Southern slavery and Nazis still in 1950

Glen

Moderator
Still existing Southern Slavery? That's a POD required to be waaay before 1900. Off to Before 1900 this thread goes...
 
Recently I thought about "What if?" the US stayed split after the civil war, and slavery was still happening in the confederate states. Then maybe a weaker US in the north would not have much of an impact on German aggression in Europe's Great War (1914-1946). And with the confederate states now allies with the Nazis afterward in 1950, another war between the north and south looks likely. With each side eager to test a new weapon just developed -- the Atom Bomb.


I just recently (within the last year) started doing illustrations of an alternate 1950 where there is still slavery in the South and Nazis rule Europe.

I don't read Sci-Fi books, but I'm guessing this idea has already been written about by someone?

Thanks for any info.

There is a powerful effect known as the "Butterfly Effect" that weighs heavily against the scenario.

The Point of Departure (The last day this situation follows our world) would be in the 1860s, if not earlier still. This by itself has profound ramifications:

Children are born from a combination of a mother's egg cell fertilized by a father's sperm. If that act happens in a slightly different way than OTL (Our Time Line), then that child is never born. Instead, a sibling of the same age is born instead.

Adolf Hitler, for example, was born in 1883. Just by the dice, there would be a 50% chance that there would be an Adelle Hitler instead, and that's ignoring the odds that the meeting between his parents actually happens either. Klara Hitler was all of 16 when she met Alois Hitler. Furthermore, Klara lost most of her children-if that is run fairly, Adolf has to beat long odds as well.

With a PoD in the 1860s, the world would consist entirely of random characters in by 1910. These characters would share grandparents with OTL people, but an Austrian Prostitute living in Munich has no chance of being elected Kanzler of Germany.

So the specifics have to be gutted. The National Socialist Party probably never forms; people we know as staples of history are never born: FDR, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin. That alone doesn't mean the world can't repeat its somewhat unlikely direction in the 1930s, but we then have to ask how the CSA would interplay with world events.

The CSA and USA aren't going to get along. Parts of the Confederate States have seceded from it, trying to join the Union (the Appalachians, for Example). The CSA claims Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, as well as any other portions of its territory it has to concede to get any kind of peace. Throw in Fugitive Slave Hunters abducting escaped slaves and hundred of thousands of vengeful soldiers and there will be no international reconciliation.

Furthermore, the CSA almost by definition is going to be a dictatorship. One third of its population is slaves and its policies were set by the narrow cliche of its planter elite. It may be a military dictatorship, run by people like Nathan Bedford Forrest; it definitely is unstable, a large armed camp that's already got a penchant for censorship and enslaving free blacks.

We can safely assume that the CSA is turning into a rather bleak place. Keeping slavery into 1950, or heck into the present day, may well be entirely possible--most confederate stories don't want the CSA to continue its likely movement into national dystopia, even though it turning into a giant armed camp to keep a third of its people in profitable forced labor would probably be a move in that direction.

The problem remains tying this all together. If the USA and CSA fight another war, the CSA will get bashed up very well; smashed to the point where it is either annexed back to the Union, or perhaps left as a vassal nation with forced emancipation. The Union and Confederacy would probably not participate in a WWI analog, which would likely pit them against each other.

Now we run to the point where the music stops. Hitler isn't born, his or her equal age sibling is instead. He or She is unlikely to survive childhood, poverty, and the WWI analog. The odds are something like 1:20 against.

Strong money is on Hitler not surviving.

And now there is a WWI analog with no US involvement; With the US out (and probably a full neutral, given how the UK and France would be instrumental in keeping the CSA alive), Germany probably WINS the WWI analog. The French economy collapses as the US refuses to make empty loans to France--that's what they get for propping up the Richmond Regime.

Germany's enthusiastic annexation of Luxembourg and the Baltic States is not the national grievance; nor are its Jewish minority, who clearly did not stab it in the back. And while France and Italy are moving into Fascist Territory and Russia has collapsed into warlords, no one cares about a homeless man spewing hatred. (To be fair, even fewer care about a single mother of two; as long as she gives those soldiers a good time).

Victorious, Monarchical Germany may indeed pursue an atomic bomb. With the National Socialist Movement never emerging, Albert Einstein is a well respected physicist in Germany itself; the power of such a device and it's importance in retaining control around the edges of enlarged Germany, still fragile Austria-Hungary and angry neighbors, a nuclear program may well begin, and may well bear fruit by 1950.

The Confederacy, now a twisted cross between Pakistan and North Korea owing to its prolonged dictatorship and abuse of its own citizens, is not a top tier scientific power. Nor is it on friendly terms with German MittelEuropa. It may develop nuclear weapons in the 1980s or so.

