What If?

[Turrosh Mak]

Originally posted by MrDictator
What if the British had joined forces with nazi Germany in attacking soviet Russia, as Hitler had intended? Russia would surely have been crushed, so there would be no cold war, and maybe Britain would still have control of its empire

Was there a possibility of this happening? What events would have lead to this unlikely and unholy union?

[Verto]

What if America HAD been able to take over Canada during the 1812 war?

and...

What if US-Soviet relations had plummeted to the point where Patton's wish to go to war with the USSR was realized? Would the atomic bomb have been dropped immediately, or after a period of extended conventional warfare?

[Turrosh Mak]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I do not see how Turkey would have had an impact at all. First off Stalin had massive T36's that he was holding back and when he let them fly the tide was turned in Russia for good.
Russia was too large to be over run by the Germans, they did not have man power or material to get the job done.
They caught Satlin by surprise and it still did not allow them to win. Not to mention we were feeding Russia with supplies and would have stepped it up if need be.
Russia was about three time the size of Germany and could lose troops forever and not run out.
Turkey was and is not even a blip on the world stage.
If they had come in Axis side, they would have fallen under Soviet rule most likely. Satlin would have demand his pound of flesh. It would have gone very harsh on Turkey to declare war on Russia.

I have to disagree with you on this one Vmxa1. Turkey is ideally placed for a strike at the Soviet Unions main oil supply source in the Transcaucus. The lend lease route of western supplies for Russia mostly went through Iran. With Turkey sitting astride that route, Japan sitting on Vladivostok, and Germany sitting on the Murmansk route, I highly doubt much would get through. And anyway, Americans think too highly of the aid we gave the Soviet Union. Lend lease helped, but it wasn't a determining factor on the Eastern front.

The entire German plan of campaign in 1942 was based on grabbing the oil fields of Maikop and Baku, not only for German use but also to deny them to the Soviets. Without petrol, T-34s don't run and LaGG 5s don't fly. If Germany could have secured Arabian and Persian oil in 1941 the entire 1942 plan in the east changes. That means no Stalingrad (and the loss of a quarter million Axis troops) and no Mediteranean front (because the Germans would have rolled up the Brits from their secure non-sea based supply lines through Turkey.

I highly recommend the book "Oil and War: How the Deadly Struggle for Fuel in WW2 Meant Victory or Defeat" by Robert Goralski. There is a nice big section about the 1942 German campaign plan.

One final note - God isn't always on the side with the biggest battalions.

[Turrosh Mak]

Originally posted by Verto
What if America HAD been able to take over Canada during the 1812 war?

and...

What if US-Soviet relations had plummeted to the point where Patton's wish to go to war with the USSR was realized? Would the atomic bomb have been dropped immediately, or after a period of extended conventional warfare?

If the USA had won the war of 1812, the half million Canadians (mostly French Royalists with no taste for revolutionaries and second generation Tory Immigrants from the American Revolution) would have had two choices: either fight a guerilla war until the USA gave up in disgust or accept the new government and make the best of it. Considering the USA had nearly 8 million people at the time, I think Canada would have been fully integrated into the USA within 30 years due to immigration and representation in Washington. I imagine it would go just like the annexation of the territory from Mexico in 1848.

I can't imagine anything that would have provoked a war with the Soviet Union before they had the bomb. It really took the communist takeover of China for the average American to wake up to the threat the Soviets posed. The Soviet Union would have had the same problem as the Japanese, being unable to attack US supply sources or production capacity while their's was vulnerable. The Soviet navy was even weaker than the Germans. The bomb would not have been used. It would tarnish our "liberator" credentials.

[johncmcleod]

Did the US have influence on Britain becoming democratic? If that is so, then would the US be a democracy? And, would the US rebel when slavery was outlawed?

[Turrosh Mak]

Originally posted by johncmcleod
Did the US have influence on Britain becoming democratic?

The days of absolute monarchy died forever in Britian during the reign of Charles I (1625-1649) and the subsequent civil war between crown and parlimentary forces that brought Oliver Cromwell's dictatorship.

In fact, a better question to ask is whether the USA would be a democracy if Parliament hadn't revolted. One of the big themes of the English Civil war was taxation without parliamentary representation.

[Turrosh Mak]

What if the USA had invaded Cuba during the missle crisis? The Russian commander had authorization to launch if we had... how ugly do you think it might have gotten?

