Alternate History Thread III

[das]

Yes, just offered it to Luckymoose as a matter of fact, but he seems to have refused.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Mhmmm, I'll get round to it...one day. *ahem*

 

[Luckymoose]

Yes, just offered it to Luckymoose as a matter of fact, but he seems to have refused.

It's not that I do not like it. I just do not want to mod it. Is that understandable. Thanks for the offer though.

 

[Abaddon]

So is that map going to survive?

 

[Israelite9191]

Of course I would like to mod it. Rules from ITNES is fine I think.

Yay!!!

Just in case you missed the discussion about it earlier, in TTL the Temple still exists, but has been turned into a giant school by the Pharisees. The Judaism in the cities and that is popular in the Eastern Roman Empire is called "Pharisees" but is closer to Philo Judaism with emphasis on the prophets over a "literal" interpretation of the Law and an attempt to merge Greek thought with Judaic revelation (similar to Justin Martyr and the like except with Judaism instead of Christianity if you are familiar with him).

Very interesting. I can definately work with that, thanks.

 

[das]

Althist-related randomness:
- According to some accounts, Alexander the Great shouted the name of general Craterus (Krateros) when on his deathbed, as opposed to the vague description "Kratistos". While not as famous as some more succesful Diadochis, Craterus actually seems to be fairly competent on the battlefield and in diplomacy, and his positions in Persia would be strenghthened by his marriage with a Persian princess. So perhaps had he been in Babylon when Alexander, he might have tried and held the empire together for longer. This is really more of a question for Dachspmg and other such specialists.
- And this is more directed towards Israelite9191, I suppose. This AAR caught my eye recently (I lurk the Paradox AAR forums a lot). In between actual AAR posts, the possibility of Anglo-Saxon Orthodoxy is mentioned. Might an Orthodox England be actually possible, especially after the failure of a certain Papal-sanctioned invasion? From looking at OTL Novgorod especially I'd say that Orthodoxy would indeed seem to fit traditional Anglo-Saxon England more than Catholicism in many regards.
- I've just learned of a book named "Missile Gap", from the author of the aforementioned "Colder War". Needless to say it is not here yet, but perhaps some others have it? Anyway, the very concept sounds quite intriguing and perhaps NES-worthy (as are its variations set in other parts of the 20th century).
- Here's a curious 19th century althist that I've found a while ago. IMHO it is a bit too unrealistic in a few moments, but still is generally enjoyable. The setting might be NES-worthy.
- Anybody still remembers my Ming althist? After weeks of procrastination and false starts, I'm working on it again, and have come up with some neat additional twists. IMHO it could make a nice NES setting one day.

 

[Symphony D.]

Part of what I found charming about the premise of Colder War was that it didn't try too hard for technicality. I actually read Mountains of Madness on the suggestion of a friend and all throughout I was struck by the image of strategic bombers pummeling the city and mountains in question and swarms of infantry and tanks descending it--a human counterpoint to Lovecraft's idea that there were great and terrible things in the universe and humanity was but a mere mote in the cosmos; humanity could be worse than those horrors. I always found Lovecraft's characters mental frailty in the face of the supposedly incomprehensible horror facing them annoying and untrue. It's difficult to imagine something more depraved than humanity at its worst (and were it thus it would likely be for wholly different motivations).

So when somebody decided to more or less do that and make these terrible beings the weapons with which humanity waged its final war, it was amusing. That said, from what little I read of its description, it favored the Soviets entirely too much and the United States didn't seem to get anything of use at all, instead relying simply upon technology (which is odd because the book seems to span some 20 years). Even so, it captured that sort of feel, and the premise was fairly sound were you to start it earlier, say in the 50s.

The same could in theory be said for the idea of Missile Gap, but the premise as executed is total rubbish, for two very simple reasons:

The balance of power of the Cold War has shifted because the nuclear deterrent of the United States was predicated on being able to launch a missile over the North Pole and then south to Moscow. With the Flat Earth this is impossible and the Communist Soviet Union has spread its power and influence across Europe with only the United Kingdom holding out, but even that is weakening.

