DBWI: What if there was a Second World War?

So we all know that the Great War from 1914-1918 was the last big conflict between major nations. While it looked like that major war would happen again, because of the Soviet’s or the Japanese, cooler heads won every time. Especially with the creation of nuclear bombs in the 50s what if there was a second Great War? What if Germany never fell apart and had to be become part of other nations.

Who would be the instigators of that war? Would the U.S become part of the war like in the Great War or would it continue to be isolationist like in the OTL? What would cause it to happen?
 
So we all know that the Great War from 1914-1918 was the last big conflict between major nations. While it looked like that major war would happen again, because of the Soviet’s or the Japanese, cooler heads won every time. Especially with the creation of nuclear bombs in the 50s what if there was a second Great War? What if Germany never fell apart and had to be become part of other nations.

Who would be the instigators of that war? Would the U.S become part of the war like in the Great War or would it continue to be isolationist like in the OTL? What would cause it to happen?

I worked in a rtirement home and one of the folk there had family living in Germany at the time. According to him during the time of Weimar Republic, there was a rising group of nationalists with a charismatic leader. From what I udnerstood, it was kinda like the Falangists of Spain though with some very serious racist elements and reactionary elements. The guy ended up dying in an accident and the party died soon after.

Of course, A decade later, the southern Germanic states would end up combining with Austria, Prussia would undergo "Balticization" and unite with the Baltic states to become the Baltic Kingdom, which basically ended up browbeating Poland and Czechoslovakia to become the Wends Federation after Poland collapsed financially.

The closest thing left to Germany would be the Diarchy of Westphalia-Brandenburg, who are planning to recreate some sort of northern German state now that the Treaty conditions have finished and they've been influenced by their Nordic neighbors.

If this party took control of Germany like how Mussolini in Italy, it probably could've led to a Second World War by beginning a reign of warfare and so on. Given how Japan and Italy were also ruled by imperial reactionaries, but hamstrings by alot of problems, this Germany I think could escalate things to war.
 
It's not considered good sport to steal the idea from this year's Turtledove winner y'know.

Honestly, in my opinion, One People, One Leader - a Third Reich is an odd duck. I certainly recognize its merits as an exceptionally well written AH timeline, lots of interesting original characters, self-contained story arcs, and all the countries feel more or less in character. But... I don't really believe it's a good alternate history, per se, if we look at it from a realism perspective. Picking the obscure Adolf Hitler and his DAP instead of the more well known right-wingers in Germany like Hindenburg or von Schleicher to lead this "Third Reich" in a Second Great War is eyebrow-raising as it is, but then the entire story goes its way to make them as overpowered as possible! Stealing the idea for armored warfare straight from Tukhachevsky's book, remilitarizing in a few years, somehow starting a war with the West as early as 1936, defeating France, immediately getting into a fight with the Soviets and winning!

Turning a country which collapsed by this time in OTL is, as someone who got his tongue extended across the continent would say, a pretty big stretch.

At least the author had the decency of not actually glamourizing the DAP and Hitler, instead taking the option of writing the story from the perspective of the villains. Because honestly, they are as close to villains as you can get in this site's AH timelines.

Though I don't personally view it in high regard, I do believe that some of its ideas are sound. A New Triple Coalition composed of Germany, Italy, Japan and a bunch of Central European states isn't far off, although, honestly, I'm not sure why Japan is included at all, given that they don't even participate in the story all that much (the "unavoidable" war with America never happens, and the Japanese don't even attack the Soviet Union for some reason, despite having all of China under their control). The idea of the Soviets and the "Third Reich" working together for the first few years is interesting too, and I honestly believe something like that could have happened.

I think you should go read that timeline if you are interested in this scenario, but remember that it could definitely be made more realistic.
 
So we all know that the Great War from 1914-1918 was the last big conflict between major nations. While it looked like that major war would happen again, because of the Soviet’s or the Japanese, cooler heads won every time. Especially with the creation of nuclear bombs in the 50s what if there was a second Great War? What if Germany never fell apart and had to be become part of other nations.

Who would be the instigators of that war? Would the U.S become part of the war like in the Great War or would it continue to be isolationist like in the OTL? What would cause it to happen?


