Miscellaneous >1900 (Alternate) History Thread

McPherson

Banned
While reading "West Point - Two Centuries of Honor and Tradition" edited by Robert Crowley and Thomas Ginzburg, I came across these three episodes with plenty of AH potential:

Sept 12, 1918 - near St. Mihiel, France

What if.... Patton and Mac weren't so lucky on that day, and the barrage kills them both?


March 1921 - West Point

For all of his flaws, Mac worked very hard to bring the West Point curriculum into the 20th Century. His ouster as Superintendent largely left that institution revert back to a 19th Century constabulary mindset. What happens if Mac's tenure at West Point runs longer and his reforms are sustained?


Autumn 1921 - Jan 1922

What if..... Pershing wasn't so petty? Most US Army officers served stints in the Philippines back then, at one point or another in their career, but might a change here alter Mac's career arc?

Departure 1 helps in the Pacific. Hurts in North Africa, but Patton would be replaced by Devers eventually who knew his stuff better. or Adna Chaffee does not smoke himself to death and Uncle gets lucky that way. See Departure 3.
Departure 2 hurts the US Army. MacArthur's "politics" poisoned every operation and institution he touched. The last thing West Point needs to become is a hotbed of future Shoguns and Caudillos.
Departure 3 has Pershing and MacArthur fight a duel of honor instead and they shoot each other. The survivor gets court martialed and sent to Leavenworth. Winner? US Army. Uncle gets BT type tanks, a good squad machine gun and the world's first assault rifle. Might even get a successful defense of the Philippine Islands too.
 

Driftless

Donor
March 1921 - West Point
For all of his flaws, Mac worked very hard to bring the West Point curriculum into the 20th Century. His ouster as Superintendent largely left that institution revert back to a 19th Century constabulary mindset. What happens if Mac's tenure at West Point runs longer and his reforms are sustained?
Departure 2 hurts the US Army. MacArthur's "politics" poisoned every operation and institution he touched. The last thing West Point needs to become is a hotbed of future Shoguns and Caudillos.

I'm no fan of MacArthur as well. In this case, Mac's updating the curriculum at West Point and banning the worst forms of hazing was decades overdue. It was an improvement over what existed before and the retrenchment that followed his ouster. If not MacArthur, then someone else with a 20th Century outlook needs to be the next man up - and not Gen. Fred Sladen
 

McPherson

Banned
I'm no fan of MacArthur as well. In this case, Mac's updating the curriculum at West Point and banning the worst forms of hazing was decades overdue. It was an improvement over what existed before and the retrenchment that followed his ouster. If not MacArthur, then someone else with a 20th Century outlook needs to be the next man up - and not Gen. Fred Sladen

Agreed. Pershing man and a definite atavist.
 
Anyone got a Timeline where Taft has a free run at Wilson in 1912 without Teddy please?

Interested in a President Taft iN power over WW1 timeline.
 
Anyone got a Timeline where Taft has a free run at Wilson in 1912 without Teddy please?

Interested in a President Taft iN power over WW1 timeline.
Could Taft without Teddy have beaten Wilson? I thought the historians' view was that Wilson would have beaten Taft?
 
Could Taft without Teddy have beaten Wilson? I thought the historians' view was that Wilson would have beaten Taft?

Very crudely simply adding Roosevelt's numbers to Tafts we get:

Roosevelt: 4,122,721 Electoral Vote: 88 States: 6
Taft: 3,486,242 Electoral Vote: 8 States: 2

Combined Total: 7,608,963 Electoral Vote: 96 States: 8

Which compared to Wilson's: 6,296,284 Electoral Vote: 435 States: 40 - Means Wilson loses on popular but wins in Electoral and States?

However, take Roosevelt out of the race and leave sitting President Taft to campign without that distraction and can he win bigger?

What would a second term President Taft do in office? Esp with WW1 just about to break out?
 
Alternativly track what might have happened if President Roosevelt had ran in 1908 for his 3rd term?

Could Roosevelt gone for a 4th in 1912 with dark clouds over Europe? Or would the Democrats victory been even higher due to fears of a tyrant? Or would a Taft unsullied by 4 years in the White House have taken on Wilson (or whoever) and won if Roosevelt stepped down and endorsed him?
 
What if US Congress had given them the funds and enough tonnage that the South Carolina/Michigan-class Battleships could have armed with Triple 12" guns per turret rather than the OTL's Dual 12" guns per turret?

A what if where the United States Navy's First Dreadnought had a more vicious bite in the form of a 12 gun broadside in four turrets.
 

McPherson

Banned
What if US Congress had given them the funds and enough tonnage that the South Carolina/Michigan-class Battleships could have armed with Triple 12" guns per turret rather than the OTL's Dual 12" guns per turret?

A what if where the United States Navy's First Dreadnought had a more vicious bite in the form of a 12 gun broadside in four turrets.

More speed, more float reserve, a bit more range, improved directors, turbines instead of reciprocating steam engines (RSEs) might be better. These ships were little more than barely floatable flatirons with guns. Their "bite" already equaled a Dreadnought or a Nassau. Their lack was tactical and strategic mobility.

