Would a victorious CSA be in the Entente or CP?

1.) Which would they choose? Would they (and possibly America) even be in the war at all?
2.) What effect would this have in WW2 and the present day

Personally I don't find Turtledove's take realistic hence I asked you guys.
 

SsgtC

Banned
They would definitely be entente aligned. Though I think the whole alliance system in general would look very different. I don't think there would even be a WWI as we know it.
 
Neither bloc would be likely to emerge, since the most basic problem with TL-191 is assuming that the deeply changeable alliance system proceeds despite the major geopolitical shakeup of a CSA victory.

But handwaving it?

I doubt the CSA would join either. It would almost certainly be an unstable, deeply corrupt agrarian state. Power would either be devolved to inefficient state governments, or conceivably be in the hands of a strongman president. It's quite possible that you've got an equivalent to Porfirio Diaz running the place.

The Entente wouldn't want them- they'd have far more invested in keeping access to the New York financial markets and Union industry. The Central Powers would prefer the North too, but are more likely to be locked out by the Royal Navy. It's possible you see them try to get the CSA on board with something cackhanded like the Zimmerman Telegram, but you'd have much the same results.

So, to summarise: they don't want to join the war, and neither side wants them to join the war.
 

Deleted member 94680

I can’t see a surviving CSA joining either the Entente or the Central Powers. I imagine the conservatism of the Confederate elites would be even more isolationist than the USA was IOTL.

Unless, in managing to survive for fifty-odd years, they manage to solve the inherent weaknesses in their government and economy, I can’t see them being much of an attractive proposition anyway. I don’t see the CSA being ranked as a Great Power either.
 
I can’t see a surviving CSA joining either the Entente or the Central Powers. I imagine the conservatism of the Confederate elites would be even more isolationist than the USA was IOTL.

Unless, in managing to survive for fifty-odd years, they manage to solve the inherent weaknesses in their government and economy, I can’t see them being much of an attractive proposition anyway. I don’t see the CSA being ranked as a Great Power either.
i agree with this. that said ..

So its 50 years later, the north is strong, and industrial, the south will see its flaws, and while the south had and fought for slavery ( cough states rights ) this doesn't mean they would remain this way.. they could ban slavery but still be an apartheid state.

I honestly don't see them joining either myself, but we still have to stop and look at other things too. Spanish American war could be off the books, or it would be a Spanish CSA war. additional hostility and or purchases from mexico ..


there is much that shaped the world view of the USA after the civil war. remove those and maybe even the north isn't so interested in Europe or they are doubly so for one side or the other. The northern United states is heavily german so that might also add a bit to things.

I hear many people saying the south would align with the germans, I don't quite think so myself, I could honestly see the north being the more pro german.
 
The CSA is much more likely to suffer a communist revolution than willingly ban slavery. It's the entire reason and point of secession.
I'd say that the CSA becomes the puppet of whichever European power intervened on their behalf (France and/or Britain) to win them the war and it becomes de facto another colony. In any case the Entente Cordiale probably doesn't exist or is very different given the probable US-UK tensions as a result. If anything I'd say that the Union ends up pro-German as a consequence.
 
As a few others have said, they'd be likely to sit the entire thing out, maybe selling things to the Entente. I genuinely think the French and British would dump them as allies fairly quickly well before we got to the start of the 20th century. The Confederacy would be a local power at best, not a global one.
 
As a few others have said, they'd be likely to sit the entire thing out, maybe selling things to the Entente. I genuinely think the French and British would dump them as allies fairly quickly well before we got to the start of the 20th century. The Confederacy would be a local power at best, not a global one.

I'm not even sure they would be a local power. Absent making significant political, social, and economic changes that would have contradicted the whole reason for secession, the CSA would end being a backward apartheid state that would be a very strange place and would get only stranger as much of the rest of the world progressed. I see a governing structure that makes decisions designed to sustain an increasingly unsustainable status quo and as reality becomes more and more apparent, they dig their heels in even harder. How long this can last I don't know.
 
As idle speculation, French-aligned Hapsburg Mexico and British-aligned Union will push CSA to the Prussian sphere (probably no Franco-Prussian War and no German Empire as OTL). CSA will be looking at an equivalent of Germany's 1914 dilemma, trying a Schlieffenesque-knockout to the north before Mexico can mobilise, but it requires a Hitler-type charismatic dictator with delusions of strategic vision to drive such an idea.
 
Being an Apartheid State isn’t taboo in 1914. Industrial scale slavery is taboo however, and how they have dealt with that will have a greater bearing on how the rest of the world views them then something like making blacks second class citizens, as virtually every country did with their colonies and to at least some ethnic group.
 