First, so did the Soviet Union. Russian may not have a direct translation for efficiency but anybody can figure out the shortest distance between the two superpowers was over the North Pole, hence why both sides pointed all their radars that way and were going to launch their missiles. There were some potential alternatives to this as regarded missiles but all of them had been discarded long before 1973. Even if it somehow was unbalanced, American ICBMs were simply superior; they were more efficient, had longer ranges, more compact and efficient warheads, and were more accurate. It would be a trivial matter to re-target them to some other flight plan. It's just math.

Second, the world being flat presents all sort of problems unless it continues on infinitely as a plane (or is in fact the inside of a surface such a sphere or torus, and thus not flat at all) simply because of two questions: where's the edge, and what's on the other side? That's ignoring all the physics problems behind it, but more from a practical standpoint: where do you end the map?

It also just doesn't quite have the ambiance or feel of Colder War, in that there's this established and decidedly weird setting underlaying everything, in my opinion. Colder War sounds to me the superior of the two.

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In a different vein, I was watching the Military Channel recently, and they were running a documentary called Warlords on the various leaders of WWII and their interactions. In light of earlier discussion on WWII and what would be required to prevent war between Germany and the Soviet Union, it put forward an interesting idea: Stalin and Hitler basically psyched each other out into believing the other would attack. Stalin annexed part of Romania not in the treaty and revealed to Hitler Britain's attempts to get them to realign to the Allied cause (Hitler could not understand why Britain had not surrendered in a war he felt was already over; something was giving them hope, and that was collaboration with Russia), and Hitler's responses triggered Stalin's own paranoia that Hitler would invade (but would be logical and not fight a two-front war). I continue to maintain that unless you alter the way in which they behaved they would continue on to war; but this particular interpretation gives an opportunity to alter their behaviors and perceptions of one another's motives sufficiently to perhaps avoid the war or at least put it off to a point where it might be a separate and less integral conflict.

It also brought up an interesting point that Hitler's innate racism had somewhat tapered off in 1940 when he was flush with success from the victories in France and Poland. It was not until it became apparent that the war was going to continue (and operations against the USSR began to be planned by virtue of Hitler's own paranoid conclusions) that the Final Solution began to be planned, along with Hitler's reversion to his earlier beliefs of Lebensraum in the East.

The consensus is that the outlines of the Final Solution arose gradually throughout the summer and fall of 1941. Prominent Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has stated that the decision to exterminate the Jews was actually two decisions, one in July 1941 to kill the Jews of Russia (mass killings by the Einsatzgruppen had already begun by the summer of 1941), the second in October 1941 to exterminate the remaining Jews of Europe.

What this means is if one wants a short, less devastating WWII, it could become possible to engineer one by having Stalin act somewhat less rashly (Stalin's major fault was in assuming Hitler was as methodical and logical as himself), a few different things (for example Molotov's brusque behavior not being so strong), it might be possible to set up a situation in which Hitler does not formulate Barbarossa and stays focused upon Britain. What might follow from there is hard to predict but it could be possible for a sort of stalemate to settle in between the USSR, UK, USA, and Germany. Odd things could happen such as the Madagascar Plan (or even the Fugu Plan) going into effect instead of the Holocaust, leaving WWII just as inconclusive as WWI and setting the stage for a third world war, or at least lots of intriguing.

 

[foolish icarus]

- I've just learned of a book named "Missile Gap", from the author of the aforementioned "Colder War". Needless to say it is not here yet, but perhaps some others have it? Anyway, the very concept sounds quite intriguing and perhaps NES-worthy (as are its variations set in other parts of the 20th century).
-

I've read it. The Amazon reviews touch most of the key points, but leave out a few things about the premise, which would have to be addressed or adjusted:

In the book, the disk that earth's geography is transposed upon is very, very big. If I recall, it is described as having the proportions of a record disk, with a hole ~1 AU (in diameter or radius, I don't remember) in the middle. The overall radius for the disk is at least 2 or 3 AU, giving a surface area billions of times larger than the surface area of earth.

The Disk is not in the Milky Way Galaxy. It's in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud (I think). Other similar structures can be seen only a few light years away.

Spaceflight is (virtually) impossible. The force of gravity is earth standard at the surface, but because it's a giant disk not a sphere its escape velocity is hundreds or thousands of times greater than earth's escape velocity.

Overall geography is apparently primarily oceanic. The nearest non-familiar continents are tens of thousands of miles away.

