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KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

feedmegin posted:

I doubt it. Scandals come and go, it was more on Leopold personally, and if bad things happening to black people actually mattered at the time then the US, UK and France would be international pariahs. Belgium wasn't viewed like ISIS in 1914 or anything.

yeah on the scandals levels of the day shooting suspected (white) partisans in an occupied country is way, way higher than horrible things perpetrated against black colonials, even if those were pretty shocking even by contemporary standards

Alchenar posted:

A counterfactual where Motlke knows how the war is going to pan out and instead opts for a passive strategy in the West and concentrating everything against Russia is interesting. No invasion of Belgium places the war faction in the UK in an awkward position, it's unclear that they get the vote. Then in France you have a simultaneously awkward situation where Plan XVII has a been a disaster to no avail, but Germany doesn't need to be forced off occupied territory and is saying as widely and as loudly as it can "look we don't want this war and we don't want anything from you, lets just agree status quo ante in the West?". Does a French government survive that kind of disaster?

e: but yes, the actors did what they did because they were who they were.

It's an interesting one because without the British Empire you don't have a blockade, and without the blockade I don't think Germany and AH lose against France and Russia, the Ottomans are far less threatened and see some opportunities against the Russians, and Italy probably stays out of it (or decides that Corsica and redemption of former territories of Savoia is worthwhile to add to France's misery).

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Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

PittTheElder posted:

The Zimmermann Telegram is a good one though, like they really should have known better. Obviously mid-civil war Mexico isn't going to declare war on the US, and Zimmermann definitely shouldn't have admitted he sent it.

It's the high water mark of Imperial Germany loving up its foreign relations efforts and having no understanding of how its actions are going to be percieved at every step.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

I think there's a non-zero chance that the Germans could have pulled a quick victory off in 1914 using the same basic concept of inviting the French to advance through the revolving door of Alsace and Lorraine, whereupon the STRONK RIGHT VING wheels round to kick them up the arse and cut them off faster than they can retreat. However, what it's also going to take is big enough brass balls to bring the French all the way up to the Rhine, and possibly even allowing them to cross it, before the hammer falls. This shortens the distances involved far enough that it's possible that the SRV might actually be humanly capable of marching and fighting the required distance in the required time without collapsing well short of the finish.

That's an absolutely massive risk; it's entirely possible that the Kaiser would have taken fright and forbidden it; and even if allowed to play out without any interference like we're in a Paradox game, it's just as likely that if things go down this way, the Western Front ends up running from something like Trier to Liechtenstein by way of Stuttgart, which is a far worse outcome for Germany than what they ended up with.

aphid_licker
Jan 7, 2009


Srsly wanna go back in time and publicly propose the return of Lorraine as Willy 2 in like 1905 or something just to see just how many people I get shot / hung / deposed by.

e: it's gonna be Mr. Burns illnesses door.flv only with hypernationalist assassins

aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Apr 6, 2021

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
hell it'd just be following Old Man Otto's advice

EggsAisle
Dec 17, 2013

I get it! You're, uh...
My understanding of WW1 is that nobody expected or predicted it would play out the way it did, or that it would draw in so many countries. Is that actually true? Or was there anyone in like 1912 (or even in the early weeks of the war) looking at the situation and thinking "we're in for a long, bloody mess if this blows up." I heard an anecdote once of an American remarking that Europe was like a powder keg- but that's literally from my high school history textbook, so who knows.

I guess I'm just curious if anyone "saw it coming", so to speak, and if so, what led them to that line of thinking?

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

PittTheElder posted:

The Zimmermann Telegram is a good one though, like they really should have known better. Obviously mid-civil war Mexico isn't going to declare war on the US, and Zimmermann definitely shouldn't have admitted he sent it.

