Thoughts on the Gone Horribly Right map (Central Powers Victory) by MisterP?

Can be seen here. As with most of his maps on DA, @MisterP does a fantastic job building up the background from all angles.

The prequel, Central Powers victory is pretty conventional, though I do find it interesting that he describes a Soviet Union as indebted to Germany, and thus a pseudo-client state. Dunno who the Belkies are, though-

The Bolshies and Belkies could do what they wanted on their side of the border, and probably get guns 'n' training

Dug the idea of a German-approved Belarus-Ukraine "republican Intermarium", as well.

What I like about this CPV WWII map:
  • France is essentially intact after the Germany crushes the leftist revolutionaries. Sensibly instead of pressing them further, Germany forms an European Community mini-League of Nations. Having France as part of Mitteleuropa, rather just being an embittered hotbed of revanche, feels innovative to me.
  • Mussolini's Italy is the threat to peace, but is Balkanized happens anyway, under the EC’s aegis.
  • The big baddy ends up being a fascist Britain under Edward VIII and a mad dog Churchill that’s like, really frustrated that its ambitions were thwarted in the Weltkrieg. They don’t even get crushing war debts or made into a puppet like France, yet they want to start a new war. This characterization I have not see in alt-WWI very much. I know far right UK is an aggressor in Timeline-191, but they were at least egged into it by Featherston’s Confederacy and suddenly monarchist far right France.
  • Trotsky alive and well in control of the Soviet Union.
  • Germany mucking about spreading influence in Latin America.
  • 2nd Weltkrieg ends up being fascist Britain + post-Trotsky USSR vs. the Kaiserreich and their pet semi-fascist France. Also Britain teams up with Imperial Japan in China. I don't think I've ever seen those sides in an CPV WWII, at all.
  • France still ends up hating the hell out of Germany though, hah.
  • Concludes with a stalemate and ceasefire, colonialism intact, racism not discredited, and the U.S. still isolationist and not part of any Cold War.
His concluding comments:
thinking on this I may've created a reverse-Orwell: rather than James Burnham's three social-fascist bureaucratic systems increasingly coming to mirror one another through warfare, we got a bunch of democratish,
un-nationalisti, incorporation-happy systems converging; OTOH I have no idea of the postwar world's ideology or political structure (no Inevitable West European Parliament here!)

it's different from the other AHs lacking big, sweeping changes emerging from obscure cults and leaders: I seem to have barely mentioned real developments here

A Belle Époque that never ends... check it out!
 
As usual, people take the ripping-at-the-seams Austro-Hungarian Empire and see fit to add 4 to 7 million angry Italians to the mix. I don't know, that keeps looking like a Darwin Award in the making to me.
 
As usual, people take the ripping-at-the-seams Austro-Hungarian Empire and see fit to add 4 to 7 million angry Italians to the mix. I don't know, that keeps looking like a Darwin Award in the making to me.

You assume people are rational enough not to accept poisoned chalices if the alternative is to try and come up with an excuse to why you won't annex any more land. The social indignance in post-1905 Japan is a pretty good example of what happens when you don't (or can't) take enough rewards.
 

Anchises

Banned
The prequel, Central Powers victory is pretty conventional, though I do find it interesting that he describes a Soviet Union as indebted to Germany, and thus a pseudo-client state. Dunno who the Belkies are, though-

Dug the idea of a German-approved Belarus-Ukraine "republican Intermarium", as well.

Actually is similar to my ideas for my WW1 CP victory TL.

It all depends on how Germany wins WW1. If you have them somewhat exhausted but not on 1918 levels you can toss a coin if the Whites win or if you see a Soviet Union heavily dependent on Germany.

If the Soviet Union enters a "troubled partnership"/master-vasall relation with Berlin, it is very likely that Berlin woul made sure that there is a Cordon sanitaire of right-leaning authoritarian states in Eastern Europe.
 