Other (vaguely) intelligent life exists on some of the other continents, including blowgun-wielding lizard analogues and tool-making, communal hive-mind insect-like creatures.

As for the alternate history part, there was at some point around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis a limited scale nuclear war. Only offhand references are given, but six Soviet cities were apparently struck by nuclear weapons, and several American sites may have been nuked as well.

Continental Europe, as of the seventies (the time the story is set in) is
somewhere between a puppet and an ideological ally of the Soviets.
Britain, though not yet in the communist camp, is in a perpetual state of emergency and had been effectively pushed into neutrality.

Since their brief war, the Soviets and Americans have been more or less at peace, but are still at each other's throats as per usual. They have taken to financing/launching massive expeditions and settlement efforts to the far off continents so as to create a Greater Communist Utopia/Bulwark of Anti-Communist Freedom.

There are of course a few more twists in the book but I won't give them away.

 

[Symphony D.]

In the book, the disk that earth's geography is transposed upon is very, very big. If I recall, it is described as having the proportions of a record disk, with a hole ~1 AU (in diameter or radius, I don't remember) in the middle. The overall radius for the disk is at least 2 or 3 AU, giving a surface area billions of times larger than the surface area of earth.

So it's basically a ring-world with multiple planets mapped onto it (for study, or something similar). In that case it's pretty much impossible to adopt it as a NES because the world map is (for our intents) almost infinite across the horizontal axis. You could "stop" it at certain points by placing "walls" I suppose, but humans (and players) being what they are they'd want to find ways around them, and ultimately unless whatever orchestrators of the whole thing stepped in directly, they'd find them.

Also, just as a further shout-out, I have to say the Fugu Plan is the craziest piece of WWII trivia I've heard in a long, long time.

 

[das]

all throughout I was struck by the image of strategic bombers pummeling the city and mountains in question and swarms of infantry and tanks descending it

The big question is, why bother? The logistics of deploying a large force to the Antarctic are mind-boggling, and it is after all an abandoned city.

As for humanity at its worst, the Old Ones at their worst might be something of a match.

Anyhow, what I meant about the Missile Gap's setting being NES-worthy, I meant the general idea of such vast geographic changes at some point in the 20th century, prompting a new colonial race. That would certainly be completely different from how usual modern day NESes evolve; essentially it would mix elements of Modern Day with Age of Exploration. The Cold War variation itself also sounds quite promising, though.

As for WWII, there isn't much Germany could do against Britain itself directly. I suppose that we could have Germany focusing fully on the Mediterranean theatre, though; it would have plentiful expansion space on the other shores of the sea, and that seems to be the best way to bring Britain to its knees (triggering a general land-grab, Soviets moving into the Middle East, the Japanese "liberating the Asian colonies" and the Americans turning Churchill into a puppet, establishing bases and garrisons in the remaining British colonies).

Btw, a German invasion of Palestine would be... interesting. Especially with the Lehi taken into account. A Nazi Jewish German puppet state in Israel would certainly be original (kind of reminds me of Pestel's plan for deporting all Russian Jews to the Middle East to set up a pro-Russian state there; many traditional European anti-Semites weren't as bothered by Jews as they were by their "parasitism" on the European society, though its hard to tell whether or not Hitler agreed with them - then again, he always was very flexible with his racial propaganda).

 

[Symphony D.]

The big question is, why bother? The logistics of deploying a large force to the Antarctic are mind-boggling, and it is after all an abandoned city.

It was mostly the idea of the Shoggoth breaking loose and ultimately being pushed back to the region (which makes no sense, but such images rarely do). Or whatever it was in that distant, higher mountain which was so ominous yet was never really explained or explored at all (Cthulu being far away and under the sea, after all).

Anyhow, what I meant about the Missile Gap's setting being NES-worthy, I meant the general idea of such vast geographic changes at some point in the 20th century, prompting a new colonial race. That would certainly be completely different from how usual modern day NESes evolve; essentially it would mix elements of Modern Day with Age of Exploration. The Cold War variation itself also sounds quite promising, though.

