germany of an invaluable pool of knowledge while simultaneously handing the atomic bomb over the United States. If there's ever an argument against racial nationalism, there it is.
But that's not my suggestion. I'm sure "what if the Nazis hadn't been anti-semitic" has been done to death. In 1954 the US conducted the Castle Bravo nuclear test. The plan was to detonate a 6mt bomb over Bikini Atoll, but due to a miscalculation the explosive yield was actually 15mt. Something about the lithium casing in the bomb. Imagine producing 9mt of energy by accident! I learn from Wikipedia's article on the Trinity test that there was some guesswork involved as to the explosive yield of the bomb, and:
The original plan was to encase the bomb in a large, thick metal vessel called Jumbo, so that if the explosion was a failure they could recover the plutonium. I wouldn't like to have that job. In the event Jumbo wasn't used, but suppose for handwavy technical reasons it increased the yield tenfold, purely by accident. What would be the results? Firstly all the measuring equipment would have been completely destroyed, rendering most of the test a failure; secondly a whole bunch of top nuclear scientists would have been blinded; as would thousands of civilians, including at least one nearby airline pilot; it would be impossible to maintain the veil of secrecy; by this time it didn't matter if the Japanese were aware of the bomb and the Soviets had spies, but the press would be running lottery competitions giving readers a chance to guess which Japanese city would be hit first, etc.
But that's not my suggestion. I'm sure "what if the Nazis hadn't been anti-semitic" has been done to death. In 1954 the US conducted the Castle Bravo nuclear test. The plan was to detonate a 6mt bomb over Bikini Atoll, but due to a miscalculation the explosive yield was actually 15mt. Something about the lithium casing in the bomb. Imagine producing 9mt of energy by accident! I learn from Wikipedia's article on the Trinity test that there was some guesswork involved as to the explosive yield of the bomb, and:
"[New York Times reporter William Laurence] had prepared four releases, covering outcomes ranging from an account of a successful test (the one which was used) to catastrophic scenarios involving serious damage to surrounding communities, evacuation of nearby residents, and a placeholder for the names of those killed. As Laurence was a witness to the test he knew that the last release, if used, might be his own obituary."
The original plan was to encase the bomb in a large, thick metal vessel called Jumbo, so that if the explosion was a failure they could recover the plutonium. I wouldn't like to have that job. In the event Jumbo wasn't used, but suppose for handwavy technical reasons it increased the yield tenfold, purely by accident. What would be the results? Firstly all the measuring equipment would have been completely destroyed, rendering most of the test a failure; secondly a whole bunch of top nuclear scientists would have been blinded; as would thousands of civilians, including at least one nearby airline pilot; it would be impossible to maintain the veil of secrecy; by this time it didn't matter if the Japanese were aware of the bomb and the Soviets had spies, but the press would be running lottery competitions giving readers a chance to guess which Japanese city would be hit first, etc.
On the subject of nuclear errors, I'm currently reading Richard Rhodes The Making of the Atomic Bomb, which is fascinating. I've got to the part where the Nazis have kicked out all the Jewish nuclear scientists, thus depriving Nazi Germany of an invaluable pool of knowledge while simultaneously handing the atomic bomb over the United States. If there's ever an argument against racial nationalism, there it is.
In the early 1990s as the Soviet Union was starting to come undone, Jews started fleeing there and read an article that a lot of them were people with advanced degrees in subjects like physics, math, and chemistry and they were leaving the Soviet Union for Israel and taking any job they could find like janitors and bus drivers.
In the early 1990s as the Soviet Union was starting to come undone, Jews started fleeing there and read an article that a lot of them were people with advanced degrees in subjects like physics, math, and chemistry and they were leaving the Soviet Union for Israel and taking any job they could find like janitors and bus drivers.
France goes fascist after winning world war one, ends up allied with Mussolini against Hitler, Britain and the USSR.
Driftless
Donor
I'd like to see how that could be made to work. That arrangement could turn inter-war Europe inside out.
Probably a bit like the Twin Vipers TL. Stalin and Hitler forced into an alliance of necessity.
Fascist France backs Mussolini's ambitions in Ethiopia, Yugoslavia and Greece. Yugoslavia gets partitioned. When Hitler tries Anschluss Italy+France invade and wipe the floor with a barely rearmed Nazi Germany, then probably split Germany (say Rhineland to France, Bavaria to Austria, East Prussia and Silesia to Poland).
After that it's anyone's game- do they go east, against Stalin, or try to fight Britain? I'd say fascist France probably wants to make a play for Belgium and that's going to mean war with the UK, ditto with Italy and Greece.
If France went fascist during the interwar period, it would make it unlikely that Britain would fight a war against a wholly authoritarian (except Czechslovakia, Switzerland and Scandinavia) Continental Europe.
One must remember that Anglophone ruling classes had very strong sympathy with the Nazis until it was clear Nazi territorial ambitions would threaten British and American interests abroad. Like the Nazis and the Catholic corporatists, Anglophone ruling classes were extremely hostile to European proletarian and subproletarian culture, which they viewed as entirely selfish, materialistic, present-oriented and shallow.
Britain would be likely to stay out of wars it felt itself unable to win, and very likely Stalinist Russia would have been overthrown.
Possibly the USSR (and Mongolia) could have been divided into occupation zones (Germany, Japan, “Fascist” France) just as Germany and Austria were to be after World War II. If that did occur, it is interesting to see what trajectory it would have taken. Would the former USSR have been united or would ethnic divisions between Japan and the West have led to the formation of separate states?
I'm not sure you could actually shatter Sov control. Given you can, however, the ethnic & nationalist strains would seem very likely to prevent a reunification except by force--& I can't see the Brits countenancing that. IDK about the U.S., which was so war-weary, & talked tough over Poland OTL, but did damn all.
