Historical What If: Confederate States

[Lord Avalon]

Actually the CSA's Freedom Party was HT's Nazi Party. There was also a similar party in France, I think, though I don't recall the name.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon
Actually the CSA's Freedom Party was HT's Nazi Party. There was also a similar party in France, I think, though I don't recall the name.

The French Fascist party in HT's world was the Action Francaise. It actully existed in real life, just like Oswald Mosley's British Fascist party. Both of them were footnotes in our world, but both took over in HT's world.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
IIRC didn't HT put the CSA with Britain and the USA with Germany in his alternate WW1 and WW2 scenarios? Didn't he basically equate the Yankees with the Nazis largely because of his twisted southern devotion to the idea of the Confederacy as champion of "State's Rights"?

I have no idea what you're talking about here. Maybe you're confusing Turtledove with S.M. Stirling.

This era, the very apogee of Nationalism ethnic ties became much more important to the European powers than ever before. That's why Germany and Austro-Hungary bonded and that's why Russia was willing to go to war on behalf of Serbian revolutionaries who represented the very anti-thesis to everything the Tsar believed. It's also why there is no question that the US would have picked Great Britain over Germany in almost any situation imagineable.

I agree that ethnic nationalism was an important part of this era. I mentioned it earlier. Ethnicity wouldn't completely decide geostrategy, but it would play a large role. However, you're negliecting the fact that the north, shorn of it's southern states, would have been at least 40% German / German descent. As it stood in real life, 1/3rd of the U.S. population at the outbreak of WW1 was of German descent, and most of the German settlement was in the North (Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, etc.) There were over a thousand German language newspapers in the U.S. at the time, and Germans tried their best to avoid complete assimiliation into WASP culture. It was only after the massive anti-German backlash during the two world wars that German-Americans allowed their ethnic identity to be subsumed by WASP culture.

In a world in which the British were allied with the US's biggest continental rival (the CSA) and in which Germans and those of German descent constituted a large minority, Britain would be a much less appealing partner. The Germans weren't the only significant minority in the U.S., though. There's also the vehemently anti-British Irish-Americans (who favored Germany in WW1 in real life.) The Germans and Irish would have made a majority bloc in U.S. politics, a bloc that would have been sympathetic to Germany and suspicious towards Britain.

The U.S. and Britain came close to war in the 1890s as it was. Add in these other factors and I think that U.S.-British relations would be tense indeed.

[Dr Strangelove]

I think you're way over-estimating the German descended population of the US.

[OzzyKP]

Nope:



Maybe not 40%, but significant. Wikipedia says that 23.4% of all Union soldiers were of German decent. Half of those were actually born in Germany. And yes, I believe in Turtledove's America, Germany and the USA were allies while Britain and the CSA were.

(for the record I grew up in that dark green patch of West Michigan).

[Barnabas]

So the confederate states would have been a second south africa? with a more commonwealth kind of culture?

[Wycoff]

Here's an 1872 German-American population density map. I couldn't find a better scan, but it gets the point across. The north had heavy German settlement. The south didn't.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Nope:



Maybe not 40%, but significant. Wikipedia says that 23.4% of all Union soldiers were of German decent. Half of those were actually born in Germany. And yes, I believe in Turtledove's America, Germany and the USA were allies while Britain and the CSA were.

(for the record I grew up in that dark green patch of West Michigan).

Yet, as you admit, only 23% of Union soldiers were of German ancestory. Despite all of those light blue counties Germans still account for a mere 15% of the population. The US census now has an enigmatic category of ancestory: "American". Judging by the area of its largest concentration I'd guess that most of those claiming that category of ancestory were primarily descended from immigrants of the British Isles. If that is so, then 30% of the country is still descended from British immigrants. You also have to consider that 30% of the Census respondants claimed multiple ancestories, so if you claimed German and Italian ancestories you'd count in both categories. Also 20% claimed no ancestory. This category is likely to contain more people descended from British immigrants than other nationalities since British immigrants have been living in the US longer and therefore more likely to have lost track of their ancestory.
Finally, consider this. From 1865 to 1960 Southern culture was such that voting Republican was considered an act of cultural treason, so most Republican Presidents elected in that time period were elected by virtue of carrying the rest of the country. How many German ancestory Republican Presidents were elected in that time period?