Favorite Lost Cause?

Every aher has his or her favorite lost cause. John likes to see the ottomans do well; Straha fees that no world is complete without legal narcotics.

What is yours and why?

Myself, I like to see bonaparte win, because I think you're more likely to get a utopic scenario than a dystopic.

And I applaud Italians who make it big.

I still think that Germany winning WWI is better for the world (no Hitler and drastically weakened Communism) and that Nazism being destroyed from within by the old German military aristocracy is cool too. This has led to impassioned debates with WK, Prunsquallor, and others.

I dislike Communism; hence the Germany-wins-WWI and other TLs where the Bolsheviks get slapped around.

I like scenarios where Christianity does well--hence I like the Christian North Africa TLs (part of Christianity's original heartland DOESN'T go Muslim), the Celtic Church remains independent and influencing much of Northern Europe (with less power and wealth, Rome-centered Christianity probably won't become corrupt and require a Reformation), and some other things.

My Libertarian leanings lead me to enjoy secessionist regimes of various sorts.

Rafi likes it when Armenia does well; I guess that's his "Lost Cause."

In a likewise nationalist fashion, my lost cause is germany doing well,e specially in the imperialist era/ first world war.
Which I begin to find kinda annoying, to be soemwhat self-critic. I become too biased...

I'm rather partial to the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. They had so much potential, and yet the forces of history were against them.

In real life, I do linguistic fieldwork, documenting moribund dialects of Aramaic. My current project is to document a dialect that was spoken until recently in a city on the Iran-Iraq border. This city was destroyed by Saddam Hussein, and its Aramaic-speaking population fled to various parts of the world. So I guess you could call this my pet lost cause.

dammit I was going to mention it

things in many of my TLs

1 victimless crimes legalized
2 the Draka
3 left wing america
4 a smaller mexico/latin america if I don't have it annexed
5 higher technology
6 the race making an appearence
7 a cold war with the nazis instead of the soviets
8 a bigger germany
9 nukes used in anger in minor conflicts
10 rap music becoming unpopular/never making it big
11 the CSA leaving/being crushed into oblivion
12 no political correctness

none of those are lost causes,straha.

they're lost causes because they didn't happen

Like Matt, I strongly dislike Bolshevik-type communism and I tend to like timelines where it never exists. Actually, I think an ideal timeline would be one where the various "collectivist" ways of thinking - nationalism, socialism, communism, fascism - never come into vogue and western civilization remains under the sway of individualistic liberal principles.

Other unlikely things that I'm strangely fascinated by ...

- Russia industrializing and modernizing earlier in the 19th century

- Brazil becoming a superpower in the 20th century

- New England fighting for independence from Britain in the 17th century, and succeeding

- Byzantine Empire surviving into the 20th century (at least as long as the Ottoman Empire did OTL)

- The northern states seceding from a southern-dominated US and a "Civil War in reverse" scenario

- The US still winning the Cold War without supporting ugly kleptocratic dictatorships

Monarchies. I love monarchies and most of my timelines revolve around the US being an Empire or something to that effect.

Faeelin said:

Every aher has his or her favorite lost cause. John likes to see the ottomans do well; Straha fees that no world is complete without legal narcotics.

What is yours and why?

Myself, I like to see bonaparte win, because I think you're more likely to get a utopic scenario than a dystopic.

And I applaud Italians who make it big.

Click to expand...

How exactly do you define a "lost cause"? The Ottomans surviving and doing well was not that unlikely, a single individual behaving slightly differently in 1877 could be enough (Midhat Pasha).

To me a lost cause is more like Byzantine survival, which would be my favorite.

AustriHungary surviving as a medium strong multinational state gradually liberalizing (but not too much) would be mine.

Oh, come on Straha, the Race does not qualify as a lost cause.

