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I'm going to confess I was not following the TL when the posts about the actual Sudeten War went up and "New Posts" jumped me past it, so I should go back and read exactly how Soviet troops got to Czechoslovakia and what they did there. But there is a world of difference between a few...

Yep, during WWII.

How else could one read it? As soon as the Republicans took power, they appointed Kenneth Starr special prosecutor. But then, the charge against both Clintons was supposed to be murder, pursuing the allegations that Bill Clinton abused his power as state governor to kill a man and cover it up...

It became known fairly soon after. IIRC not only Gingrich resigned as House Speaker, but the next two Republicans in line stepped up for the position, then each in turn had their own extramarital scandals exposed in succession. The revolving door was spinning fast that year.

IIRC on the other side of the lines, Churchill had this notion of making a really tough super-battleship, that somehow or other would simply be able to endure all the artillery the Heer and all the bombs the Luftwaffe could drop on it, to plow stolidly through the Danish Straits and start...

Precisely. Sentiment for the USN to be a navy "second to none" preceded the Great War, and the Spanish American War (before 1900) was in part a flexing of the newly put on muscle. My understanding of the overall trajectory of the USN, from 1776 to the Great War, was a) improv, with little...

It seems wasteful to rely on hauling Keplers meant to be lifeboats up in Orbiter bays; that up-mass and cargo volume ought to be reserved for station equipment and supplies, considering that Kepler was designed to be launched on Ariane IV. Of course a crewed Kepler launch, ESA demonstrating...

I've noticed how important it is for Nordek, pre-1991 anyway, to thread the geopolitical needle between Norway and Denmark's NATO status, Sweden's armed neutrality (everyone in both blocs reckoning Sweden would be a de facto Western ally in case of open war between NATO and Warsaw Pact to be...

All right, that was news to me. Still think you are making a mountain out of a molehill in terms of the effectiveness of a French blockade of the North German confederation. Overland trade involves tariff costs increasing prices by...1 percent? How can that possibly be the stuff of major...

You must be referring to its status in 1890? Today it is Canadian of course. But that wasn't true until well into the 20th century; I forget if it was indeed the Depression crisis, or an earlier one in the 1920s peculiar to Newfoundland itself, that changed things. The island rejected...

I don't really know all the facts of course, but all experience with nuclear power I know of suggests that while it might in fact be safe enough, and secure in the sense that if one makes the investment and has the supply chain (including waste storage!) in hand, the kilowatts will be...

I'd like to believe this. Would you say that by the early 2000s, just before Columbia was lost, that a suitable alternative to the (themselves evolving) tile suite of the Orbiter existed that would have been a lot more robust against foam strikes? There is no getting rid of the foam itself, some...

It's practically ASB to my way of thinking. I was indulging an ASB scenario in which all American citizens wake up one morning in 1890 with a fixed resolve to destroy the British Empire completely, for no stated reason whatsoever. Annexing all of Canada to the USA (everything from the US border...

The difference is strategic depth. Canada has a narrow band where it makes any sense to have railroads, the USA has the entire sweep from El Paso to the 48th parallel in which by 1890 three or four major TC RR trunk line had been built, and only a fraction of these lines are close to the...

Certainly seizing anything the Germans could claim to deny it to them (not to mention France using it instead) would be a coup. But the war OTL only lasted six months. That was the norm of wars between the Napoleonic period and the Great War; a lightning campaign and peace settled in a matter...

I didn't address the question of government of the French territories. From the map proffered it seems that Britain first loses the great war that ended in 1763 or so OTL, failing to acquire control of any French territory at all, or else an ATL campaign had limited to little success to the...

I think assuming the British system evolves as OTL is a bit questionable. Certainly in military terms, basing and deployment of Redcoats and RN squadrons and fleets, the Admiralty in particular would like consolidation of responsibilities and command. But politically speaking, if the Colonials...

Given Denmark's power in the era, it surprises me they didn't try harder to get something on the North American coast. A Danish colonization could involve a Kalmar Union joining forces with Sweden (which did attempt a North American colony) or the suggested German city-states coming under the...

I suspect that if we find habitable tidal locked planets, mostly it would be a matter of the subsolar zone being the habitable part, and a fair part of the sunward hemisphere iced over. The important thing is that the cold night side not become so cold that air starts to liquefy. Carbon dioxide...

That's pretty much why the USA was leaning Entente OTL of course. With the RN effectively blockading the Central Powers, de facto it was impossible for the CP to have much traction in US policy regardless of sentiment. Sentiment also tended to favor the Entente--the USA of course has a strong...