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Alternate History General Discussion

I do feel like alternate history has a habit of thinking of war as a game and not the serious matter it is. Seriously, there probably should be some sort of horror at the note that more than 10K people died in a few days and people are just focusing on the cool tactic which led to said 10K people dying.
I think there's a certain level of "well wars do happen and plenty of people died IOTL" an so you're just rearranging the corpses.

I've done it plenty of times but yeah, its not something to tread lightly about or to pat yourself on the back about the cool factor of.
 
I do feel like alternate history has a habit of thinking of war as a game and not the serious matter it is. Seriously, there probably should be some sort of horror at the note that more than 10K people died in a few days and people are just focusing on the cool tactic which led to said 10K people dying.

As someone who does a lot of wargaming, I think you can separate fiction and history. I can run a sim where thousands and thousands of people would have been killed, and can treat it as something other than a chronicle of real horror (because it isn't). You can acknowledge the human costs in real life and still have fiction that doesn't dwell on it.

That being said, I do see your point. The postwar part of AANW, where the entire setting turns into just a way for the US to show off its superweapons, is especially bad in that regard. There's stuff like that and there's how pure exposition TLs aren't really that good for "human element" stuff in general.
 
I do feel like alternate history has a habit of thinking of war as a game and not the serious matter it is. Seriously, there probably should be some sort of horror at the note that more than 10K people died in a few days and people are just focusing on the cool tactic which led to said 10K people dying.
Think our mind reacts differently to what is real ore not, if i write a TL where 10,000 are killed i know it is not real, but if something like that happens in real life, i would react in shock most likely.
 
Having gone through quite a few internet quests and alternate history stories of people deciding the course of nations, it feels like a lot of wannabe Bismarcks flock to this stuff since the minute it starts people are talking about how to expand their territories and how to properly do imperialism and speaking of complex international relations in very simple terms.
 
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Having gone through quite a few internet quests and alternate history stories of people deciding the course of nations, it feels like a lot of wannabe Bismarcks flock to this stuff since the minute it starts people are talking about how to expand their territories and how to properly do imperialism and complex international relations in very simple terms.

I'm actually forgiving of this, simply because wanting big stuff to happen is a very understandable trait.
 
Something that kind of annoys me is that people really overestimate how badly the Ottomans were doing after the 17th century. Seriously, the way some talk about it, it seems like the Ottomans would be knocked out by a gust of wind and that it wasn't actually a durable state that lasted until the 20th century.
 
Something that kind of annoys me is that people really overestimate how badly the Ottomans were doing after the 17th century. Seriously, the way some talk about it, it seems like the Ottomans would be knocked out by a gust of wind and that it wasn't actually a durable state that lasted until the 20th century.
Yes and no. It depends from region to region and time period.

For instance,it was very common in the Balkans (especially around my neck of the woods) for the Ottomans starting with the 18th century to have to deal with rogue generals or just armies of highwaymen that have taken over a region or two and being unable to actually stop them for at least 5 to 8 years in every particular case.

Again,only in my neck of the woods. I’m sure they were doing well in the Middle East.

This perspective on them isn’t helped by the general corruption and degradation of their political importance,as well as them constantly losing or doing badly on their own in wars after 1815 and the constant rebellions and uprisings.

IDK,it’s just my view that,at least in my side of the Balkans,the Ottomans just stopped caring.
 
Yes and no. It depends from region to region and time period.

For instance,it was very common in the Balkans (especially around my neck of the woods) for the Ottomans starting with the 18th century to have to deal with rogue generals or just armies of highwaymen that have taken over a region or two and being unable to actually stop them for at least 5 to 8 years in every particular case.

Again,only in my neck of the woods. I’m sure they were doing well in the Middle East.

This perspective on them isn’t helped by the general corruption and degradation of their political importance,as well as them constantly losing or doing badly on their own in wars after 1815 and the constant rebellions and uprisings.

IDK,it’s just my view that,at least in my side of the Balkans,the Ottomans just stopped caring.

They did come close to winning the 1878 war and the First Balkans War.
 
They did come close to winning the 1878 war and the First Balkans War.
Regarding the first-pfff NO,all their vessels along the Danube got destroyed and overestimated the Russians,thinking they’d just be too lazy to march along the Danube.

Regarding the second-also no,since the army forgot how to conduct large-scale maneuvers due to Sultan Abdul Hamid II being really paranoid and banning any war games/maneuvers out of fear of a coup,the reservists’s training had been neglected for decades at this point,logistics of any kind were inexistent-really the list could go on.

By the 1870’s the Ottoman army was only impressive due to its size,it fucking sucked at anything else.
 
Regarding the first-pfff NO,all their vessels along the Danube got destroyed and overestimated the Russians,thinking they’d just be too lazy to march along the Danube.

Regarding the second-also no,since the army forgot how to conduct large-scale maneuvers due to Sultan Abdul Hamid II being really paranoid and banning any war games/maneuvers out of fear of a coup,the reservists’s training had been neglected for decades at this point,logistics of any kind were inexistent-really the list could go on.

By the 1870’s the Ottoman army was only impressive due to its size,it fucking sucked at anything else.

I have seen it argued that they came close to winning both.
For the former, "Osman Pasha organized a defense and repelled two Russian attacks with colossal casualties on the Russian side. At that point, the sides were almost equal in numbers and the Russian army was very discouraged.[36] Most analysts agree that a counter-attack would have allowed the Ottomans to gain control of, and destroy, the Russians' bridge.[who?] However, Osman Pasha had orders to stay fortified in Plevna, and so he did not leave that fortress."
For the latter, the world was shocked at the Ottoman defeat.
 
Going through Kaiserreich, something that people point out is that all prospective monarchies are kind of taken to be okay with democracy.
I mean, there's some truth to that. A monarch (especially a currently dethroned monarch) is essentially a randomly chosen rich person, and most randomly chosen rich people will not be dyed in the wool reactionaries with an ideological commitment to anti-democracy. This is one of the reasons the far right doesn't really go for monarchy much any more.
 
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