Guest Post: Austria collapses after losing the Seven Weeks War

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History exploring related ideas in Why didn't Switzerland and Austria join the German Confederation?, Why didn't Bismarck want to absorb Austria into the new Germany as well? and If Kaiser Frederick III of Germany and Prince Rudolf of Austria had not died, what would have happened to Europe (WWI)?.

November 7, 1866 -

The Habsburg's vast multinational empire was drawing its final breath. The family had ruled as monarchs since 1282, dominating Central Europe for centuries. Six hundred years later, Austrian, Sudeten, and Siebenbürger Saxons accounted for just a quarter of the population of the ten different ethnic groups living in the huge territory that covered much of Central Europe. Nationalist pressures within her borders plus German and Italian aspirations triggered the Habsburg downfall.

In better days, the Austrian emperor led the German-speaking peoples through the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire and then later as the president of the Rhine Confederation. But the rising influence of Prussia dominated the successor Deutscher Bund (the German Confederation), causing tension. Consequently, the spirit of the Holy German Empire had long-since disappeared. It was to be replaced by sectarian struggles between the Protestant "Iron Chancellor" Otto von Bismarck and the Catholic Habsburgs. As the architect of a German customs union under the Zollverein policy, Bismarck sought no political interference of Catholic Austria; however, scientific, cultural and economic ties remained strong. The final blow to Habsburg rule came from Deutscher Dualismus, the intensifying rivalry between Austria and Prussia for the domination of the German states. The climax to this struggle was the Seven Weeks War that pitted Austria against the largest alliance since the fall of Napoleon: the Kingdom of Prussia, various allies within the German Confederation, and the recently unified Kingdom of Italy.

The decisive Prussian victory occurred at the Battle of Königgrätz on July 3. Sadowa, as it was commonly known, was a calamitous setback for the authority of Austrian Chancellor Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust. With the result no longer in doubt, the conflict petered out weeks later with the Prussian occupation of northern Württemberg. Military capitulation triggered a political collapse caused by a general uprising across the Habsburg lands. This unexpected outcome was an unwelcome surprise in Berlin as there was no realistic prospect that the Germans could absorb Slav territories into the German Empire. However, the German-speakers in the former Habsburg lands soon realized that only the Prussians could provide the necessary military protection from the new Slav nations arising from the conflict.

Although Italy gained territory in the south, the key result was that the majority German-speaking region, including a chunk of Bohemia and pro-Imperial Slovenia, were brought under Prussian hegemony as the German Kingdom of Austria. This was ruled by the Prince Rudolf Habsburg, a much weaker figure than his father, the recently deposed Emperor Franz Joseph. Lichtenstein, which had been under Austrian protection, also joined with the Germans. After the defeat of France, these territories would merge to form the Second German Reich that was proclaimed at the Palace of Versailles. This ethnically unified polity only excluded Swiss Germans who had been independent from the Holy Roman-Germanic Empire after the Swabian war and formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia.

The creation of the new powerful German state was a major challenge for the British whose primary foreign policy goal was to prevent continental domination by one Great Power. Had the late Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha survived, then perhaps Great Britain would have been more directly involved much earlier. Fortunately, the immense difficulties in consolidating the new territories with the states of the former German Confederation, and the tiny size of the Austrian Navy, were a constraint upon further expansion. Certainly they prevented the Reich from investing resources in colonial empire-building. Britain and Germany watched each other warily from the sides of their eyes and yet without clashing points or disputed areas there was no immediate threat of war breaking out.

The royal architect of German unification, Kaiser Wilhelm I, passed in 1888. His death ushered in the steady rule of Kaiser Frederick III, husband of Victoria, Princess Royal. Bismarck stepped down as Iron Chancellor, opening the way to democratic and social reforms. Intense diplomatic efforts were made to build a friendlier relationship, based upon neutrality, around agreed spheres of influence with Great Britain. The wise decision to return the province of Lorraine to France further reduced the tension in Europe.

Many royal heads attended the funeral of "Good Emperor Fritz" when he passed in 1905, but storm clouds were already gathering. He was to be replaced by his eldest son, Wilhelm II, an unstable individual who entertained dreams of a bellicose "New Course" to cement German status as a leading world power.

Author's Note:

In reality, the major result of the Seven Weeks War was a shift in power among the German states away from Austrian and towards Prussian hegemony. It resulted in the abolition of the German Confederation and its partial replacement by the unification of all of the northern German states in the North German Confederation that excluded Austria and the other Southern German states, a Kleindeutsches Reich. The war also resulted in the Italian annexation of the Austrian province of Venetia.

A further OTL consequence of von Beust's desire for revenge, was The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 which established the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary.

