How would WWI & WWII be affected with a separate USA and CSA?

This is a pretty hard question to ask (given that 75 years would have passed to WWII and still about 45 years between the end of the Civil war to WWI) but how would WWI and WWII be different if there is a separate USA and CSA. Would they both be on the same side for both wars, would both maybe fight on opposing sides for both?

How do things change?
 
Very likely to stay on opposite sides. Look at Turtledove for an example. Also, that much time means a host of butterflies; WW1 is still plenty possible, WW2 is likely very different or absent.
 
Hard to say. It would depends much how CSA wins the war and how their politics are going post-war years. And in any case whole WW1 would be very different almost unrecognsible. And WW2 might be butterflied away totally.

Very likely to stay on opposite sides. Look at Turtledove for an example. Also, that much time means a host of butterflies; WW1 is still plenty possible, WW2 is likely very different or absent.

I wouldn't take Turtledove's TL-191 as example for good AH TL. It has much of implausible things, parapelles and butterfly killings. And very much depends how history is going. It is too very possible that both or another one is neutral or even in same side altough that is bit implausible altough not impossible. All depends how internal politics is going in both nations.
 

Deleted member 94680

Hard to say. It would depends much how CSA wins the war and how their politics are going post-war years. And in any case whole WW1 would be very different almost unrecognsible. And WW2 might be butterflied away totally.

I don’t think WWII would be absent seeing as it was born from WWI. Agreed it would be totally different but there’s every chance it would happen.

I wouldn't take Turtledove's TL-191 as example for good AH TL. It has much of implausible things, parapelles and butterfly killings. And very much depends how history is going. It is too very possible that both or another one is neutral or even in same side altough that is bit implausible altough not impossible. All depends how internal politics is going in both nations.

Totally agree. Although the TL-191 books were what got me into AH, they are junk, really. “Master of what if”? More like “Master of cut and paste”.
 
Post civil war the CSA is going to need allies/friends to stave off a Civil War mark 2. What they do with slavery would be a big decider on who is available/willing to be their friend. If the CSA is pulled into the European alliance system pre WW1 they might be obliged to fight. The US has less need to join an external alliance but might to oppose the CSA because they don't like each other. They might even secretly join the same alliance without realising it puts them on the same side as the CSA. Or they might stay neutral and/or be dragged in during the course of the war AOTL. To many butterfly's to know for sure.
 

GarethC

Donor
I think that it would mean that the WW1 analogue would not involve as many players,

CSA survival probably means French victory in Mexico to put Maximilien Hapsburg on the throne.

That is likely to butterfly away the Franco-Prussian War - Napoleon is not embarrassed by Mexican failure and is still entangled there so is less involved in German affairs, so giving Bismarck less leverage over the other German states than OTL's fear of France, and also France is less able to afford another war (so Napoleon doesn't want one) and may be better able to fight one if a continuing Mexican insurgency reveals issues with French artillery and doctrine early (so Otto doesn't want one).

The thing is, a France with A-L, and with no 1871 defeat, is really one of the biggest players on the board, which means that this sort of POD is one that is really hard to generalise for and really easy to be creative with.

Without 1871 war and French defeat, Franco-Russian postures against Germany are less strong. France has more difficulties being cordiale with Britain as with Alsace-Lorraine it remains a much stronger industrial power and competitor.

1873 Dreikaiserbund still goes ahead, though Bismarck has less influence. He pushes A-H to engage with Mexico (Hapsburg) while Britain is closer to USA.

Russian and Austro-Hungarian interests in the Balkans will remain at odds, leading to a shrinkage to a Zwiekaiserbund of some sort.

With a successful American venture and no Prussian humiliation, French colonial ambitions in Indochina and Africa may be more urgent. Maybe Fashoda is rather more contested?

Assuming only North German integration, then Franco-Prussian Great Game over southern Germany is parallel to Anglo-Russian Tournament of Shadows in Central Asia, and everybody dances around Africa.

By the end of the century, Britain has shifted away from Confederate cotton (Egyptian, rather than bad PR from slavery). CSA economy probably shifts towards slave-based industrialization of textile production to compete against USA Hudson Valley output, but is hampered by general tariff approaches. A smaller Germany means a much smaller HSF, with a corresponding decrease in British paranoia.

Spanish disengagement results in German Philippines and British Hawai'i (and maybe Wake, Guam, Midway as coaling stations).

Russo-Japanese War still probably happens on schedule. Britain is not anxious to go to war with Russia even if Dogger Bank incident happens as OTL.

If there is an Austro-Russian War after a Serbian terrorist act, it likely pulls in Germany and some support (loans and supplies mostly) from Britain and the USA on the Austrian side. There is no guarantee that France, the CSA, Mexico, Italy, or the Ottomans get involved (though all are possible, depending on how the early-1900s things in North Africa and the Balkans have gone). It's a given that the Anglo-American side can catastrophically harm trade to Mexico and/or the CSA if they get involved, which is a big argument for not doing so.