I have an ATL theoretical track where a standardized layout progresses by generation from twin to triple and from chaser guns to the broadside battery as templated standards, but which also keeps the relative due proportions of speed, float reserve, shooting accuracy and punch, and tac/strat mobility constant as per foreign peers as design ratios to make the "Great (Gray or Blue) Fleet" about 2x as effective as it actually was. (I find the imperialist and other obvious connotations of Great (White) Fleet something to be considered "offensive". If I ATL that turkey concept, I want it to be the more moralistic weapon Teddy Roosevelt pretended it was, even by the atavistic standards of its day. Besides; I think if I am going to write that one up, it should be the YANKEE Navy not the CONFEDERATE; not like the historical one that resulted as unreconstructed southerners like Tillman and later Josephus Daniels who sponsor it as the neutered force it actually was, produced.).
 
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McPherson

Banned
What are some go alternate filming sites for 1956's The Conqueror so as to prevent the cancer controversy around the OTL version of the film?

Operationally....

Mexico. Bolivia, Montana, Eastern Oregon, ideally... Mongolia. And get Tyrone Power (too old?) or Omar Sharif (too young?) instead of John Wayne. Save Nevada for the people there and move A-bomb testing to where it belongs... as in NEVER DO IT ANYMORE once the triggers are understood.
 
What if MCA had decided to go ahead with the purchase of Atari? Would the relationship between the two have been similar to that of Atari and Warner? Would the have the video game crash better than OTL?
 
I’ve seen a few alt-Tunguska ideas thrown around both in this website and on other places like the wiki. Most have it occur in either London or St Petersburg for some reason, likely due to how big an impact they would have on those respective nations compared to our timeline, with the odd deviation like Rome or Washington, that never got filled out. Most of these scenarios are pretty brief and don’t go into much detail though.

How about an alternative major target in the northern hemisphere? How might history have gone had the comet exploded over Vienna, capital of the Austrian-Hungarian empire? An explosion equivalent to 200-300 Hiroshima bombs (minus the radiation obviously) in one of the most prestigious cities in Europe, with a highly diverse empire under its control. This is (literally) just under 6 years before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand for reference.

One consequence I imagine is a lot of ethnic instability and terror from nations across Europe at the event, but I’d be happy to hear other opinions on such a thing.
 

Driftless

Donor
I’ve seen a few alt-Tunguska ideas thrown around both in this website and on other places like the wiki. Most have it occur in either London or St Petersburg for some reason, likely due to how big an impact they would have on those respective nations compared to our timeline, with the odd deviation like Rome or Washington, that never got filled out. Most of these scenarios are pretty brief and don’t go into much detail though.

How about an alternative major target in the northern hemisphere? How might history have gone had the comet exploded over Vienna, capital of the Austrian-Hungarian empire? An explosion equivalent to 200-300 Hiroshima bombs (minus the radiation obviously) in one of the most prestigious cities in Europe, with a highly diverse empire under its control. This is (literally) just under 6 years before the assassination of Franz Ferdinand for reference.

One consequence I imagine is a lot of ethnic instability and terror from nations across Europe at the event, but I’d be happy to hear other opinions on such a thing.

Even an impact or near-surface explosion of the Tunguska object over the Pacific or Atlantic near a coastline probably sets off devastating tsunamis.

Depending on where and what cultures might be involved, you may get a massive "sign of god" reflex from the local religious communities and that could have several layers of potential social impact
 
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Even an impact or near-surface explosion of the Tunguska object over the Pacific or Atlantic near a coastline probably sets off devastating tsunamis.

Depending on where and what cultures might be involved, you may get a massive "sign of god" reflex from the local religious communities and that could have several layers of potential social impact
Are there any ways to figure out how powerful said waves would be?

For the scenario I envisioned, Vienna is hit in 1908, and sets off a powder keg, with Russia wanting to support the Slav minorities, Hungary and Germany wanting to restore order, and possibly an earlier ww1.
 
Could a Democrat have won in the 1920s? Or did Wilson tarnish the brand and that's why they couldn't win the 1920s? What would be the effects of a Democrat in the White House in the 1920s?
 

Driftless

Donor
Is this feasible? What do we know of its path?

There's been a ton of sometimes conflicting analysis over the last several decades, but this seems to be reasonably current: Tunguska Event
A 2019 paper suggests the explosive power of the Tunguska event may have been around 20–30 megatons.[41]

Soviet experiments performed in the mid-1960s, with model forests (made of matches on wire stakes) and small explosive charges slid downward on wires, produced butterfly-shaped blast patterns similar to the pattern found at the Tunguska site. The experiments suggested that the object had approached at an angle of roughly 30 degrees from the ground and 115 degrees from north and had exploded in mid-air.[48]
 
Is it okay if I ask another 90's Russia question?
If Zyuganov had beaten Yeltsin in 96, would Zyuganov have gone full authoritarian, or is that just propaganda and he wouldn't be that awful?
 
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