Can you do a what if napoleon gifted Brazil to his brother who was king of the Netherlands making Brazil a Dutch colony after he occupied Lisbon, but the Britain annexes it along with South Africa and Sri lanker after 1812, giving us British Brazil
What I personally don't like in alternative history communities, is when they ignore logic. Yes, sometimes we can make outrageous scenarios. But in principle it is asking about cause and effect and how specific changes would impact history. And not space Nazis taking control over America, just because space magic! (too common)
The Confederacy and Carthage would probably fight each other enough to destabilize the alliance. Does this make them the China and India of this analogy?
"Those Carthaginians worship Satan, which means we must burn their Capital to the ground. Our Mongols allies are brave men, and raise fine horseflesh, though." --J.E.B. Stuart, maybe. Source: Trust Me Bro
@@daniellewis5533 I mean the Confederates would have thought Spartans to be based, never mind pre-Christian polytheism. Whenever I hear about Sparta it reminds me a lot of antebellum South Carolina, where the majority of residents had to toil for a wealthy few, and those on top were constantly fearful of being annihilated by a major revolt. I can’t even be sure Spartan citizens were the original settlers of Laconia and Messenia. I’m willing to bet that references to Sparta appear in some Confederate literature or speeches.
Being totally honest, the scenario where the dual invasions of England result in two separate English kingdoms (with the north being aligned with Norway and the south being aligned with Normandy) sounds more interesting than "England has vikings now".
And it very well could have happened. Why does Hardrada a Norseman have to go to London when York has more significance to Norway. He can just stay in York. What is William gonna do? Send his Calvary to attack essentially a castle? Yeah nice try there.
Yep, totally agree here. Hardrada defeats Godwinson at Stamford Bridge & takes the Earldom/Kingdom of Northumbria & probably the 5 Boroughs of the East Midlands (where there's a lot of common bonds between the Scandinavians & the local population). William lands unopposed in Wessex & takes the south. Earls Edwin & Morcar (grandsons of Leofric & Godiva of Mercia) are stuck in the middle wondering what to do next. Do they submit to William who has effectively crowned himself King of England or throw their hand in with the Norse? Either way, being young & inexperienced they would get manipulated/killed off by the 2 new powers & there'd be a few years (decades) of chaos/raids/civil war until a new unified kingdom of England emerges. Two probable outcomes: no Harrying of the North (it being too strong); a lot less French influence, especially in language and land ownership north of the Trent.
If we are tweaking history slightly, in favour of Hardrada, why not have the Norman's arrive slightly earlier and as such the Anglo Saxons are ready, waiting and not tired and more likely to beat them then have to trek North quickly to beat Hardrada. That produces a Hardrada win more easily than beating two armies.
I have an alt-hist where Rome industrialized, but I literally had to bring in an undead time-traveler with the book "How to invent Everything. A survival guide for the stranded time traveler." to even make that happen.
@@BasicallyBaconSandvichIV And now I'm curious; it sounds kinda like a modern version of _Lest Darkness Fall._ (For those who aren't familiar, _Lest Darkness Fall_ (by L Sprague deCamp) is a novel where a 1930s time traveler keeps Ostrogoth _post-_ Roman Italy together enough to fend off the Byzantine invasion and its years of devastating war from OTL. He also manages to introduce the printing press and double-entry bookkeeping centuries early, though his attempts at clocks and gunpowder are failures.). And for those who haven't read it, I _highly_ recommend _How To Invent Everything,_ by Ryan North (author of _Dinosaur Comics_ and a number of other things*). (Reposted with revisions.) * He's written for a few comic book series too. And he wrote the books _To Be or Not to Be_ and _Romeo and/or Juliet_ -- which are funny choose-your-own-adventure retellings of _Hamlet_ and _Romeo and Juliet._
@@AaronOfMpls Oh, you've also read the book? It's a very good read! But I haven't really written any story for it. I've got a vague idea of how it would come to be, but the most I have currently is a 4th century map with a very big Rome indeed.
@@Edax_Royeaux that or to take over Hawaii and it becomes a cluster f'cker of ships, bombs and blood. Well then again the USA couldn't really invade China or take major gains. So I guess it would be a battle of stalemates in the Pacific Ocean.
I read somewhere that the Roman writer Pliny wrote one of the first althistories wondering if Alexander invaded Rome. Being a good Roman, he said he would lose.
My man, at the time of Alexander Rome was barely in control of all of Latium. They fought with neighbouring italic tribes over a few hills to graze their sheep. They needed a century more until they fought Carthage for the first time and barely won. For Alexander Rome didn't even exist. Just another village.