The Mexican Civil war had mostly wrapped up by then and the US Army had been skirmishing with the Mexican army while chasing Pancho Villa when the telegram was sent. It wasn't entirely implausible that Mexico would be pissed enough to declare war, and Germany doesn't care if they win or lose, just that they distract the US long enough for <something> to resolve the war in Europe.

bewbies
Sep 23, 2003

Fun Shoe

EggsAisle posted:

My understanding of WW1 is that nobody expected or predicted it would play out the way it did, or that it would draw in so many countries. Is that actually true? Or was there anyone in like 1912 (or even in the early weeks of the war) looking at the situation and thinking "we're in for a long, bloody mess if this blows up." I heard an anecdote once of an American remarking that Europe was like a powder keg- but that's literally from my high school history textbook, so who knows.

I guess I'm just curious if anyone "saw it coming", so to speak, and if so, what led them to that line of thinking?

To some extent everyone saw it coming -- the huge military expenditures/arms races running up to the war saw to that. What most people got wrong was just how grindy warfare backed by universal conscription and industrial economies could be, and also they made a lot of bad assumptions along the way about diplomacy.

I think some sort of conflagration was inevitable though, so I personally tend to go easier on the statesmen and generals from that era than a lot folks do.

Cessna
Feb 20, 2013

KHABAHBLOOOM

EggsAisle posted:

I guess I'm just curious if anyone "saw it coming", so to speak, and if so, what led them to that line of thinking?

Some did, most didn't.

There was a sub-genre of literature in the years before the war that predicted possible outcomes of future wars, sort of like Hackett's Third World War was written in the 1970's and postulated a Cold War gone hot. Some of these predictions were pretty accurate.

In 1887 Engles (yes, that Engles) wrote Zur Erinnerung Fur Die Deutschen Mordspatrioten, and he predicted that a future war would lead to "the depredations of the Thirty Years’ War compressed into three to four years." Mass armies would ravage Europe, and "crowns will roll into the gutters by the dozen."

A Polish author named Bloch, for example, wrote a book entitled Is War Now Impossible? In it he predicted that modern weapons would lead to trench warfare, and that armies would launch futile attacks in which millions would die. The combatant nations would turn their economies to arms manufacture, which would lead to shortages, then revolutions.

But these were outliers. Most didn't predict the scope or scale of the war, let alone its outcome.

Nenonen
Oct 22, 2009

Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa
At the very least I doubt Gavrilo Princip had a clue of all that he would set in motion.

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

A lot of people predicted 1914. Very few people predicted 1914-1918.

WWI was like a powder keg going off next to the fireplace and then everyone realizing that now that there's no walls, they need to keep shoveling all the furnishings into the resulting fire to stay warm. I don't think for a lot of people it's obvious that a majority of the nations involved found it much easier to reconfigure themselves for total war than it was for any of them to accept defeat, and that nobody would end that in a position to force a surrender.

And then there's Italy predicting 1914 at the start of their war and being so incompetent they don't even get the rapid advances before 1915 sets in.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

EggsAisle posted:

My understanding of WW1 is that nobody expected or predicted it would play out the way it did, or that it would draw in so many countries. Is that actually true? Or was there anyone in like 1912 (or even in the early weeks of the war) looking at the situation and thinking "we're in for a long, bloody mess if this blows up." I heard an anecdote once of an American remarking that Europe was like a powder keg- but that's literally from my high school history textbook, so who knows.

I guess I'm just curious if anyone "saw it coming", so to speak, and if so, what led them to that line of thinking?

The way I read it is, you've got a bunch of drunk people in the middle of a really killer party. They're all standing around something really flammable, juggling lit candles. They're all very good at juggling candles. Most of the time the candles stay in the air and nobody gets hurt. Every so often, someone fumbles and some other people all dive after the falling candle to stop it setting fire to the entire house. Someone catches it, there's a few awkward looks, and then everyone goes right back to juggling candles. They're all preparing for what could happen if a candle falls all the way and how they might best take advantage of this and how to make sure Neil gets stuck with the burning bedroom, but nobody's actively trying to drop a candle; it's just that everyone's going to do it if they're pissed and juggling candles. And then one day, someone drops a candle, but this time around, independently, all for their own very good reasons, everyone just stares at everyone else while it falls, and goes "actually it's your job to catch the drat thing this time". The candle falls, the house burns down, and someone posts that old meme about WWI as a bar fight.

