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Sorry, "horces" in the above means "his forces"

Although von Lettow-Vorbeck had achieved the near miraculous, Smuts' forces were getting more efficient and Smuts' strategy of starving the Germans out by cutting them off from supplies was working. If the war had gone on and von Lettow-Vorbeck wanted to keep fighting from Portuguese Mozambique...

Depends what you mean by "frenchified"? French owned and controlled, garrisoned by gendarmes and with the tricolore flying in every town square regardless of the demographics still seems French to me. And that would be in 1920, give it another 80 years of French control and population movements...

Either it is never painted at all or it would probably never be painted in the way it was, so becomes a minor painting of little renown.

"It really depends on the neighborhood though" Of course, every such rating system is based on an average. But going through every county and local school board in the US would make for an incredibly long and boring post.

It wouldn't have to be a one-for-one replacement. The French wouldn't even have to kick all the locals out, they could just declare ownership of whatever land,businesses and mines they liked, or appoint their own administrators. It could end up with a large German minority on the west bank of...

At least it's not Kansas. The American school system covers a huge range of performance from the very good (mainly in New England) to the absolutely woeful. The school system in California has the worst performance in the US, down near the bottom of the OECD.

I don't think it's as impossible as some other posters claim. Have an even more belligerent France tell Wilson to back off at Versailles, have a similarly more belligerent Britain so determined to crush the German menace that they would back Paris on almost any demand, and have France claim...

Most, if not all, textbooks contain errors, just as any human activity is error prone. When publishers commission a book they do ask individual experts to review it but it doesn't pay much and there's no glory in doing it so they are basically relying upon the goodwill of a few individuals, who...

How is AC/DC synthpop? Any soundtrack would be influenced by the progress and outcome, just as for the Vietnam War. If it becomes a really big war then the definitive soundtrack might be the percussive rhythm of two rocks being clunked together in a post nuclear wasteland. Iraq/Afghanistan...

"1) There is a LOT of coastal trade by shipping off the shores of the UK, plus there are the convoy arrival routes, so a load more submarines is going to have a big impact here. It doesn't matter that they can't get into the mid Atlantic" Sorry but I disagree. I found this from...

"It might have actually stopped all convoys to britain, with the u-boats as well." I strongly doubt that. Soviet subs in WWII seldom ventured far from the coastline and would be far, far less effective in the Atlantic than Germany's U-boats. And that's even IF Stalin sent 300 subs in...

Textbooks are generally written and proofread by experts, who do you think does it? Longer school hours would probably help, but you would also need a change in educational culture in American society. Increased funding would be required, more discipline-trained teachers (and to encourage...

True, but I was just trying to think a little outside the standard massed navy response. I'll try again. To dominate the waves now a superpower needs to be able to a) protect its own shipping, freedom of movement and trade b) destroy any enemy fleet and trade and deny the enemy's...

The Soviet Union was indisputably a super power so while USN-type aircraft carriers might be nice they aren't the must have that the POD mentioned. Is China a superpower? If so, you don't need that much of a navy at all.

"If so it will be like shooting fish in a barrel for the defending fighters." Ah, no. They would be fish in a barrel IF there were capable fighters stationed in the area. But I don't think there were. I believe that there were a couple of Brewster Buffaloes within useful range and that's it...

with Heinlein's point being that it didn't work as a society

Western society would be substantially different to the one we live in. Society has changed so much since the days of ancient Greece and republican Rome and their need for citizen armies. Today, our world is shaped by science, technology, engineering, finance, accounting and a host of other...

The idea that earlier HIV occurrence would change sexual practices in the ancient or medieval world is baseless. Syphilis was rife in Europe during the 16th-18th centuries, it's a horrible disfiguring disease that is a lot more evident in effect than AIDS, but didn't stop prostitution or any...

For me, Nikola Tesla is the epitomy of this phenomenon. Tesla was a marvellous inventor and engineer but he was still subject to the laws of physics. That, however, has never stopped the wide-eyed predictions of semi-magical futuristic discoveries far too many posters think he would have made in...