Bloodiest WWI and WWII Possible

CalBear

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Gah!!! A pet peeve of mine!

I'll excerpt I previous post I made on the matter.


It isn't half as harmless as that implies. There are a several dead Postal Employees in Metro DC who would love to be able to argue the point.

Is Anthrax death on a stick? No, not compared to Smallpox or Cholera, but it is a very effective weapon, especially in the pre-antibiotic era (BTW: Cypro, the drug of choice to treat Anthrax, is a NASTY drug. I was given it once for an infection; still not sure that it wasn't better to just keep the infection). Serious use of Anthrax as an area weapon would have both caused considerable direct casualties, but, far more critically, would have knocked German (or any other target) food production into the creek. The RAF had somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 "cattle cakes" to scatter across Germany, as well as thousands of bombs. There would STILL be parts of Germany that would be "no go" zones.

Anthrax is also a lovely area denial weapon. I understand the British finally go the Island they used as a test site during WW II cleaned up a few years ago. Only took about half a century.
 
It verges (!) on ASB, but the Germans were working on using fungi to destroy wheat crops. Have them actually do well with it - only too well, and have it quickly mutate, impacting barley, corn and/or rice.

It may not be immediately bloody, but the end results could be a halving of the population of the earth if not more.
 
World War One: Sweden and Norway ally with Germany and Italy honors her alliance with the Central Powers. The Naval war is a lot tougher since the French and British have to contend with a real naval threat in the Mediterranean and the Germans have a secure path out into the open sea because of the bases in Norway. The Germans are able to blockade the United Kingdom with more success and there are more major naval battles.

The Germans become more cocky and don't appease the American's concerns over the blockade early on and the Americans enter in 1915 after a series of deadly interventions against shipping. With Austrian troops freed up and Italy on the Central Powers side the entry of the United States doesn't immediately tip the balance, especially since the US has to gear up first. Things go a lot bloodier but largely as OTL.

World War Two: The UK and France go through with the idea to intervene in the Winter War, getting involved in a war against the USSR. Germany invades Sweden and Baku gets bombed. The Soviets invade Iran and the Brits and French hold on for dear life (France doesn't fall ITTL). When the US gets involved they have to fight all the way to Moscow.
 

The Sandman

Banned
World War I: have the war last just a few months longer, give the Germans more and better submarines and give the US some sort of massive crop failure, and now the big flu pandemic hits while the war's still going and the civilian populations are starving to death.

World War II: what CalBear just said, although another fun one would be having one of those crazy Japanese fire balloons actually work; figure it drifts a bit farther south than expected and hits SoCal at exactly the wrong time. Have the Germans actually spend some time setting up a decent network in the US pre-war and have them do some good old-fashioned sabotage of things like bridges, tunnels, dams and so forth. Also, let's say that Heisenberg gets his calculations right this time around and Germany actually has a nuke or two available while they can still hit somewhere useful with them. And if Japan makes it into India, you'll be able to add on a few more megadeaths from the usual atrocities and likely famine due to food confiscation and destruction of the infrastructure there.
 
The fire balloons wouldn't have caused that much damage in a modern city...unless you hit an oil refinery.
(In OTL, a fire balloon did damage the Japanese were unaware of- it cut a power line leading to Hanford....)
What about "friendly fire" type incidents? What if some chemical weapons went off at a depot somewhere? What if Unit 731's experiments escaped the lab? What if the Suicide Squad failed and Chicago Pile 1 became the first meltdown?
 
OK, I'd also add, for WWI:
-fullscale US military involvement in Mexico, Haiti & Nicaragua
-massive race riots in US cities by 1917, of a much greater scale than the 1919 Red Summer- perhaps also including ethnic riots between WASPS & hyphenated Americans of German & Irish extraction opposed to US intervention, leading to large nos. of deatsh & destruction in American cities
-Tsarist Russian forces in Central Asia implementing a final solution program against rebellious Kazakhs & Kirgiz
-successful U-Boat blockade of Britain, leading to starvation
-successful German fire-bombings of London using Gotha bombers- followed by retaliatory RFC heavy bomber strikes

for WWII:
-utilisation of advanced bioweapons by Unit 731 against US, British Cth & Soviet forces (OTL such bioweapon attacks were planned against US forces on Bataan in 1942 & on Saipan in 1944, which only didn't eventuate due to circumstance)- leading to massive Allied retaliation with nukes AND nerve gas (as proposed by Project SPHINX)
-again, massive race riots in Detroit, LA & other major US cities
-Japanese iinvasion, occupation & destruction (however brief) of some part of Australia- a la John Birmingham's scenario with Bundaberg in DESIGNATED TARGETS
-greater Jap successes & atrocities in SWPA- incl successfully taking & holding PNG, Solomons
-successful U-Boat-launched guided missile attacks on NY & other major East Coast cities- incl tipped with radioactive waste or sarin/tabun
+likewise Nazi use of nerve gas against British cities
-mass, co-ordinated uprisings by Jewish inmates in concentration camps & ghettos- killing much greater nos. of SS SONDERKOMMANDO personnel & local Nazi collaborationists
 
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