@@yaldabaoth2 not to mention they got slapped around phyyrrus who was alexander light and only won because they had more manpower alexander would of rolled them so hard it would of been comical
@@nukesomething5518Pyrrhus did in fact NOT “slap the Romans around” the Romans would’ve won both battles if not for Pyrrhus war elephants which turned the tide in both battles (battles which Pyrrhus was badly losing before using his elephants.)
Hardrada conquering England, to my understanding, is more typically justified by Godwinson fighting William first, winning, then getting defeated by Hardrada
And William winning against Godwinson was by no means a given. He NEARLY lost. And that's if he even lands. The only reason he was able to land in the first place is because Harold Godwinson spent ages waiting for him to arrive. Unfortunately, William was trapped in port, due to bad weather. So Harold Godwinson sent his army home (as it was expensive keeping a semi-professional militia in place, when they were needed for farming). Then Hardrada lands in the North. Godwinson has to high tail it all the way up North, gather a new army from Northumberland and do battle with the Norwegians. William then has a stroke of luck and the weather unexpectedly changes, allowing him to sail before Godwinson can make it South again. This means the fyrd, the semi-professional militia that would have prevented William from making a safe landing was never able to be called up again. Instead, Godwinson had to march his exhausted army on a forced march all the way back down South ... where he still nearly manages to beat William. So, an easy way for Hardrada to win is ... just to change the weather. Either, 1) the weather is worse. William is trapped in port for longer. Hardrada wins at Stamford Bridge and takes London. He consolidates his position and is elected King by the Witan. (England was an elective monarchy under the Saxons. If Hardrada can bully the Ealdormen to elect him, he will be the legitimate king in the eyes of the saxon nobility.) Hardrada inherits Godwinson's position, except he has more soldiers and less opponents. It is entirely plausible he could beat William in a battle. 2) The weather is better. William sails on time and meets Harold Godwinson in battle. Godwinson had a very long time to plan the battle site and signal fires to rapidly respond. William has enough supplies to land and campaign for less than a week. After securing a landing site, he must fight Harold Godwinson on a site of his choosing, or withdraw back to Normandy. With the addition of the Wessex Fyrd, and rested troops, as well as a strong defensive position, it is highly unlikely William wins. At Hastings, William's knights will be forced to charge up a muddy hill, against a larger and more professional force than in Our Timeline (a battle William nearly lost). It's very unlikely William emerges victorious. Hardrada can then land unopposed in the North. The North of England at this time was inhabited by the Anglo-Norse. These were the descendants of the old Danelaw, and has only recently risen against the Godwinsons of Wessex. The Godwinsons were Saxons, and were seen as foreigners by the Anglo-Norse. By contrast, Hardrada was a Norwegian. It's entirely plausible that he would be seen as the successor to Harold Harefoot, the last native viking king of England, to whom Hardrada was actually distantly related. Hardrada could well have been seen as a liberator and established York as a strong base, sparking an English Civil War.
I could see Hardrada seizing some northern lands, while William was busy pacifying the. South. They might avoid fighting each other initially to secure their new possessions. And then the Saxon lords would be forced to try to unite or choose sides.
So the alternate history I want to see is this: during the US Civil War the king of Siam offered Lincoln a bunch of war elephants for the campaign. I want the movie mostly historically accurate until like Antietam, and then suddenly Elephants.
The union had lots of cannons, and spammed them. Maybe the elephants could do stuff in the forests, but on open land like Gettysburg, they'd get mowed down.
@@charliebasar9068 southerns still talk about the march to the sea. Imagine the generational trauma of elephants on that and nobody ever has fun at the circus again 😅
I mean, in Wolfenstein the Nazis essentially acquired sci-fi level tech/magic at some point, right? I also think that Napoleon may win his invasion of Russia if he's handed mechanized horses or some shit. lol (Hyperbole but you know what I mean)
@@oliversherman2414 Oh no I agree. I also just wanted to point out to anyone who wasn't aware (saying it as if I was an expert on the lore, I am not lol) that Wolfenstein only gets to be as wacky because the alternate history in this case is not caused by a divergence but by injecting future tech into the past. Lol
I did my bachelor's paper on the German bomb and boy howdy the story is even sillier than people realize. On top of what Cody said, we have: Discounting uranium as a viable atomic energy source. Insisting that more Neptunium (their alternative) than actually physically existed would be needed to get anything done with atomic energy. Backtracking everything in the 60s and insisting that they knew all of Einstein's stuff all along and that they were "this close" to completing a functional bomb before the German surrender. It was wild.
um...I hate to ask, but can you link that paper? It sounds like an interesting read; I've heard a lot of theories on Germany and the bomb it would be nice to have some factual clarification.