Provine's Addendum:

With Europe finding a new balance of power, the twentieth century began with a general sense of good feelings diplomatically. Britain, France, and other nations with long-standing overseas empires kept their eyes abroad with passion for colonialism, yet the recently unified nations of Germany and Italy served as seeming proof of the effectiveness of nationalism for unity. The same was seemingly being revealed in the east as the collapse of the Austrians meant independent nations for the Hungarians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovenes, Slovaks, and more. The Ottoman Empire retreated from the Balkans with independence for Greece in 1830 and Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria in 1878 overseen at the Congress of Berlin. Russia had been a major player in the Ottoman decline, supporting each of the rebelling nations, but it soon came into its own bitter inward struggle with antiquated serf laws and a sprawling territory that would be difficult to industrialize quickly. It was all the more agitated by the experimental republics established for Poles and Ukrainians spun off from former Austrian lands that Germany knew better than to attempt to absorb. Germans imagined that Russia might be the next empire to give way to nationalism, and they made ready to benefit.

The Russian Civil War was born out of the Balkan Wars where the new nations attempted to find mutually agreed borders. Parallel to military altercations was rampant genocide and huge numbers of refugees attempting to find a peaceful home. While Germany profited from industrial and agricultural sales, Russia became embroiled in the tensions and met demands for reform with unpopular crackdowns that only worsened the situation. The assassination of Nicholas II and attempted repression turned to open warfare and rebellions in Polish and Ukrainian lands as well as the Baltic states. This situation turned even more desperate with the death of the tsarevich in 1918. Wilhelm II stepped in to aid with another Congress of Berlin reinforced by German military authority that redrew borders and saw even more new countries added to the European map. The rump Russian Kingdom had only a fraction of its population and became, like much of the rest of Eastern Europe, economically dependent on German banking and industrialization.

Germany grew wealthy exploiting natural resources of its neighbors, creating a new system of economic colonialism rather than the more literal political states held by other empires. Following the Pacific War between Japan and an alliance of British, French, Dutch, and American forces, this German model became the norm for empires disintegrating from the map but still maintaining spheres of authority through commonwealths.

Guest Post: Gan Ying changes course for Great Qin

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History with input from Tom Bornholdt author of the Greater Alodia thread and also Philip Ebbrell and Mike McIlvain.

Background:

There are speculations that the Parthian sailors intentionally frightened Gan Ying with false travel information. If so, they likely acted out of self-interest, seeking to prevent the Chinese and Romans from reaching a direct trade agreement that could threaten their profitable status as a major trade hub between the Roman and Chinese civilizations. It has been argued that the breaking of the Parthian monopoly over the Silk Road was at the forefront of Emperor Trajan's mind when he invaded their empire in the 2nd century AD.

In AD 97, as the Protector General of the Western Regions, Chinese general Ban Chao was fascinated by a military report describing his illustrious predecessor Ban Gu's unorthodox fight with approximately one hundred men. These Romans had used what he termed a "fish scale" formation, interlocking their shields for protection in the testudo formation. He acted impulsively upon this intriguing discovery by dispatching his subordinate, a Han diplomat named Gan Ying. This entailed a long and dangerous mission to establish direct contact with the Roman Empire known to the Chinese as "Great Qin." But fatefully his role was not as extensive as ambassador; apart from being authorized to establish diplomatic relations, he had no authority to open negotiations.

A hardy and intrepid explorer, Gan Ying endured tremendous hardships to reach the Middle East, but then his luck turned. Thanks to the envoy's chance encounter with a Roman merchant on the coast of Parthia, the over-ambitious travel plan to sail around Arabia to Roman Egypt was abandoned in favor of a much safer inland alternative. This re-route only took a few weeks following the Euphrates north to the Roman border in Syria. Ultimately the successful mission of the Chinese delegation would lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two most powerful empires in the world.

Gan Ying's second piece of luck was the timing of favorable circumstances due to the recent death from natural causes of the aging Nerva. Despite being considered the first of the Five Good Emperors, his reign had been marred by financial difficulties and his inability to assert his authority over the Roman army. He was succeeded by his adopted heir, Trajan, a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier-emperor who presided over one of the greatest military expansions in Roman history.

To the incalculable advantage of Gan Ying, Trajan was the good trading partner that Nerva could never be. Prior to their fateful meeting, the empires had only conducted the indirect exchange of goods on land along the Silk Road and sea routes. This included Chinese silk, Roman glassware, and high-quality cloth.

Standing in the way of their direct trading plans were other powerful empires that separated the two on opposite ends of the Eurasian continent. In the case of the Parthians, they regularly made a profit by obtaining Chinese silk, unraveling it, and making fine hu ("Western") silk damasks. Wishing to leapfrog this constraint, Trajan startled them with a second impulsive act: he provided Gan Ying with an offer of a military alliance for presentation to Ban Chao.

