TL-191: After the End
- Thread starter David bar Elias
- Start date
I would assume he doesn't have one given the radical changes in music and popular culture 🤔
In Filling the Gaps, Kanye's parents survive the Population Reduction and instead he's named Kevin West so there's that.
In 2021, throughout the US, Canadian-American history in TTL is taught in public schools as a series of distinct phases, with the ascension of the Canadian states into the Union after the end of the SGW framed as an process of reconciliation and justice.
-
From what I understand, Turtledove himself has indicated that the US would eventually bring Texas into the when the status of Texas as an independent state no longer served US interests.
In TTL, if the US had forced the issue of reunion in Texas during the immediate postwar period, it would have ultimately been successful. Ultimately, in TTL, this did not happen for several reasons:
-The Dewey administration, after an extensive debate, decided that existing military requirements precluded a likely difficult military occupation of Texas; unlike the rest of the former CSA, Texas had gained political independence, and did have a history of political independence from before the War of Secession.
-Any consideration of permanently militarily occupying Texas ended later in the 1940s, by the time that the US military launched Operation Husky against the Russian Empire in Alaska.
-During the first generation after the end of the SGW, the Republic of Texas was the destination for a large number of people from the former CSA who refused to accept US rule. By the beginning of the Humphrey administration in 1961, around three million people had emigrated from the former CSA to Texas. This had the effect of creating another large constituency in Texas opposed to reunion.
In 2021, diplomatic relations between the Russian Republic and the Kingdom of Ukraine and the Kingdom of Belarus at best might be considered polite. But it’s a strained politeness. There are bitter memories in both Belarus and Ukraine of the atrocities committed during the SGW by Tsarist forces. There are also a not-insignificant number of Russians who believe that Belarus and Ukraine should be brought into the Russian Republic, although no Russian political leader is prepared to attempt an armed conflict against Belarus and Ukraine, since that would also mean war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire.
I can only imagine that having Texas be a safety valve of sorts made eventual reconciliation and readmittance happen sooner as the people most likely to fight a guerilla war just up and left for the Lone Star State.
Yes, that was a factor in the successful political reunion project in the rest of the former CSA
One negative consequence of the mass flight from the former CSA to Texas in the immediate postwar years was that a number of former Confederate war criminals also fled to Texas. This would become a source of diplomatic tensions between the ISA and Texas well after the end of the SGW.
hows the Confederacy treated in Texas, especially the featherson period.
In 2021, there are no significant “fourth parties” that regularly compete in US presidential elections. This is in part because of the nature of the USA’s three party system: each of the parties is broad enough, ideologically speaking, to attract support from outside core supporters.
At the state level, there are state-based parties that cooperate with the three main parties and form state-based alliances with them, not unlike the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party in Minnesota in our world.
In 2021, the CSA and the Featherston regime are viewed extremely negatively in Texas. The Featherston period is also viewed as a source of national shame in Texas, due to what happened in the state during the Destruction.
The analogue to Orson Welles in TTL was George Welles, born on a slightly different date to the same family. The family situation for George Welles was different from our world’s Orson Welles: his parents never separated, his father did not become an alcoholic, and his mother did not die from hepatitis. Growing up in a stable and relatively affluent family, George Welles developed talent early in life both as a musician and as a writer. By the early 1930s, Welles was living in New York City, and working as a musician and composer in the city’s theater scene. He rose in prestige within this world, and, in spite of his youth, was given a chance in 1940 to bring his artistic vision to the stage.
Welles’s first attempt at directing, writing and composing a stage musical, a song-and-dance adaptation of Faust, was a massive commercial failure. The outbreak of the SGW in 1941 served to dampen the New York theater scene even further. Welles volunteered for service in the US military; his technical skills with electrical sound systems led to his service in the United States Army Signal Corps. Welles was honorably discharged in 1947, after which he returned to New York City.
Welles did not return to the theater world. Instead, he started a new career as a scriptwriter, first in commercial radio and later in television. Welles did not particularly enjoy this work, but the pay was good in a USA still undergoing national reconstruction. Welles found a creative outlet in fiction writing, beginning with short stories. In 1954, his first novel, Sound Off (a satire of army life and the ethos of national service) was published, to lukewarm reviews and disappointing commercial sales. Welles worked as a television screenwriter until his retirement in 1974. He died in 1989.
Although Sound Off was a commercial disappointment when it was first published, the novel gained new, positive attention from both scholars and the general public as one of the best satires of US military life ever written. The novel later became one of the inspirations for director Zachary C. Webster’s 2000 film Quartermaster Corps, the first US movie released as part of the “Low Life Wave” of the 2000s.
Last edited:
Just goes to show that there's no timeline where audiences will make correct decisions. This sounds incredible, honestly.
I borrowed the idea of a musical version of Faust from the OTL 1953 movie The Band Wagon, in which one of the characters, a stage actor, writer, and director who may have been inspired by Orson Welles, attempts to turn a proposed light musical comedy into a melodramatic stage interpretation of Faust.
Last edited:
What happened to the following people:
Anthony Eden
Arthur Harris
Samuel Longstreet
John Nance Garner
Harold MacMillan
Hugh Gaitskell
Anthony Benn
John Redmond
W. T. Cosgrave
Georges Remi (aka Herge)
Charles De Gaulle
P. G. Wodehouse
A. A. Milne
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann
Anthony Eden
Arthur Harris
Samuel Longstreet
John Nance Garner
Harold MacMillan
Hugh Gaitskell
Anthony Benn
John Redmond
W. T. Cosgrave
Georges Remi (aka Herge)
Charles De Gaulle
P. G. Wodehouse
A. A. Milne
Michael Flanders and Donald Swann
Last edited:
The series itself indicates that at least an analogue to the OTL 1918 influenza pandemic occurred.
In TTL, HIV/AIDS is known as Fleischer’s Syndrome, after the German medical doctor and scientist who first studied the disease. While it’s a potential danger in this world, Fleischer’s Syndrome was ultimately not as devastating worldwide as HIV/AIDS was in OTL, due to more countries taking more preventive measures early on.
In 2021, there has not been an analogue to the OTL COVID-19 pandemic. However, the dangers of a potential worldwide pandemic are not like those in our world.