[korn469]

What if Alexander the Great hadn't of died when he did and had of lived a full life, and had of left his consolidated empire with a true heir when he finally did die of old age?

[zorbop]

what if the persian had beaten the greeks?

what if the confederates were victorious in the US civil war?

what if the great library had not burnt down? they say when it burnt down it set civilization back 1000 years.

[Turk Man]

what if the germany won the ww1

[Verto]

Hitler wouldn't have come to power.

[Dinner]

The odds are good that German could have "won" WW1 if they hadn't provoked the US into war by torpedoing civilian ships. Of course at the cost of WW1 you really can't call it a win.

A better what if is what if there was no WW1 or WW2 and instead we had a continuation of the post Napoleonic realtive calm. I mean there were still 1 on 1 wars but none of the grand wars like the 1763-1815 series.

[Dinner]

How about What if Hitler had died in 1939 right before he started the war. I suspect he would have gone down in history as the greatest German Chancelor of all time. After all he would have united German and Austria, reclaimed the Sudentenland, ended Germany's Post WW1 subserviance and economic funk, and greatly modernized the country. All that would be left to do would be to negotiate with the Allies to let the Danzig Germans vote their seccession from Poland (no small task but possible).

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by johncmcleod
OK, fine. For now, I'll choose one. Hitler had almost destroyed the RAF and there were hardly any airplane factories left. In real life he stopped bombing strategically and started bombing London to create terror. It was a terrible decision. What if he kept on bombing the factories and and went for the kill with the RAF. Britain would no longer have an air cover. The Germans could begin bombing England all they wanted to. They could really soften up Britain's defenses for the upcoming invasion. They would invade and Britain would be crushed. They didn't have much of an army based in England at the time. After being heavily bombarded, the British wouldn't have been able to stop German panzer divisions. So, if Britain had been lost would we still have been able to win the war?

Part of your answer is correct. The RAF would not have been destroyed but it woyuld have been pushed up north where the German Bombers could not reach. An Invasion still would not have happened for Great Britain controlled the sea. The German airforce would not have been able to destroy the British Navy and the invasion would have been crushed. If operation Sealion had been enacted, the only thing that would have changed would be that the cream of the German Army would have drowned in the English Channel instead of freezing to death in the Russian Steppes.

Turrosh Mak:

How would history have changed if the Turks and Greeks could live in peace? Israelis and Palestinians?

[Turrosh Mak]

Originally posted by Mad Bomber

Turrosh Mak:

How would history have changed if the Turks and Greeks could live in peace? Israelis and Palestinians?

Greeks and Turks - With nearly a thousand years of bad blood (if you count the fact that Greeks served in the Byzantine Army when the Seljuks of Rum first appeared on the Anatolian Plateau circa 1048) it's hard to see them ever getting along. It would be like trying to get back to gracious with someone after you raze a few dozen of his cities.

Israelis and Palestinians - ooh, third rail... but I'm an incautious kind of guy so I'll touch. I can understand and have some sympathy for the Palestinians in this. A truckload of people show up on your beach spouting that your land was promised to them by God. Each side lobs bombs for 15 years or so, then WW2 happens. Post war, there is so much sympathy for what happened to the Jews the Allied Powers decide to give your land away. Unfortunately for you, you and your allies are poorly led and abysmally equipped so you get your arse handed to you... 4 times (48, 56, 67, 73).

Now here is where my sympathy ends. There are Israeli Arabs, what did they have to do? Sign a pledge to be good citiziens? I look at the Palestinians who have raised 3 generations in refugee camps and I just want to scream "Get a clue! It's over! Stop living in the past and move on with your life!" They act like they're the only people in history to ever get booted off their land. After WW2, the Germans in Prussia and Silesia were forced off their land. There are some old Germans who still speak of the former DDR as Mittledeutsche (Middle Germany, East Germany is actually a third of modern Poland). There are no Prussian refugee camps because anyone who thinks Poland will ever give up those lands is in an insane asylum.

Anyway, thats not really what you asked. But as long as these two peoples claim the same land, the only peace they will know is that of the grave. I just wish one side would wipe out the other (don't care which) so we don't have to hear their shyte on the nightly news for the next half century. Personally, I wouldn't trade 10 acres of West Texas desert for the whole of the "Holy Land"

edit: spelling is da debil