Oh, and did I mention: The German American relationship is quite strong, balancing a Anglo-Frence-Confederate relationship. If there is a WWII, it will feature Germany and a largely German United States teaming up against the Fascist/Slaveholding Entente.
 
There is a powerful effect known as the "Butterfly Effect" that weighs heavily against the scenario.

The Point of Departure (The last day this situation follows our world) would be in the 1860s, if not earlier still. This by itself has profound ramifications:

Children are born from a combination of a mother's egg cell fertilized by a father's sperm. If that act happens in a slightly different way than OTL (Our Time Line), then that child is never born. Instead, a sibling of the same age is born instead.

Adolf Hitler, for example, was born in 1883. Just by the dice, there would be a 50% chance that there would be an Adelle Hitler instead, and that's ignoring the odds that the meeting between his parents actually happens either. Klara Hitler was all of 16 when she met Alois Hitler. Furthermore, Klara lost most of her children-if that is run fairly, Adolf has to beat long odds as well.

With a PoD in the 1860s, the world would consist entirely of random characters in by 1910. These characters would share grandparents with OTL people, but an Austrian Prostitute living in Munich has no chance of being elected Kanzler of Germany.

So the specifics have to be gutted. The National Socialist Party probably never forms; people we know as staples of history are never born: FDR, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin. That alone doesn't mean the world can't repeat its somewhat unlikely direction in the 1930s, but we then have to ask how the CSA would interplay with world events.

The CSA and USA aren't going to get along. Parts of the Confederate States have seceded from it, trying to join the Union (the Appalachians, for Example). The CSA claims Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, as well as any other portions of its territory it has to concede to get any kind of peace. Throw in Fugitive Slave Hunters abducting escaped slaves and hundred of thousands of vengeful soldiers and there will be no international reconciliation.

Furthermore, the CSA almost by definition is going to be a dictatorship. One third of its population is slaves and its policies were set by the narrow cliche of its planter elite. It may be a military dictatorship, run by people like Nathan Bedford Forrest; it definitely is unstable, a large armed camp that's already got a penchant for censorship and enslaving free blacks.

We can safely assume that the CSA is turning into a rather bleak place. Keeping slavery into 1950, or heck into the present day, may well be entirely possible--most confederate stories don't want the CSA to continue its likely movement into national dystopia, even though it turning into a giant armed camp to keep a third of its people in profitable forced labor would probably be a move in that direction.

The problem remains tying this all together. If the USA and CSA fight another war, the CSA will get bashed up very well; smashed to the point where it is either annexed back to the Union, or perhaps left as a vassal nation with forced emancipation. The Union and Confederacy would probably not participate in a WWI analog, which would likely pit them against each other.

Now we run to the point where the music stops. Hitler isn't born, his or her equal age sibling is instead. He or She is unlikely to survive childhood, poverty, and the WWI analog. The odds are something like 1:20 against.

Strong money is on Hitler not surviving.

And now there is a WWI analog with no US involvement; With the US out (and probably a full neutral, given how the UK and France would be instrumental in keeping the CSA alive), Germany probably WINS the WWI analog. The French economy collapses as the US refuses to make empty loans to France--that's what they get for propping up the Richmond Regime.

Germany's enthusiastic annexation of Luxembourg and the Baltic States is not the national grievance; nor are its Jewish minority, who clearly did not stab it in the back. And while France and Italy are moving into Fascist Territory and Russia has collapsed into warlords, no one cares about a homeless man spewing hatred. (To be fair, even fewer care about a single mother of two; as long as she gives those soldiers a good time).

Victorious, Monarchical Germany may indeed pursue an atomic bomb. With the National Socialist Movement never emerging, Albert Einstein is a well respected physicist in Germany itself; the power of such a device and it's importance in retaining control around the edges of enlarged Germany, still fragile Austria-Hungary and angry neighbors, a nuclear program may well begin, and may well bear fruit by 1950.

The Confederacy, now a twisted cross between Pakistan and North Korea owing to its prolonged dictatorship and abuse of its own citizens, is not a top tier scientific power. Nor is it on friendly terms with German MittelEuropa. It may develop nuclear weapons in the 1980s or so.

Oh, and did I mention: The German American relationship is quite strong, balancing a Anglo-Frence-Confederate relationship. If there is a WWII, it will feature Germany and a largely German United States teaming up against the Fascist/Slaveholding Entente.


Actually I think it is quite likely if England and France go to war with Germany in a WWI analogue it will ally with Germany. If the CSA is still independent it tries to grab it then while Europe is busy. If not it helps the Germans.
 
Actually I think it is quite likely if England and France go to war with Germany in a WWI analogue it will ally with Germany. If the CSA is still independent it tries to grab it then while Europe is busy. If not it helps the Germans.

I could certainly see that; that would lead to an Endgame of the CSA for sure, probably before OTL's 1914 outbreak.
 
