AH Challenge: Japanese Guam
- Thread starter tom
- Start date
Thande
Donor
Turtledove did it, quite plausibly IMO, with his Confederate victory series, but if you want it to happen after 1900, that's more difficult.
Option 1) Axis wins WW2. But not very original, and hard to see how that could come off without radically different circumstances.
Option 2) US gets a very inward-looking government that sells some of its minor Pacific possessions to imperial Japan. Also not all that likely.
Option 3) The US loses a more minor war with e.g. Russia (Czarist or Soviet) and as part of the peace treaty has to return all its former Spanish colonies to Spain (a Russian ally or puppet).
Nothing seems that plausible offhand...
Option 1) Axis wins WW2. But not very original, and hard to see how that could come off without radically different circumstances.
Option 2) US gets a very inward-looking government that sells some of its minor Pacific possessions to imperial Japan. Also not all that likely.
Option 3) The US loses a more minor war with e.g. Russia (Czarist or Soviet) and as part of the peace treaty has to return all its former Spanish colonies to Spain (a Russian ally or puppet).
Nothing seems that plausible offhand...
Didn't the US get Guam as part of the settlement of the Spanish-American War?
That POD isn't that hard--just give McKinley some backbone. He, a veteran of the Civil War, did not wish to go to war over something so dubious as the Maine. However, after a lot of a yellow journalism BS and some nasty comments by a Spanish diplomat (McKinley catering "to the rabble"), he gave in.
The Japanese will probably pick the Guamian and Filipino plums soon enough in this ATL.
That POD isn't that hard--just give McKinley some backbone. He, a veteran of the Civil War, did not wish to go to war over something so dubious as the Maine. However, after a lot of a yellow journalism BS and some nasty comments by a Spanish diplomat (McKinley catering "to the rabble"), he gave in.
The Japanese will probably pick the Guamian and Filipino plums soon enough in this ATL.
Matt Quinn said:
The POD needs to be after 1900. No Spanish-American War should not qualify.
Diamond
Banned
The flu pandemic of 1918 is far worse than OTL. It decimates Europe and North America, leaving the US shell-shocked, its infrastructure gutted by losing 25% or more of its work force in a matter of months. The US becomes a xenophobic nation, unwilling to risk 'contamination' with the rest of the world for some time to come. The Philippines are overrun by resurgent guerilla groups, and other US Pacific possessions wither on the vine - America just doesn't have the energy or the interest in them anymore.
Japan (and the rest of the far East), while taking a major hit economically from the pandemic, are less severely affected than the West, and are able to move in to 'restore order' in the Philippines and other places. Guam becomes just another Japanese supply depot on the way to the creation of a Japanese Pacific empire.
Japan (and the rest of the far East), while taking a major hit economically from the pandemic, are less severely affected than the West, and are able to move in to 'restore order' in the Philippines and other places. Guam becomes just another Japanese supply depot on the way to the creation of a Japanese Pacific empire.
Valamyr
Banned
US doesnt join WW1 due to more germanophile sentiment. Germany is defeated in mid 1919. All ex-german pacific possessions that went to the US in OTL go to Japan, so in addition to all they got in OTL they gain Guam, Wake.
After this, things develop as they did in OTL for awhile. Come WW2, there is much greater isolationist sentiment in the US than in OTL. This cause Roosevelt to fail re-election in 1940 as many americans doubt his commitment to true neutrality. America then stops pressuring Japan about the situation in East Asia.
The war continues in Europe. In the pacific, the non-embargoed japanese continue their gains in China, gain Indochina completely from Vichy, and push for bases in Thailand. Tensions increase with the British who keep supplying China but to avoid angering the US, the japanese, who are not as hard-pressed as in OTL for ressources, limit their ambitions. By 1944, the japanese successfully push into central China, finding truly little organised resistance along the way. Formal negociations are opened, with the Manchukuko puppet poised to take over all the country.
In August, 1945, with the soviets at the gates of Warsaw and the British gaining ground in Italy and the Balkans, a coup occurs in Germany. The military leadership pulls out of France, the Low countries, Italy and most of the Balkans. V2s stop raining on London. There is no unconditional surrender doctrine and Churchill is hard-pressed to make peace. There are even greater worries than in OTL that the Soviets wont stop till they are in Paris, and much less means to stop them this time around. After the separate peace in the west, Germany forces the SU into accepting the return to the 1940 borders.
The world rebuilds, and America is increasingly the preeminent power, the only one from having not pertaken in war. In 1955, nuclear weaponary is first tested in the US. Japan retains her Empire, and Germany very generous borders.
Japanese rule in Asia softens over time, but to this day, most of the pacific islands remain in her possession. Her staunch refusal to embrace western values persists, but the japanese people thrive nontheless.
In Europe, the long military regime followed by Germany's return to the imperial age leaves Europe split to this day, with no notion of unification anywhere in sight.
After this, things develop as they did in OTL for awhile. Come WW2, there is much greater isolationist sentiment in the US than in OTL. This cause Roosevelt to fail re-election in 1940 as many americans doubt his commitment to true neutrality. America then stops pressuring Japan about the situation in East Asia.
The war continues in Europe. In the pacific, the non-embargoed japanese continue their gains in China, gain Indochina completely from Vichy, and push for bases in Thailand. Tensions increase with the British who keep supplying China but to avoid angering the US, the japanese, who are not as hard-pressed as in OTL for ressources, limit their ambitions. By 1944, the japanese successfully push into central China, finding truly little organised resistance along the way. Formal negociations are opened, with the Manchukuko puppet poised to take over all the country.
In August, 1945, with the soviets at the gates of Warsaw and the British gaining ground in Italy and the Balkans, a coup occurs in Germany. The military leadership pulls out of France, the Low countries, Italy and most of the Balkans. V2s stop raining on London. There is no unconditional surrender doctrine and Churchill is hard-pressed to make peace. There are even greater worries than in OTL that the Soviets wont stop till they are in Paris, and much less means to stop them this time around. After the separate peace in the west, Germany forces the SU into accepting the return to the 1940 borders.
The world rebuilds, and America is increasingly the preeminent power, the only one from having not pertaken in war. In 1955, nuclear weaponary is first tested in the US. Japan retains her Empire, and Germany very generous borders.
Japanese rule in Asia softens over time, but to this day, most of the pacific islands remain in her possession. Her staunch refusal to embrace western values persists, but the japanese people thrive nontheless.
In Europe, the long military regime followed by Germany's return to the imperial age leaves Europe split to this day, with no notion of unification anywhere in sight.
I was thinking the US captured it in WW1, should have remembered that better.David S Poepoe
Banned
Thande said:
So was Wake Island.
What I would consider likely is that the US has second thoughts about being imperialistic and grants independence to both Guam and the Philippines by the early 1900s - much to the dismay of Alfred Thayer Mahan and his crowd. The US still has its overseas foreign ports, like Subic, for military operations but these are on land leased from the various governments. The 20th century carries on much as in OTL, tho by the 1970s a revitalized Japan economically dominates Guam. In the 1990s when the 100 year lease for the US base in Guam is allowed to lapse and the US withdraws its forces the Guamians invite the Japanese in. Guam enters into a 'commonwealth' status with Japan.