1) Germany had plans and prototypes for kamikaze bomber jets called "New Yorkers." 2) The German nuclear program was plagued by sabotage from the director, who went full Thomas Edison on it, insisting they keep pursuing and pushing ideas that he knew would go nowhere, just to use up money and encourage Nazi high command to abandon the project. Oscar Schindler somewhat famously did something similar: using his munitions factory to produce intentionally defective ammunition while expropriating Jews slated for Auschwitz (including children) to "work" in his "factory."
The whole "Rome industrializing" thing really ticks me off every time I see it, because it took a mega-uber-nerd named Whitworth to finally establish the principles of close-tolerance-manufacturing needed to properly ramp up production, and even then it was the final hurdle in centuries of iterative changes in manufacturing techniques. Everything before then, even close-tolerance machining for complex machines like clocks and steam engines were each bespoke projects hand-fitted to purpose and incredibly precious and irreplacable (at least not exactly 1-to-1 replacable).
It also doesnt help that Rome lacked the system of international banking we had, a huge part of the industrial revolution hinged on financing and logistics. Slavery was a huge issue too, you really had no reason to industrialize if you could just enslave more people to do things for free.
I read somewhere that someone actually pitched the idea for a steam locomotive back in ancient Rome but they laughed it off because at the time, they said it just couldn’t be done
There's also the fact that the industrial revolution kind of occurs in a way that's just things happening at the right place at the right time. The steam engine was not initially meant for anything other than pumping water out of coal mines, which then led to steam engines being used to drag out coal from the now expanded coal mines, which finally led to someone considering we can use those coal movers to move things other than coal.
Also isn't the idea that the whole of humanity went backward after the fall of Rome, like mentionned in the video, complete bullshit ? Europe sure did, the rest of the world was fine, multiple golden ages for different civilizations happened in that time period. Kinda irks me to hear "dark ages" type bullshit on a history channel.
@@PP-ok2xt Rome had wealthy families which were patrons of the arts and extensive logistics to supply its army and people. Slaves weren't free, they were a valuable good and needed food and training. Rome used many machines which increased the power of human labor.
Fun fact: The Germans DID try to make a nuclear bomb, but when the Allies invaded the facilities they found that it looked more like a garage than an industrial laboratory. When the war ended, they put all the German scientists in a house with hidden microphones and played radios that gave the news of the bombings in Iroshima and Nagasaki, to which one of the Germans responded: "How did the Americans get 200 tons of plutonium just for one bomb?" It's not just that they weren't interested, it's that when they tried it they didn't even know how to make one.
@@Üser.alt.666Yeah, that's what happens when you throw out and kill millions of your people, a LOT of those people being great scientists and engineers.
Also another fun fact is the reason they were so confused is because their research was leading them to try heavy water from the Norwegian territory. Still a possibility of nuclear capability but they weren't able to continue that research for long until the allies fully took over. But we also took a lot of german scientist with their information on the nuclear concept and used that to greatly increase our progress to the nuclear bomb.
They also had the lead scientist of their version of the Manhattan project being... Oddly incompetent whenever something could have been done for the project. Which is just what you said but moreso to an individual level.
@Nobody-zl3kk he (Heisenberg) almost fucking killed himself in his first criticality experiment and never really got close again, though he did try. Based on his failure and hubris (japanese did this too) they figured if he can't do it there was no way anyone else could. Then America went freedom on their fascist asses!!
In all fairness, it wasn't like they would have made much progress anyways. The US would have always beaten them in an atomic race and not bothering would have freed up some much valuable resources, even if the resources would just be wasted on wunderwaffe.
Ironically any form of nuclear development would probably be a disadvantage for the nazis, because they lack a good method of deployment with the air supremacy of the allies and it would be a huge resource sink
To be good at Alternate History is to be great at History in the first place. So many new people creating alternate history "scenarios" who have little knowledge of history makes the wildest and most out-of-character events ever.
Alexander the Great is my favorite personal example: the casual, first impulse is to wonder what would happen if he lived longer; but the far more realistic question is what if he got his brains turned into soup at the Granicus?
He's been talking about alternate history for longer than he's been talking about Roland Emmerich movies. This is his main channel, PointlessHub is his secondary channel that he barely created four years ago.
It's the same with all of Turtledove's books. Lots of repetitions, lots of mentioning how things cannot be helped etc. It does make his novels easy to read.
