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I've suggested that the key to a better settlement would be the victorious Allies adopting a program for general reconstruction of all Europe, Entente and CP alike, under the rubric of the League of Nations, with Germany not being as OTL post-WWII an occupied non-state subject region but the new...

The most striking bit of Versailles extremism to me, as an aeronautical nut, was the total ban on all aircraft attempted. Gliders were an exception, I don't know if initially or just the first point the Entente powers backed off on. In practice the attempted total ban on powered aircraft aimed...

But in a Pitt falls, Fox negotiates scenario, the proposal is that Ireland is granted independence on the condition the French troops are evacuated. Before I grapple with how likely that is--in those conditions, the Irish are inclined to hostility to Britain and would welcome French troops back...

Fighting the Nazis was an accelerant in basic egalitarian humanism being normalized more in US and the world in general, postwar. But eugenics is not the only front some people seem to attribute to going out of fashion 100 percent to this epic struggle. Let's say Hitler was never born, or died...

Mm, are you aware that when the ancestry of people deemed "white" in America is traced, the biggest European contributor to that genetic heritage is German? That American culture is to a great extent German, translated into English and whitewashed? I too think it might have been cool to have a...

I read the OP to mean "classical China," that is before the intrusion of the mutant capitalist-industrialist European sphere. Classical China evolved in capability over time, and as it did so, the definition of "China" expanded, and as many have noted--everyone on its periphery was under...

In terms of putting ideas on the table for a modern reform, I thank you for explaining how France does it. In terms of realistically having someone in 1786 propose this at the Constitutional Convention, there are two huge problems I see: 1) as noted, in theory, in the American common law...

It seems everyone is pretty much ignoring the OP-from the title "Britain is settled by Franks instead of Anglo-Saxons." And glancing over the facts (which seem to be pretty murky actually) it seems there is good reason for this. For perspective: 1) Rome ordered the last legion out of Britain in...

My impression is that, without going into subjective whys and wherefores about what motivated the respective Safavid and Ottoman monarchies, the effect of strongly promoting Shi'ism in Persia was to isolate the Safavid domains--but thus also, to harden the borders. Once (let us say, after 3...

I guess it is off topic here, but I wonder if you know enough about French politics and society in the period 1925-'34 to go yourself one better and tackle a plausible POD for France straightening itself out pretty well earlier than your 1934 and on thread--which I should read, and I think I...

I'm suggesting that if we have FDR or a close type in the Presidency, and the USA is persistently if somewhat desultory in the LoN all along from its foundation, Hitler can get away with a lot of crap but by 1936-37 it is getting into "enough is enough" territory and with France, the USA, and...

While the most likely result of US League membership in the 1920s would be to have Europe evolve differently and handle the Depression quite differently, we can not too implausibly arrive at the mid-30s with the mess substantially as OTL due to LoN dropping the ball. But by say 1936 if the USA...

That's pretty reasonable actually--but I suppose any such development must involve a hugely different 1920s and '30s for the USA. I find it hard to visualize how the USA would as OTL turn down active membership in the '20s but then get roped in in the mid-30s. Mind, I imagine FDR would be happy...

A possible answer--if anyone could believe Castro would do it this way, which I don't--is that radical left wing movements that affiliate with Moscow come in two categories--the movements obedient to the Kremlin that follow orders and never have any success, and successful ones like the Viet...

But is Congress hostile? The strongest opposition to war is against war with Germany; it is a lot more equivocal about Japan. Frankly the USA is quite racist for starters; people who don't want American boys shooting at fellow "white" people have a different perspective about shooting at Asians...

Maps have a purpose, and a lot of choices go into what to portray which relates to how as well. Looking at a 15th century portolan map, we pretty well recognize the kind of detail we'd expect today--in the matter of coasts. That's what the map was for, helping a ship reach a port safely...

It comes down to how rational it is for the Japanese planners to believe the USA would not react badly.

US isolationism was mainly a "fool me twice, shame on me" attitude strongest among grassroots Midwestern Republicans, who felt (with reason) the Wilson Administration and British propaganda had taken the US for a ride in the Great War, with all manner of mendacious exaggerations of the evils of...

The figures I have in my head are that the Eastern Front accounted for 3/4 of all Axis tank losses, 1/2 of all aircraft losses, and averaging about 2/3 overall losses. No question, Britain attempting to finish the Reich off all by herself is a terrible gauntlet to ask Commonwealth subjects to...

Again, Churchill and not just his own stubborn self, but the War Cabinet (tri-partisan, ministers from Conservative, Labour and Liberal parties) kept on fighting in circumstances no better than this. I even took that track myself--one I highlighted as improbable, to emphasize how improbable the...