All this talk of Germany starting a Second World War is painfully implausible. No way the French and the British would just stand idly by as Germany blantantly violates the Treaty of Versailles.

A US-Japanese war would be somewhat likely. They were in a bit of a standoff for much of the 1930s over their interests in the Pacific. Don’t think it had much of a chance to turn into a world war, though.

Ultimately, the power that was most likely to start WW2 was the Soviet Union. Their attempts to expand into Europe, Asia and the Middle East united the British Empire, the United States, and Imperial Japan into the Anti-Comintern Pact, and the Manchurian Crisis of 1943 nearly saw that Pact activated.

As for how the war would have gone, it would be an absolute meat grinder. The Soviets would throw everything they had into attempted invasions of Poland, Finland, Iran, China, and Korea, and it would probably take everything we had - up to and including atom bombs - to force them back. Thank God it never came to that.
 
So we all know that the Great War from 1914-1918 was the last big conflict between major nations. While it looked like that major war would happen again, because of the Soviet’s or the Japanese, cooler heads won every time. Especially with the creation of nuclear bombs in the 50s what if there was a second Great War? What if Germany never fell apart and had to be become part of other nations.

Who would be the instigators of that war? Would the U.S become part of the war like in the Great War or would it continue to be isolationist like in the OTL? What would cause it to happen?

All good questions, and difficult to answer, too. The only thing that's for certain, at least IMO, is that the nations that took part in the war would be more technologically advanced. Imagine, using technology created because of the war effort...maybe the Americans would have arrived on the Moon earlier than OTL.
 
Ultimately, the power that was most likely to start WW2 was the Soviet Union. Their attempts to expand into Europe, Asia and the Middle East united the British Empire, the United States, and Imperial Japan into the Anti-Comintern Pact, and the Manchurian Crisis of 1943 nearly saw that Pact activated.

As for how the war would have gone, it would be an absolute meat grinder. The Soviets would throw everything they had into attempted invasions of Poland, Finland, Iran, China, and Korea, and it would probably take everything we had - up to and including atom bombs - to force them back. Thank God it never came to that.

I don't see Stalin's Union doing anything. He was far too paranoid to risk major foreign escapades. Maybe Trotsky doesn't get icepicked and takes advantage of Stalin's paranoia to rally people against him as even allies of Stalin could be killed easily. Maybe a communist Germany working in tandem with the Soviets to combat Western capitalism and Japanese aggression could kick off the war? They would good in the opening, but I can't see them knocking Britain or Japan out of the war, and soon the nukes will fall on Moskva and Leningrad
 
All good questions, and difficult to answer, too. The only thing that's for certain, at least IMO, is that the nations that took part in the war would be more technologically advanced. Imagine, using technology created because of the war effort...maybe the Americans would have arrived on the Moon earlier than OTL.

I really don't mind it took so long to get to the moon, to be honest. Indeed, I think it was a crackerjack idea to schedule things so the planned landing could take place on The nation's bicentennial. The "Declaration of Unity" broadcast was a real public relations master stroke as well as a work of art and one of the seminal writings of our time, and it'd be a shame if we lost it.
 
I really don't mind it took so long to get to the moon, to be honest. Indeed, I think it was a crackerjack idea to schedule things so the planned landing could take place on The nation's bicentennial. The "Declaration of Unity" broadcast was a real public relations master stroke as well as a work of art and one of the seminal writings of our time, and it'd be a shame if we lost it.

I agree.
 
There is of course the possibility of the aftermath of a German victory in the Great War. There's a mod for the Paradox Interactive 1930s-60s political-economy sim Postbellum about it, called Siegerkranz, and it's pretty good. The gist is that the defeated Entente powers end up going communist and find themselves in opposition to the German-led Mitteleuropa bloc, while Russia becomes a desolate backwater and the US enters a phase of political turmoil. Though the game usually plays out peacefully as in OTL, focusing on the different government and economic mechanics for each faction there's a roughly 40% chance of one of the numerous crises sparking a full-blown Second Great War on the European continent. Depending on how you respond to it, this can then spiral all across the world as civil wars and regional power struggles from China to America meld into a single battle to the death. It's all a bit too ambitious for the mod IMO, since Postbellum has very weak military mechanics, but does make you think how close we came in OTL to a full blown renewal of hostilities. Could the chances have been as high as 40% in our 1930s? Or perhaps an ascendent Prussian militarism in the 1930s would simply have made another war more likely.
 