Mine vote is, of course, for the Roman Empire and/or an industrial revolution in antiquity. The Byzantines also rate fairly high. I guess I like Empires (the only title of nobility I have any stomach for is Emperor, I've no idea why).

my favorite 'lost cause' would be to have the US somehow take Canada in the 19th century... with all that extra room and resources, our population could have expanded even beyond the (pretty incredible) explosion in OTL....

zAs you can easily guess, my "lost causes" are very Polish:

Partition (damn! just 20 years more, and we could survive, or even catch the wind from Napoleonic storm)

Lost November Uprising (1830-31). We'd have quite nice army (my favourite episode is destruction of Russian cavalary unit with Polish rocket artillery - that's not AH or joke), but leadership was mediocre. Of course, nobody thought about coup d'etat and removal of this lazy, coward generals.

Lost September Campaign (1939) - obvious.

But, onthe other hand, we were lucky, after all. I don't even dare to think, what would happen, if we lost Warsaw Batlle against Red Army (1920), and became one of SU republics.

And my favorite "foreign lost cause" is Bizantium and Spanish Caliphahate. Pity, that they were lost... can you imagine going to Constantinopolis for holidays, or alliance of France and Cordoba Republic against evil US .

Faeelin said:

Every aher has his or her favorite lost cause. John likes to see the ottomans do well; Straha fees that no world is complete without legal narcotics.

What is yours and why?

Myself, I like to see bonaparte win, because I think you're more likely to get a utopic scenario than a dystopic.

And I applaud Italians who make it big.

Click to expand...

Well, I have two...

1) "THE" Lost Cause, of course. If you have to ask which one, or why, you haven't been reading my posts. For those newbies on the board, I strongly believe that the cause of freedom for everyone (not just one group of people as in OTL) would have been better served by a Confederate victory in the War Between the States, or even better, if the South had been allowed to secede in peace and no war had occurred at all. The slaves would have been freed within a few decades after the war anyway, the 14th Amendment would never have been passed, and the states would not have lost their ability to restrain the growth of the power of the federal government, which would be much less intrusive in our lives today. Furthermore, a weaker United States might not have chosen to stick it's big nose into World War One, which would likely have meant German victory in that conflict, and a completely different (and likely far less bloody) twentieth century.

2) The Britons vs. the Anglo Saxons. I just find the idea of a Celtic-dominated Britain fascinating, and I think such a Britain would have been much less aggressive and imperialist.

No Norman Conquest of England would be nice. The Norman monarchy started with England's first imperial adventure--the conquest of Ireland--as well as wars in France, Scotland, etc.

I don't quite understand the idea that a German victory in WWI would have automatically led to no WWII and a more peaceful century. I think it's just as likely that you would just have the pattern of OTL reversed - a vengeful, aggressive, nationalist government comes to power in 1 or more of the defeated allies, and eventually starts a war of revenge. Having extreme nationalists come to power in Russia or France is no more far-fetched than the Nazi rise to power in OTL. A Nazi or Fascist-like Britain is somewhat less likely, but still possible.

Basically, any ending to WWI with 1 side dictating a punitive peace to the other side makes another massive war a very significant possibility. If Germany had won, it's terms on France, Russia, and Britain would have probably been even harsher than the Allies' terms were against the Central Powers in the Treaty of Versailles.

Paul Spring said:

I don't quite understand the idea that a German victory in WWI would have automatically led to no WWII and a more peaceful century. I think it's just as likely that you would just have the pattern of OTL reversed - a vengeful, aggressive, nationalist government comes to power in 1 or more of the defeated allies, and eventually starts a war of revenge. Having extreme nationalists come to power in Russia or France is no more far-fetched than the Nazi rise to power in OTL. A Nazi or Fascist-like Britain is somewhat less likely, but still possible.