The wild card is Napoleon IV. Napoleon III's health was poor in the run up to the Franco-Prussian War and his death in 1873 is not likely to be very much later even without that conflict, leaving his son to rule instead of dying in an Anglo-Zulu War. Never having ruled the French Empire OTL, and without a clear idea of whether he would indeed become Emperor, or with what powers, had there been no war in 1870, you can pretty much do what you like with him.

Lunatic jingoist bent on Mitteleuropäische Kavallerie-Kriegsführung and whose armies surge into Luxembourg and Belgium within days of the news of a shooting in Sarajevo?
Anglophile connoisseur of bitters and ales who lets war slide on by?
Opportunist who fortifies in Europe while racing Japan to seize the Pacific and and Britain the African colonies?
Let France explode with civil war between Republicans, Bonapartists, and anarchists if you will, or let it rival Victorian Britain for the splendour of its isolation while a drang nach osten engulfs half a continent.
They are all possible, and as likely as you wish them to be.
 
Well, the USA will be a lot more militaristic with a hostile nation on the southern border. I honestly can't see peace lasting for long unless the south ends up with significant allies. Despite Turtledove, I can't see Britain being one of those allies; Canada is too vulnerable to the United States. Britain might be an economic partner, but no more.
 
After the Civil War, the CSA is going to industrialize. It’s going to have to if it wants to keep the Union from marching in a few months later and fucking up its program, taking whatever it wants with no repercussions. So you can bet they will value militias and firearm ownership but industry will be truly what makes the CSA a free nation. And the irony that the very thing that was the CSA’s casus belli will be destroyed by the thing that makes the CSA last will not be lost on people.

A lot of suddenly free blacks with nowhere to go - or who escape industry slavery while it’s still a thing - will go north, and all of a sudden, have nowhere to go. Industrial farming will make slaves useless there, so the most workable solution may be for a mainly black territory to be formed. And of course, expect it to remain a territory instead of a state for as long as possible.

I see either the USA or CSA to get involved eventually in WWI; the CSA has Woodrow Wilson, who pushed for international involvement, while the USA would probably be dominated by people like TR and Taft leading up to war. It’s hard to say which side each one would be on, but I don’t expect it to result in much of a change; the Ottomans and Austria-Hungary will still fall apart and Germany will be left holding the bag.

After that, assuming the Nazis are still a thing, I expect that Hitler would make overtures to the CSA but I see the CSA as part of the Allies or, at worst, neutral. They have little in common with the Nazis and the desire for avenging the Union will likely be a thing of the past.
 

While I agree that a different civil war might butterfly the war of 1870/71 this also means German History is much different. Without the victory we might never see the development of Germany into the Kaiserreich - instead "Germany" might be more of a federation. A (longer) lasting French Empire might have other influences. thus a WWI will be much different and a WWII is probably not comparable to OTL...

One consequence might also be that there is one less (ore one more) player in East Asia.

Probably there WILL be a WWI sometimes - it will not be comparable...
 
After that, assuming the Nazis are still a thing, I expect that Hitler would make overtures to the CSA but I see the CSA as part of the Allies or, at worst, neutral. They have little in common with the Nazis and the desire for avenging the Union will likely be a thing of the past.

I agree. I can see the CSA having largely the same religion / cultural / traditional social order based nationalism as Franco's Spain.

My guess is that relations with Spain and right wing oriented Portugal would be warm, but relations with Nazi Germany would follow Franco’s example of “polite, but muted”. The seeds of cozy CSA relations with Portugal and Span could be sown immediately after CSA independence as the CSA seeks affirmation through ties with Brazil and Cuba, both slave holding nations at the time that had a long tradition of putting the interests of “gentlemen planters” first.

As for the Nazis, the CSA’s main interests would be weapons purchases. I am thinking that CSA naval arm would find the Graf Spe and Scharnhorst concepts very attractive as commerce raiding deterrents against the USA. A Scharnhorst as “General Lee” would also make a credible flag ship to show the CSA flag to the world with out going into the un-needed super heavy weight classes. General Lee’s first port of call, however, would be Spain, not Germany.
 
After the Civil War, the CSA is going to industrialize. It’s going to have to if it wants to keep the Union from marching in a few months later and fucking up its program, taking whatever it wants with no repercussions. So you can bet they will value militias and firearm ownership but industry will be truly what makes the CSA a free nation. And the irony that the very thing that was the CSA’s casus belli will be destroyed by the thing that makes the CSA last will not be lost on people.

[/QU

And they're going to swiftly industrialize... how exactly? The nation is going to be incredibly short on liquid capital (They can't exactly sell their slaves internationally for currency they can convert into investment capital), deep in debt, has overheated/overtapped its manpower and productive capital to the point that it needs to recover, has a non-existant international credit rating, lacks cheap excess labor that can be fed into the industrial machine (at an economically profitable rate) and the infastructurial-urban base on which to build industrial centers. Add that to the fact that protective tariffs are going to be domestically problamatic and viewed poorly by potential international allies who'd want the south as a market for their own industiral output, and you have a huge uphill climb... the time by which you overcome it your infant industries are going to be hugely uncompedative against forgien competition.
 
Top