It wouldn't be really dystopian with a WW2 being a lot more unlikely here as France would be way too weak in industry and economy to be able to beat a superpower Germany with Britain recognizing the loss redirecting its focus towards its colonial empire alongside even if the USSR or a fascist White Russia takes power they would significantly lag in industrialization compared to otl with much of their valuable territories under German influence and a second front war so the entire power of the Kaiserreich doesn't swarm them. The worst it can get is if decolonization is delayed to decades after with no UN and superpower USA with the destruction from WW2 pushing them to let go they will try to continue to lord after Africa either through blood and guts or the signing of a "mutual contract" it doesn't change that the old world's prospects will be alot grimmer even if its freedom was harder to gain alongside in the topic of empires a sun would have found its place in the sun ever rising as per its namesake with America either losing or staying out of WW1 isolationist feelings would be much more prevalent meaning no embargo on Japan if it attacks China or British and French Asian colonies out of fear of provoking the sun while there may be pacific war but not by the US but by the empires of old and the new facing off to gain rulership over Asia with Japan winning just by distance alone with all the funni moments Asia would have to face otl over years turned to decades as imperialism in name chains them down while being fed crumbs from their "liberator"
Would a Central Powers Victory be Dystopian?
- Thread starter THE KINGFISH
- Start date
Malarky
Banned
No holocaust, no mega ussr, no massive depopulation of eastern europe, no mass deportations, bigger Finland, tons of more countries than existed without their victory in eastern europe, massive economic integration of europe. A more stable middle east as the ottomans crumble, a more stable balkans. And if the US never joined the war then german-americans wouldnt have been so heavily persecuted.
I think its a better world because tons of tragedies and problems are avoided by the central powers winning if the US doesnt join. But in the end, you just swap one empire for another.
I think its definitely better for eastern europe, and much of Europe, but then for some places its debatable. I think German being slightly more common is a small price to pay for Europe not being completely devastated from the holocaust, communism, and ww2. The problem is what will happen to decolonisation.
I think its a better world because tons of tragedies and problems are avoided by the central powers winning if the US doesnt join. But in the end, you just swap one empire for another.
I think its definitely better for eastern europe, and much of Europe, but then for some places its debatable. I think German being slightly more common is a small price to pay for Europe not being completely devastated from the holocaust, communism, and ww2. The problem is what will happen to decolonisation.
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Since when has stability ever been a feature of the aftermath of empires collapsing?
The Balkans, USSR and literally all of Africa would like a word.
Malarky
Banned
because it would be a much more minimal decline and any nations that did manage to get independence from the ottomans would have more natural borders, and not be carved out by Britain and France for their mandates. That said, the middle east is hardly a beakon of light and inspiration in either timeline.
But both Austria-Hungary and the Ottomans would have troubles keeping together post-war
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Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
And nobody has ever disputed "natural borders" before, or ever had situations where the boundary between two ethnic-majority areas is blurred, right? Again, Balkans and USSR want your number.
Oh, and have I mentioned the Ottoman genocides enough times yet? Those were explicitly meant to cleanse the Turkish empire of ethnic minorities on the grounds that the 19th century loss of the Balkans had proven that integration was simply impossible, and minorities would always be subversive elements within the empire. The longer and more gradual the decolonization process is, the more dead bodies will pile up as this Turkish equivalent of Generalplan Ost keeps rolling along.
I suppose there is one silver lining to this cloud, in that the genocides might limit infighting between different ethnic groups in the end because many of them simply won't exist anymore, and many of their lands will now be populated by Turks. Isn't that a cheery thought?
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Malarky
Banned
Im not very familiar with the ottoman genocides, I will have to read some more on that. Only really know of the armenian genocide
That region is so intermixed that its completely impossible to create nations that have "natural borders". Because any nation made for one ethnicity will be forced to have a large minority of another due to how population is distributed there, the only way that they could create nations of one ethnicity would be mass deportations. In fact its the desire to create ethnically homogenous nations with natural borders which makes this conflict inevitable.
And thats before we even get into how the new nations would want access to resources that are in another nation, how they would want sea access, how they would want lands that they don't have majority in but were held by them historically or how they would generally want to expand themselves to make themselves more powerful.
Decolonisation certainly is going to be really messy thing. France is going to fight over its remaining colonial empire with nails and teeth. Even in OTL it was willingful fight over Indochina and Algeria even after years lasted brutal occupation. The Netherlands is not going allow Indonesia leave peacefully. Portugal probably will fight with same way as in OTL. Germany probably will be really stubborn on keeping its colonies assuming that it gets some African colonies during the Great War.
Decolonisation of British Empire is probably about same as in OTL altough more blood might be spilled.