There is of course the possibility of the aftermath of a German victory in the Great War. There's a mod for the Paradox Interactive 1930s-60s political-economy sim Postbellum about it, called Siegerkranz, and it's pretty good. The gist is that the defeated Entente powers end up going communist and find themselves in opposition to the German-led Mitteleuropa bloc, while Russia becomes a desolate backwater and the US enters a phase of political turmoil. Though the game usually plays out peacefully as in OTL, focusing on the different government and economic mechanics for each faction there's a roughly 40% chance of one of the numerous crises sparking a full-blown Second Great War on the European continent. Depending on how you respond to it, this can then spiral all across the world as civil wars and regional power struggles from China to America meld into a single battle to the death. It's all a bit too ambitious for the mod IMO, since Postbellum has very weak military mechanics, but does make you think how close we came in OTL to a full blown renewal of hostilities. Could the chances have been as high as 40% in our 1930s? Or perhaps an ascendent Prussian militarism in the 1930s would simply have made another war more likely.

Well, to be fair, the military mechanics of the game are designed to model "national policing" type violence such as civil unrest, separatist insurgencies, piracy, combating terrorist cells, ect. that actually occurs in our era as opposed to the "field warfare" of armies and fleets of the Pre-Versailles era. There's only so much the moderns can do without having to gut the game engine, at which point you're better off just modding one of their games modeling an earlier era (I'm a fan of Conquistadors III myself). But given the lore they've put behind the events I'd say they at the very least showed the possibility of over belligerency on the part of the hegemons can produce war regardless of the dangers.
 
Ultimately, the power that was most likely to start WW2 was the Soviet Union. Their attempts to expand into Europe, Asia and the Middle East united the British Empire, the United States, and Imperial Japan into the Anti-Comintern Pact, and the Manchurian Crisis of 1943 nearly saw that Pact activated
I Remeber learning that it was hard to get Japan in the alliance because it was unhappy with all negative views from its actions in China. Which people at the time believed would cause a war, others apparently though that Japan would launch a surprise attack on the U.S for some reason
 
So I see nobody here subscribes to the historiography that the decolonialisation and peasant-based national socialisation wars constituted a "second" "world war" lasting from the 1930s in British India, French Indochina, Japanese Eastern Asia and the Netherlands East Indies through to the late 1980s in Africa?

Awfully Eurocentric.

yours,
Sam R.
 
So I see nobody here subscribes to the historiography that the decolonialisation and peasant-based national socialisation wars constituted a "second" "world war" lasting from the 1930s through to the late 1980s in Africa?

Awfully Eurocentric.

yours,
Sam R.
That wasn't a single war though, it was a series of multi faceted conflicts.
 
That wasn't a single war though, it was a series of multi faceted conflicts.

It isn't just politically motivated pan-Africanist ideologues associated with Ethiopia or the former UK colonies in the Caribbean putting this argument; it is also mainline liberalistic historians focused on the long duration. Now admittedly it may not be as satisfying as great powers going to war in two blocs in the middle of Europe, but The West [and sometimes Japan] versus The Rest [with occasional help from Japan, The United States and the Soviet Union] over 60 years was certainly war on the scale of the world?

I mean, I don't quite get the focus on great powers and Europe: terror bombing was always about "Killing an Arab" (Camus; Smith) rather than the threatened European gehenna.

yours,
Sam R.
 
Short version:
With the increase in Aircraft capacity and the improvements in chemical and biological warfare capability, (see the differences between the Great War's use of chemical weapons, and then just a few years later, British use of Chemical weapons against rebellious tribesmen in Persia for a improvement curve), Germany, Belgium, Northern France, Belgium, Italy and Austria would become permanently polluted and uninhabitable wastelands where nothing could live. All those persistent agents would just end up being soaked into the ground and would kill everything. Those weapons were used in the Great War and there's no reason that any war starting before the 1950's wouldn't have used them both on the battlefield and civilians. RIP Europe if they were used.
 
