Indiana Beach Crow
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It's also a little unfair of me to use a photo of 6'7" tall Christian X next to Vittorio Emmanuel III, because everyone looks like a giant next to 5' 0" Vittorio Emmanuel.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Don’t find those reasons compelling at all.
Institutions matter way more than physical infrastructure and thus having good, responsive, transparent ones copy-pasted (to varying extents, admittedly) at American bayonet-point onto Europe’s largest economies post-WWII was transformative in terms of their convergence with American standards of living over the coming 5-6 decades.
My thesis is that not killing off a bunch of Europe’s young best and brightest in two world wars while most of Europe remains more authoritarian and illiberal for much longer will benefit *America* above all others, doubly so when it’s just entrenched a very favorable immigration environment for Western and Central Europeans, and a less closed one than OTL for Eastern Europeans.
The big problem in yout entire argument is that well not even the USA is safe from being more illiberal and less democratic ITTL as unlike OTL they get first hand the nice full experience of a World War, followed by a nasty and troublesome period of occupation that looked more as a (relatively) low level conflict and an economic crisis plus some 'little' resistance towards emigrants.
OTL European authoritarian reaction was due to the enormous shock of the Great War that really took away any support to the previous system and enstablishment and said that less democratic and liberal for longer than OTL doesn't mean going 1984 or even something approaching OTL fascism, nazism and communism dictatorship, even because just remain as they were at the moment mean that.
Second, just to know what nation had his government system copy-pasted from the USA at boynet-point? Finally and that is just my very personal opinion, not having millions of deaths united to apocalyptic devastation from the Pyreene to Oceania generally help a little
I always forget just how short Victor Emmanuel was; at 5’6”, I’m taller than him.
Eh, sure. I don’t disagree on the importance of institutions. But institutionally there was a lot about pre-war Europe that worked very well, in particular the academy being head and shoulders above the US by a wide margin (this was before well-funded research publics and when Harvard was basically just a continuing school for the New England aristocracy)
Perhaps, though a stabler Europe leaves more reason for them to stay. Even OTL, Einstein only decamped to the US due to Nazism rising exactly when it did; otherwise, he’d have stayed at KWI since Europe was where the exciting things in physics happened
Decent point that the US has gotten a much worse postwar here than OTL, too.
Not yet, no. But irredentism is nonetheless a popular and populist position
So putting aside the political and institutional aspect for a moment here, I think there's a potential for Europe to come slightly ahead of OTL on a human level due to the lack of two continent wide wars and a less severe 1918 flu epidemic.
However I think economically there's a chance that the lack of widespread destruction actually slows things down economically. I've seen compelling arguments that the ability of Germany and Japan to adapt so rapidly to post-war industrial changes was that they were rebuilding from scratch (alongside massive investment by the US), whereas the US had to retool existing factory infrastructure.
On a human level it's really hard for me to think of a continent spared from both world wars, Nazi genocides and the repression during the Cold War as not coming out ahead. I have no doubt that there are countless pepe who died in those wars, in their aftermath, and in the various repressive governments of the twentieth century that could have greatly enrich the human experience had they lived. That's not even getting into the interpersonal level of families and friends.
With the exception of the French Stat we don't know if various post-war governments turn out to be particularly authoritarian. If things stay on their general course of moderate constitutional monarchies largely winning out I can very easily see central and eastern Europe coming out on par or slightly of OTL. Similarly if Italy avoids fascist rule and the years of lead, and if Spain and Portugal continue on their current course I think southern Europe will almost certainly come out ahead. The only area I feel safe saying will be worse off is France and Belgium. I think it's highly likely that France sees net out-migration during the bulk of the twentieth century and that many of the artistic and cultural developments that came out of France OTL will either not exist or come out of emigre communities.
It occurs to me that this may have a particularly strong impact on European comics. I don't see any way that the Franco-Belgian bande desine isn't at least some what disrupted by what sounds like pretty nasty twentieth centuries in those countries. While something like Asterix or Tintin may still emerge, I can't see a conservative state being cool with something like Metal Hurlant. That does make me curious what TTL's comic scene will look like. North America and Europe are in such different contexts and without a US occupation bringing western style comics to Japan in massive quantities I don't think Manga as we know it emerges. We may see other areas be the big center for comics than OTL emerge or that particular art form might be much more minor.
(This kind of got away from me at the very end, feel free to ignore the comics digression 😂)
Oh this i agree with. What I’d say is that Europe grows slower, but from a higher baseline, thus getting to a similar QOL from an economic standpoint even if it’s quite different in practice.
