The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL

I think i'll wear myself out thinking of all the things in life that fall under that category.

Fair enough. But Turkish nationalism seems really, really poisonous.

Turkish politician: Should we tolerate these non-Turkic people and build a multiethnic identity upon the values of inter-ethnic unity?

Turkish general: Nah, lets kill them all, steal their shit, and say they were revolting.

Turkish politician: Well, that's what happens when you don't shower.

General and politician: HA HA HA HA HA HA!
 
This is why the implementation of the Treaty of Sevres, as harsh it was to Turkey, would have probably been a "blessing in disguise" in the long run.

Yeah. It is why you not only need to punish genocide, but you need to punish people who deny it.

Not punishing Turkey has only rewarded their extremely horrible form of nationalism. Rojava seems to be the next thing on the chopping block.
 
This is why the implementation of the Treaty of Sevres, as harsh it was to Turkey, would have probably been a "blessing in disguise" in the long run.
Yeah. It is why you not only need to punish genocide, but you need to punish people who deny it.

Not punishing Turkey has only rewarded their extremely horrible form of nationalism. Rojava seems to be the next thing on the chopping block.

I do not agree, though this is probably because I would not have even been born.

You believe Sevres would have solved everything? I would ask that to you consider Versailles and the millions of death it brought when saying that. WW2 happened for a reason and if I know my people well (which I do) you would only be adding another front to it, and millions of deaths on top of it to boot with all the other shit that would follow. Believe it or not, this iteration of the Turkish people is the best you're ever gonna get, and I know that's horrible, but there's no other better way unless you plan to go back centuries.
 
I do not agree, though this is probably because I would not have even been born.

You believe Sevres would have solved everything? I would ask that to you consider Versailles and the millions of death it brought when saying that. WW2 happened for a reason and if I know my people well (which I do) you would only be adding another front to it, and millions of deaths on top of it to boot with all the other shit that would follow. Believe it or not, this iteration of the Turkish people is the best you're ever gonna get, and I know that's horrible, but there's no other better way unless you plan to go back centuries.

Uh...

Let me put it this way:

The path from Versailles to Auschwitz was not something ANY SANE PERSON could've foreseen. In 1919, Hitler was nothing more than a low level spook, and the ultranationalism had not really coalesced.

The people who wrote Versailles were old school imperialists living according to the rules that they had grown up under. They did not have crystal balls that allowed them to foresee the war that would bring human civilization itself to the precipice.

I can't foresee how the Treaty of Sevres could've backfired. But...letting the Young Turks get away with their crimes and keep the shit they took from Armenia was something that shouldn't have ever been allowed to occur. If Turkish Hitler rose to power over that and chose to start a genocidal war over that, that's on him.
 
Uh...

Let me put it this way:

The path from Versailles to Auschwitz was not something ANY SANE PERSON could've foreseen. In 1919, Hitler was nothing more than a low level spook, and the ultranationalism had not really coalesced.

The people who wrote Versailles were old school imperialists living according to the rules that they had grown up under. They did not have crystal balls that allowed them to foresee the war that would bring human civilization itself to the precipice.

I can't foresee how the Treaty of Sevres could've backfired. But...letting the Young Turks get away with their crimes and keep the shit they took from Armenia was something that shouldn't have ever been allowed to occur. If Turkish Hitler rose to power over that and chose to start a genocidal war over that, that's on him.

That you are still wishing it happened despite having the benefit of hindsight with what happened as a result of Versailles baffles me.
 
That you are still wishing it happened despite having the benefit of hindsight with what happened as a result of Versailles baffles me.

My simple response is this: Versailles did not lead to the invasion of Poland. That was the brainchild of a twitchy madman sitting in power in Germany.

If a Turkish despot chose to invade Armenia and start another genocide over an unfair treaty, that would be his own fucking fault.

As shitty as a lot of the World War I treaties were, wars of extermination are ultimately the fault of those who wage them.
 
My simple response is this: Versailles did not lead to the invasion of Poland. That was the brainchild of a twitchy madman sitting in power in Germany.

If a Turkish despot chose to invade Armenia and start another genocide over an unfair treaty, that would be his own fucking fault.

As shitty as a lot of the World War I treaties were, wars of extermination are ultimately the fault of those who wage them.

Look, what I'm trying to say is every treaty the Entente could force on the losers of World War 2 resulted in them going to war again because revanchism is a bad thing.

I'm not excusing Turkish Nationalism here, seeing as I'm actually there to witness the harm it's done to my country. I'm trying to get you to accept that Entente Imperialism was just as responsible for causing WW2 as Hitler's actions were, because they created the environment for him to rise to power, they created the allies that would join him in this war and perpetrate his slaughter.

Turkey would not have just felt revanchism against the Armenians, they would have felt it against Arabs, Greeks, Georgians etc. They would not be merciful against these people that would just happen to be their enemy if they join the Germans...