Unfortunately, matters then took a sour turn when Gan Ying's luck ran out on the hazardous return journey. His chosen route was to go around Arabia, forcing him into the Kingdom of Axum located in East Africa. By this stage, he was running very low on provisions, making it necessary to sell his cargo to the Axumites. But all was not lost for Gan Ying, who achieved the notable distinction of establishing trade relations with Axum, which would prosper as an intermediary between China and Rome. He would also be the author of a fascinating travelogue detailing the Han Chinese view of the Roman Empire. While a full Sino-Roman military alliance would prove to be impossible, a limited partnership was established. To Ban Chao's delight, Roman soldiers trained imperial soldiers on tactics such as the testudo formation. He would inspect these troops wearing a short Romanesque toga which would be come a fad among the elites of Han China. Needless to say, many of these military maneuvers would later be recounted in updated editions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

Author's Note:

In reality, the first group of people claiming to be an ambassadorial mission of Romans to China was recorded as having arrived in 166 AD by the Book of the Later Han. Gan Ying actually did not reach Rome, only traveling to as far as the "western sea," which could refer to either the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, or the Parthian coast of the Persian Gulf. Writing in his commentaries Vernacular Mandarin version of Zizhi Tonjian, Bo Yang famously said that Gan Ying was a coward who was horrified by the sailors' tales.

Provine's Addendum:

Gan Ying's mission turning into two-fold contacts with western powers changed the scope of the world. Axum, which had already established trade relations with many of the Indian states, found itself in the key position of maritime trade between China and Roman Egypt. Capitalizing on the wealth, Axum eclipsed the nearby Cush kingdom already in decline due to conflict with the Romans. With control of the Nile headwaters, Axum brought valuable African materials into the growing global trade network.

The Parthians found themselves in a difficult position as an alternative route to the Silk Road threatened their monopoly. With Axum as a Roman ally, attempting to cut off the maritime trade with a naval war would be costly as well as potentially disastrous with a three-front war if the Han in China decided to invade from the east. Instead, the Parthians dedicated themselves to economic warfare by improving the Silk Road to attract overland merchants and drive down transportation costs so that they could still enjoy a healthy profit as middlemen. They also worked to attract maritime trade up the Persian Gulf and Euphrates, drawing traders from the Indian Ocean northward rather than going through Axumite ports. With northern Syria as the confluence of both land and sea trade heading west, cities like Dura-Europos and Antioch became some of the most metropolitan and wealthiest in the world, establishing a secure border between Rome and Parthia ensured by economic forces that would collapse if war erupted in the region.

This Parthian investment in Mesopotamia while Trajan was distracted with the Dacian Wars discouraged him from invading in the Middle East. Instead, he improved relations with Axum to counterbalance Parthian economic power and undertook massive engineering projects to ease the difficulty of maritime trade being interrupted by merchandise needing to switch from ships in the Red Sea to land travel in eastern Egypt and then back to ships in the Mediterranean Sea. After years of surveying and documenting silt flow, smaller canal projects were abandoned to focus on a Great Canal through the Isthmus of Suez. In centuries to come as the Roman Empire faded due to northern incursion, emperors would move the capital to Alexandria.

Han China, too, profited from the expanding trade. While the Silk Road continued to be an important route, Empress Dowager Deng ordered merchant fleets to trade more directly with Axum, encouraging economic growth in southeast China. Wealth from the sea trade balanced the power of local landowners in the west, maintaining imperial authority in the face of rebellions that encouraged reforms. With sea traffic rounding the peninsulas of Southeast Asia, a region of loosely connected states the Chinese collectively termed as "Funan," numerous ports sprang up to foster trade with local supplies. The Cham peoples of Austronesian background established a seafaring empire that rivaled the Khmer and expanded eastward through the archipelagos of the South Pacific, adding numerous spices and valuable woods to the global trade network. In India, the Kushan Empire attempted to gain a foothold in the trade coming up the western coast, but they were eventually replaced by the Tamil Empire stretching across the northern shores of the Indian Ocean.

Along with the material goods, ideas traded swiftly over the routes from east to west and readily intermixed. Christianity mixed with Confucian ideals in Axum, while Daoism attempted to find balance in the dichotomy of Zoroastrianism, and Hindu gods such as Ganesh gained followers in Rome. Roman engineering improved aqueducts in the Pacific bringing water from windward sides of islands to leeward fields, and Chinese inventions like paper and printing improved libraries as far as Timbuktu in the southern Sahara tracking the goods of overland African traders.

Guest Post: Secretary of War Kitchener Resigns from the Cabinet

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.


June 3, 1916 -

On this fateful day in alternate history, Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, resigned from his Cabinet position as Secretary of War.

The mistaken choice of Britain's ageing, last military hero was a panic measure taken to assuage public fear when the Liberal Government's ultimatum to Germany was ignored. Considered unsuitable for Chief of General Staff and too old for BEF Commander, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith offered him a political role that ill-suited him for exactly the same reasons Asquith had refused to appoint him Viceroy of India three years earlier. As a precondition for accepting the position, he insisted on being an apolitical figure that would not be expected to publicly defend the Government's record. Ultimately, circumstances would make this impossible because the stakes were too high for him to take isolated decisions from inside in the War Office; to maintain morale they would have to be vigorously defended in the public arena.

At issue was his accountability in a modern democracy to the voting population rather than his orders from a chain of command or, more accurately, the mission parameters. A Victorian-era dinosaur, he wrongly considered his foremost loyalty was to the King, and indeed it was to the King that he had lobbied for the position of Viceroy. When this was firmly declined by Secretary of State for India John Morley, Kitchener obtained permission to refuse the consolidation prize of the commander of Malta. By this stage, the monarch was only a ceremonial figure, and Kitchener was caught out of step with the modern democracy, having spent his career overseas serving as a senior British Army officer and colonial administrator in the British Empire, a long way from the liberal politics of Westminster. Disconnected, the other problems were he held the War Office in open contempt and, being an introspective figure, had a major flaw in communicating critical pieces of information.

