Alternate "Great Historical Evil"

I don't think a Central Powers victory would butterfly away Japanese atrocities in China and East Asia.
Well, why not? I can think of quite a few things possibly resulting from a CP victory that might well butterfly away Imperial Japan's slide into Militarism, or otherwise, at least, Militarist Japan's expansion across so much of Asia and the Pacific.

  • If the Central Powers defeat Russia in a short war, the lack of the strain of a long, losing war might well butterfly away the Bolshevik takeover in Russia. Without a n entire country going Red (assuming no others do) would necessarily lesson the worldwide Red Scare. With a lessened Red Scare, the various Peace Preservation Laws might be less harsh. Historically, these cracked down hard on the left, while leaving the ultra-right relatively unscathed. If both the left and the right are options for revolutionary youth, that lowers the odds for a revolutionary right victory.
  • If the Bolsheviks don't take over Russia, there will be no Russian Civil War, and thus no Japanese troop dispatch to Russia. Many in the Japanese military considered their withdrawl in 1924, both as a result of domestic and international pressure, as a humiliation. This in turn left the more radical among them to spend the rest of the 1920s and early 1930s in supporting ultranationalist secret societies, which promoted both the military, and super-patriotism generally. If there is no Siberia Dispatch, then there is no humiliation when it ends, and thus no added impetus to the secret societies. That in turn lowers the chances of a Militarist takeover in Japan.
  • It might butterfly away, or at least change, the Great Depression. During OTL's Great Depression, real rural incomes in Japan declined by half. This lead a great many rural youth in Japan, coming from lives of desperate poverty on tiny unproductive plots, to be susceptible to the siren call of ultranationalism. It was, of course, the ideology that said that soldiers were the heart and soul of Japan, no matter their lowly station in life. It also promised an easy solution to their woes. Butterfly away or lesson the GD, and you also lesson the odds of OTL's Imperial Japan's slide into Militarism. Alternatively, if the PPLs are weaker at suppresing the radical left, than some of those desperate rural youth who in our history ended up supporting the ultranationalist right will instead end up supporting the radical left, again lowering the odds of Militarist victory. Finally, if leftist-leaning parties can openly stand in the Diet and collect votes, those parties just might be able to pass some law or laws ameliorating rural poverty, again lowering the odds of Militarist victory.
  • An alternative GD may lower the odds of the rich zaibatsu class throwing in their lot with the Militarists. It's important for us to remember that, historically, the zaibatsu were the enemies of the Militarists. They hated the huge tax burden that military spending inevitability resulted in. For proof of this, we need only look at the writing of the Militarists themselves. They were as much anti-capitalism as anti-communist. They always castigated the rich as being in league with foreign interests, as not being really Japanese. Under normal circumstances, they could never support the Militarists. In the very first stage of the Great Depression, Japanese goods actually increased their market share overseas. Japanese goods, in many cases, were not as good as their foreign equivalents, but they were cheaper. However, the US Smoot-Harley Tarriff, and the resulting wave of counter-tarriffs, priced Japanese goods right out of international markets. Japan, then as now, was a country of few natural resources. The only way Japan could even hope to feed itself was if it could import natural resources, process them into finished goods, and hope the profit difference between the two left enough to import food. If this was no longer possible, than the Militarist plan of simply seizing both foreign resources and and captive foreign markets looked pretty good. Even if they could not deliver this, with no other business opportunities, the lucrative weapons contracts looked pretty good. Butterfly this away, and the zaibatsu never support the Militarists, again lowering their odds of taking over.
  • Even if none of the above comes to pass, it is possible that, somehow, the butterflies of a CP victory, especially an early one, result in butterflies in China. Without OTL's odd combination of China looking both historically weak, and on the verge of unifying and becoming a serious threat in the future, the argument for invading China becomes weaker.
  • Even if Militarist Japan does come to pass, and does commit to total war with China, we cannot ignore the impact of the potential lack of war in Europe after a CP victory. The impact of "don't-miss-the-bus-ism" cannot be underestimated. The argument against those who opposed expanding the current war was always that Imperial/Militarist Japan could not afford to miss this historic opportunity, while the European powers were busy elsewhere. Tojo was able to face down those who opposed another war by arguing that Nazi Germany wold inevitability triumph in Europe. Even if everything else goes the same as OTL, if Militarist Japan faces a world with no war in Europe as a result of a CP victory, it becomes less likely that Militarist Japan expands that war.

Lonh story short, Japan is no more likely to fall into OTL's pattern with a PoD in the 1910s than Germany is.
 
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What about the "Great Historical Evil" of a CP victory scenario, then, folks?

Boris Savinkov and his Russian National Populists, as well as the Iron Guard party in Romania.

Or on a more serious note possible some sort of Nazi France or Britain, or the USSR itself.
 
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