Overall the tone seems a bit deterministic and guided by fitting the ATL into OTL with different hats. But I do like to see effort drawn in a post-war CP "victory" to shape the likely less familiar yet similar world. In my take the oddest outcome and the one I think feels most unfamiliar is a socially democratic Germany under a limited Monarch, feeling much more like the UK with a transition to post-industrial economics, balancing oil imports and global trade, playing second fiddle in the global finance system, etc. And next is a more right-wing France at odds with itself and the socialist undercurrent in the Republic, fiercely independent but too much the caricature of short Napoleon. But perhaps the weird one is a more tortured democratic-ish "White" Russian Republic more deeply in divide with soviet sympathy straining to achieve real reform in their minds, always flirting with autocracy and revanche or in mimic of OTL a surviving yet reduced Soviet Union bordered by nervous Nationalistic pro-democracies under the influence of a Realpolitik Germany. The SPD is the dominant single party yet always in coalition, sympathetic towards other socialist parties in power or hoping for power but keenly defending German interests, making sober deals with the enemies of her enemies. A blend of pre-war Europe and modern day messy, less ideology and more economics, military might is not the strict yardstick, market share, export balances, influence in resource states, good tariff relations, the mundane as a battle ground. And we can learn from these explorations, the issue of racism, colonization, eugenics, adoption of atomic weaponry, war in a multi-lateral world, less or no international community, no true dominant power, all expose things we take for granted, sometimes good, often bad. In my thinking I do try to find more bright spots on the path.
 
Interesting to learn about the riots in Argentina IOTL. It is however odd that that no mention is given to Canada or how try British are occupying all of Quebec outside of Ungava.
 

Deleted member 94680

I think many of his 'minor' changes are in fact ground-breakingly major and others make no sense at all without a pre-WWI POD.
 
Can be seen here. As with most of his maps on DA, @MisterP does a fantastic job building up the background from all angles.

  • The big baddy ends up being a fascist Britain under Edward VIII and a mad dog Churchill that’s like, really frustrated that its ambitions were thwarted in the Weltkrieg. They don’t even get crushing war debts or made into a puppet like France, yet they want to start a new war. This characterization I have not see in alt-WWI very much. I know far right UK is an aggressor in Timeline-191, but they were at least egged into it by Featherston’s Confederacy and suddenly monarchist far right France.
A Belle Époque that never ends... check it out!

I guess I question whether the UK would be as fertile for fascism as Germany, since there are a few things that lessen 'humiliation' stuff. It looks like the UK kept most of their colonies outside of Cairo, they (obviously, no one is crossing the channel on them) maintained the totality of their homeland boarders, and still have a ton of possible trading partners to keep the economy afloat.

Maybe this is ignorant of me, what incentive would the UK have to sign a crippling armistice, as opposed to just scaling back from the conflict. It's not like CP troops can just march into London. I'm interested in people's thoughts on if that line of thinking holds up.

Nonetheless, this is neat.
 
The issue with the USSR (Besides being lead by Trotsky.) is it would be serious weaken without the Ukraine. OTL, the Ukraine was an major industrial region of the Soviet Union ( Massive iron and coal mining industry.) and most of its weapon R&D was there. Without it, the USSR would not be able to risk war with Germany. (Even if Berlin mess up in Eastern Europe, they will fight tooth and nail against the Russians.)

Besides, this USSR would be bankrupting themselves with constant wars, and international sanctions.
 
yay, my first roast!

@Strategos's risk I think the Belle Époque’s quite dead, but perhaps a Central Victory TL is much less different from the shattering changes of OTL: France loses, Germany wins, a few million fewer schoolboys are ground into meat, the Modernist trends of the 10s keep going as they started; so there’s as much “bite” in the new artistic and cultural movements, but without the despair of a generation being cut off at the root

I have a soft spot for occult-fascist!France (think Isabel Perón’s Argentina) and the Imperial Federation (before Canada’s Hundred Days, but after Gallipoli), and nasty FR and UK (though at each other’s throats this time around)

@WeissRaben as long as the Austrians stay out of Milan and Genoa! but with a 1916-7 divergence “Italy” is really not as strong a uniting concept as it was after Vittorio Veneto—here it was some Piedmontese who’d overrun the peninsula 60 years ago, whose last king had been shot only in 1900

@MichaelWest after all it was Bismarck who was the first to apply Marx, evading a German revolution until OTL 1918

@Clandango Canada had a Conscription Crisis in 1917 as Quebecois were expected to melt away into a new Imperial identity; this returned in 1944 OTL with less political damage, but now Britain’s fighting France itself

@creighton TTL Churchill is trying to bring America in like what didn’t happen TTL’s WWI—note London’s not Blackshirt here, just spiraling into post-Churchill madness by isolation and two defeats

@historyman 14 I was never too keen on the Cold-War image of “St. Trotsky,” so here he’s still anticlerical and wants to spread the Revolution, but still quietly eased out; at least he’s not as BORING as Stalin!