A bad early omen was the death of his former boss, Lord Roberts of Kabul and Kandahar. "Bobs" died of pneumonia while visiting Indian troops at the BEF base in St Omer, France, on 14 November 1914. Meanwhile, BEF Commander Sir John French had been particularly angry that Kitchener had arrived wearing his field marshal's uniform. By the end of the year, French thought that Kitchener had "gone mad" and his hostility had become common knowledge at HQ.

Regardless of whether Asquith also intended for him to be a ceremonial figure, Kitchener used his considerable ability to set about organizing the British Army with great vigor. Key staffing decisions such as holding back officers for training were inspired, but his man-management skills were overwhelmed with the larger problems of scaling up munition supply. Within twelve months the war effort, which he himself admitted was a "grand experiment," hit a brick wall during the Shells Crisis. The leak to media was made by Sir John French, who bore a grudge against Kitchener for insisting the BEF fight in the First Battle of the Marne. This crisis resulted in the appointment of David Lloyd-George, a "peppery fellow" who had been sharply critical of his grand-standing ever since the Second Boer War. DLG became Minister of Munitions as well as Chancellor of the Exchequer, while Kitchener was stripped of his role as owner of the war-time strategy. This reshuffle was a reversion to the military reforms of 1904, which safeguarded civilian control of military matters, demonstrating that the bygone era of Marlborough and Wellington had long since passed. His reputation was further damaged by his mishandling of the Gallipoli Landings even though Winston Churchill at the Admiralty oddly took the majority of the blame.

The famous finger-pointing at the British public was now pointed straight back at him. Whereas Kitchener had failed to understand popular liberal opinion over his inhuman mistreatment of the Dervishes or Boers, public anger over British casualties was impossible to ignore especially after the disastrous Battle of the Somme, the grimmest moment in the history of the British Army. A failed vote of censure in the House of Commons over his running of the War Department was the beginning of the end. Most damagingly, Kitchener had ordered two million rifles from various US arms manufacturers, but only 480 of these rifles had arrived. The number of shells supplied was no less paltry despite the determined efforts he had made to secure alternative supplies.

Kitchener correctly foresaw a three-million-man volunteer army because conscription was considered politically unacceptable by the British cabinet. The tragedy was that he alone had foreseen a long conflict of up to five years, but even he had not anticipated the horrors of trench warfare. Adherence to the strict timings of seven-day bombardments by artillery and attacks on the half-hour removed the element of surprise, and the German machine guns cut down waves of attacking British soldiers. The final nail in the coffin was when conscription finally began when the British government passed the Military Service Act in January 1916. The act specified that single men aged eighteen to forty years old were liable to be called up for military service unless they were widowed with children or were ministers of religion. Despite unrealistic high hopes, Kitchener had lost the public's confidence in military control of the conflict and the ruthless culture of blood-letting in high command finally reached all the way to the very top.

Always more popular overseas than at home, the Canadian city of Berlin, Ontario, named in respect to a large German immigrant settler population, was renamed Kitchener following a referendum only two weeks earlier. With the public perception of "lions led by donkeys," the ever-ambitious Welsh firebrand Lloyd-George replaced him as the new Secretary of State for War and was already eyeing Downing Street. The wider problem was public trust because Kitchener's resignation triggered a wave of defeatism. This ultimately would lead to the signing of the Treaty of Potsdam with the Central Powers. Meanwhile, Kitchener would live the rest of his life on Hinson's Island, which was owned by his nephew, Major H.H. Hap Kitchener, who had married a Bermudian. Like the masses of young men he had sent to their death, he would be buried overseas in "a corner of a foreign field that is forever England."

Author's Note:

In reality, Kitchener was among 737 who drowned when the HMS Hampshire struck a German mine 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Orkney, Scotland, and sank. His great fame, the suddenness of his death, and its apparently convenient timing for a number of parties gave almost immediate rise to a number of conspiracy theories about his death.

Provine's Addendum:

With the end of the World War in 1917, a second American president won a Nobel Peace Prize for mediation with Woodrow Wilson following after Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 in efforts of bringing an end to the Russo-Japanese War. Wilson's presence in truth was largely ceremonial and allowed the honor of all parties to be maintained, despite Wilson's bold initiatives and outlining Fourteen Points that he hoped would establish lasting peace. Kaiser Wilhelm II was arguably the greatest winner of a no-win situation, but German confidence in royalty had declined along with the rest of Europe's, shifting Wilhelm's authority more toward ornament than practical governmental action. Germany found itself in a difficult new position rebuilding along with the rest of central Europe while the Russian Empire faced bitter revolts in the east and a Great Flu pandemic swept across the world. Through the decades, Germany became the leader of continental Europe propping up Russia during its long overdue reforms while Britain and France turned toward their attentions to maintaining their empires overseas. Japan's rapid industrialization and expansion into eastern continental Asia and Southeast Asia, challenging British, French, Dutch, and American colonial authorities already present along with Russian territory beyond Siberia. Military advisers across the world agreed, "the next great war will be in the Pacific."