Like it or not, what happened IOTL was the best deal you are going to get in regards to Turkey, wishing otherwise would only mean you're willing to see more people die in an already horrible war just to see us punished.
 
Yeah. It is why you not only need to punish genocide, but you need to punish people who deny it.

Not punishing Turkey has only rewarded their extremely horrible form of nationalism. Rojava seems to be the next thing on the chopping block.

I'm not sure exactly how a treaty that was deliberately designed to prevent Turkey from functioning as anything other then a vassal state of the West (see the European economic zones that occupied the entire coastline) is supposed to prevent Turkish nationalism, or lead to any mass acceptance among the Turkish population of the Armenian genocide having occurred. That the treaty proved impossible to enforce only two years after it was first signed also doesn't really point to it leading to any sort of long term stability in the region. But I do agree with you that the notion of Turkish Hitler is ridiculous. How an overwhelmingly traditionalist economic backwater rump state (which Sevres Turkey would have been) is supposed to elect fascists and then magically overrun huge swathes of the Middle East is anyone's guess.

Though I do question why we are debating the right to existence of an entire nation over a (thankfully) fictional genocide carried out by ultranationalist fascists (which the west also had at this point in time).
 
I'm not sure exactly how a treaty that was deliberately designed to prevent Turkey from functioning as anything other then a vassal state of the West (see the European economic zones that occupied the entire coastline) is supposed to prevent Turkish nationalism, or lead to any mass acceptance among the Turkish population of the Armenian genocide having occurred. That the treaty proved impossible to enforce only two years after it was first signed also doesn't really point to it leading to any sort of long term stability in the region. But I do agree with you that the notion of Turkish Hitler is ridiculous. How an overwhelmingly traditionalist economic backwater rump state (which Sevres Turkey would have been) is supposed to elect fascists and then magically overrun huge swathes of the Middle East is anyone's guess.

Though I do question why we are debating the right to existence of an entire nation over a (thankfully) fictional genocide carried out by ultranationalist fascists (which the west also had at this point in time).
Indeed. While the Modern Middle East isn't my specialty I really don't think Turkish industrial capacity would be enough to support a modern war after the disaster of Sevres.
 
Indeed. While the Modern Middle East isn't my specialty I really don't think Turkish industrial capacity would be enough to support a modern war after the disaster of Sevres.
That's another thing.
The focus in discussions like these is always on the "harshness" of Versailles. But it's obvious from OTL that however harsh the fiscal terms were, materially speaking, Germany was left in good enough shape to fight another war. There was no partition, no major occupation, barely a minor occupation. Beyond a some trading of territories with France and Poland, they were left largely intact.

Their army was disbanded, but not technically unarmed. If that were the case, there'd have been no Freikorps.
The political leadership (besides the Kaiser, anyway) was still largely in the hands of the same people. The SPD was far more competitive post-war, but one only has to look to the rise of the NSDAP to see how much pull the traditional junkers and conservatives still had on Germany.

Versailles drained Germany dry and put its economy on broken stilts, but it didn't butcher it. The country was just allowed to fester in its own social excesses while being allowed every opportunity to rebuild its powerbase.

Political independence was maintained, economic independence was maintained, social independence was maintained.

The treaty of Sevres, if even half of it was maintained goes a lot further than Versailles.

I'll butt out on whether that's bad or good, cause I know jack about Turkey.
 
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I'm not sure exactly how a treaty that was deliberately designed to prevent Turkey from functioning as anything other then a vassal state of the West (see the European economic zones that occupied the entire coastline) is supposed to prevent Turkish nationalism, or lead to any mass acceptance among the Turkish population of the Armenian genocide having occurred. That the treaty proved impossible to enforce only two years after it was first signed also doesn't really point to it leading to any sort of long term stability in the region. But I do agree with you that the notion of Turkish Hitler is ridiculous. How an overwhelmingly traditionalist economic backwater rump state (which Sevres Turkey would have been) is supposed to elect fascists and then magically overrun huge swathes of the Middle East is anyone's guess.

Though I do question why we are debating the right to existence of an entire nation over a (thankfully) fictional genocide carried out by ultranationalist fascists (which the west also had at this point in time).

I'm not debating the existence of a nation. I am pointing out that Turkey can only do these things because its leaders were never punished for the mass murder of Armenians.

Obviously, the Entente had less than selfless reasons for occupying Turkey. But, they did promise to punish the people who murdered the Armenians.
 
Is West Berlin a thing because in chapter 13 because it mentions that Russel continued the Berlin Airlift as in otl with Truman? I figured that West Berlin butterflied away with the dismemberment of Germany and the Vienna Airlift with Wallace.
 
Is West Berlin a thing because in chapter 13 because it mentions that Russel continued the Berlin Airlift as in otl with Truman? I figured that West Berlin butterflied away with the dismemberment of Germany and the Vienna Airlift with Wallace.

Whoops, my mistake. Thanks so much for catching it!
 
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