So you:
- smash the liberal democracies,
- instill 'might is right'
- eliminate small nations and kill between a sixth to a third of their population
- have no way of making trusting and lasting international agreements.
Japan in this alt scenario would still have its OTL militarism and imperialistic tendencies, as while they're on the entente's side, their distance means that the central powers would be unable to enforce any meaningful treaties on their ass. However their ambitions would still remain, as is the power vacuum caused by the collapsing chinese (except this time with the added bonus of even weaker european imperial powers in the region).
Those, along with a far less militarized (and interested) US, might make for an even more expensive Japanese rampage and occupation of the far east and pacific.
Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Of course, this means that Japan is free to enact its own genocidal vision of lebensraum and apocalyptic race war on all of East Asia.
So not only is race war ideology not discredited by the defeat of its most powerful advocates, but genocide for the sake of lebensraum is effectively normalized as a political concept by its unpunished practice by at least two empires, probably three - and genocide for the sake of suppressing revolts is certainly practiced and celebrated by all three. And there is no one strong enough to stop all of them. Tell me how that's not a dystopian timeline.
Speaking of which!
Of the European colonial empires in Africa, all of them had some amount of blood on their hands prior to the decolonization era, but there were two big standouts: Leopold II's personal empire in the Congo, which was basically one large slave camp; and German Namibia, which is famous for having the largest native uprising in colonial history, which was then crushed with the most brutal response in colonial history. Once decolonization kicked off, basically everyone got a lot of blood on their hands very quickly - France in Algeria, Britain in Kenya, even Portugal in Angola.
Due to considerable pressure from the Americans, most African colonies got let go with relatively little fighting, but a few like Algeria and Kenya did not, and Portugal clung onto all its colonies until 1975. ITTL, the Americans have no leverage over the colonial empires other than to arm and fund the rebels themselves, so the process will be a lot slower and bloodier. Given their previous record, their avowed callousness to civilian casualties and their marked tolerance for genocide, the Germans will undoubtedly be the most brutal of the lot in Africa (though, even then, they might pale in comparison next to the Japanese in Asia), and they will actively aid their fellow Europeans in keeping their colonies down, sorta like how South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal helped each other. After all, having your neighbor's colonies become independent will only give your own colonial populations bad ideas.
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These are the two most salient points. Internally, the lesson Berlin (and Vienna) will learn from this is that wars are winnable and even profitable. "After all, we won in 1870 and again in 1914 (insert latter year as preferred), why not start another?" States institutionalise what makes them great; the range of policy options considered reasonable by decision-takers is set to a large extent by past experience.
Externally, the attitude in London, Paris and several other capitals is that treaties with Germany aren't worth anything, since Berlin regards them as mere 'scraps of paper'. This, to put it mildly, will not create the conditions for lasting peace, such as adumbrated by several posts here. A Berlin-centred order in Europe could only be imposed and maintained by force, with a negligible degree of consent, and it would collapse as soon as Berlin lost the will and/ or ability to use force to preserve it. Some writers (Niall Ferguson, for instance) imply that the Berlin-centred Europe would resemble the European Union; I think it would actually comprise a set of puppet regimes that would never gain popular legitimacy. Sooner or later there would be trouble on a scale that led to renewed war. Bear in mind that Berlin could never gain lasting control over policy in either London or Moscow, and neither state would have any reason to trust Berlin. They would gleefully exploit any difficulties Germany might have - especially e.g. in the political turmoil that would have afflicted Austria-Hungary sooner or later, probably sooner.
The Nazi experience - understandably - has distorted our understanding of the range of historical possibility; we assume that anything is better than the Nazis taking power in Germany, and that without that, all the negative downstream events simply don't happen. That seems not to take a pessimistic enough view of the range of historic possibilities. Imagine, for instance, a major European war in the 1940s or 50s which goes nuclear - on both sides. Not saying that's certain or even likely, but it surely can't be ruled out.
I wouldn’t mind reading a For All Time: CP Victory Edition if there is anyone out there interested in doing it...
Japan in this scenario would be interesting, OTL they learned from the success of the British blockade WW1 that not having all the resources you need within your borders will lead to your defeat. This is one of the factors that lead them to invade China so they could make sure they wouldn't end up like Germany in case they got into a war with the western powers. The Paris peace conference that ended the war also lead to the rejection of the racial equality clause which also pushed Japan into radicalisation.
However in this scenario there are still the internal factors which caused it and the lessons they'd learn from WW1 would not be great either, as Germany attacking a neutral country helped them to win.
However in this scenario there are still the internal factors which caused it and the lessons they'd learn from WW1 would not be great either, as Germany attacking a neutral country helped them to win.