Guest Post: Tokyo Raid Dominates the Skyline

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History with input from Allen W. McDonnell, Robbie A. Taylor, Eric Oppen, and Thomas Wm. Hamilton.


April 18, 1942 -

Admiral Yamamoto feared that the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor would "awaken a sleeping giant". But due to a twist of fate, the consequences would prove to be far worse as the Soviet Union, British Empire, and Free China combined forces with the United States, assisting the Americans in seeking to wreak their revenge.

Japan had established the puppet state of Mengjiang, which bordered the Soviets, while the two countries were not at war. Stalin had major problems in the west from the German invasion and was heavily dependent on supplies coming in to the Far East via Vladivostok. Consequently, it was only a wild card factor that gained Soviet support for Lt-Col James Doolittle's Tokyo Raid. A significant ship from the Soviet Pacific fleet had been on a port call to Pearl Harbor, where it was destroyed in the Japanese attack. This was a terrible mistake since the Japanese had been soundly defeated by the Soviets in a Border War, prior to a 1939 ceasefire. Unafraid of Japanese reprisals, Stalin secretly gave his approval for the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet to deliver a substantial force of B-25B Mitchell medium bombers to Vladivostok.

Without this logistical assistance, Doolittle would have had to have led a smaller force launching at sea from the Hornet itself. Instead, the Raid by a much larger force created a reciprocal amount of significant damage at the very top end of President Roosevelt's expectations. The impact on the Japanese high command was hugely disproportional. The fact that the bombers arrived unexpectedly and unopposed was another brick kicked from the foundations of their outpost perimeter defense.

Moreover, there were wider consequences that Chiang Kai-shek partly foresaw - after all, he was most familiar having fought the Japanese Empire the longest. He correctly anticipated a realignment of naval forces with most analysts suggesting the northern Pacific and even into the Bering Sea to cut off supply routes to Russia. But, to protect the Home Islands, instead the Japanese set about punishing the United States with further revenge attacks on America's west coast.

Americans were deeply worried about the "still very badly undermanned west coast" and Chief of Staff George Marshall discussed a "possible attack by the Japanese upon our plants in San Diego and then a flight by those Japs down into Mexico after they have made their attack." Marshall's visit would foreshadow the San Diego Raid, a second Pearl Harbor-style attack which would bring the Second World War to American shores. The costs to Japan were far greater than the momentary political benefits being that America was fully on a war footing and with radar tracking in San Diego spotting the raid.

Author's Note:

In reality, the Bombers were launched from the USS Hornet, and Johnson speculated from China where the crews landed. Eight US aviators were captured by Japanese forces, and three of these were later executed. All but one of the B-25s were destroyed in crashes, while the 16th landed at Vladivostok.

The consequences of the Doolittle Raid were most severely felt in China, where Japanese reprisals caused the deaths of 250,000 civilians and 70,000 soldiers. Nevertheless, Chiang Kai-shek awarded the raiders China's highest military decorations, and predicted (in his diary) that Japan would alter its goals and strategy as a result of the disgrace. Indeed, the raid was a shock to the staff at Japanese Imperial General Headquarters. As a direct consequence, Japan attacked territories in China to prevent similar shuttle bombing runs.

Provine's Addendum:

Japanese forces did indeed realign their attacks, which had been primarily southward in the first five months of the war in the Pacific as they seized the Philippines in December, 1941, and the Dutch East Indies in January, 1942. Following the declaration of war on the USSR in late April, Japan shifted its attention northward, determining to follow a defensive strategy in the south. An altercation in the Coral Sea in May, 1942, was an Allied victory, although only minor Japanese ships were sunk since larger carriers had been shifted northward. The Japanese forces dug in at Port Moresby and New Britain proved to the Allies that every inch of ground would need to be won with blood. Japan, meanwhile, laid siege to Vladivostok and achieved an overwhelming victory at Midway Atoll thanks to additional ships. Yamamoto, who had been too busy in the north to review defenses in the south, reevaluated their submarine doctrine to align with German Wolfpack U-boat tactics that devastated American supply lines to Russia.

The Pacific Theater continued as a grueling grind of bloody invasions and never-ending cat-and-mouse naval sorties. Even after the lackluster results of the Battle of San Diego, Japanese bombers struck Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and Vancouver attempting to continue psychological warfare. Experimental Japanese high-level balloons attempted to firebomb forests and poison herds with anthrax, but the damage was minimal in scope and the US government kept the public from panic with coverups. World attention was mostly focused on Africa where the Allies made some gains and Eastern Europe, where Stalin's forces fought on desperately with fewer and fewer supplies. Long-term industrial investments proved necessary, spurring the UK and US to send engineers to Siberia in hopes of opening new mining and manufacturing.