Hey I don't think the OP specified it had to be stable or prosperous, just that it lasts into the 50's. Plenty of unpleasant regimes have staggered on far past the point where they reasonably should have gone under. And wouldn't the CSA have a lot of oil in their territory?

Yep. Can definitely see the same problem in DoD with the status quo. Slavery is still around as of 1953, but it's highly unlikely to be thriving anywhere at that point, even out east...in fact, at this point you might just need an ASB intervention to really reverse the decline(one hint as to why that might be, you ask? Refer to that one chapter with Oliver Bird and the cotton gin.).

(P.S. Jared, if you read this, watch your inbox. There will be a far greater explanation of my position soon enough.)
 
Yep. Can definitely see the same problem in DoD with the status quo. Slavery is still around as of 1953, but it's highly unlikely to be thriving anywhere at that point, even out east...in fact, at this point you might just need an ASB intervention to really reverse the decline(one hint as to why that might be, you ask? Refer to that one chapter with Oliver Bird and the cotton gin.).

(P.S. Jared, if you read this, watch your inbox. There will be a far greater explanation of my position soon enough.)

The irony is that by that point in time the USA might have to try and prop it up for fear of the whole place collapsing and anarchy spilling over the border.
 
The irony is that by that point in time the USA might have to try and prop it up for fear of the whole place collapsing and anarchy spilling over the border.

Some states certainly could try, particularly in the *East and South America, especially once Peru and Chile are no longer manageable. Though it goes without saying that there will have been at least some opposition to the system building for some time beforehand(Of course, it'd be somewhat miniscule at first. Remember, the Civil Rights Movement took some time to build up IOTL as well.), though the exact specifics remain to be worked out.

I have been working on a few contributions to DoD in recent months and most of it will be focused in the 1933-1953 era, before the start of 'The Fox and the Jackal', particularly in the Americas where there are many, many, opportunities to get things done. One of the key things to watch out for will be labor issues(something which seems to have been woefully neglected by most other contributors).
 
1) Civil war is even more devastating of US, resulting in hunger deaths galore in the South and (via some hectic raids), devastated industry in the North. Plausible? could be.

2) Some sort of truce is signed, and the split is a reality. That was a bit close, apparantly

4) North does not get back in shape for years

This is plausible for a peace by exhaustion.

3) CSA gets massive support to grow industry from the UK and from Germany (UK did support CSA due to the cotton for the Birmingham industries)

An independent CSA may butterfly away Germany as we know it. Ivestors from there and the UK will put their money where they think they can turn a profit. Odd are they'd invest more in the Union, if for no other
reason than it's bigger and has more investment opportunities.

5) Irish, Italian and Scandinavian emmigration go South, not North.

This is wildly unlikely. In 1860 there were more immigrants in New York than in all 11 states that would form the Confederacy.

Does this dramatically alter European developments leading up to 1914?

Not really. The political realisties of Balkan were still there. Russia was still problematic at best. Germany was not too concerned with US, so WWI could still have happened more or less as it did.

Many of the tension that lead to the Great War would still exist. OTOH, in a world with an independent Confederacy, Germany may not unify the way it did, and might not unify at all. Relations between Britain, France, and Germany could end up significantly different than in OTL.

What would have been the outcome of WWI? How decisive was the US involvement after all?

Standard American view is that their presence was essential. Standard British view was it made no significant difference. By 1917 the French Army had basically gone on strike and some had mutinied. The Russians collapsed into civil war. The Entente powers might have been able to win, but Britain would take another 300,000 to 400,000 casualties than they did in OTL.

Could the whole thing have ended in a stalemate in 1917/8/9 (after the Spanish flue as well)?

That's the most likely result without US intervention. It's still a possible result with US intervention.

Would WWI then still have been "unfinished business" where the underlying fault lines will still result in another war? Maybe not.

You wouldn't keep the same faultlines; we didn't in OTL. The question is which countries end up thinking anything is better than another war and which end up controlled by expansionist extremists.

So, let's butterfly away the WWII (not so likely after all), and have Germany allign itself with CSA together with the UK in 1920? Not so likely.

Who would like to get in bed with CSA in that world?

Countries ally because they believe it's to their advantage. In the 1920s, I'm not seeing anyone's advantage in allying with the CSA. OTOH, in the 1890s Germany (and as a longshot Italy) might ally with the CSA to get coaling bases in the Caribbean.
 
Still though. I think that if such a collected timeline is well written, the story would be epic and have all kinds of crunchy bits for every kind of reader out there.

Looking at published AHs, the public's standards on plausibility are a lot lower than on this forum.
 