It's much heavier on Modern Day than Age of Exploration. With nuclear power indefinitely extending the range of ships, along with jet aircraft and electrical communications (let alone something later, like fiber-optics) there is absolutely nothing to stop a superpower like the United States of Soviet Union from simply borging their way across such a landscape almost infinitely--as fast as they can set up supply depots or localized resource manufacturing to continue expansion, anyway. There's no real discovery to it at all, just exploitation, unless you suppose at some point they meet something that can pose a credible opposition (and then it must surely be biological, as the atmosphere and so on will be the same and no facet of geography will block that kind of expansionism for long). It's more just the Colonial Age again, to me.

If you want Age of Exploration a much easier and simpler solution would just be to have earlier / faster research be made into space travel (take your pick of reasons) and incorporate something like Barsoom into it. Sort of like that Space: 1889 setting I mentioned in the Ideas and Development thread awhile back. Lots of unknown territory that's hard to get to, definite and strange opposition abounds, none of it very easy to reach or keep. Same sort of idea of the fantastic from the 1930s as Colder War but a rather different focus entirely.

On a different yet similar subject, the concepts of Battlezone paired up with certain events at Roswell and Tunguska gave me an interesting idea awhile back that sets up a vaguely similar scenario (though different), but its hard to keep the lesser powers in the game without the USSR and USA running away entirely.

[EDIT] Oh, yeah, I forgot: the idea of the world going from round to flat sounds suspiciously like an undoing of the sundering of the world from Tolkein's Silmarillion. Now, in the middle of the Cold War (the Seventh Age, perhaps?), that could most definitely be strange. Balrog vs. W-87 Nuclear Warhead. Orcish Hordes vs. T-72 Divisions. Dragons vs. AH-64 Apaches. Who will triumph? And do Elves like free market or communist economies? You know who the Dwarves will side with.

 

[das]

There's no real discovery to it at all, just exploitation, unless you suppose at some point they meet something that can pose a credible opposition (and then it must surely be biological, as the atmosphere and so on will be the same and no facet of geography will block that kind of expansionism for long).

See icarus' post. Plus there's radiation and stuff.

As for space, technically we can always just have an Earth-based space colonisation NES. We had those, actually. Space colonisation is different from Earth colonisation in many regards, so its not quite the same.

As for the latter, well, that's the problem in most modern NESes with a similar power composition. Perhaps a more ordinary althist to balance things out will be in order before the meteorites or whatever you will have? Such as the "WWII lite" you suggested; then you'll have to worry about USSR, USA, Germany, Japan (and the UK?) running away entirely, which isn't quite as bad.

 

[Symphony D.]

See icarus' post. Plus there's radiation and stuff.

Radiation's no big handicap unless you wallow around in the stuff and it's fairly recent. One can wander all around Chernobyl today with relatively little ill effect; if they're radioactive ruins then odds are it's not such a big deal. And sentient insects and reptile men, dastardly staples of science fiction though they might be, are generally not evolved to handle being carpet-bombed or stormed over with the sorts of things our resident Human superpowers are fond of inventing to kill one another. The rendering useless of the bulk of the strategic nuclear arsenal would also just place that much greater emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons or more powerful conventional ones too, which just bodes even worse for Earth's newfound and tantalizingly close neighbors.

As for space, technically we can always just have an Earth-based space colonisation NES. We had those, actually. Space colonisation is different from Earth colonisation in many regards, so its not quite the same.

I dare say that's because the concept has by and large been handled poorly in the past.

As for the latter, well, that's the problem in most modern NESes with a similar power composition. Perhaps a more ordinary althist to balance things out will be in order before the meteorites or whatever you will have? Such as the "WWII lite" you suggested; then you'll have to worry about USSR, USA, Germany, Japan (and the UK?) running away entirely, which isn't quite as bad.

Perhaps. Then again, my plate is rather overly full as it is right now.

 

[Dachs]

Krateros was off building the new fleet for the conquest of Carthage when Alexander died IIRC; if he had been in Babylon, perhaps on some errand, then it's entirely likely that he could have got his fellow generals to at least obey him for a while. He, instead of Antipater, could have seized the Regency (not a particularly difficult endeavor); in fact, even if we take the normal series of events, but Antipater dies in the Lamian war when Krateros is fighting with him, Krateros would then have control of the largest single army and probably the loyalty of Antigonos (they were good friends). Perdiccas was killed by his own soldiers anyway; Krateros himself could easily seize the reins of power in his absence. Alexander's Empire was entirely maintainable; if the Persians could do it for two hundred years, the Greeks sure as hell could. Krateros might prolong the life of the Empire or plunge it into a dangerous foreign adventure leading to its doom...it could go either way, of course. It'll definitely last longer, though, and might fragment into a few large Hellenic successor states much later, after a few generations of Kraterid rule.