By 1945, the Allies had taken Europe, but Japan still held much of the Far East. The US's new weapon, an atomic bomb, proved to be an opportunity to end the war early. Long-range flights reminiscent of the Doolittle Raid dropped bombs in a first wave in August at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo on the 15th. Japan refused to yield despite the devastation, leading to a "return to the countryside" strategy to protect its populace by spreading out and decentralizing industry while continuing production. The bombings continued into 1946 with smaller yield bombs effective at destroying clustered surface fleets with smaller craft sunk and sailors bathed in radiation on ships large enough to withstand a blast. Finally, almost a year after the fall of Berlin, the Japanese Empire capitulated.

The effects of nuclear war became apparent, especially as the American Baby Boom also saw disfigurations due to fallout carried on prevailing winds (including the recently discovered jet streams). One of the early decisions of the fledgling United Nations was to ban atomic weapons completely, a move lauded by scientists and the public alike. While leaders like Churchill felt Communism would be the next looming enemy, the Allied effort in boosting USSR production also brought along a wave of demand for consumerist items like Coca-Cola. Stalin himself capitalized on giving the people what they wanted, securing his legacy as a champion of hope in the darkest times and a gift-giver in times of plenty. Today Ded Moroz (often called "Russian Santa Claus") is depicted with a mustache and not a beard in a portrayal of Stalin.

Guest Post: PM Reynaud issues the Algiers Declaration

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History, asking "what if Third Republic had fought on after the fall of France?" co-written with Allen W. McDonnell.

June 21, 1940 -

The incomparable Prime Minister of the Third Republic Paul Reynaud declared his intention to fight on from the new capital of Algiers where his embattled government would continue to direct the war effort and govern Free France.

With a growing sense of defeatism in the air, Reynaud had followed the hawkish advice of his recently appointed Undersecretary for War, Charles de Gaulle, who had recommended a withdrawal to North Africa. The only alternative was capitulation; other military figures were urging surrender, while some politicians the formation of a government-in-exile, essentially following the same route as other defeated nations whose ministers were now based in London, England. Given the risk of reprisals on the mainland, Reynaud's decision was certainly bold, taken for the glory of France and perhaps motivated by a fear of kicking their heels in London for the duration of the war.

The implications of this decision would last for decades. Whereas Winston Churchill had offered Reynaud a Franco-British Union to fight on, Reynaud decided to take a very different, more patriotic, route that would eventually see Algeria fully integrated into a modern bi-continental, multi-faith state. A blended economic super-power, rich in oil reserves and Western technology, by the millennium she would become the eighth largest populated country in the world.

Rewarded for his courageous stand, Reynaud would be strongly supported by the British Empire and the still-neutral United States. The Third Republic had millions of dollars of military goods on order from the USA preparing to ship across the Atlantic now re-directed for delivery to Casablanca. She would use her New World colonies as collateral to get the needed bank loans until Congress voted to extend lend-lease arrangements to the government in Algeria. Meanwhile, de Gaulle, as the newly appointed Minister of War, gathered up colonial French forces from around Africa and the Americas along with escaping naval and army units from France proper. Forging these diverse forces into an effective modern military took months, but, by April 1941, they were advancing into Italian territory using American Garand rifles and British food and medical supplies.

Meanwhile, Reynaud focused his efforts on political development, taking the courageous step of granting full voting rights to Algerian Muslims. Ironically, this was a historic decision that the electorate of occupied France would have surely vetoed. Yet another problem was the status of other members of the French Union. Algeria and her three departments were a formal part of Metropolitan France, but Tunisia and Morocco were protectorates, and Indochina and Polynesia, etc., had their own local governance structures. Ultimately, some progressive steps were required in order to "squeeze the lemon" to unify the command of colonial forces within a French Empire. The path to this citizenship development was Reynaud's policy famously known as "Algeria First."

Having gone native to some limited extent, Reynaud and de Gaulle had essentially become pied-noirs. The Blackfoots, so-called because of the black boots worn by French soldiers compared to the barefoot Algerians, were an ethno-cultural group of people of French and other European descent who were born in Algeria during the period of French colonial rule from 1830. These émigres enjoyed a high life, occupying a salubrious urban area around the cities of Oran and Algiers as well as owning farmland in the interior. Meanwhile, the indigenes lived in the crushing poverty of the kasbah. It would be Reynaud's legacy to integrate these communities such that a post-war Algeria would flourish inside a victorious Metropolitan France. De Gaulle would later succeed him as president to face the consequence of West Germany's famous "nein" - the rejection of Franco-Algeria's application to join the nascent European Economic Community as a member state.

Author's Note:

In reality, German commanders met with French officials to negotiate an end to hostilities. In 1967 de Gaulle would say "non" to Great Britain joining the EEC partly due to commitments and trading links with the Commonwealth.

Provine's Addendum:

The abrupt shift of French Republican affirmation of Algerian peoples created a very different political landscape after the war ended. With more than seven million Algerians, they were a small contingent compared to some 42 million French, but local affairs gained enough significance that the French government was required to take note. Algerian soldiers served with distinction in Europe, and necessities of improving agriculture and industry leading up to retaking the continent, as well as supporting it afterward during its own reconstruction, poured investments into Africa. Some French conservatives sought to roll back Algerian advantages, but the financial benefits of improving developing economies as new markets proved too effective. Other colonies like Indochina quickly argued for similar footing, and France was faced with treating its colonies as equals or losing them outright.