To pull of a Second Great War, I think you would have to torpedo the League of Nations. It's not perfect, but having countries talk about their differences has helped defuse quite a lot of crises in the past century.
 
It isn't just politically motivated pan-Africanist ideologues associated with Ethiopia or the former UK colonies in the Caribbean putting this argument; it is also mainline liberalistic historians focused on the long duration. Now admittedly it may not be as satisfying as great powers going to war in two blocs in the middle of Europe, but The West [and sometimes Japan] versus The Rest [with occasional help from Japan, The United States and the Soviet Union] over 60 years was certainly war on the scale of the world?

I mean, I don't quite get the focus on great powers and Europe: terror bombing was always about "Killing an Arab" (Camus; Smith) rather than the threatened European gehenna.

yours,
Sam R.
So I see nobody here subscribes to the historiography that the decolonialisation and peasant-based national socialisation wars constituted a "second" "world war" lasting from the 1930s in British India, French Indochina, Japanese Eastern Asia and the Netherlands East Indies through to the late 1980s in Africa?

Awfully Eurocentric.

yours,
Sam R.

... well, while I personally find it interesting, Sam, it's hard to call that series of conflicts a "war" and more an "era". While most of them had similar ideological motivations, the events themselves weren't connected in any meaningful cause-and-effect way. Calling it a "War" stretches the definition of that word to such an extent as to be more or less worthless. I hold to the school that calls it the "Era of Transitional Deconstruction"
 
To pull of a Second Great War, I think you would have to torpedo the League of Nations. It's not perfect, but having countries talk about their differences has helped defuse quite a lot of crises in the past century.
I do remeber learning that for a while ,any though the league was weak and pretty much useless, espiclaly since the U.S wasn’t a part of it. Thankfully it manged to become stronger over the years. Espcailly after the Manchurian crisis
 
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I'm not sure what you mean by "Second World War." What is a "world war"? If you mean a globe-spanning conflict, then the Napoleonic Wars would be the second such conflict, with the Seven Years War being the first. The ATL war would thus be a Fourth world war.

If you're asking for Great War 2: Return to the Lonely Mountain, I think that another major war in Europe is nigh impossible. Ignoring colonial conflicts, the nations of Europe have wisely integrated the Continent and avoided nationalist spear waving. If you've been following the Great War Centennial events, you'll see this anti-war ethos is very much alive. Any major conflict would quickly be defused by the League of Nations, especially since nuclear technology has made such a war unwinnable. Not even the Soviets would be stupid enough to start another Great War. Remember, the Russian Revolution was in partial response to Czarist militarism. The Soviets didn't even have the stomach to help the Hungarian socialists against Austria in '56; I doubt even Trotsky would be stupid enough to say, annex Poland. The Soviets couldn't even conquer Finland!

If you're looking for any Great Power conflict, then it would probably involve the Japanese Empire. During his third term, Hoover tried to save China by an arms lease deal, but Congressional isolationists shut him down. The Japanese would still conquer the Chinese if Hoover succeeded. I doubt the Japanese would attack the U.S in response to armaments- they're smarter than to fight a two front war. Maybe some demagogue could stir America into war over fear of the Yellow Peril through some bogus incident like the sinking of the Maine. Maybe the U.S.S Arizona explodes off port in Hong Kong; and somebody like William Randolph Hearst uses it as a Casus Belli.

After the 1950s, a hot war between Japan and America becomes less likely due to nukes, despite tensions in the Pacific. I can think of one POD which could result in war. Before it became obvious he was a terrorist psycho, the U.S gave covert support to the Reverend Moon in the 70s. The OSS dropped him like a hot potato after he nuked Osaka; and the U.S government today still denies it supported Korean guerilla fighters. Suppose the OSS was somehow connected to the Osaka bombing? Japan might feel compelled to retaliate, and the world would go up in flames. I think there was a short story about this by Asimov. But then again, not even the most bloodthirsty American President would be crazy enough to support the nuking of the Japanese mainland without being nuked first.
 
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