Well who says the CSA wouldn't be a democracy? Sure there's big chunk of its population with no voting rights but that can be overlooked if they are a useful trading partner. Secondly with a ready supply of cheap labour and access to foreign markets there's no reason why the CSA couldn't be economically viable, heck maybe instead of outsourcing manufacturing to China and other parts of Asia it ends up in the CSA instead.

Of course the proviso is that the CSA remains as a single nation, frankly once the principle of states having a right to secede is established I think it will come apart eventually.

In a world where the British Empire apolished slavery in 1807 and the Southron AMerican continuance of slavery and the overseas slave trade was a prime cassus beli for the war of 1812, and the Union fights a war with thesouth over the issue of slavery, the victorious confederacy would be a pariah nation that has to import nearly EVERY kind of industrial goods.

Hardly a recipe for success.

The case of Naziism is even worse.
 
I haven't read any. Would you say the readers enjoy them, or collect them if there is a series of books? Or do the books go out of print soon after?

Mostly the Turldove books on a southron victory are read for morbid curiosity.

The books on Nazi victories are even less popular.

There is a book(s) I kine called "The Big One" that goes into deep detail about just how impossible it is for the Nazis to win World War II. It among other things goes into detail about the crippling enemic inefficiency of the Third Reich.
 
Mostly the Turldove books on a southron victory are read for morbid curiosity.

The books on Nazi victories are even less popular.

There is a book(s) I kine called "The Big One" that goes into deep detail about just how impossible it is for the Nazis to win World War II. It among other things goes into detail about the crippling enemic inefficiency of the Third Reich.

The book assumes that Hitler was in charge? A different leader would have had a better outcome for Germany I bet.
 
Hitler was only part of the problem. The ideology itself is founded on fundamentally flawed priniciples that run counter to the real world and how it works.

I dissagree. Hitler controlled everything and did not delegate. He also assigned two people to the same jobs so they would fight with each other instead of focusing on getting Hitler removed. Each guy would try to outdo the other to impress Hitler so they could get a better job. But Hitler had no intention of giving anyone a better job. If Hitler did promote someone, they would just get paired with someone else that was doing that job already.

But anyway, this standard of operation was a Hitler thing. Remove him, and the German organization would have run differently. Probably a lot smoother. Rome had Emperors that were deadly rulers and Emperors that were people persons. Rome ran swimmingly at times.

Oh, my poor thread got moved to the "Before 1900" forum.
 
In a world where the British Empire apolished slavery in 1807 and the Southron AMerican continuance of slavery and the overseas slave trade was a prime cassus beli for the war of 1812, and the Union fights a war with thesouth over the issue of slavery, the victorious confederacy would be a pariah nation that has to import nearly EVERY kind of industrial goods.

Hardly a recipe for success.

The case of Naziism is even worse.

Again I'm assuming they go down something like the South African Apartheid route, trying to at least put a veneer of respectability over their system, which may be easier if they move to industrialize in a cheap sweatshop sort of way. As for them being a pariah well that depends on how politically/economically useful they are.
 
Again I'm assuming they go down something like the South African Apartheid route, trying to at least put a veneer of respectability over their system, which may be easier if they move to industrialize in a cheap sweatshop sort of way. As for them being a pariah well that depends on how politically/economically useful they are.

A very similar thing happened in Decades of Darkness, btw. Jared noted slaves working in places like mines in Sonora, steel mills in Virginia, and even in a *car(read: Horst) factory in TTL's Birmingham[Pulaski]. And since Jared did a relatively decent job accomplishing this in a plausible manner in a *USA which isn't quite the cultural monolith that even the least dystopic plausible CSA would be, I don't see how slavery couldn't survive for a good while in an alternate C.S.A.
 
Again I'm assuming they go down something like the South African Apartheid route, trying to at least put a veneer of respectability over their system, which may be easier if they move to industrialize in a cheap sweatshop sort of way. As for them being a pariah well that depends on how politically/economically useful they are.

In out TL South Africa WAS a pariah nation specifically BECAUSE of apartheid.

The COnfederacy would never be more than a barely tolerated second world nation, and that is a generous estimate.
 
In out TL South Africa WAS a pariah nation specifically BECAUSE of apartheid.

The COnfederacy would never be more than a barely tolerated second world nation, and that is a generous estimate.

In my timeline, There are a hell of a lot of Democrats in the north (typical yankies, plus the Irish Democrats that beat blacks to death showing up from the south to find work). And a hell of a lot of Democrats in the south (the KKK and later the types that Republicans dragged kicking and screaming to sign a couple Civil Rights ammendments). But since Lincoln dies before writing his Gettysburg address, the Republican party soon becomes just a memory.

The northern Democrats don't really see a problem with slavery in the south because hardly any of them are abolishionists or have heard of the concept. The CSA eventually looks like North Korea. A huge wall is erected separating the USA and CSA.
 
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