Challenge: The stablest Balkans possible...

The Cold War goes nuclear in the mid-'60s. Yugoslavia is a neutral, and doesn't take more than maybe a few nukes; while the refugee crisis is very dangerous in the immediate aftermath of the war, the country pulls through, and eventually emerges as a local powerhouse, due to retaining significant amounts of prewar infrastructure. This wealth, along with the shared experience of surviving the Third World War and its aftermath, helps the People's Republic of Yugoslavia survive beyond Tito's death [which might come earlier than OTL on account of increased radioactivity], avoiding the fracturing that occurred in the 1990s.

Admittedly, I doubt this Yugoslavia would be reaching the wealth of the OTL Benelux for a while yet, but it certainly would be richer than TTL's Benelux. And while Yugoslavia would probably be more likely to fracture under the stress of the Third World War beyond its borders, I could see it holding together. Admittedly, I'm not sure that the country would escape warfare, but if it did, it might have a shot.
 
The Cold War goes nuclear in the mid-'60s. Yugoslavia is a neutral, and doesn't take more than maybe a few nukes; while the refugee crisis is very dangerous in the immediate aftermath of the war, the country pulls through, and eventually emerges as a local powerhouse, due to retaining significant amounts of prewar infrastructure. This wealth, along with the shared experience of surviving the Third World War and its aftermath, helps the People's Republic of Yugoslavia survive beyond Tito's death [which might come earlier than OTL on account of increased radioactivity], avoiding the fracturing that occurred in the 1990s.

Admittedly, I doubt this Yugoslavia would be reaching the wealth of the OTL Benelux for a while yet, but it certainly would be richer than TTL's Benelux. And while Yugoslavia would probably be more likely to fracture under the stress of the Third World War beyond its borders, I could see it holding together. Admittedly, I'm not sure that the country would escape warfare, but if it did, it might have a shot.
You do know that the Balkans (named after a mountain that is mostly in Bulgaria) include territory outside of Yugoslavia? Such a nuclear war would devastate Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Turkey. How would that lead to stability in the Balkans? Unless most of the population being killed counts as stability.
 
For some reason, I thought the thread was talking only about Yugoslavia itself; it's certainly the most war-torn part of the Balkans. Point taken.
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In a less depressing vein, I wonder how the Balkan states would've done if the Nazis failed to win the Battle of France. If World War II turns into the Western Front revisited, would Hitler still be able to push through the Second Vienna Award? Could the Germans still undo any pro-Allied coup in Yugoslavia, and would they end up supporting any Italian invasion of Greece? I sorta wonder how the Balkans would develop if they managed to maintain neutrality in the 1940s.
Or, for another different approach, what if there's a war over the Sudetenland Crisis, and Romania agrees to serve as a corridor for Soviet troops to support the Czechoslovaks? How do the Balkan polities develop after that?
 
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Either way, Bosniaks aren't in any particular danger (up till 1945, they were merely considered moslem Serbs, so the biggest threat to them is that of the assimilation).

Uhm, this is very wrong. The enmity between Serbs and Bosniaks runs much, much deeper than the enmity between Serbs and Croats. Bosniaks had proportionally the highest casualties in ex-Yugoslavia during WWII, mainly because of Chetnik massacres through Eastern Bosnia (similar to what happened in the 1990s, but even worse).

Similarly Muslim Ustase in some parts of western Bosnia went crazy against Serbs there, ostensibly in revenge for their own massacres suffered at the hands of the Serbs dating back to the 1875 revolt (and then, of course, you can just keep going further and further back into the past to find more examples). Furthermore, there were even massacres of Muslims in the first Yugoslavia, in peacetime. Several hundred Muslims were killed in Sahovici in Montenegro in 1924, Milovan Djilas I think was the first to write about this (no-one was ever prosecuted for it). I seem to remember that I read somewhere that around 2000 Muslims were killed within the first few years of the establishment of first Yugoslavia, and of course much of their property (especially land) was taken. All this enmity stems back from the Serb view of the Bosniaks as being directly involved in their travails under the Ottoman rule, and obviously it still persists to this day.

The point I was trying to make is that if Croats and Serbs don't have the serious problems which Yugoslavia created post 1918 and which resulted in an absolute orgy of violence during WWII, the Bosniaks would probably end up being dealt with by Serbs alone, and their fate would probably be very similar to the fate of Muslims from Serbia who were pretty much ethnically cleansed once Serbia gained independence from the Ottomans. Wouldn't be good news for the Bosniaks, but would lead to a more stable Balkans.
 
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Split the A-H empire. Unite all non german parts in a pan Slavic republic.

Problem: The Hungarians are not Slavs: they are less Slavic than the Portuguese are Spanish. :D

I fear putting A Magyarok into a pan Slavic union would have the same effect as when a good portion of ethnic Hungary was added to Romania. :eek:
 
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