On another subject...LittleBoots: ND or PASOK?

 

[Dachs]

All right then, I guess I'll throw out a load of ideas to try to spice up the thread again.

-American Civil War, 3 June 1863: George G. Meade completes one of the best-run campaigns in history - that of Gettysburg - with a stunning general assault on the heels of the Confederate failure of Pickett's Charge. Longstreet's Corps is kept relatively inactive in the south by Sykes and part of the Cavalry Corps, while the remainder of Pleasonton's command, aided by the II Corps under Hancock with supporting units, surges across the field in close pursuit. Confederate artillery is ordered not to fire on their own retreating men, being mercilessly cut down by Union troops; even if they had been, they probably would have refused to fire. A.P. Hill's corps is cut to pieces and virtually ceases to exist; Ewell is isolated by the charge and is forced to surrender on the fifth of July. Only Longstreet's corps has any semblance of cohesion or even combat power, and it is this formation that retreats towards the Potomac, and is fortunately saved by the rain and horrible weather of mid July. By late August, the Confederacy was in dire straits, as Meade was on the Rappahannock, pressing Lee - who had no strength to resist - south, while in Tennessee Chattanooga fell to General Rosecrans, who now menaced northern Georgia. At Chickamauga on the 20-21 of September, Rosecrans resisted a desperate shoestring attack by Braxton Bragg, who afterwards complained that he wouldn't have made such a hash of things if he had had the reinforcements that he'd asked for. There were no reinforcements to give, though - Grant, now in charge of the Union drive towards Atlanta, seized that city in November, then halted there for the winter to consolidate his gains; in Virginia, Meade regained McClellan's lines of 1862 around Richmond and began a siege of the city. The 1864 campaign was brief; Savannah and Richmond both capitulated on the same day (1 March 1864) and Lee's army was forced to surrender after a protracted slaughter in the Great Dismal Swamp. The war, to all intents and purposes, was over.

...or had it just begun? The CSA, despite the end of its government, continued to resist, and even gained new vitality in a protracted guerrilla campaign. President Lincoln instituted military government in the South following victory in the 1864 election, and used more troops to threaten Napoleon III with intervention in Mexico; the French quickly backed down, and Juarez marched back into Mexico in triumph, although he needed US troops to help him put down several conservative uprisings. This saw the beginnings of US influence in Mexico that would lead to...whatever it led to.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Napoleon III took a much more active foreign policy, determined to accomplish something, by God! He quietly supported Prussia in the Seven Weeks' War, in which the Austrians were decisively defeated and Prussia was allowed to unite Germany north of the Main in the North German Confederation. However, Napoleon wanted to show something for this, to have something to boost his popularity - so after the war was over, the French ambassador to Prussia, one Vincent Benedetti, had a very long talk with Otto von Bismarck, Ministerpräsident of Prussia...

Napoleon had gotten bitten bad by the press for his acquisition of Savoy and Nice from Sardinia in return for assistance during the war with Austria - the British had lampooned him as an "Annexander". He wanted less obvious concessions instead. By the same Peace of Prague that established the North German Confederation, a southern one also came into being - Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and the Bavarian Palatinate came together under the presidency of young Ludwig II, King of Bavaria. This southern German confederation wasn't allied to Austria, which might not be very good for France in the future - instead, Austria and the SGC were tied to the French Empire via a series of secret clauses involving defensive alliances. Naturally, von Bismarck was furious about this, and began to look for ways to undermine this new superalliance lying across his southern border...including reconciliation with the Russian Empire of Tsar Alexander II...

