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I can't see the Turkish sultans giving the Japanese an area with significant Muslim population.

Colonies give you a low return on investment. Italy would be much poorer and less powerful if they had colonies to suck up money from their industrialisation drive before WWI. Of course, that might make them less inclined to get involved in WWI at all. That was an economic catastrophe for...

We used a gun type assembly on Hiroshima because we wanted to drop the bomb before the Russians invaded Manchuria, so if the Japanese immediately surrendered we could claim the Russians had nothing to do with it. If we weren't trying to push it, we could have used the same amount of uranium to...

1. Why would the Germans need 12 inch guns to fight the Russians in a mobile war on the plains of Poland? No way the Belgians, Dutch, French, Yugoslavs, Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, and Italians are going to allow that. No plausible German excuse, either. 2. Lots of Germans wanted German...

Spending money on armed forces makes you stronger at the time and weaker later. The opportunity cost of a navy could be the transcontinental railroad. It's a delicate balancing act.

If Germany goes into Belgium first and the Belgians ask for the French to honor their treaty and come to their assistance as in OTL, then the British will also come in as in OTL. France is not going to invade Belgium because: 1. They don't mobilize as fast as Germany anyway. 2. They want the...

1. Single jet engine off the shelf. 2. Wolkovich (joined) wing for agility (at cost of range) for survivability. 3. Twin seat mod for training, or for guided weapons/electronics officer. 4. Hard points (4) for bombs, missile pod, specialised electronics pod, or fuel. 5. Single nose cannon...

The only reason to invade Belgium is to pass through on the way to someplace else. So blow up all every bridge, overpass, switch, and culvert in every road in the country twenty minutes after the invasion starts. So it takes months to repair stuff if somebody does invade, so what? They aren't...

The easy way to do it is to have the whole of North America taken over by the Rebels, a shorter revolutionary war that does less damage, and a tariff to fund the navy. Then the US just keeps growing. The navy is funded by the tariff, with lots of sloops to stop smuggling and a few 40 gun...

Well, English expanded out of the Frisian islands and took over the world. Why shouldn't some little colony from a stranded ship have a charismatic Jewish preacher? Next thing you know, Colombus finds Ladino speaking people all over the Caribbean. Ultimate nightmare to the Reconquistas!

Invent vasectomies much earlier. You have a lot less resistance from men about the whole 'not breeding' thing when it does not involve 'no sex'. In fact, you could probably get a large section of the male population to volunteer for vasectomies if it was before birth control because they would...

Laddic computers built in the thirties after advances in ferrite technology spins off television research in Britain. British keep them secret and build lots of very fast, very reliable, very cheap, computers for code breaking. 1. The sub war dies aboring, but the torpedo fuse problems are...

In 1846 the US didn't have as much industrial capacity as the UK, but the ration was much more in the favor of the US. The US had steel mills, railroads, arsenals, etc. The UK would have wiped the US merchant marine off the sea within months, but the US would have crippled the UK merchant marine...

L. Sprague de Camp, 'Lest Darkness Fall' or some such. Good book. Turns out the problem is where do you get all those sheep for the parchment.

If Stalin's heirs decide to just call the whole thing off and turn into a socialist democracy? Nothing. The European establishment tells Hitler to sit down and shut up or they will kill him, with or without the assistance of the German army, what there is of it in 1936. Then they lean on Japan...

The Portuguese army were tired of their version of Iraq. They removed the dictatorship and instituted democractic elections. The newly elected government promptly ordered the army out of Mozambique and Angola. Both nations fought a civil war. Timor was annexed by Indonesia at our suggestion...

Does the south still have slaves? Does the south still have Kentucky and Tennessee? Does the south still have Western and Northern Virginia? Does the south still have Louisiana? In short, does the north retreat from the occupied areas? What are the terms of the armistice? What are the...

1. Islands of the Mediterranean, the galley naval power. 2. Italy and Switzerland. 3. Greece and the Balkans. 4. Anatolia and the Levant. 5. Egypt and Libya. 6. Northern Africa 7. Spain. 8. Gaul. 9. Britain, the sailing naval power. Islands of the Mediterranean gets all the...

One point of departure for the South losing at Bull Run was if the Confederate Shenandoah forces don't sneak out and make it to the Bull Run battle at the last minute to rally the defeated first Confederate army. If the Shenandoah Union forces find out the Confederates are leaving they can...

Discovery of the Voisey Bay FeNiCuCo deposit, maybe the garnet/zircon/rutile beach sands, the Grandpa's Knob FeMn deposit and the iron mines of the Quebec/Labrador district, though that one needs a railroad to get to tidewater. How to get Sept Iles into Labrador? And Newfoundland also has the...