Investing in her colonies proved to be the advantageous maneuver with being denied partnership in the EEC (though some economists the denial was because of it). France experienced generational waves of Muslims moving to the continent, while French education sent engineers, administrators, and technicians back into the empire for further development. The EEC instead looked to the UK for membership, focusing on connecting with the English-speaking world with its German-speaking near cousins. Soon the EEC would expand to Greece, Austria, the Iberian nations, and into the Nordic countries and then further east across Europe as the Soviet Bloc crumbled. Today Europe is a three-fold economy with the EEC, Russian influence, and the religiously diverse France, where an education ministry case requiring the removal of headscarves was laughed out of French courts as students obviously had their rights to privacy.

Guest Post: Democratic Eisenhower

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.

Oct 14, 1890 -

Future five-star general and later Democratic candidate for president of the United States, David Dwight Eisenhower was born in his hometown of Denison, Texas.

"Tex" was of German origin and raised in a deeply religious household that set aside specific times at breakfast and at dinner for daily family Bible reading. His family struggled to survive crushing poverty, but his father, David, eventually managed to make a profitable success of the family store at great personal cost to his time available for his son.

Seeking his own fame and fortune, the younger David Eisenhower attended officer training at West Point Military College, a choice that saddened his mother, who felt that warfare was "rather wicked," but she did not overrule his decision. Her faith was well placed; speaking of himself in 1948, Eisenhower said he was "one of the most deeply religious men I know." His illustrious career in the military would bring him into two wars with Germany, the ancestral country that the Eisenhauer family  had left two centuries earlier. In his leadership, he managed to help plan a successful D-Day and occupation of Germany while holding together a shaky coalition that included Patton, Charles de Gaulle, and British commanders such as Montgomery.

In addition to working with these famous leaders of the greatest generation, the arc of his destiny would cross another magnificent American of European heritage. FDR's ancestor Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt had arrived in New Amsterdam (present-day New York City) sometime between 1638 and 1649. He saw Tex as a natural presidential successor for the 1948 election, but time was against him with his passing in 1945. Instead, Harry S Truman (who initially had a "caretaker" feel to his Administration) occupied the White House for most of two terms, while Tex served as military governor of the American-occupied zone of Germany (1945), Army Chief of Staff (1945-1948), president of Columbia University (1948-1953), and as the first supreme commander of NATO (1951-1952).

Not bound by the Twenty-second Amendment, Truman could have run again in 1952 but was deeply unpopular and tired of office. As a ready replacement, Tex Eisenhower was a shoe-in for the Democratic nomination even without Truman's encouragement. A moderate conservative, he chose Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson for his running mate. As a military hero, he was far better qualified than Stevenson to handle the Cold War that arguably Truman had created. However, the problem was that the Democrats had been in the White House for five consecutive terms and the country was ready for a sharp change of direction.

The keynote speech at the Republican National Convention was delivered by another five-star general, Douglas MacArthur, who had become a hero to Republicans after Truman relieved him of command the previous year. He condemned the Truman administration for America's perceived loss of status on the international stage, including criticism of the Yalta Conference and the administration's handling of the war in Korea. MacArthur also criticized Truman on the domestic front, blaming his administration for wages that failed to keep pace with post-World War II inflation. MacArthur had high hopes of receiving the nomination himself, but his ill-tempered speech was not well received and he dropped out of sight. This was the first misstep that sent the Republic downwards on a negative trajectory despite their win in 1952 with Taft.

Former Senate Majority Leader Robert A. Taft narrowly won the general election, but he was in even worse health than FDR had been in 1944 and died after only six months in office. This calamity would bring Vice-president Earl Warren, former governor of California, into the Oval Office. Seen as too close to the unsuccessful 1944/48 candidate Thomas Dewey, Warren was despised by the GOP base. Despite his infamous internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, President Warren made great strides with Civil Rights legislation, stoking violent opposition in the South and splitting the conservative Republicans. Warren would be assassinated in Dallas during the course of a hard-fought presidential election campaign with Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

By now deep into retirement, Eisenhower blamed a "psychopathic" action for taking the president's life. He would be asked to serve his country one more time, heading a Commission on the Assassination of President Warren, known unofficially as the "Eisenhower Commission."

Author's Note:

In reality, the Eisenhowers lived in Texas from 1889 until 1892 and later returned to Kansas, with $24 (equivalent to $782 in today's money) to their name. In this scenario, we imagine that his family store is a success, but, in so doing, his father has less time for him triggering subtle changes:  is not nicknamed Ike, and does not reverse his two Christian names to "Dwight David."

Ike and FDR maintained formal, but amiable, relations during the war although Mamie and Eleanor disliked each other. He had mixed views about FDR's domestic legacy but considered him to be as good a Commander in Chief during WWII as Americans could have asked for. Sitting President Harry S. Truman tried to get him to agree to run as a Democrat and succeed him, and so did a number of other Democrats. Eisenhower had never officially announced what party he supported, because he felt that was impolitic as an active-duty soldier.