-Five Years' War, 1 August 1759: Ferdinand of Brunswick defeats a larger French army under Louis de Contades decisively at Minden, almost completely destroying the force. The chance for the utter destruction of the enemy was nearly lost when Lieutenant General George, Lord Sackville, in charge of the British cavalry assisting the Prussians at the battle, refused to order a charge to disperse and destroy the French army; his subordinate, the Earl of Granby, ignored his commander after the second refusal and led the decisive charge that culminated in the death of de Contades' subordinate, Victor duc de Broglie, as he attempted to reform the shattered French troops. de Contades, his army virtually gone, fled across the Rhine, pursued closely by Ferdinand. Sackville, for his sheer incompetence bordering on treason, was cashiered, and Granby was put in charge of the British force.

After the battle, Ferdinand was ordered to release most of the Prussian contingent for Friedrich the Great to use in repelling a joint Russo-Austrian invasion. The King of Prussia was forced to wait until the allied army was besieging Frankfurt an der Oder before moving on September 4 to engage the enemy. The allies, under the joint command of Pyotr Saltykov and Gideon von Laudon, withdrew from the siege and moved away from the larger Prussian force towards occupied Saxony, but Friedrich caught up with them quickly. At the Battle of the Spree River (7 September 1759), the Prussians caught the allies in a bend in the river and annihilated them while they were attempting to cross and escape. Saltykov was captured; von Laudon managed to rally the Austrian contingent, which had fled first, and moved back into Bohemia. Meanwhile, in the Americas, the British General Wolfe brilliantly captured Quebec City from the French at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, although he himself was killed in the moment of victory. The remainder of the year saw another revival of Prussian arms following the decidedly bad year of 1758 (which saw the bloody battles of Zorndorf and Hochkirch). 1760 looked to be bright with promise for the Prussians and British.

Louis XV, despite his signature on the Second Treaty of Versailles, was now convinced that remaining in the war would be detrimental to France's interests. However, he decided to stick it out a little longer - and immediately got paid back in kind for honoring his agreement, as de Contades lost another battle (though it was not as decisive) to Ferdinand and Granby at Kloster Kampen in April. In the east, Heinrich, Friedrich's brother, maneuvered rather pointlessly against the Imperials in Silesia while the King himself attacked the armies of von Daun and von Laudon, which were repeatedly hammered by the Prussian army, which maneuvered on interior lines between the two converging forces to fight each in turn and smash them. These battles in Saxony basically ended the combat power of the Austrian army, while the Russians sluggishly moved against Berlin. At Liegnitz in August, Friedrich defeated the last semblance of numerical superiority the allies could muster against him and forced the final retreat of the Russian troops. Tsarina Elizabeth was apoplectic at the refusal of Marshal Buturlin to continue the campaign, and was driven into a further rage by Louis XV's note, attempting to halt the war and seek peace. A few weeks after the reception of the note, a palace coup was staged, placing Pyotr III on the Russian throne instead and consigning Elizabeth to a convent. Pyotr withdrew from the war officially, and due to his admiration of Friedrich offered troops to assist him against the Austrians. Prussia, with Russian support, annihilated a resurgent Austrian army under von Laudon at Torgau in November that proved decisive. Maria Theresa sought peace with Louis XV; Friedrich, having held the upper hand throughout almost all of the war, demanded that he be ceded Saxony in its entirety to make his wartime occupation legitimate; the Austrians refused until Friedrich, in a night attack, destroyed von Daun's army at Burkersdorf in Silesia and then carried the war to Bohemia, maneuvering to occupy Prague without a shot fired on Christmas Eve. Reluctantly, Maria Theresa and von Kaunitz and Louis XV made peace at Hubertusburg and Paris in January 1761, ending the Five Years' War and opening the world up to a new period of British dominance...

More to come soon. These are a bit like das' old PoD-of-the-Days. What do you think?

 

[das]

Curious ideas.

Napoleon had gotten bitten bad by the press for his acquisition of Savoy and Nice from Sardinia in return for assistance during the war with Austria - the British had lampooned him as an "Annexander".

But that didn't stop him from plotting to move the French border to the Rhine; I think Bismarck even promised him as much at some point, though I'm not sure if he reallly meant to keep that promise unless things got real bad for some reason.

I'm really not sure if the Iron Chancellor would be so easily outmaneuvered in southern Germany.

As for the second PoD, I'm not sure if the Prussian troops from the west would've been able to make that much of a difference, though they might just have been enough, as usual. The Russian part is a bit weird, though. For one thing I really can't see Buturlin disobeying the Empress' orders; Saltykov might have, but even then it would have been very unlikely. What precedent is there of 18th century commanders disobeying orders outside of civil wars or coups? A military coup against Elizabeth would also appear unlikely; the Guard was always very loyal to her, that was what won her power in the first place and she realised as much.