Fact of the matter is, might makes right was the philosophy of the British and French empires too. Who do you think violated Greek neutrality and forced the king to abdicate on threat of leveling Athens? Britain's record of respecting neutrality is spotty at best, little better than the German one. Italy, France, and Britain signed secret agreements before the war permitting the Italians to make a grab for colonies and influence in North Africa. And the less said of the Sykes-Picot Agreement which betrayed the Anglo-French's Arab allies, the better. TLDR, we're talking about racist, imperialist empires, not true liberal democracies. Everyone was operating on the Might Makes Right principle. A bad precedent to be sure, but one in which Germany was hardly exceptional.
Liberal democracy as an idea would not be crushed. It would just be traded in one country for another, where in others it survives better. Why do you think the UK is suddenly going to go fascist? Paris might go through a phase but it's hardly inevitable for democracy to collapse, especially in the long run. In Imperial Germany, the Social Democrats were steadily making gains and would be in a position to challenge the conservatives. Outcomes of course also depend on what kind of victory there is, and all manner of other factors.
Given that the record of the Entente members shows they had no problem violating international agreements and betraying their allies, and still there were some norms of paying lip service to international agreements, I don't see how a Central Powers victory changes this. Might Makes Right, always has, and international law to this day is a formality that countries only follow when it is in their interests. It's no coincidence that foreign policy morals almost invariably follow in their country's interests.
I don't see a dystopia. I just see the war being won by a different shitty empire, with different atrocities replacing some OTL ones. It's not inherently worse than OTL overall. Worse for many people, but also better for many people. In terms of cumulative global death toll, probably the lesser evil, but it would not feel that way to the victims of the new timeline's crimes against humanity.
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Grey Wolf
Donor
You might get a completely different type of decolonialism where what happens is that colonial powers withdraw in favour of the previously-existing entities in these places - to an extent this happened, or tried to happen in OTL but by that time, the length of time since these entities were independent was so much longer that the status quo ante-colony had been about as fallen into disfavour as the colonialism.
Vietnam, Cambodia and Vientiane/Laos have native dynasties that a defeated France might be forced to retrocede these lands to. Maybe they hang on to Saigon and Cochin, or maybe even the Germans take that over. Quite possibly Siam launches a war to take the Cambodian borderlands, perhaps even to dominate/vassalise the country.
Tunis could be retroceded to the Bey, the Senussi could be rewarded with Cyrenaica, or even all of Libya like OTL. In the first instance, the Bey has only been displaced by France for a few decades, not the 7 or 8 of OTL when they tried to leave Tunisia and make it a kingdom. The Senussi are not the previous rulers of Tripoli (I cannot remember what happened to them? The Ottomans put them down?) but are strong in Cyrenaica during WW1 and a defeated Italy could certainly be forced to cede that part of Libya to them.
Grey Wolf
Donor
Japan, sitting on its own as undefeated would be in an interesting position regarding both its sitting on Manchuria and its occupation of Vladivostock and Eastern Siberia.
Definitely.
Also they would act different if there wasn't a Hitler trying to cause conflicts, it may make them less confident in China and the lack of WW2 would most likely stop them attacking Indochina. This means that the US oil embargo would happen later or not at all, which means Japan does better in China if they decide to invade and doesn't need to attack Pearl Harbour, Malaysia and Indonesia, which could all lead to a victory in China.
However, with a Europe not distracted by WW2 they could take more action against the Japanese invasion of China. What Germany, the major power of Europe would do though is most important. They could see Japan's invasion of China as a threat or they could try to cut a deal with China for access to Chinese resources in excahnge for giving Japan free reign in China. Though I think the former is more likely. IOTL when Japan started to take parts of China the first time Germany lead by Wilhelm II intervened with Russia and France in the triple inetrvention. The same Wilhelm who will be Kaiser by the time Japan would start their invasion of China. Wilhelm also was a big beleiver in the idea of "yellow peril" and had fears of asia taking over Europe and believed that a race war between Europe and Asia was coming. Wilhelm may try what he did before and try to organise a coalition of European powers to oppose the Japanese invasion of China, both to increase relations with his former enemies and also to stop Japan from getting strong enough to oppose the west.
But Wilhelm would have to battle with the fact that by this time the reichstag likely has more powers and the fact that the population would be quite anti war due to the events of WW1. This would make a millitary intervention hard but economic sanctions wouldn't be hard as a lot the population could be swayed by looking at the Japanese war crimes, the government might also negotiate with the US for joint sanctions, which could escalate into an embargo of oil (with Germany perhaps being able to pressure the Dutch.)
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