Latest Possible Mechanized Warfare

WWI is largely considered as the dawn of mechanized warfare, with tanks, airplanes, trucks, etc. coming to the fore in order to deal with trench combat. Obviously enough, mechanized warfare changed the course of history after that point.

What is the latest possible era that we can push mechanized warfare (i.e., tanks, airplanes, machine guns, etc.) back to? How would that affect things?
 
WWI is largely considered as the dawn of mechanized warfare, with tanks, airplanes, trucks, etc. coming to the fore in order to deal with trench combat. Obviously enough, mechanized warfare changed the course of history after that point.

What is the latest possible era that we can push mechanized warfare (i.e., tanks, airplanes, machine guns, etc.) back to? How would that affect things?

I do suppose you mean "earliest"? Anyway, a lot of Steamwankers would tell you it would be the Victorian era, but I suppose you could have it as far back as the Roman Era. After all, they had aeropiles in Alexandria and repeating Ballistas. Perhaps some Roman aristocrats go technophilic on the scale of Charles Babbage?
 
I do suppose you mean "earliest"? Anyway, a lot of Steamwankers would tell you it would be the Victorian era, but I suppose you could have it as far back as the Roman Era. After all, they had aeropiles in Alexandria and repeating Ballistas. Perhaps some Roman aristocrats go technophilic on the scale of Charles Babbage?

Erm... I think you have it backwards. He wants later in time.

If you get rid of the needle gun? Maaaaayyybe the 1930s. The first big muzzle v breech war and they switch over, rates of fire goes up, and bad stuff starts to happen.
 
I think the longer you can delay World War I, the longer you delay the advent of mechanized warfare. World War I will probably happen eventually: the roots of the conflict go back hundreds of years.

Once the airplane appeared, it was inevitable that someone would try to use it for warfare: in fact the first use of the airplane in combat occurred, IIRC, during the Balkan Wars, even before World War I.
 
I think the longer you can delay World War I, the longer you delay the advent of mechanized warfare. World War I will probably happen eventually: the roots of the conflict go back hundreds of years.

Once the airplane appeared, it was inevitable that someone would try to use it for warfare: in fact the first use of the airplane in combat occurred, IIRC, during the Balkan Wars, even before World War I.

The longer you delay WWI, the better the chance of mechanized warfare developing, since everybody on both sides are trying to improve the standard infantry + cavalry charge doctrine. Then somebody will have the bright idea of employing cars/ tractors fitted with MGs.

Then delay the airplane! Make the first commercial prototype a miserable failure that can potentially cause hundreds of deaths.
 
I think the longer you can delay World War I, the longer you delay the advent of mechanized warfare. World War I will probably happen eventually: the roots of the conflict go back hundreds of years.

Once the airplane appeared, it was inevitable that someone would try to use it for warfare: in fact the first use of the airplane in combat occurred, IIRC, during the Balkan Wars, even before World War I.
 
I think the longer you can delay World War I, the longer you delay the advent of mechanized warfare. World War I will probably happen eventually: the roots of the conflict go back hundreds of years.

Once the airplane appeared, it was inevitable that someone would try to use it for warfare: in fact the first use of the airplane in combat occurred, IIRC, during the Balkan Wars, even before World War I.

Err, why did you have to post it 2 times? :confused:
 
The Italians used airplanes in the Turkish war the year before the Balkan war.