Indeed. France and the Nordics are the only place I’d definitely say are well worse off, and even then Denmark keeping Ekofisk makes them the Norway of TTL so this *gasp* May become a Danewank!
No but It’s an interesting point! I don’t know much about comics so the points are great. A Japan that doesn’t produce manga is a Japan with a virtually unrecognizable culture to the West
I don't want to overemphasize the importance of western comics in influencing manga. I think there's a solid chance that Japan still produces comics TTL, but the style is likely different. I also don't know if Japan will be as culturally influential as it was OTL, which is a big reason for manga catching on so much outside of Japan. Similarly European comics will probably still exist, they just may be centered elsewhere and head in a different tradition.
I think most of the forces that produced comics as a medium TTL still exist in the Cincoverse (newspaper cartoons were the big starting point in North America), but it's likely they'd evolve in different ways. I'm amused by the idea of dominant publishing styles being shuffled from OTL. I know you don't generally cover pop culture, but with a 19th century POD there's so many different way things could develop, even with things not straying too unrecognizably far from OTL.
1919: How Europe Went to War
New
"...offensives of mid-March were the culmination of well over a decade of French Army planning. There was only one path forward, and that was into the heart of German defenses in the "Trier Triangle" but with the Belgian forces fully on their side and launching a well-equipped attack of their own, the French were convinced that the stars had fully aligned for their grand offensive and leaned into it fully.
The French were, at the outset of the war, able to mobilize one hundred and ten divisions of men before raising any reserves, and the Belgians had raised two armies of their own even while filling their fortress network at Liege for what was considered an inevitable counterattack. France had the world's second-largest standing army, behind only Russia (and only narrowly behind), the world's largest contingent of landships, and its largest, most modern and best-trained army air force. While none of this was particularly sustainable for the French treasury, 1919 saw France near the peak of her modern martial powers, and as the columns of French troops were transported through Belgium past cheering crowds as biplane bombers zoomed overhead, it was considered highly likely that the Franco-Austrian alliance would prevail, probably within a year. "It is the advantage we did not enjoy in 1867," remarked French Chief of Staff Joseph Joffre, "the advantage of an ally."
Key to this, however, was the French desire to execute a knockout blow against Germany, not unlike what Berlin was doing in Denmark in the first weeks of the war, and that was termed the "Race to the Rhine." Joffre had in the weeks prior to the war adjusted his deployment timetables and plans minutely, drawing down the number of divisions to be deployed against Italy on an Alpine front and abandoning his hopes of taking Turin within a month; news of the rapid Austrian advance through Veneto from Istria quickly persuaded him that this was the right choice, and that the smaller forces he sent into the Alps against Italy were perfect as a screening force. Rather, he focused the weight of his army towards the narrow "Maastricht Gap," the space east of Liege between the Dutch border and the Ardennes Plateau, a natural chokepoint at the border town of Eupen and beyond, Aachen, one of the most symbolic cities to the French country due to its siting as Charlemagne's capital. However, the easily-defended ground around Eupen did not lend itself to simply cramming a huge army through, and thus the offensive also called for trying to punch through northern Luxemburg towards the city of Bitburg.
Bitburg was a strategic goal for one main reason - it lay essentially "behind" the Trier Triangle, the network of defenses arranged in a rough triangle throughout the Moselle Valley, anchored by the "Gibraltar of the North" in Luxemburg and the city's surroundings and then a latticework of fortresses, pillboxes, pre-built defense in depth trenches and even two or three suspected fields of new, innovative and difficult-to-spot landmines, with a focus on the border town of Saarbrucken and then Trier itself. While dozens of divisions were to be deployed into the maw of this defensive network, it would involve huge bloodshed to break through (and Luxemburg herself was regarded as unseizable) and so Bitburg became a way to get behind that network, collapse some of its logistic support lines, and potentially scramble German forces. The only problem? Separating Bitburg from the Belgian frontier was a wooded, hilly country known as the Eifel, split roughly equally between Luxemburg and Belgium and sluiced through in the south by the river canyon of the Sauer, which France would need to control to make this offensive work.
The first week of March, then, saw French and Belgian soldiers plunge headfirst into German defenses. Artillery roared, bombers danced overhead to try to break defenders from the sky, hundreds if not thousands were ripped up by machine gun fire as they pressed ever-closer to Luxemburg and the outskirts of Aachen, and Saarlouis fell on March 16th, abandoned as German soldiers withdrew into safer ground. But during that first week, French elite forestry corps were pushing through the Eifel north of the Sauer, until March 20, 1919 - the First Battle of the Sauer, and the first major French defeat.
