A good POD might be if Michael Collins had lived and been able to lead Ireland for the next few decades as opposed to Eamon De Valera. His chapter on "Building Up Ireland" in his book The Path to Freedom shows a very pragmatic approach to develop the Irish economy while avoided laissez faire...
Switzerland also has mountains that help protect its neutrality in war (Ireland is surrounded by water, but that is no barrier to the Royal Navy). It also had a banking culture since the 1700s and the legal laws and culture that prized banking secrecy until recently. It would be hard for...
I don't see this as feasible. You may see some de facto independence for a while, but the world community would recognize the independence of any of these statelets. When the Soviet Union broke up, there was actually formal language in the constitution of the Soviet Union that allowed them to...
To defeat Japan earlier, Japan has to do worse in December 1941 and the first six months of 1942. This is plausible by various means. That means the Allies start with ground that they did not recover until after 1942 (if they recovered them at all). Two critical bits. One is for the US to...
I'm confidant that it would be Dixie with new verses that better fit a national anthem. Even during the Civil War, southerners gave Dixie new verses that were more appropriate (just as Northerner sang Dixie with new words to make it supportive of the Union cause).
It would either be one of the...
Yucatan would definitely be its own nation. Central Mexico has a heavy population and would be a single entity. Strong change for a US dominated northern Mexico which is more desert, sparsely inhabited, and open to US economic investment. A very southern more indigenous polity in Chiapas and...
National Health Care is very iffy. Same thing with saving South Vietnam. Both rely on some kind of approval by Congress, and it is by no means certain that could happen. At the same time, it is possible that a President Nixon that stays on and does not have the distraction or liability of...
Britain, like the United States, historically did not have conscription for the army. British liberty required that the army be small, and since it was the Royal Navy and not the army that really prevented foreign invasion this was acceptable on security purposes. It was only the large...
Do the Germans even have an aircraft or rocket capable of delivering an atomic bomb comparable to Fat Man and Little Boy? Given Allied air superiority (even supremacy in some areas) delivering the bomb would be difficult. I imagine Hitler would want to take out London, but tactically they need...
I don't see how improving the air force, but neglecting the army would turn out better for the French. Having an even worse French army fight the Wehrmacht doesn't sound good to me even if their air force is more on parity with the Luftwaffe. Neglecting the navy though would turn out to be a...
You need to avoid the social disruption and civil disorder of the late sixties and early seventies which means that large parts of the left does not become radicalized. So no Vietnam War to act as a radicalizing agent, no race riots, no increase in crime, no rampant drug use, or anything else...
The Axis powers were revisionist powers intent on upturning the international order as it then stood so they could expand. Britain was the premier example of the power who benefited from that international order since it had essentially created it. As a status quo power, it has nothing in...
Germany clearly intended itself to become the most dominant power in Europe, insuring that Great Britain would ally with its rivals. Navies are luxuries for continental land powers, but are essential for island nations. Germany certainly could have developed a navy large enough to protect its...
Probably a combination of the difficulty to experiment to get a fourth crop rotation right (which crops, and in which order), legal difficulties in getting large property together for a single farmstead, and having a large enough internal market so that you can always sell the crops you grow...
Seems more likely they would keep them employed in the East as a buffer for the desert nomads, just as they had employed the Arab Federated tribes for centuries. If they are going to settle any loyalist Arabs elsewhere or recruit Arabs for the legions, it is going to be done piecemeal and...