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Alternate History General Discussion

You ever read a WW2 alt history short story and all of the sudden the actual alt history element is “the Aztecs do a Sealion with advanced 1940’s weaponry“ and you go “WAIT HWAT”

Cuz that happens in Ovidiu Vitan’s collection of short stories On Seben Julney in Austrialia and I don’t have an explanation for why anything happens in the story

The Nazis are surprised as well and have deal with losing at Stalingrad AND the Aztecs declaring war on them after South England is invaded by the mighty and unusually advanced Aztec army,solely because ”the chief priest got high and told the Emperor that the Gods told him to declare war on Britain and Germany”
 
Yokai Man said:
You ever read a WW2 alt history short story and all of the sudden the actual alt history element is “the Aztecs do a Sealion with advanced 1940’s weaponry“ and you go “WAIT HWAT”

Cuz that happens in Ovidiu Vitan’s collection of short stories On Seben Julney in Austrialia and I don’t have an explanation for why anything happens in the story

The Nazis are surprised as well and have deal with losing at Stalingrad AND the Aztecs declaring war on them after South England is invaded by the mighty and unusually advanced Aztec army,solely because ”the chief priest got high and told the Emperor that the Gods told him to declare war on Britain and Germany”
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This reminds me of a book whose author and title I sadly forgot, which a distant POD of Spanish Armada succeeds, followed by a Saadi / NeoUmayyad conquest of Iberia. Neither Spain nor England invade the America's. The Aztecs thus expand and become a global superpower. The novel starts with the conflict between Aztec and Spain (capital London) a d the Aztec awesome solar powered weapons
 
I ran into an alternate history quest that had the Habsburg Empire in 1790s at crisis with its various parts splitting up and apparently each committing genocide except the imperial center led by Archduke Charles because they don't commit genocide.

Aside from those unfortunate implications, what were tensions like with the various ethnicities in the empire? I read that the Bosnian genocide was more rooted in WW2 than anything else.
 
Christian said:
I ran into an alternate history quest that had the Habsburg Empire in 1790s at crisis with its various parts splitting up and apparently each committing genocide except the imperial center led by Archduke Charles because they don't commit genocide.

Aside from those unfortunate implications, what were tensions like with the various ethnicities in the empire? I read that the Bosnian genocide was more rooted in WW2 than anything else.
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The Austrians thought that the Hungarians ruled their kingdom harshly, but that was under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
 
Christian said:
I ran into an alternate history quest that had the Habsburg Empire in 1790s at crisis with its various parts splitting up and apparently each committing genocide except the imperial center led by Archduke Charles because they don't commit genocide.

Aside from those unfortunate implications, what were tensions like with the various ethnicities in the empire? I read that the Bosnian genocide was more rooted in WW2 than anything else.
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That definitely feels anachronistic; even during the revolution in 1848, the Hungarians didn't treat the minorities in the Kingdom well but they didn't try and slaughter them en masse either.

Mass killings in the Balkans really start in the late Ottoman period and get revived in a big way during the Second World War.
 
One of the interesting observations about nationalist movements is that there is an uncanny tendency for leaders to come from areas that aren't exactly the core of the movement.

Hitler dodged the draft back in his native Austria to illegally immigrate to Germany and join the military there, and many members of his inner circle came from Catholic Bavaria. That is not what you would have expected given the leading role Protestant Prussia played in establishing Germany.

Hendrik Verwoerd, considered the architect of Apartheid, was not just of Dutch ancestry but was in fact born in Amsterdam. Support for Apartheid was strongest in the Afrikaans community, the same group that had been defeated by the British in the Second Boer War. Due to quirks in the election system the Afrikaans movement won a majority in the 1948 South African general election despite trailing the United Party by almost ten points in the popular vote.
 
Delta Force said:
One of the interesting observations about nationalist movements is that there is an uncanny tendency for leaders to come from areas that aren't exactly the core of the movement.

Hitler dodged the draft back in his native Austria to illegally immigrate to Germany and join the military there, and many members of his inner circle came from Catholic Bavaria. That is not what you would have expected given the leading role Protestant Prussia played in establishing Germany.

Hendrik Verwoerd, considered the architect of Apartheid, was not just of Dutch ancestry but was in fact born in Amsterdam. Support for Apartheid was strongest in the Afrikaans community, the same group that had been defeated by the British in the Second Boer War. Due to quirks in the election system the Afrikaans movement won a majority in the 1948 South African general election despite trailing the United Party by almost ten points in the popular vote.
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You have Napoleon as one of the big ones. Lajos Kossuth arguably counts, as does Joseph Stalin. Similarly, many early Arab nationalists were Christian.
 
Orwell makes much of this in 'Notes on Nationalism'.

He adds Eamon De Valera, Baron Beaverbrook, Benjamin Disraeli, Houston Chamberlain and Lafcadio Hearne to Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin as examples. And also Henri Poincare, though I have no idea how he fits.

Which is an interesting list, one very much of its time.

Orwell argues that nationalist fervour tends to be stronger when it's the second loyalty, rather than the first. That is the country you have chosen rather than the one you grew up with because you transfer the patriotism you are meant to feel to the new country without the doubts that come form knowledge of it.

A pre independence Irish man or a Haitian can imagine that their new nation will be the place of their dreams but a Frenchmen or an Englishman has their nationality tied up with the injustices of the existing nation.

People like Hitler who leave Austria to fight for Germany are picking a nation by choice rather than by birth and so can allow themselves to be entirely committed to it in a way they couldn't be their own country which they know too well to see as a blank slate.

I don't entirely buy it (I find 'on Nationalism' deeply hypocritical as a whole) but it's an interesting take.
 
Gary Oswald said:
Henri Poincare
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Raymond Poincaré, maybe? He was a Lorrain, but saying that's not exactly French is, er... especially so considering he was from a part of Lorraine that was not annexed in 1871. I'm not even sure he was particularly vehement towards claiming back Alsace-Moselle at times when most people were quietly dropping it before WWI broke out and it became an obsession again.
 
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