WI: 20th century is peacetime in Europe the whole century

POD is sometime between 1900 and 1914, but that doesn't matter much here because I'm wondering how technology will develop through the 20th century with no world wars rather than how politics and diplomacy will play out. If the century was peaceful in the Western world, how would things like aircraft and electronics develop? By 2016 is there a chance that jet planes and rockets would still exist? Would there be large passenger aircraft? Would cars still contain almost no electronics? It's interesting to think about this since the world wars advanced technology so much in such a short amount of time.
 
This has been done many times before, use the search function. Basically war and the damage of the world wars specifically retarded growth and development of technology due to the loss of life and expending of wealth. We would likely be significantly more advanced without the major wars of the twentieth century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
I've heard this theory but does it still apply even when so many things were invented solely for the purpose of the wars?
 

All Rounder

Gone Fishin'
I've heard this theory but does it still apply even when so many things were invented solely for the purpose of the wars?

Like gas masks? Yes they would still have a likely chance of being created as someone one would decide to find a way to prevent smoke from entering our lungs, and would come up with a gas mask. Jets would still be created, possibly earlier than OTL. We may have international airports by the late 40s, and men on the moon in the late 50s, I believe tech will be a decade ahead, but not much more.
 
There would still be wars in colonies and whatnot.
They wouldn't be as big though. And that's good, because big wars are incredibly destructive, not just when they happen, but also afterwards. Look at Sopwith Aviation Company for example, a major producer during the war, but went bust in 1920 thanks to there being a load of army surplus stock available.
 
They wouldn't be as big though. And that's good, because big wars are incredibly destructive, not just when they happen, but also afterwards. Look at Sopwith Aviation Company for example, a major producer during the war, but went bust in 1920 thanks to there being a load of army surplus stock available.
They might be significant in those colonies though. Remember, a world without the world wars is probably considerably whiter, which means more substantial white settlement in some colonies compared to OTL. That would probably go less than swimmingly for the peoples displaced or relegated to second class citizens in their own homelands as a result.
 
They might be significant in those colonies though. Remember, a world without the world wars is probably considerably whiter, which means more substantial white settlement in some colonies compared to OTL. That would probably go less than swimmingly for the peoples displaced or relegated to second class citizens in their own homelands as a result.
Maybe, but I have my doubts, because most people would want to go and live somewhere they'd be welcome, which would mean the white Dominions like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which are majority white anyway.
 
Maybe, but I have my doubts, because most people would want to go and live somewhere they'd be welcome, which would mean the white Dominions like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which are majority white anyway.
Where are the settler colonies for Germany, France, and Italy, all of whom would have larger white populations?
 
They might be significant in those colonies though. Remember, a world without the world wars is probably considerably whiter, which means more substantial white settlement in some colonies compared to OTL. That would probably go less than swimmingly for the peoples displaced or relegated to second class citizens in their own homelands as a result.

There wasn't ever really a lot of white settlement to begin with thanks to the climate, assuming you're talking about sub-Saharan Africa (North Africa's a different story with French Algeria). Britain and Portugal snapped up all the best lands in sub-Saharan Africa, which would be the Kenyan highlands, most of Rhodesia, parts of Angola and Mozambique, and of course South Africa.

Where are the settler colonies for Germany, France, and Italy, all of whom would have larger white populations?

Italy has Libya, France has Algeria and to a lesser extent Tunisia and New Caledonia. Germans have Namibia. But Italians and Germans could just emigrate to the Americas or Australia anyway as many did.
 
This has been done many times before, use the search function. Basically war and the damage of the world wars specifically retarded growth and development of technology due to the loss of life and expending of wealth. We would likely be significantly more advanced without the major wars of the twentieth century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Well maybe, but Broken Window Fallacy mostly applies to economic arguments of war as increasing aggregate wealth which isn't a direct correlation with technology. One might as well take natural selection from biology and say that the inefficient were removed / survival of the fittest. I wouldn't do that, but I will say that all economics is local, and if you take an Euro-centric view (as the OP does) then injection of wealth from America into Europe (and perhaps Soviet expansion into Europe) vastly changed the local economy and could have contributed to technical innovation in a local way. Broken Window Fallacy doesn't matter if you are breaking a window you will never use.

All one can do is list the technical innovations and their timelines, and list the innovations during war and extrapolate from there. I for one am not convinced particularly in direct areas like military technology, governments overthrown, etcetera. Particularly because the most realistic timelines has monarchy and dictatorship triumphing over democracy and nationalism. Kaiser + UK + other European nobility comes to some gentleman's agreement butterflying away WW1 / Kaiser crushes Hitler, etc., etc. That kind of TL doesn't appear to generate innovation as easily as post-WW2 Marshall Plan and the golden age of capitalism.
 
All one can do is list the technical innovations and their timelines, and list the innovations during war and extrapolate from there. I for one am not convinced particularly in direct areas like military technology, governments overthrown, etcetera. Particularly because the most realistic timelines has monarchy and dictatorship triumphing over democracy and nationalism. Kaiser + UK + other European nobility comes to some gentleman's agreement butterflying away WW1 / Kaiser crushes Hitler, etc., etc. That kind of TL doesn't appear to generate innovation as easily as post-WW2 Marshall Plan and the golden age of capitalism.
You need to look more closely at the situation then. Just because war is averted, it doesn't mean that nationalism and international rivalries have been quelled. Remember the technical innovation that went on during the Cold War? Right, now double (or more) the rate of advancement as the old European powers - much stronger without two World Wars - get in on the game.

War has three costs in terms of stymied development:
  • Loss of potential genius
  • Railroading of projects
  • Post-war economic collapse
Compared to these, the often minor developments to come out of war aren't actually that impressive.
 
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