If you fought WWI in 1907 and it was over very quickly after the Germans ran out of nitrates for ammunition, then armor might not have been developed until the next big war.
OK, Russia and Japan get into it. Russia has competent leadership (the Tsar gets blown up and someone is regent) and no revolutionary movement (the Tsar gets blown up with his family and pisses off the peasantry) and so keeps it's navy at home and just sends more troops and supplies, buying locomotives for the transiberian and steamships for Baikal to get them there.
Then the US president doesn't get involved, the war lasts longer, more Russian troops get battle experience, and the war ends in a Russian "victory" after Japan goes bankrupt. Russia is too broke to take over Korea as a colony and gets brownie points from the Russophobe liberals of Europe by allowing Korean independence.
When Austria-Hungary takes over Bosnia in 1907 the Russians threaten war. Austria-Hungary doesn't back down. Russia doesn't either. Germany doesn't dare do nothing or it will lose it's only major and dependable ally, and it can't attack Russia without attacking France first. The German army attacks France through Belgium. The French army moves into Belgium as per plan Michael to defend Belgian neutrality and the armies bog down along the central Belgium high ground, with the canal ports still in French hands.
Russia's experienced troops, back less than a year from Siberia, stomp the Austro-Hungarian army even worse than in OTL. The Serbs don't do as well since they have not had the Balkan wars to test their officers and doctrines, but they do hold the Danube when the Austro-Hungarians have to yank away their troops to hold the Carpathians against the Russians.
The Germans launch multiple attacks against the dug in French and keep pushing them back all the way across Belgium, but the pace is slow enough for evacuations to preserve the French and Belgian industrial capacity until the war is over , which is when the Germans run out of ammo.
The British send a token expeditionary force of one division. It keeps getting more reinforcements as they keep getting killed or wounded. Mostly Britain just blockades Germany until it evacuates Belgium.
Without Turkey in the war the Russians keep getting ammo and other supplies. The Germans can pull troops out of the Western Front and attack them, but they can't force a decision in only one year. So they sign an armistice and then a treaty. This treaty is considerably milder in form and harsher in enforcement. The Germans pay reparations to the Belgians, French, and Russians for the damage they did to their civilian property, and the Austrians pay reparations to the Russians and Serbians. The reparations are much less because the damage of the war is much less. Belgium got hosed and got the most reparations because they were the battlefield. Germany levys a property tax to compensate people who leave the annexed lands.
Without Italy in the war the Slovenians get Trieste as a seaport. Rumania stayed out because their King was German, so they don't get Transylvania or the Russian occupied lands. Hungary pulls out of Austria-Hungary and is much larger and with significant minorities, keeping Ruthenia, Vojvodina, Transylvania, and the Hungarian parts of Slovakia as a reward. Czechs and Slovaks get nations. The Czechs don't get the Sudetenlands, which stay part of Austria, which does merge with Germany. Silesia winds up part of Russian Poland. Serbia gets Bosnia and Croatia.
After the war the Germans are forbidden to build tanks, planes, any naval forces, or artillary over three inches, in effect preventing them from attacking any kind of fortified position. Nobody else build tanks because nobody else wants to fight as big and bloody a war as the one year of slaughter called the Last War.
 
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I'm interested in this ATL. Anyone else?
Since the Balkan wars haven't started yet, Albania still has Kosovo. So an Italian railroad though Albania would access the lignite deposits. If Italy hadn't become involved in WWI they could afford to both pay off their overseas debts and also build a postwar railroad to access alternate coal sources in preference to Britain. Assuming that Turkey decided to dump Albania and Kosovo.
Without an interregnum the US immigration attraction will continue. Lots of ethnic groups will be minorities in new countries and will consider moving to America in preference to moving to an area where they are the majority, or learning to speak a new language.
The Ottomans will have enough money (after paying off their overseas debts in the wartime boom) to drill around Kuwait, thereby becoming an oil exporting country.
Germany, France, Russia, probably Italy will all build nitrate production facilities in case they get cut off from overseas imports. Germany will probably succeed first because they have the people who did it on OTL.
Rumania will be an unsatisfied country because many of their nationals will be in other countries' areas. Hungary will be happy because 99% of their nationals will be in Hungary. This is the reverse of OTL.
Belgium will have been essentially destroyed by the war. They will offer the Belgian Congo to France in accordance with treaty, but the auction will be won by Italy. Poor Italy.
America will have used the high commodity prices to pay off their debts to Britain, but will not have loaned more money after it.
But the important thing is that there won't be a WWII afterwards. No armor developed at all.
 
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