- Location
- In a van, down by the river.
I actually don't remember this - but there have been a lot of TLs over the years! I'm glad you were able to eventually turned this one into a published book.Thande, I'm glad you enjoyed the book. You may remember it started out some years ago as a story called 'The Dark Colossus' on the Alternate History message board and you (as well as many others) did much to improve the story with your input, leading to the completely re-written and greatly expanded version that is this book. Attlee does get a bit of a rough deal in TTL, he finds himself in a number of extremely difficult positions and has little room for manoeuvre.
I was kind of commenting on the idea that one might expect more immediate impact from a decisive German defeat at Jutland (i.e. Germany might make different decisions in the last two years of the war which would impact on who lives and who dies etc.)...but this depends very much on how fundamentalist you want to be about butterflies, and (as said above) I am quite happy to ignore or scale down this factor myself for the sake of a good story.I settled on the shells right after reading 'Riddle of the Shells' by Iain McCallum published in Warship annual in three parts between 2002 and 2005, though I didn't get round to reading it till 2007/8 IIRC. The shell crisis of 1915 is well known, but I felt the ante needed to be upped slightly in TTL to give the UK an industrial kick in the pants. In DD, its not just that the UK can't build enough shells for the Army, but the fact they've provided ineffective shells for the Navy as well! These two issues are understood simultaneously and this concentrates minds. In OTL, volume for the Army was addressed by 1916, quality for the Navy by 1918. In TTL the issues have to be addressed simultaneously. The effects of this will be felt much more in part 3, but in TTL its an important turning point in Britain's industrial and economic development. Technical military developments, as they relate to the build up for 1939, are similar in TTL; the largest differences being with regards to the way the world's navies evolve.
Look to the West.Forgive my ignorance, but I'm not 100% sure what LTTW is?
I was kind of commenting on the idea that one might expect more immediate impact from a decisive German defeat at Jutland (i.e. Germany might make different decisions in the last two years of the war which would impact on who lives and who dies etc.)...but this depends very much on how fundamentalist you want to be about butterflies, and (as said above) I am quite happy to ignore or scale down this factor myself for the sake of a good story.
Look to the West.
The one area where there might be the prospect of a significant change is that if there is overwhelming RN supremacy in the North Sea, along with a stalemate along the Western Front, then consideration might be given to trying to turn that line with a landing somewhere. Maybe long term, maybe a series of brief lodgements.
The argument that could be made would be that Britain could choose where and when to strike, while the Germans have to defend against all options all the time. Troops guarding the North Sea coast aren't in the trenches. Troops landed can be supplied and supported, or taken off as required.
This deserves repeating as you're quite right. It felt 'real' because it's not obviously based on something from OTL but feels just as vividly horrific--and also shows the underlying dark reality of the occasional trope in written AH of "but if the Nazis just sent the Jews to Madagascar instead then that'd be less evil and then I can portray them as better than the Soviets, right?" No, no it wouldn't be.The scene where the US cruiser comes upon the Madagascar Transport was chilling and marvelously written, especially the way the skipper explains it all later.
It reminded me of the Soviet ships that in OTL transported political prisoners from Vladivostok to Kolyma in the 1930s, and that was a much shorter trip.The scene where the US cruiser comes upon the Madagascar Transport was chilling and marvelously written, especially the way the skipper explains it all later.