The World Wars Paradigm

When do you think it's reasonable to have two World Wars similar to OTL?


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Thande

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A lot of timelines, even those with a fairly early POD, seem to have a paradigm similar to OTL - two devastating world wars separated by about a generation (~20-25 years).

Now, what do people think of this? Is it realistic, even inevitable? If a long period of peace between superpowers precedes a war using new weapons and methods of industrialised warfare, will it ultimately lead to a bitter slaughter, therefore a heavily penalised peace treaty upon the losers, and so a war of revenge a couple of decades later?

Or do you think it's a ridiculous projection of OTL on ATLs?

Discuss.
 
I think that, to an extent, the main reason that the European powers didn't come to blows sooner was because of the arena of colonial expansion. As soon as all potential colonial territories had been discovered and exploited, it is my belief that the somewhat fragile balance of power would have begun to be strained, no matter what happened.

That said, I think that whilst one major European-centred war was probably inevitable with any POD from the early C19th onwards, I don't that that having two world wars was by any means inevitable until probably the early to mid 1930s.
 
well, most large wars have been avoidable, but sooner or later "luck" runs out.

The first world war was surely avoidable, but do you really believe that we would have had a long peace since then?

Another approach would be to consider whether war was not "overdue" by 1914, and that there should be something big by the 1890s?

There is an interpretation that the Great Power system, and the internal politics of the Great Powers, were getting more unstable since the 1870s. (This interpretation focusses on internal collapse as a reason for the defeat of the Central Powers.)

No conclusions: just wandering thoughts.
 
I don't think it is ridiculous, but in many cases it is not warranted.

While I do think that at least one World War is inevitable, the outcome could very well be the total victory of one party, leaving the losers virtually impotent to do anything about the crippling peace. This would, on the other hand, almost inevitably lead to terrorism (unless the peace involves genocide).
In the same note, a war without victors is also not that unlikely an outcome, especially if the World War was an escalation that noone anticipated (think of the 1914 Christmas events on OTL's western front). The most problematic is a whishy washy peace, like OTL's Versailles.

That said, it hinges pretty much on the who and why.
 
Kabraloth said:
I don't think it is ridiculous, but in many cases it is not warranted.

While I do think that at least one World War is inevitable, the outcome could very well be the total victory of one party, leaving the losers virtually impotent to do anything about the crippling peace. This would, on the other hand, almost inevitably lead to terrorism (unless the peace involves genocide).
In the same note, a war without victors is also not that unlikely an outcome, especially if the World War was an escalation that noone anticipated (think of the 1914 Christmas events on OTL's western front). The most problematic is a whishy washy peace, like OTL's Versailles.

That said, it hinges pretty much on the who and why.

Arguably the first world war does not have enough victors, and certainly not enough victors to enforce the peace - although if Tsarist Russia survived it would have done.

but then peace is not enforced in the 30s due to British policy errors - not staying close to Japan, not crushing Italy post Abyssinia and inappropriate appeasement of Germany.
 
I agree: there weren't enough victors left to call them victors (maybe except for the USA, which in itself was a problem - a victor that simply does not care after Wilson left the office), but the peace was one that should have come after a crushing victory (and even then, it would have been absurd in certain parts, like the Polish corridor, imho).

I wouldn't call the appeasement to Germany inappropriate (disclaimer: I'm German), but it came ten years too late.
 
Kabraloth said:
I agree: there weren't enough victors left to call them victors (maybe except for the USA, which in itself was a problem - a victor that simply does not care after Wilson left the office), but the peace was one that should have come after a crushing victory (and even then, it would have been absurd in certain parts, like the Polish corridor, imho).

I wouldn't call the appeasement to Germany inappropriate (disclaimer: I'm German), but it came ten years too late.

Personally I do not believe that Versailled was "too harsh": if anything it was too lenient, compared for instance to 1945 or to Brest-Litovsk.

Nor was Germany in a position to resist what happened to it: as the 1923 occupation showed.
 
It was in my opinion too harsh for a war that had no clear victor. Had the French/British/US-american armies entered Berlin for victory celebrations after slugging their way through the German cities, with the German army revolting, it would not have seemed too harsh (except for the "cut through Germany's heart").

1945 was different, if anything because of the Holocaust and because Germany clearly started WW II and was even more clearly defeated.

Brest-Litovsk is also different: during the first round of seperate peace with Adolf Joffe, where Russia was in a comparable situation to postwar Germany, the Germans wanted the seperation of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. During the second round with Trotzki, who seemed to have used the peace talks to propagate communist propaganda (when Sovjet Russia was almost collapsing), they were a clear loser.

Edit: And then, the peace of Brest-Litovsk was (ironically) closer to the wet dreams of happy nationstates that Wilson had than Versailles was. And it had no war guilt clause, afaik.
 
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Kabraloth said:
It was in my opinion too harsh for a war that had no clear victor. Had the French/British/US-american armies entered Berlin for victory celebrations after slugging their way through the German cities, with the German army revolting, it would not have seemed too harsh (except for the "cut through Germany's heart").