Basically, any ending to WWI with 1 side dictating a punitive peace to the other side makes another massive war a very significant possibility. If Germany had won, it's terms on France, Russia, and Britain would have probably been even harsher than the Allies' terms were against the Central Powers in the Treaty of Versailles

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I think you are overstating the severity of German peace terms upon victory. I feel that Germany was much less likely to seek an especially vengeful peace. The Allied demand that Germany accept responsibility for starting the war would not have been made in reverse, for example. Germany probably would not have demanded huge reparations, as very little actual damage took place in Germany itself during the war. Certainly it would have annexed some territory, but I doubt that it's territorial demands would have been more upsetting to the defeated allies than the willy-nilly re-drawing of the map which took place in OTL was to Germany. I doubt that Germany's treatment of Britain would be such as to cause long-term resentment there, but I can imagine they would be pretty hard on France. And, therefore, I think
the likeliest candidate for the rise of a fascist type regime among the defeated allies would be France, and quite frankly, France simply did not have the potential to cause trouble which Germany possessed. It is unlikely that anything like that would arise in Britain.

Finally, a victorious Germany is not likely to tolerate a Bolshevik State in Russia for very long, and would probably intervene in the Russian Civil War to make sure the communists were defeated. That, in and of itself, would save millions of lives.

The Germans practically introduced the idea of forcing the loser to pay heavy reparations after the Franco-Prussian war. I think that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is a good indicator of how the Germans would have treated other defeated governments - massive loss of territory either directly annexed by Germany or turned into what amounted to puppet states. The actual terms would have varied depending on when the victory came and how severe it was, but I suspect that some features might have been -

- Belgium becomes a virtual German vassal state. Possibly Germany annexes the eastern part of Belgium and gives Belgium a little territory to the west taken from France. Part or all of the Belgian Congo becomes German.

- France loses a belt of territory from the Channel to Switzerland, its army is stringently limited in size, part of France is demilitarized, most of the fleet is scrapped, tanks and military aircraft forbidden, extremely heavy reparations, much French colonial territory to Germany. Basically similar to how Germany was treated in OTL, except much more severe relative to France's size and population.

- Britain has to hand over some colonial territory, pay a large indemnity, and limit the size of its all armed forces including the navy, part of which must be scrapped.

Russia loses Baltic States, Byelorus, most of Ukraine, which become German puppet states. The Ottomans get a slice of the southern Caucasus, and Austria-Hungary gets a piece of the western Ukraine.

The Germans might not include a "War guilt" clause directly in the treaty, but I don't think that will matter very much. There will be plenty of other public announcements about Germany justly punishing the guilty allies who tried to encircle and crush her.

Whether the Bolsheviks come to power or not depends on how long the war lasts. If the Germans win in 1918, there may very well be a German intervention against the Bolsheviks. If the Bolsheviks are crushed, it may save a lot of lives, but then again it may not. If a virulently nationalist regime ends up rising to power in Russia, bent on revenge against Germany and the destruction of all socialists, liberals, Jews, non-Russians, and others blamed for losing the war, then you could easily end up with a fascist Russia that is as bent on starting a war as the Third Reich.

Otis Tarda said:

zAs you can easily guess, my "lost causes" are very Polish:

Partition (damn! just 20 years more, and we could survive, or even catch the wind from Napoleonic storm)

Lost November Uprising (1830-31). We'd have quite nice army (my favourite episode is destruction of Russian cavalary unit with Polish rocket artillery - that's not AH or joke), but leadership was mediocre. Of course, nobody thought about coup d'etat and removal of this lazy, coward generals.

Lost September Campaign (1939) - obvious.

But, onthe other hand, we were lucky, after all. I don't even dare to think, what would happen, if we lost Warsaw Batlle against Red Army (1920), and became one of SU republics.

And my favorite "foreign lost cause" is Bizantium and Spanish Caliphahate. Pity, that they were lost... can you imagine going to Constantinopolis for holidays, or alliance of France and Cordoba Republic against evil US .

Click to expand...

Well, you still can go to Constantinople on holiday if you want to - it's still there, you know, it's just got a different name. All the buildings are still there.