The engagement occurred near the bridge over the river at Dasburg, a strategic point that the French simply could not cross. The German defenders held doggedly on the river's east bank, their machine guns so hot that they melted, and after ten hours of brutal fighting, they took down the bridge with artillery so that the French could not attempt to break through during the night, thus cutting off one of the most important routes across the Sauer. The strategy to push on Bitburg rapidly to cut into the German rear had failed; France would need to grind their way through in the sector to the north, the hard way..."
- 1919: How Europe Went to War
The French were, at the outset of the war, able to mobilize one hundred and ten divisions of men before raising any reserves, and the Belgians had raised two armies of their own even while filling their fortress network at Liege for what was considered an inevitable counterattack. France had the world's second-largest standing army, behind only Russia (and only narrowly behind), the world's largest contingent of landships, and its largest, most modern and best-trained army air force. While none of this was particularly sustainable for the French treasury, 1919 saw France near the peak of her modern martial powers, and as the columns of French troops were transported through Belgium past cheering crowds as biplane bombers zoomed overhead, it was considered highly likely that the Franco-Austrian alliance would prevail, probably within a year. "It is the advantage we did not enjoy in 1867," remarked French Chief of Staff Joseph Joffre, "the advantage of an ally."
Key to this, however, was the French desire to execute a knockout blow against Germany, not unlike what Berlin was doing in Denmark in the first weeks of the war, and that was termed the "Race to the Rhine." Joffre had in the weeks prior to the war adjusted his deployment timetables and plans minutely, drawing down the number of divisions to be deployed against Italy on an Alpine front and abandoning his hopes of taking Turin within a month; news of the rapid Austrian advance through Veneto from Istria quickly persuaded him that this was the right choice, and that the smaller forces he sent into the Alps against Italy were perfect as a screening force. Rather, he focused the weight of his army towards the narrow "Maastricht Gap," the space east of Liege between the Dutch border and the Ardennes Plateau, a natural chokepoint at the border town of Eupen and beyond, Aachen, one of the most symbolic cities to the French country due to its siting as Charlemagne's capital. However, the easily-defended ground around Eupen did not lend itself to simply cramming a huge army through, and thus the offensive also called for trying to punch through northern Luxemburg towards the city of Bitburg.
Bitburg was a strategic goal for one main reason - it lay essentially "behind" the Trier Triangle, the network of defenses arranged in a rough triangle throughout the Moselle Valley, anchored by the "Gibraltar of the North" in Luxemburg and the city's surroundings and then a latticework of fortresses, pillboxes, pre-built defense in depth trenches and even two or three suspected fields of new, innovative and difficult-to-spot landmines, with a focus on the border town of Saarbrucken and then Trier itself. While dozens of divisions were to be deployed into the maw of this defensive network, it would involve huge bloodshed to break through (and Luxemburg herself was regarded as unseizable) and so Bitburg became a way to get behind that network, collapse some of its logistic support lines, and potentially scramble German forces. The only problem? Separating Bitburg from the Belgian frontier was a wooded, hilly country known as the Eifel, split roughly equally between Luxemburg and Belgium and sluiced through in the south by the river canyon of the Sauer, which France would need to control to make this offensive work.
The first week of March, then, saw French and Belgian soldiers plunge headfirst into German defenses. Artillery roared, bombers danced overhead to try to break defenders from the sky, hundreds if not thousands were ripped up by machine gun fire as they pressed ever-closer to Luxemburg and the outskirts of Aachen, and Saarlouis fell on March 16th, abandoned as German soldiers withdrew into safer ground. But during that first week, French elite forestry corps were pushing through the Eifel north of the Sauer, until March 20, 1919 - the First Battle of the Sauer, and the first major French defeat.
The engagement occurred near the bridge over the river at Dasburg, a strategic point that the French simply could not cross. The German defenders held doggedly on the river's east bank, their machine guns so hot that they melted, and after ten hours of brutal fighting, they took down the bridge with artillery so that the French could not attempt to break through during the night, thus cutting off one of the most important routes across the Sauer. The strategy to push on Bitburg rapidly to cut into the German rear had failed; France would need to grind their way through in the sector to the north, the hard way..."
- 1919: How Europe Went to War
Machine gun fire remains undefeated against elan. Of course, France will just try harder next time, I'm totally sure that will be the ticket to success.