I also wanted to get at how Hitler’s predecessor Schleicher was busy executing peace-treaty signatories on the word secret kangaroo courts, ruling by decree, total warfare under an army-state, pocket battleships and secret buildup, the careful dismantling of democracy, dishonorable discharge for any soldier not in the NSDAP, deposing the Prussian socdems; Hitler (a knockoff of Schönerer) just happened to be at the top of the pile of OTL’s process of secret recreation of the Heer by secretly funding the SA when Papen picked him
'
 
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I was never too keen on the Cold-War image of “St. Trotsky,” so here he’s still anticlerical and wants to spread the Revolution, but still quietly eased out; at least he’s not as BORING as Stalin!

Your map is very interesting and well-thought out, but I think what @Historyman 14 was getting at as far as the Trotsky critique was that despite the popular misconception, Trotsky was very unlikely to come out on top of the Bolshevik leadership for a large number of reasons - some due to his abrasive personality, some due to political clique-forming, etc. @Greg Grant had a great explanation for why this was in the Make Trotsky Defeat Stalin thread:

The trouble with Trotsky's bid for leadership is that he looked too much a natural for it, and that made very many small men seek to topple him. What's that old saying about conclaves? "He who enters the conclave as pope, leaves it as a cardinal." Trotsky was an egotist and pompous, but ladies and gentlemen of AH.com (do we have an informal name by the way? AHers?), any man who creates the Red Army has to feel like he can have a victory lap or twelve. I am not talking about the sheer military dimension either, I'm talking the nuts and bolts of organization and support.

I once had to organize the travel and support for my little niece's football (soccer) team. It went off without a hitch and I felt like I should have been given a medal by the end of it. I cannot even begin to imagine what must go through the mind of a man who cobbled together the Red Army and watch it roll back (almost) every foe. But I can easily imagine what went through his head when he then had to enter into a dreary Party meeting where some git who increased production of ladies' shoes in Novgorod by 200% is looking for applause and support from his fellow Party colleagues and is looking at you to acknowledge his deeds. The look of "are you f'ing kidding me?" had to be imprinted on Trotsky's face when his deeds were being listed alongside that of a parade of goofs whose claim to Party legitimacy lay in their ability to smuggle Lenin's speeches across borders in their underwear. Of course he had an ego! How could he not? Of course he disdained the mundane. How could he not? And of course he was resented for it.

The military thing also bred the other factor. Remember, we're talking about men who studied history as obsessively as members of this Board (we seriously need a shorthand name for us, by the way). They memorized every detail of the French Revolution and there was no way they were not sizing up Trotsky as the next Napoleon as soon as his successes started rolling. And here comes unassuming Stalin who can't speak well and whose military exploits are not much to write home about (at the time, the retcon came later). If you were an Old Bolshevik and were marginally okay feeling inadequate standing next to Lenin (mainly because Lenin went out of his way to be a dick at times as well), you were probably not okay being made to feel inadequate standing next to Trotsky and were anxious to believe every bad rumor about him.

Then there was the Jewish thing. Regardless of whether it was true or not, Trotsky was thought of as being Jewish and Russia gave us the word "pogrom," so... All it would take is for some goon to whisper after a Trotsky speech in the lobby outside to folks on the fence, "He's not one of us, is he? I mean, just saying. You know what those people are like. Right? Just saying, that's all."

I like the idea that some suggested that with Lenin dead and the Party in need of military and organizational skills, they would turn to Trotsky to drag him out of the morass and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. But Trotsky while capable of winning the war was very much wired to lose the peace.

That being said, the sheer insanity of a Trotsky lead Soviet Union would have been an amazing technicolor show with peaks and valleys as opposed to the King bummer ride of Stalin's Soviet Union.


Might I suggest the capable and cunning Zinoviev or the ever-popular-with-the-party Bukharin in place of the red general Trotsky for your General Secretary?
 
yeah, I think I was focused more on "competent Hitler-free Germany" under a Schleicher type, and the two-way effects of an Anglo-Japanese alliance
 
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