In the European system after 1871, crises were inevitable. It was never inevitable that any given crisis would lead to war, as demonstrated by the large number of crises that came and went and everyone carried right on rolling. It wasn't inevitable that the crisis of July 1914 would lead to war...except that everyone decided it was someone else's responsibility to back down. It could have just carried on and history would have taken a different course.

SerCypher
May 10, 2006

Gay baby jail...? What the hell?

I really don't like the sound of that...
Fun Shoe
The fact that armies are getting implausibly huge doesn't help any of this either.

Especially given how complicated they are to mobilize. It's almost like the concept of MAD with nuclear weapons.

As soon as one side starts mobilizing everyone has to, and history has shown you can only keep massive armies mobilized for so long without someone deciding to do something with one of them.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually

Cessna posted:

A Polish author named Bloch, for example, wrote a book entitled Is War Now Impossible? In it he predicted that modern weapons would lead to trench warfare, and that armies would launch futile attacks in which millions would die. The combatant nations would turn their economies to arms manufacture, which would lead to shortages, then revolutions.

But these were outliers. Most didn't predict the scope or scale of the war, let alone its outcome.
Norman Angell wrote a widely-celebrated book (The Great Illusion) arguing that industrial-scale war between major powers would be so destructive and so costly that war was now literally unthinkable and permanent peace was now at hand. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for that and his other peace-promoting efforts.

The book was published in 1910.

Grenrow
Apr 11, 2016

Arbite posted:

Considering the atrocities perpetrated by colonial Belgium managed scandalize the world even by the standards of the day, I'm curious if the British government made a concerted effort to rehabilite that country in the eyes of the public as WWI loomed.

The last thing Imperial Germany wants to argue in 1914, given their own track record in Africa up until then, is that being perceived as one of the worst and most brutal colonial powers justifies an invasion of your home territory in Europe.

Hannibal Rex
Feb 13, 2010

Lawman 0 posted:

Could the central powers done anything after the capitulation of Russia in ww1 to change the outcome of the war?

Thinking about this has led me to a question of my own: if the Central Powers had had enough foresight to consider the war unwinnable by that time, could they have used a magnanimous treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a diplomatic signal for better peace terms for themselves later on?

Though I think it would have taken several dozen gay black generals, diplomats and statesmen to even get to that point.

Panzeh
Nov 27, 2006

"..The high ground"

Hannibal Rex posted:

Thinking about this has led me to a question of my own: if the Central Powers had had enough foresight to consider the war unwinnable by that time, could they have used a magnanimous treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a diplomatic signal for better peace terms for themselves later on?

Though I think it would have taken several dozen gay black generals, diplomats and statesmen to even get to that point.

I don't really think the Entente powers cared much about the Bolshevik government's peace and the military situation was such that the German military was never going to give the Bolsheviks much room to maneuver and Lenin was in no position to force anything. The thing about Brest-Litovsk is that no one really took it very seriously, not the Germans(they were strongly considering ousting the Bolsheviks themselves), not the Entente(who repudiated it). Even if it was kind, I think a peace made with Kerensky's government in 1917 might have had more weight, but the Entente powers would never have allowed it to happen, and Kerensky was much more sensitive to their desires than Lenin.

Some of the German parliamentary socialists groused about the Bolsheviks suddenly being uninterested in self-determination when they tried to play hardball at the treaty but it was more a matter of the divisions in socialism at the time than anything else, and probably reflective of some of the animus between the German socialists and the Bolsheviks.