That said, a simpler solution might be in her generally poor health. Indeed, the most likely course of action for the pro-Prussian faction would be to delay military operations (easy enough to achieve) while waiting for her to die and be replaced by Peter III.

 

[Dachs]

I'm really not sure if the Iron Chancellor would be so easily outmaneuvered in southern Germany.

He wasn't; he didn't have much of a choice. Bismarck himself noted many times that when Benedetti visited him for real after the OTL Seven Weeks' War, he could hardly breathe for fear of what the French would ask of him. It's really not something that he couldn't easily overcome; indeed, Bismarck is working on stirring up south German sentiment against the French as we speak. In any event, with the French much more of a menace in Europe than OTL and with Napoleon much more interested in Germany than previously, it's not unreasonable to have Bismarck doing this...and he can probably count on worries of French imperialism to get him at least tacit British support, putting him into the three-out-of-five combine that he always was fixed on. This will probably force a Russo-British reconciliation similar to OTL 1907, and since Alex II is a much more palatable friend than Alex III, IMHO the Brits, if/when they end Splendid Isolation, will be more interested in keeping the French out of the Channel than the Russians out of the central Asian states.

As for the second PoD, I'm not sure if the Prussian troops from the west would've been able to make that much of a difference, though they might just have been enough, as usual.

The actual problem was that Friedrich never collected the troops from the west in time for his attack at Kunersdorf, not that they didn't make a difference. In OTL they actually formed the core of his army after the horrifying casualties the Prussians suffered there. While Friedrich won't have numerical parity, he will have enough men to force the allies into a different location - which was already changed enough by the fact that he actually waited this time. Without the terrain problems he suffered on the Oder at Kunersdorf, what with columns getting lost in the woods and all, his double envelopment plan, had he decided to carry it out, would have worked; catching the allies in a retreat across a river is also a nice way to decimate them.

The Russian part is a bit weird, though. For one thing I really can't see Buturlin disobeying the Empress' orders; Saltykov might have, but even then it would have been very unlikely. What precedent is there of 18th century commanders disobeying orders outside of civil wars or coups? A military coup against Elizabeth would also appear unlikely; the Guard was always very loyal to her, that was what won her power in the first place and she realised as much.

Right - I was sort of taking a page from your book with the early death of Elizabeth in the althist with the northern alliance, but that was under vastly different circumstances, so it wouldn't work as I wrote it. I submit to your immensely superior knowledge of Russian history. Yeah, the poor health would probably work better. If/when I develop that more (although interest would be limited due to Josef's seizure of your Tsar Pavel TL for a NES), that'd be in there instead.

 

[das]

will be more interested in keeping the French out of the Channel than the Russians out of the central Asian states.

How about the Russians out of the Straits? Before the Berlin Conference Alexander II - and moreso, his inner circle - were quite certain that it was a viable goal. Could some compromise be arranged?

Especially if Gladstone is in power. I rather like the Ottoman Empire at times, but that thought makes me gloat self-indulgently regardless.

 

[Dachs]

How about the Russians out of the Straits? Before the Berlin Conference Alexander II - and moreso, his inner circle - were quite certain that it was a viable goal. Could some compromise be arranged?

Oh, certainly - especially if Alex times the emancipation of the serfs correctly. That's for later - I'll probably develop that PoD rather than the Five Years' War one mainly due to sentimentality.

 

[Dachs]

All right then, I suppose I'll throw out less fleshed out ideas. Please talk/argue about them, as this thread needs to be resuscitated.

-Kunala isn't blinded for whatever reason and takes the Mauryan throne. IIRC he was much more competent than the real successor of Ashoka, Dasaratha; perhaps the Mauryans might not fall apart this way...
-More successful American campaigning against Canada in the War of 1812 or perhaps a generally more successful war for America there; perhaps this could be tied to a brief revival of Napoleon's Empire in Europe at the same time.
-A generally different pattern of barbarian migrations into Europe in the early Dark Ages; I actually drew about eleven maps for this, putting it into about 1100, but never wrote anything up. I should do that sometime...