TL-191: After the End
- Thread starter David bar Elias
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In 2021, the Italian Empire is one of the major powers of the European Community. The Italian Empire includes the Dodecanese Islands, as well as the territories of OTL Libya, Tunisia, Djibouti, and Eritrea. The Italians withdrew from most of the territory that makes up OTL Somalia (in TTL, the Somali Republic), but still controls OTL Somaliland and Puntland. Full legal rights for all residents of the empire, regardless of religion or nationality, were implemented by the Italian government in the 1970s.
Italy was never ruled by the Fascists in TTL, and remained neutral in both Great Wars. With the discovery of huge oil reserves in North Africa, the Italian Empire became one of the world’s major petroleum exporters.
The Italian Empire, while never interested in directly challenging the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire for leadership of the European Community, was never a close ally of the Central Powers (like the Netherlands, or Norway, or the various kingdoms of East Central Europe). In 2021, some Italian policymakers wonder at the possibility of one day forging a unified allied bloc within the European Community, with countries such as Spain, the Portuguese Federation, and the closely allied and interlinked United Kingdom and France, to undermine the power of the old Central Powers (all in the name of forging European unity, of course). It goes without saying that the Austro-Hungarians and Germans are vehemently opposed to a hypothetical Western bloc forming within the EC, as remote a possibility as that may be in 2021.
Are most countries in the world either democratic to a degree or basically constitutional monarchies? Would you say the fact that so many major powers are democratic or constitutional monarchies and allies in one way or another has mostly prevented war among the great powers?
Yes. In 2021, choosing which branch of the military to serve in, or else what kind of national service to enroll with, is an integral part of the high school experience.
There is also competition between the different branches of the US military for the most promising potential recruits.
In 2021, most countries in the world are either republics or constitutional monarchies, although some countries have more authoritarian elements than others.
Unfortunately, in TTL, war between the great powers is not unknown, even after the end of the SGW: the Fourth Pacific War between the USA and the Japanese Empire, the Tibetan War between Bharat and China, the Russo-Kazakh War involving conflict between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and the Kashmir War between Bharat and the Ottoman Empire.
The prospect of a major war between one or multiple great powers diminishes somewhat in TTL’s 2020s, with the proliferation of superbombs and the relative rise in prestige of the International Security Council.
The USA in TTL did not implement forced civilian transfers from restive areas of the former CSA. I did imagine that large numbers of former Confederate civilians who refused to accept US would ultimately leave the former CSA during the first postwar generation, with the vast majority leaving for the Republic of Texas.
Isaac Asimov doesn’t exist in TTL. However, the Asimov family still emigrated to the United States. In TTL, the Asimov family included small business owners, mathematicians, engineers, and scientists. In 2021, one member of the family, Doctor Leah Asimov, is among the scientists and engineers employed by the new Department of Applied Mechanics of the US Defense Department’s Bureau of Scientific Research. The Department of Applied Mechanics is currently focused on bringing about the world’s first true artificial intelligence (before the Austro-Hungarians and Germans do so).
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TTL’s analogue to Ray Bradbury was Douglas Bradbury, who was born on a slightly different date than in our world. He was drafted into the US Army at the beginning of the Second Great War, and was among those killed in Ohio during the initial US retreat from the Confederate onslaught.
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TTL’s analogue to William Seward Burroughs was born on a slightly different date. At the beginning of the SGW, Burroughs, a Harvard graduate, enlisted in the US Navy, where he would eventually see action in the Atlantic against the Royal Navy, as well as at Bermuda. After the end of the war, he returned to Harvard, and later studied in the Austro-Hungarian Empire for a doctorate in anthropology. He never became a writer.
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TTL’s analogue to Edgar Rice Burroughs succeeded in getting into West Point, in contrast to his counterpart from our world. Although he successfully graduated from the academy, underlying health problems prevented Burroughs from active service. He served as an instructor at a West Point until the outbreak of the FGW in 1914, when he was invited to serve within the War Department. During the FGW, Burroughs served on serval joint military-civilian boards that were responsible for overseeing the wartime system of rationing. Burroughs remained at the War Department until 1921, when he was among those forced into retirement by the Sinclair administration. Burroughs worked in a variety of civilian jobs for the rest of his life, but never became a popular writer.
Not at the moment. I may post a 2010s entry down the line, but I have no immediate plans to do so.