Trin Tragula
Apr 22, 2005

Hannibal Rex posted:

Thinking about this has led me to a question of my own: if the Central Powers had had enough foresight to consider the war unwinnable by that time, could they have used a magnanimous treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a diplomatic signal for better peace terms for themselves later on?

Though I think it would have taken several dozen gay black generals, diplomats and statesmen to even get to that point.

The problem here is, by the time Brest-Litovsk is being negotiated, you've got on the one hand Woodrow Wilson let out of his box and banging on about the Fourteen Points and self-determination; and on the other you have Georges Clemenceau, about whom it is deeply unfair to say he was the French Churchill, because if you're going to put it like that you should say Churchill is the English Clemenceau. Neither of them are even remotely interested in buying gay black Hindenburg and Ludendorff's KK-Brot and nail statues.

Even if you want to handwave some sensible Germans into power, you also have to handwave in a Joseph Caillaux premiership in France after the failure of the Nivelle offensive. Then, and only then, might you actually get somewhere with peace talks.

xthetenth
Dec 30, 2012

Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

What would happen, and would there be any possibility for listening if the Germans say 'So are we good?' after being stopped at the Marne?

Trin Tragula posted:

I think there's a non-zero chance that the Germans could have pulled a quick victory off in 1914 using the same basic concept of inviting the French to advance through the revolving door of Alsace and Lorraine, whereupon the STRONK RIGHT VING wheels round to kick them up the arse and cut them off faster than they can retreat. However, what it's also going to take is big enough brass balls to bring the French all the way up to the Rhine, and possibly even allowing them to cross it, before the hammer falls. This shortens the distances involved far enough that it's possible that the SRV might actually be humanly capable of marching and fighting the required distance in the required time without collapsing well short of the finish.

That's an absolutely massive risk; it's entirely possible that the Kaiser would have taken fright and forbidden it; and even if allowed to play out without any interference like we're in a Paradox game, it's just as likely that if things go down this way, the Western Front ends up running from something like Trier to Liechtenstein by way of Stuttgart, which is a far worse outcome for Germany than what they ended up with.

Are you sure the primary difficulty isn't convincing the Kaiser that you need to make the weakness of the left flank visible and well known?

zoux
Apr 28, 2006

https://mobile.twitter.com/NinjaEconomics/status/1379509214066933764

What was going on in Canada in 1916

Also interesting that the goosestep thing was applied to German soldiers way before WWII, I've only ever heard it in reference to Nazis

SubG
Aug 19, 2004

It's a hard world for little things.
Are there any good books in English covering the War of the Triple Alliance/Paraguayan War?

Solaris 2.0
May 14, 2008

zoux posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/NinjaEconomics/status/1379509214066933764

What was going on in Canada in 1916

Also interesting that the goosestep thing was applied to German soldiers way before WWII, I've only ever heard it in reference to Nazis

The “Gulf of Hate” is actually pretty spot on.

*edit*

lol they just tossed on “Bismarck” SD which is an actual city.

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
I'm pretty sure prussians started goose stepping around Frederick the Great's time.

Also, that map has been in the map thread before and iirc it's not actual government propaganda, it's from a LIFE magazine or something.

MikeCrotch
Nov 5, 2011

I AM UNJUSTIFIABLY PROUD OF MY SPAGHETTI BOLOGNESE RECIPE

YES, IT IS AN INCREDIBLY SIMPLE DISH

NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL TO USE A PEPPERAMI INSTEAD OF MINCED MEAT

YES, THERE IS TOO MUCH SALT IN MY RECIPE

NO, I WON'T STOP SHARING IT

more like BOLLOCKnese

xthetenth posted:

What would happen, and would there be any possibility for listening if the Germans say 'So are we good?' after being stopped at the Marne?

Absolutely not. Both sides have lost over 100,000 killed by the end of the battle of the Marne in just over 2 months of fighting. There's just no way politically for that to happen and accept the status quo ante bellum.

