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Alternate History General Discussion

prezZF said:
Aside from conservative (southern) dems vs liberal repubs, what other alternate realignments are plausible? Is there a world with a farmer-labor centric gop, that's also urbanized? Curious to see how these changes can be plausibly made.
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Can you get from a world where e.g. Kennedy never gets in, to an Old Left sort of Democratic Party that's fiscally highly liberal but in the name of supporting The Workers, understood as men in traditional industries, preferably white but not necessarily dogmatically racist, and their wives? Something like what some of the post-liberal Right are cosplaying as, except they've actually met a worker other than their Uber driver? Quietly socially conservative, especially on family values, suspicious of urban liberalism, of immigrants (takin' our jerbs), of education that isn't highly practical, of high-tech anything, etc? A party that would be equally unlikely to go to the moon, legalise gay marriage or deregulate financial services?
 
MachiavelliJr said:
Can you get from a world where e.g. Kennedy never gets in, to an Old Left sort of Democratic Party that's fiscally highly liberal but in the name of supporting The Workers, understood as men in traditional industries, preferably white but not necessarily dogmatically racist, and their wives? Something like what some of the post-liberal Right are cosplaying as, except they've actually met a worker other than their Uber driver? Quietly socially conservative, especially on family values, suspicious of urban liberalism, of immigrants (takin' our jerbs), of education that isn't highly practical, of high-tech anything, etc? A party that would be equally unlikely to go to the moon, legalise gay marriage or deregulate financial services?
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This one goes farther in the past, but a more stringent Reconstruction results in a dominant one party Republicans with the traditional GOP party base like northern farmers and industrialists, along with the civil war era "good ol boys" of WASPs, Nordics, Germans, Scalwags, and freedmen. The rest are in disparate groups as they form coaltions and debayr about how they could win.
 
Also, I had an idea for a TL where Andrey Vlasov doesn't defect to the Nazis and eventually becomes Soviet leader in 1964 instead of Brezhnev, continuing Khrushchev's domestic policies for the most part.
I will try to be uncharitable to a Nazi collaborator though.
 
NotDavidSoslan said:
The Other Place seems to be a mix of middle-aged guys who have been interested in alternate history for decades, and edgy wehraboo teenagers who play HOI4.
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One big mismatch that's been present across most AH is that you either attract storytellers who aren't technical historians or technical historians who aren't storytellers. (Even though his work is not strictly "alternate history", one reason my opinion of Larry Bond has increased is because of how well he manages to balance the two-not perfect in either direction but still better than both pits I've seen works of that genre fall into).

Fuldapocalyptic World War III TLs are actually a pretty decent gauge for how "crunchy" a place is regarding alternate history. Over the years I saw WW3 TLs go from filled with minutiae and "How many F-4s can dance on the head of a pin" arguments to "And then a million troops marched on [city name here] and [insert edgelord gore here]" without even a small attempt at trying to see the technical arguments.

(Note that commercially published stories/novels are a totally different story, no pun intended. Having to have actual characters and a plot instead of just exposition works surprisingly well at keeping it on track).
 
Did Britain have an officially designated emergency backup capitol far away ie Kyubeshev/Samara for the USSR in WW2 if something (however implausibly) happened to London?
 
I have the following TL ideas:

- A surviving Emperor Taisho
- Andrey Vlasov doesn't defect to the Nazis while remaining an opportunist

Japan remaining democratic after WWI is an underlooked POD, especially with better civilian control of the military.
 
Coiler said:
Did Britain have an officially designated emergency backup capitol far away ie Kyubeshev/Samara for the USSR in WW2 if something (however implausibly) happened to London?
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If memory serves there were a few designated spots for evacuation, mostly stately homes around Worcester, I don’t think they were intended for coordinating a national defence (unless Gamelin picked them) more like muster points.

I suppose the issue might have been that Britain is a relatively small island whilst the USSR is a continent. The Soviets weren’t likely to face an attack on the eastern bank of the Volga for some time whereas the British we’re having to build coastal fortifications as far north as the Firth of Forth and defensive works we’re constructed around most major cities. They might not have wanted to commit to retreating in one direction. Or possibly they didn’t want to escalate the Second City of the Empire debate at a time of national emergency.

Even in the case of Kuibyshev it wasn’t the sole evacuation point, some organisations went elsewhere. One of the major subplots of Life and Fate revolves around the Academy of Sciences being temporarily based in Kazan.
 
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The Red said:
I suppose the issue might have been that Britain is a relatively small island whilst the USSR is a continent. The Soviets weren’t likely to face an attack on the eastern bank of the Volga for some time whereas the British we’re having to build coastal fortifications as far north as the Firth of Forth and defensive works we’re constructed around most major cities. They might not have wanted to commit to retreating in one direction.
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Well in the (soft) scenario I'm making, moving some degree north of London is considered cruicial because of nuclear strike concerns. It'd be centered around an early 195X nuclear exchange between a temporarily victorious Axis and the US/UK/exiled Western Allies. The issue here is that with wartime design V-weapons and lighter aircraft, the Germans can smother London with nukes but can't do the same to the UK as a whole (they can hit anywhere, but not to that monstrous degree since their other assets don't have the range or numbers).
 
Coiler said:
Well in the (soft) scenario I'm making, moving some degree north of London is considered cruicial because of nuclear strike concerns. It'd be centered around an early 195X nuclear exchange between a temporarily victorious Axis and the US/UK/exiled Western Allies. The issue here is that with wartime design V-weapons and lighter aircraft, the Germans can smother London with nukes but can't do the same to the UK as a whole (they can hit anywhere, but not to that monstrous degree since their other assets don't have the range or numbers).
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A bit like Seoul IOTL? The British govt were planning based on the pre-war theories about The Bomber Always Getting Through with a devastating attack on Central London considered likely and so they built a specifically designed cabinet bunker in…Dollis Hill North London and even that was only kept on standby until a Westminster bunker had been completed. Nukes probably would force them to consider the barren wasteland north of the Home Counties.

As @Charles EP M. said there are a lot of arguments for Glasgow administration-wise although Edinburgh or York might have a better ceremonial role.
 
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