1945 was different, if anything because of the Holocaust and because Germany clearly started WW II and was even more clearly defeated.

Brest-Litovsk is also different: during the first round of seperate peace with Adolf Joffe, where Russia was in a comparable situation to postwar Germany, the Germans wanted the seperation of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. During the second round with Trotzki, who seemed to have used the peace talks to propagate communist propaganda (when Sovjet Russia was almost collapsing), they were a clear loser.

The lack of clear victor goes right back to the stab in the back question.

It is more accurate to say that the war did not appear to be lost for the Germans. This was bound to bring resentment.

It blatantly was of course, or the Germans would have re-started fighting when presented with the Versailles terms - an option that was considered and instantly rejected.
 
Not never, if there is a good reason then it'd be too much of a anti-projection of OTL to not have them.
More towards that though.
 
Personally I view WW1 and WW2 as one war with a 20 year break in the middle. Germany was the biggest power in Europe (ignoring Empires), however pre-1914 it hadn't got its chance to lead and was deemed inferior to the UK and France, and it wanted its time in the sun.
60 million dead people later the Germans got the message the rest of Europe didn't want to be ruled by Germany.
 
Very interesting question!

It's always struck me that, particularly once you have a level of technology such that fighting totally engulfs civilian life, wars tend to breed wars.

The balance to that is that occasionally, technology provides us with a situation so terrifying and/or disgusting that full-scale war becomes inconceivable.

So a First World War analogue that causes so much devastation to ordinary citizens and leaves so many scars, but does not end with a holocaust/nuclear threat balance, will I think tend to be followed by a Second World War.
 
I think it's plausible if the POD is within the past 400 years or so.

Or you can have the two world wars at 1900 and 1925, or 1815 and 1840, with a more advanced tech level.
 
I think it's plausible if the POD is within the past 400 years or so.

Or you can have the two world wars at 1900 and 1925, or 1815 and 1840, with a more advanced tech level.
 
I wouldn't say two wars are inevitable. The second war came about because the peace treaty that settled the first was never going to last and the economic collapse that occured combined with the massively ramping increases in military technology enabled Germany to launch a second challenge with an almost negligiable disadvantage from the first. The fact that the allies fell apart almost as soon as the spoils had to be counted, Russia was rendered a new and unknownable opponent to European stability and other chaos makes the situation somewhat unique.

But it all depends on why you think WW1 was waged. If you take the (flawed in my oppinion) view that states just slid into war and they could have avoided it by a few clever bits of diplomacy, then I guess a war isn't inevitable. In theory diplomats could keep a lid on everything.

If on the otherhand you take the view that Germany exploited the situation with an eye to eliminating rising Russian power in the future then things are not nearly so bright. A reasonable comparrison with the USA/China could be made, except ofcourse that the USA is far more powerful relative to China today than Germany to Russia in the early 20th century. In a few generations however the balance may be more even... and if leaders in the USA do not wish to lose the position at the top of the pile quietly then war is likely if not inevitable.
 
Aracnid said:
Personally I view WW1 and WW2 as one war with a 20 year break in the middle. Germany was the biggest power in Europe (ignoring Empires), however pre-1914 it hadn't got its chance to lead and was deemed inferior to the UK and France, and it wanted its time in the sun.
60 million dead people later the Germans got the message the rest of Europe didn't want to be ruled by Germany.

I agree it should be seen as one war, just as we view the Peloponnesian War, with a peace in between.

The two original sides fought themselves to exhaustion and the loser climbed back from the depths sooner than the victors. Once it had done so the burning desire for revenge manifested itself in a renewal of hostilities. We tend to view the two conflicts as separate because the latter was a war of ideologies more than the first. Yet the basic instincts for conflict were the same - the desire for the domination of Europe by Germany and the elimination of Russia as threat by Germany.
 
In my timeline where the Muslims wound basically taking over Europe in the 1400's, I have one major war that happens in the early 20th century. It's a big one, a little worse than WWI in our timeline. But it's also the ONLY really major war. I don't have a WWII.
 
Argument

An argument could be made that the wars between the UK and France could be considered to be world wars. Esp. the Napoleonic era. After all, the Napoleonic Wars saw fighting in the Caribean, Europe, Africa, and the Far East. Ditto for the war which we in the US call the French and Indian War. If they could be considered to be world wars then if you consider the AR in there also, there were 3 world wars in a timespan of 50-60 years.
 
Bulldawg85 said:
An argument could be made that the wars between the UK and France could be considered to be world wars. Esp. the Napoleonic era. After all, the Napoleonic Wars saw fighting in the Caribean, Europe, Africa, and the Far East. Ditto for the war which we in the US call the French and Indian War. If they could be considered to be world wars then if you consider the AR in there also, there were 3 world wars in a timespan of 50-60 years.
Many make that argument in fact. I think Churchill did. I think the war of Spanish succession or something around that time also falls under the category.
 
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