Not to mention, the Germans are sitting on 90% of Belgium and the industrial heartlands of France with all the raw materials that entails. The Germans are absolutely in the driving seat when it comes to negotiations - they want recompense for all the people they've just lost and there's no way that France, whose leaders have by some accounts helped engineer the current war with Germany, are even going to think about handing over even more French soil to the Germans.

wesleywillis
Dec 30, 2016

SUCK A MALE CAMEL'S DICK WITH MIRACLE WHIP!!

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

the map thread

Link plz?

FastestGunAlive
Apr 7, 2010

Dancing palm tree.

Oh they didn’t make any changes to it for this map

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

xthetenth posted:

What would happen, and would there be any possibility for listening if the Germans say 'So are we good?' after being stopped at the Marne?

The French demands probably include Alsace and Lorraine. The German demands probably include compensation in some form, probably in money, raw materials, and colonies. Both of those are going to be non starters.

OpenlyEvilJello
Dec 28, 2009


https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3531615

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

zoux posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/NinjaEconomics/status/1379509214066933764

What was going on in Canada in 1916

Also interesting that the goosestep thing was applied to German soldiers way before WWII, I've only ever heard it in reference to Nazis

Are they for or against this map? I'd totally go live by, and occasionally in, lager lake.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit

zoux posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/NinjaEconomics/status/1379509214066933764

What was going on in Canada in 1916

Also interesting that the goosestep thing was applied to German soldiers way before WWII, I've only ever heard it in reference to Nazis

As extremely lazy alt-history maps goes, this is pretty up there, which is impressive considering how early it is.

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

Canada is correctly labeled at least

Nenonen
Oct 22, 2009

Mulla on aina kolkyt donaa taskussa

sullat posted:

Are they for or against this map? I'd totally go live by, and occasionally in, lager lake.

Be noted that you'll be living downstream from my Pilsener Lake.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

Nenonen posted:

Be noted that you'll be living downstream from my Pilsener Lake.

Well, as they say in Ankh-Morpork, everything's for sale except the beer, which you just rent for a little bit.

Acebuckeye13
Nov 2, 2010


If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, crisis counseling and referral services can be accessed by calling
1-800-GAMBLER


Ultra Carp

zoux posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/NinjaEconomics/status/1379509214066933764

What was going on in Canada in 1916

Also interesting that the goosestep thing was applied to German soldiers way before WWII, I've only ever heard it in reference to Nazis

I'm not sure if my favorite part of this map is Baja going to Austria, Florida going to Turkey, or the tiny little "New Romania" on Puerto Rico

Tias
May 25, 2008

Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund
Some uncomfortable self-awareness going on with the size of the reservation..

Gort
Aug 18, 2003

Good day what ho cup of tea
why would Japan get poo poo from a victorious Imperial Germany, they were enemies

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Gort posted:

why would Japan get poo poo from a victorious Imperial Germany, they were enemies
You know, that's a good question, although I suppose they might just be being racist. But Japan was certainly in the Allied camp. It seems like an interesting alternate-universe possibility to see if the post-WW1 situation went differently, and you might not have had Imperial Japan allying with Germany. Or at least a very different situation in east Asia.

Alchenar
Apr 9, 2008

Japan in WW1 was in the camp of whoever was making the best offer.

Phobophilia
Apr 26, 2008

by Hand Knit

Tias posted:

Some uncomfortable self-awareness going on with the size of the reservation..

Is it, really? Because racists will often explicitly tell you if their society ever lets the boot off the necks of the oppressed peoples, then the "superior" races will immediately have done to them what they have been doing to others.

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feedmegin
Jul 30, 2008

On the lines of future war predictions, there's The War In The Air, written in 1907 by HG Wells (yes, the War of the Worlds guy), which predicts something even more apocalyptic than what we actually got. Gets a bit Yellow Peril, though.

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