Alternate histories that are useless ideological wankery;
There are a very few alternate history points of divergence that literally need intervention by God or a sufficiently-minded alien from the Q Continuum to bring them about. Sure, anything is possible but for some things improbability is far too overwhelming to make a decent story about them.
The first of these is a Nazi invasion of England via ( Read more... )
The first of these is a Nazi invasion of England via ( Read more... )
"The first of these is a Nazi invasion of England via Operation Sealion. The Germans had no way in Hell to pull that off, they had no navy, their air force was not designed for that purpose, and the British were rather more formidable than the Germans realized. Sealion is as mythical as a polka-dotted unicorn drinking from Russell's Teapot. "
SO, lack of a navy and insufficient airforce were merely problems of timing. In order for Sea Lion to be plausable one merely need postulate 2 changes to history. First that the Germans actually destroyed the RAF in the Battle of Brittan rather than switching to bombing of civilian centers at the critical moment in the battle. Second that one somehow keeps the US out of the war in Europe for 18 - 24 months. Without active US involvement the combination of total air superiority and submarine warfare on shipping would have done a very good job of starving England and weakening their armies while Germany built a navy.
The one risk to this of course being that the worsening condition on the Eastern Front would have prevented Germany from having a large enough army left in the west to pull off the invasion by the time enough landing ships had been constructed.
"The second of these is the Confederacy winning the US Civil War. It has a very, very narrow timeframe to do that in if we're assuming a recognizable scenario. Once the Confederacy resorts to conscription the South will weaken every year no matter how well its armies do on the battlefield, while Northern strength is ever-increasing by comparison. Any long war scenario and the only question is when and how the Union defeats the Confederacy. For that matter the South could only win the war in the East but it lost it in the West due to the Union's three best generals being up against the Confederate General Failures."
This is true if one restricts ones views to the military field of battle, there are ways that the South could have achieved a political victory had they had the insight to recognize that a military victory was unachievable. Even just assassinating Lincoln *BEFORE* it was too late might have won them the war.
Another way is to assume that England decided that a Puppet regieme in the American South was more valuable to them than a unified America or the pesky issue of slavery and actively intervened on the South's behalf.
"Another irritating thing one sees in alternate history are borders that are the same as our world's without sufficient logic."
This is true and I can see why it might be irritating but why would you expect it to be any different? Honestly most writers do not have the time to become an expert in every political situation through out history before they can even begin to write a story, their goal is to write a story not get multiple history PHD's. Further even if they did you have the problem of needing to write an entire companion book explaining to the reader how each currently non existent political entity came into being before they can even begin to understand what is going on in the story.
In order for readers to follow a story one must be able to put it in a background which they can grasp, sure altering the lines on the map as a result of your changes might be more "realistic" but given that the reader will not understand that it is easier to just leave them where they are and stick to only the first order changes to history that you are making to create the setting for the story.
In other words, good history says the lines on the map would have to change, good storytelling says they shouldn't and if you want people to actually read the damn thing you're better off sticking with the dictates of good storytelling.
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No, for Sealion to be remotely possible Germany needs something like Higgins Boats and fighters that were able to maintain a long-range strategic campaign. It had a tactical air force, the Allies had a strategic one. That's why Bomber Harris did successfully what Marshal Goering failed abysmally to do.
The other part of it is that Germany needs to do the air battle as early as remotely possible before the British had a chance to recover. As it was they dithered for a few weeks and the British rightfully won one of the most epic victories of World War II.
The Germans had real chances to win the war against the Soviet Union, but by the same token the Soviets also had opportunities to win the war earlier and at much less cost to themselves, which would have huge impacts on any alternate Cold War. Several million more living Soviets would be akin to a shorter World War I, which might mean for instance that Wilfred Owen has a postwar career in poetry.
The South had a fairly limited definition of victory, simple independence. The North had to conquer a region the size of European Russia, something two successive German regimes failed at but the North succeeded at. The twisted irony is that the 1860 Confederacy was like 1914 Russia: its best hopes were a short offensive campaign and all its industrial centers were at the crust of the South, while it had a self-inflicted starvation crisis that won the war more than the other side's army did.
True, but if someone's going to make a series out of something there's plenty of popular histories that offer well-rounded looks at what they'd be writing about. Not everyone should be able to get away with Lucas-level chicanery about bad story-writing even if they have cool scenes. *Some* research is preferable.
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