Entente for sure. Confederate leaders would have to know that their country is no position to duke it out with the USA in a modern war. Their only hope would be to have the USA also focus on another enemy, therefore splitting US resources. The only country that could pose a major threat to the USA would be Britain and her empire.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
The northern United states is heavily german so that might also add a bit to things.
Depends. The US was initially German-friendly IOTL but their relation eventually became cool as the German became a protectionist economic rival (there was a trade war IOTL) and Kaiser Wilhelm of all people and Germany's jingoistic leadership in general openly challenged Monroe Doctrine with expansionist policies in Latin America. An independent CSA would not butterfly away that crack Kaiser Wilhelm.

OTOH, once Nappy is booted, The French Republic would likely reapproach with the North like IOTL.
 
A post of mine from a few months ago (it was focused on refuting the idea that the CSA would join the Entente at an early stage, but I think her joining the Central Powers is at least as unlikely):

***

Like others, I doubt very much that in a CSA-wins world, the next fifty-odd years would leave European politics completely unchanged so that the World War breaks out with the same belligerents at the same time, etc.

But let's assume that somehow it does. There is no reason to think the CSA would join the Entente. Like Yankees, Southrons would want to stay out of that bloody business overseas. The notion that gratitude to the British for helping them win their independence (if indeed Britain does so) is going to guide their foreign policy a half century later is unrealistic. Quite likely they will have had quite a few quarrels with the British--for example the UK may try to stop Confederate expansion into Latin America. FWIW, in OTL Southern opinion during 1914-15 in OTL was quite anti-British--as I wrote in soc.history.what-if some years ago: "There *was* considerable anger among Southerners over the blockade preventing cotton from reaching Germany. In 1915 it was thought that Southerners might join with German- and Irish-Americans in Congress to demand an arms embargo in retaliation for the British suppression of the cotton trade with Central Europe. John Sharp Williams, the pro-British Senator from Mississippi, spoke truthfully when he said that every politician in the South had to be anti-British. On June 28, 1915 the Georgia state legislature petitioned President Wilson to take every measure "diplomatic if possible, retaliatory if necessary" to open American trade in cotton with neutral European ports. However, the British defused this problem by a secret agreement for the British government to buy enough cotton to stabilize the price at ten cents a pound. See the discussion in Arthur S. Link, *Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era 1910-1917* (Harper Torchbooks edition 1963), pp. 170-2."

The CSA may eventually join the war against Germany but probably only at about the same time and for the same reason the USA did: the German resort to unlimited submarine warfare--including killing Confederate citizens on Confederate ships.
 
Depends. The US was initially German-friendly IOTL but their relation eventually became cool as the German became a protectionist economic rival (there was a trade war IOTL) and Kaiser Wilhelm of all people and Germany's jingoistic leadership in general openly challenged Monroe Doctrine with expansionist policies in Latin America. An independent CSA would not butterfly away that crack Kaiser Wilhelm.

OTOH, once Nappy is booted, The French Republic would likely reapproach with the North like IOTL.

Thing is speaking of the Monroe Doctrine how would the North apply it to the CSA when they go after lets say Haiti or Cuba?
 
A post of mine from a few months ago (it was focused on refuting the idea that the CSA would join the Entente at an early stage, but I think her joining the Central Powers is at least as unlikely):



The CSA may eventually join the war against Germany but probably only at about the same time and for the same reason the USA did: the German resort to unlimited submarine warfare--including killing Confederate citizens on Confederate ships.
Which means it's likely the North and the South fights on the same side more then a land war in the US
 
Would the World Wars even happen in this timeline? I've heard some people say that the existence of the CSA would change history so that the World Wars are butterflied away.
 
I honestly don't understand the idea some people have that the USA and CSA will be eternally hostile to each other.

Blame Harry Turtledove for that one.

But, on a serious note, while I do agree that the USA and the CSA would not hate each other forever, I don't see them becoming best buddies, just because they share the same language and continent.
 
I can’t see a surviving CSA joining either the Entente or the Central Powers. I imagine the conservatism of the Confederate elites would be even more isolationist than the USA was IOTL.

Unless, in managing to survive for fifty-odd years, they manage to solve the inherent weaknesses in their government and economy, I can’t see them being much of an attractive proposition anyway. I don’t see the CSA being ranked as a Great Power either.

i agree with this. that said ..

So its 50 years later, the north is strong, and industrial, the south will see its flaws, and while the south had and fought for slavery ( cough states rights ) this doesn't mean they would remain this way.. they could ban slavery but still be an apartheid state.

I honestly don't see them joining either myself, but we still have to stop and look at other things too. Spanish American war could be off the books, or it would be a Spanish CSA war. additional hostility and or purchases from mexico ..


there is much that shaped the world view of the USA after the civil war. remove those and maybe even the north isn't so interested in Europe or they are doubly so for one side or the other. The northern United states is heavily german so that might also add a bit to things.

I hear many people saying the south would align with the germans, I don't quite think so myself, I could honestly see the north being the more pro german.

Why not the "brazilian way"?

The CSA stays neutral until it is clear which side is going to win but not too late to send someone to the front, so they declare war and send a simbolic force to be enought to sit down in the negociation table, have material for some war movies and claim that they took part.
 
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