As IOTL, the family of Hugo Gernsback immigrated to the United States from Luxembourg. Gernsback’s career in TTL was centered in the emerging technology surrounding radio (interrupted during the FGW by a stint with a special unit attached to the US Army Corps of Engineers which specialized in electrical engineering and wireless communications). After the end of the FGW, Gernsback found a steady career in the budding commercial radio market centered in New York City, as a technical specialist. During the SGW, Gernsback served on the Committee of Cooperation, a New York City-based organization focused on mobilizing the civilian electronics industry for the war effort. Gernsback retired after the end of the SGW. He never became a writer or publisher.
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Robert Heinlein’s analogue in TTL was Anson Heinlein, who was born on a different date. Anson Heinlein attended the US Naval Academy, and subsequently joined the US Navy. During the SGW, Anson Heinlein served in combat against both the British and the Confederates, and participated in the successful US naval operations to recapture Bermuda, the Bahamas, and to liberate Haiti. After the end of the SGW, Heinlein, due to his fluency in German, was invited to join the staff of the new US Naval Attaché to the German Empire. Heinlein, after completing an advanced program at the Naval Academy designed for career officers, began a new phase of his career in the Navy Department, where he was involved in the strategic planning for potentially confronting the Japanese Empire. Heinlein’s service in the Navy Department continued until the end of the Fourth Pacific War, when he retired. After a life either at war or planning for war, Anson Heinlein wound up adopting a radically different lifestyle, deciding to dedicate himself to traveling. Heinlein, in the 1970s, wound up imitating some of the youthful adherents to 1970s Nihilist thought and counterculture, at least when it came to seemingly endless and aimless wandering. However, Heinlein never embraced modern Nihilism (either in its American or European variants). By the 1980s, Heinlein had settled down in Baja California, where he died in 1989. He never became a writer.
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The analogue to Robert E. Howard in TTL was Ervin Howard, who was born on a slightly different date. He came of age during the FGW, the Confederate defeat, and the rise of a new rage-filled politics in the form groups such as Freedom Party and the Tin Hats.
Howard’s family, never well-off, were never supporters of the Whig Party. Howard himself, while not free of the societal prejudices of his time and place, developed a political worldview, such as it was, that was closer to Reggie Bartlett than to that of Jake Featherston. Howard’s dislike of the Freedom Party, and loathing of Featherston, was reinforced by years of street fighting throughout central Texas with Freedom Party Stalwarts. After Featherston took power, Ervin Howard’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. He was arrested not long after Featherston took office, as part of an early crackdown in Texas that targeted known foes of the Freedom Party.
Howard’s early years of imprisonment were not dramatically different in comparison to the conditions faced by a pre-Freedom Party convict. Howard worked throughout Texas on a string of chain gangs. Howard, during this time, dreamed only of escaping captivity and the CSA but never got the chance to put any number of plans into action. In 1937, Howard was among the first groups of political prisoners transferred to a newly built camp in the Texas Hill Country. This camp, known by many of its inmates as “Camp Hopelesswas intended specifically for known political opponents of the Freedom Party. Conditions were far worse than even the meanest chain gang, and it was not long before prisoners began to die from malnourishment and harsh treatment from the guards. Ervin Howard managed to survive until the summer of 1940, when he died while on forced labor detail.
Howard’s story would be retold thanks to the postwar research of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who managed to interview those few who had survived the camp built in his own Hill Country. Howard’s full life story, pieced together by Johnson from other sources, would eventually be included in Lone Star State, the history published by the Remembrance Center in the 1970s on Freedom Party-ruled Texas.
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L. Ron Hubbard’s analogue in TTL was Ronald Hubbard, who was born on a slightly different date. Health problems prevented Hubbard from enlisting in any branch of the US military. Studying civil engineering in university, Hubbard worked in an arms manufacturing plant in Los Angeles during the SGW. After the end of the war, Hubbard found new work in the rapidly growing aerospace industry in Southern California, where he continued his career (interrupted by the mass flight of civilians into the interior immediately before the Fourth Pacific War). Hubbard retired after the end of the Fourth Pacific War. He died in 1992. Hubbard never became a writer. There is no analogue in TTL to Scientology.
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The analogue to HP Lovecraft in TTL was Philip Lovecraft, born on a slightly different date. Philip Lovecraft had an active interest in any number of subjects, especially astronomy. Unfortunately, suffered a nervous breakdown at the end of high school, and was subsequently institutionalized. Lovecraft spent the rest of his life in asylums located across New England.
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Philip Francis Nowlan’s analogue in TTL was Francis Nowlan, who was born on a slightly different date. Nowlan came of age as the USA embraced the Remembrance ideology, Nowlan embraced this worldview, and would later join a Philadelphia-based chapter of the Soldiers’ Circle. He was zealously supportive of the Democratic Party. Nowlan served on the Roanoke Front on the FGW as a war correspondent, and did not allow the actual conditions of the battlefield to greatly alter his political views. Nowlan worked as a newspaper writer and editor after the end of the FGW, but never created a comic strip.
