Miscellaneous >1900 (Alternate) History Thread

Is it viable to design a tank with the crew being fully in a prone position?
Possible yes with the right mix of autoloading main guns, cameras to give all around vision and padding. Is it practical? Maybe but I cant really see what the advantages are of such a layout given other issues such a layout would have.
 
Currently watch Lavender Scare on PBS and I'm thinking to myself "just imagine the damage the government could have done to organize crime if they used the zeal hunting for the mob as they did hunting for homosexuals."
 
Guys create some ridiculous Wunderwaffen

Hughes H-99 Daedalus, aka "Atomic Albatross" , an enormous atomic-powered flying boat that reduces the need for crew shielding by putting the reactor as far away as possible. The all-wooden airframe is very resistant to neutron activation, and despite misgivings by engineers, "probably" won't be set on fire by the 1500 degree reactor components. There are however concerns about what will happen if the reactor is accidentally submerged.
 
What if Hitler took Psilocybin as a young man?

The question seems awkward but it is not. Psychodelics were shown to change people's personalities in quite a dramatic way
 
What if Hitler took Psilocybin as a young man?

The question seems awkward but it is not. Psychodelics were shown to change people's personalities in quite a dramatic way
Before WWII Psilocybin was basically unknown in Western culture except as a poisonous mushroom to avoid. No one really sought it out (except maybe the sort who'd be regarded as a witch). The only knowledge would be in anthropology (records of Siberian peoples who used Amanita muscaria mushrooms) or obscure historical accounts of Mesoamericans using Psilocybe mushrooms. If the young Hitler was that interested in anthropology--he did enjoy Western novels, so maybe (like a few relatives of mine) he'd want to learn more about the actual period--he'd have access to biased but still reliable descriptions of the Apache or other peoples who appeared in novels by Karl May or others. Maybe he'd discover peyote from those descriptions and travel to the United States or Mexico to partake in it.

Anthropologist Hitler would be interesting, especially if he maintained his antisemitic and fascist views. I guess he'd be an intellectual in the German far-right in the late 20s/30s and if they assumed power then maybe he'd have a government post. Maybe he'd be in contact with Elwood Towner (aka Chief Red Cloud) or a few other American Indian speakers in the 1930s who expressed antisemitic views and support for the Nazis largely out of their opposition to FDR's Indian policy.
 

McPherson

Banned
Hitler as an anthropologist? Hmmm. It does boggle the mind^1. I see no fundamental difference in his politics. He would still wind up where he ended because at the end he was a dope fiend as well as an evil man.

^1 The set of ideas, which Hitler espoused and pushed to the extremes, had their roots in the "international social Darwinist intelligentsia" who ran around as the Euro-American ruling classes of the 1880s, 1890s, 1910s and 1920s. These evil ideas certainly affected the world views of many individuals like Woodrow Wilson, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II and the Three Pashas, so if that manure rolled downhill and was picked up by a future sociopath or three, like Stalin, Mao and Hitler; it can be traced to some really sick twisted distortions of what scientists were actually publishing.
 
Provided that Venizelos wins the 1920 election, how plausible is a Greek victory in the Greco-Turkish War? My conditions for victory are at least control of Smyrna and parts of the Aegean Coast.
 
Any experts on North Africa? I decided to go with a Mediterranean strategy for my Bukharin TL. The Italo-German forces actually managed to conquer/puppet state Egypt-Sudan (plus East Africa) before the Abdeen Palace incident of 1942, what in your opinion would entail?
 
Is France doomed if it loses the Battle of the Marne in WWI? (IIRC the Germans lost the Battle of the Marne because of strategic or tactical blunder, so this could theoretically be correctable in a what if?)
 

Driftless

Donor
Pre-WW2, is there a plausible way of finagling that MacArthur and Stilwell switch places? i.e Mac goes to China, Vinegar Joe to the Philippines. I realize that Mac had functionally retired before accepting the Philippine Field Marshall role and his family had a history of Philippine service. Stilwell was one of the few US officers who could speak a Chinese dialect. So, there are two practical strikes against the idea, but it's an interesting thought to see how those two prickly personalities would have done if placed in different theaters.

How would Mac have gotten on with Chiang and Wavell? How would Vinegar Joe have dealt with training and building up the Philippine Army and the 1941 Japanese onslaught? How would Stilwell got on with the Australians and Nimitz?
 
Some somewhat frivolous snippets:
"No no no. That just will not do AT ALL. He is not to go off gallivanting after the enemy fleet like that. If all the enemy carrier divisions and battleships are out there, he could hardly do much about them, now, could he? His role is to act as part of my artillery park, supporting our troops on land, as they battle with the enemy and sharing what air-cover we have with them. Someone call him back."
- General B. Montgomery telling his superior, General Wavell to not permit Admiral Phillips to sail in the as yet unwritten timeline Monty in Malaya

"<expletive in Japanese>"
- Imperial Japanese soldier discovering that Australian troops trained to play rough in rubber plantations are at least as good at the whole warfare-on-the-Malaya-Peninsula thing as the Imperial Japanese; similar sentiments will be expressed by Imperial Japanese forces upon encounter of other Commonwealth troops, at least if they have the time to get any last words out (Monty in Malaya timeline)

"So what do you suppose that the Führer will ask of us next?" (in German, as Rommel celebrates with some of his senior officers in a bar at the end of his North African campaign in 1942, in the 1958 film Ice Cold in Alex, (Monty in Malaya timeline))
 
How does Rommel win North Africa ITTL?
Whoever is in charge on the Allied side bungles Alam Halfa, probably helped by some of the staff which Monty dismissed in the original timeline remaining in place, and offering their 'expertise'...
As far as I understand it a craze had set in for breaking everything up, which Rommel (pre-Monty) found highly useful.
 
Top