Provine's Addendum:

Warren's assassination brought great turmoil to the Republican Party, especially since it was after the 1956 convention and many questions rose on how ballots would look in different states. VP and former Ohio governor John Bricker stepped up with many saying he could immediately take on the role of president even if "Warren" were listed on the ballot. The issue proved moot as "JFK" won out in the rallying cry for the election even above the "grief" vote for Warren.

Kennedy's two terms would be dedicated to finding a new balance in the Cold War along with improving civil rights at home. Eisenhower's report decried racism as the root cause of Warren's death as Warren had built policy following the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Kennedy federalized National Guard to defend African American students going to school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in accordance with integration despite the hundreds of protestors who attempted to block them. As many of the protestors proved not to be even from Little Rock, Kennedy went a step further in preserving the peace by pushing protestors farther and farther away unless they could prove school involvement. To some, this proved a violation of the First Amendment rights; the later Supreme Court decision determined that protests against a race, and even hate speech, were not protected under the First Amendment as an inherent provocation. The decision was a major win especially for Martin Luther King, Jr., who appealed to it for federal protection during the marches in Selma, AL, and the Justice Department crackdown that ended the long FBI directorship of J. Edgar Hoover. King, of course, would later go on to be the first African American president of the United States.

Guest Post: British Permanently Seize Manila

This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History based on an idea by Mike Mac.

September 24, 1762 -

A British fleet sailed into Manila Bay, capturing the greatest Spanish fortress in the western Pacific. The expedition from Madras, led by Brigadier-General William Draper and Rear-Admiral Samuel Cornish, comprised eight ships of the line, three frigates, and four store ships with a force of seven thousand regulars, sailors and marines.

The Great Powers' competing interests over trade and colonies was the underlying cause of the Seven Years War. Yet the fall of Manilla (and the nearby principal port of Cavite) created a critical point of dispute for the negotiators of the Treaty of Paris. The British needed a base in the Pacific, while the Manila galleons contributed to Spain's continued, though greatly diminishing, wealth. Without a reciprocal trade, Spain simply could not afford to give up the Philippines to the British.

Unable to reach a mutually agreeable settlement in Paris, the tension would escalate until 1766, when a spark culminated in the Anglo-Spanish War of the Indies. During the interim, imperialists had considered creating a British East Indies, putting the islands under the control of the British East India Company, maybe even creating a home-from-home grandly named "New Albion." Certainly the Christian majority population created imaginative opportunities that would never be attempted by colonial authorities back in Madras. But instead the British took the historically significant decision to divide the Philippines into the three separate governing provinces of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Author's Note:

In reality, once Manila fell to British troops, the churches and government offices were ransacked, valuables were taken and historical documents such as Augustinian records, government documents, and even the copper plates for the grand 18th-century Murillo Velarde map of the Philippines were ransacked along with the naval stores at the Cavite Naval Yard, the paintings in the Governor General's Palace, the contents of Intramuros churches and the possessions of most wealthy houses. Rape, homicide, and vandalism also rampaged through the city in what is known as the first "Rape of Manila." The British demanded a ransom of four million dollars from the Spanish government to stop the plundering of the city, to which Archbishop Rojo agreed in order to avoid further destruction. However, the resistance from the provisional Spanish colonial government established by members of the Royal Audience of Manila and their Filipino allies prevented British forces from taking control of territory beyond the neighbouring towns of Manila and Cavite. The British occupation was ended as part of the peace settlement of the Seven Years War.

Provine's Addendum:

Anglicization proved difficult in the former Philippines since the Spanish culture had been introduced to the islands centuries before. Many in Parliament saw the islands as an albatross around the empire's neck. Still, the East India Company had huge promises of wealth, and the venture lumbered on. In the nineteenth century, imperialization became much more effective with huge leaps in industrial goods like repeating rifles and transport like the steam engine. British investment poured into the islands, focusing on the most anglicized areas in Luzon in the north first, leaving the more southerly Visayas and Mindanao island groups less developed.

In the twentieth century, Britain found a new rival in the expanding Japanese Empire. On December 8, 1941, Japanese forces seized the islands by overcoming the small, but hard-fighting, resistance force left behind as most troops had been pulled toward Europe. The United States balked at Japanese aggression but remained as neutral as it could be in Lend-Lease to the Allies. Japan then moved on to attack Australia and India, seemingly threatening to swallow up all of the British and Dutch colonies in the region. However, Japan's navy soon found itself greatly overextended. Upon the entry of the United States into the fray in 1943 following the sinking of US shipping, their forces were readily rolled back while Japanese cities faced new war technology in the atomic bomb.

After the war ended, the former Philippines left the British Empire like many other colonies. War soon broke out again, ultimately seeing the island group split into pro-capitalist Luzon in the north and communist "South Philippines" with Visayas and Mindanao seeing further political turbulence from the Sunni Islam residents later seeking independence in the southwest.