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Kurt Vonnegut doesn’t exist in TTL.
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Theodore Sturgeon’s analogue in TTL was Hamilton Waldo, who was born on a different date. Waldo enlisted in the US Army in 1940, as a means of employment. He was ultimately among those deployed to the front in northern Virginia, where he was killed in the disastrous US attack on Fredericksburg.
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L. Sprague de Camp’s analogue was Lyon de Camp, who was born on a different date. He focused on science and mathematics in school, and eventually became an engineer. Lyon de Camp took an interest in aircraft design, and was an enthusiast at the possibilities of jet technology, and was ultimately among those attached to the Screaming Eagle project. After the end of the SGW, de Camp enjoyed a long and successful career in the aerospace industry in southern California. He never became a writer.
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The analogue to Alexei Tolstoy in TTL was an enthusiastic supporter of the anti-Communist forces in the First Russian Civil War, and later of the Romanov dynasty and of the Entente. Tolstoy worked as a pro-government journalist for the rest of his life. He was killed in the German superbombing of Petrograd at the end of the SGW.
With no Fascist Italy to invade them and no communist civil war of IOTL, how's Ethiopia and their monarchy holding up ITTL? Are they more industrialized and have a better standard of living? I know there's still disputes over the headwaters of the Nile with the Millennium dam as IOTL. How's the ethnic composition of the Empire holding? Are there regional and minority rights granted to the various peoples of Ethiopia?
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What would you say caused Lyndon Johnson to be so horrified by what the Freedom party did compared to the indifference or covert approval of most Texans?
Not sure if this has already been discussed, but what are geographic regions named in the US, considering the confederacy was independent for 80 years and the US now controls Canada (ie. Northeast, southwest, Midwest, etc.)?
Also, what’s the status of the Bush family ITTL?
Also, what’s the status of the Bush family ITTL?
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One thing for sure is that TLL's Bush family isn't the same considering they had partial Southern origins. That and George Herbert Walker and family moves down south from Missouri and eventually becomes C.S. Secretary of State.
Speaking of G.H. Walker, what is his fate ITTL? He wasn't a big figure in Featherston's inner circle, but willfully served when needed. Is he tried and sentenced for crimes against peace and conspiracy thereof at the very least? He also oversaw the recruitment of Imperial Mexican divisions to the CSA for use in security warfare and camp guards at Featherston's insistence, thereby helping to perpetuate the Destruction at home in some capacity. It's also speculated in these threads that the Dominican Republic under Rafael Trujillo would join the war on the side of the CSA in helping to invade Haiti and exterminate their population. In your head cannon, does that happen as well? If so, Walker would most definitely be on trial just for that. Of note: the wikia doesn't recognize G.H. Walker for TL-191 as real historical figure stating that his family were Northerners. However, his family were descendants of slave owners and were more than likely Copperhead Democrats, and it makes the case that his family moved south as I mentioned above. IRL, Walker was a local Democratic Party boss in Missouri.
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In 2021, the Ethiopian Empire is still ruled by the Solomonic dynasty. The country has a fast-growing economy, even amidst the international recession brought about by the Great Housing Crash. The HDI of Ethiopia in 2021 is close to that of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2019, although there are regional variations in terms of economic wealth.
Politically, the Ethiopian Empire is a centralized, and rather authoritarian state. While not an absolute monarchy, the Emperor does enjoy a not insignificant level of power relative to the country’s bicameral legislature.
Ethiopia is not free of ethic or religious tensions in 2021. Although the country’s constitution states equality between Ethiopia’s different communities, the Ethiopian Empire, unlike post-Mengistu Ethiopia in our world, does not allow for political subdivisions based around ethnicity or language.
Ethiopia is a military ally with Bharat, and is a member of the Chennai Pact. The Ethiopians fought on the side of Bharat during the Kashmir War in the late 1990s, with Ethiopia experiencing an initial defeat at the hands of an invasion by the Somali Republic and an Ottoman expeditionary force. The Ethiopians ultimately defeated the Somali-Ottoman offensive. In 2021, the Somali Republic is still viewed as an enemy by Addis Ababa. The Ethiopians, in 2021, have strained diplomatic relations with the US, due to the Somali Republic’s membership in the CDS, as well as the still-significant US/CDS military presence in South Sudan. The CDS presence in both the Somali Republic and South Sudan has led to renewed fears within the Ethiopian government and military of possible encirclement by hostile countries.