*Fun fact:* Speaking of Alexander, there's a cancelled a tv show in which the macedonian was played by William Shatner. Only the pilot was made and can be found on RUclips. It's pure 60's style
Well they were technically part/aligned with the republican government in the first few months of the war before the CNT-FAI briefly took over eastern parts of Iberia for itself.
I still don’t think it was IMPOSSIBLE for the Republicans to beat the nationalists. Like the nationalists very much were also divided between facists, monarchists, Carlists. And I could see it where someone who wasn’t as good as Franco at uniting them also dividing into civil war. Note how the monarchist and Carlists had pretty opposing views on what a restored Spanish monarchy should be. Not to mention the Falangists who believed in a Nazi germany style republic. I’m just saying it would’ve been very easy for the Nationalists to lose.
@@seanmcloughlin5983It’s a lot easier to get monarchists, fascists, and centre right groups to unite then communists, socialists, anarchists and centre left wing factions to. Even without Franco, the right side would still be very close
As someone into Mesoamerican history/archeology: While obviously Sunset Invasion is impossible, the "mindset of warfare" point isn't really true. Firstly, grouping in the Inca and Maya here just doesn't work: The Inca are an Andean civilization, the Maya, Aztec etc are Mesoamerican. The two regions had very little contact and are as far apart as London is from Baghdad: They don't share cultural practices much. Even for the Aztec specifically, captive taking, while a part of their warfare, was not the primary goal, and Flower Wars are heavily misunderstood/not normal warfare. To clarify on the Aztec: Their main goal in expansionism was getting economic resources and goods like gold, cacao, jade, fine feathers, obsidian, etc by forcing city-states and kingdoms into relatively hands off tax-paying arrangements. Asia isn't my area, but from what I understand about the Mongols, it's sorta similar to that where if you cough up taxes, you mostly got left alone to self-manage, but if you didn't, you'd get invaded. Even when a city did refuse/resist though, or even when subjects stopped paying taxes, the Aztec response was (usually) not instant escalation to razing, massacres, and mass enslavement: They did that stuff sometimes (especially if a city incited OTHERS to also stop paying taxes), but usually just demanded steeper and steeper taxes the more a city resisted prior to it finally surrendering, and even in those cases still usually left local rulers and laws and infrastructure in place, though sometimes they did place military governors onto subjects or soldiers in garrisons to dissuade rebellions. The goal was to get economic goods, but specifically without them needing to assert hands on administrative effort and manpower to do so: Mesoamerican did not have draft animals, and the terrain is basically mostly either inland arid to temperate valleys and mountain ranges, or lowland and costal jungles and swamps. Long distance administration and military campaigns were difficult, you really could not directly govern a wide empire easily: it's more efficient to be hands off and leave local power in place and coerce it, then to order things in a top down manner. But if you're razing cities, burning fields, enslaving or sacrificing whole populations, how are they gonna cough up the cacao, gold, etc? You'd be expending valuable political and military force to trek, on foot with no draft animals, across that terrain just to annihilate the place you're trying to take advantage of and then have to rebuild or repopulate it. If what they cared about was mostly collecting captives for sacrifice, then that wouldn't be a concern. But the primary goal was economics (not just for the sake of it, but also because having a big economic network was part of courting alliances/political marriages and getting voluntarily vassals: Constant expansion also flexed military power and kept subjects in line: Since their political model was hands off, nothing was actually stopping subjects/vassals from seceding other then these forms of influence), and we see the Aztec specifically target city-states and kingdoms with rich economic resources during their expansion, not just areas with people to capture: A fantastic example of this is Soconusco/Xoconusco, which is all the way down in Chiapas, almost in Guatemala, which was secured as subject province as a source of Cacao. Demanding captives/slaves as taxes tribute wasn't common either: It only shows up ONCE in the Codex Mendoza compared to the dozens and hundreds of listings for tax demands of the other economic resources i've mentioned, for example, and the one time it does come up in the Mendoza, it's for some towns in the province of Tepeacac, where they're not being told to give up their own people as taxes/tribute, but rather the demand is that they supply captured soldiers taken from Tlaxcala, Huextozinco, Cholula etc: States the Aztec were enemies with: This was an indirect demand to help the Aztec besiege those states. (That being said, slaves/captives of noncombants were often given, in addition to soldiers captured in the battle, as part of offer by a state when it surrendered after losing to an invasion: It's just regular payments of captives as annual taxes after that point was rare) Okay, so what IS the deal with taking captives? It was certainly a common and important practice in warfare, to be clear, but at least for the Aztec, the consensus is now that it was secondary to actual tactical military objectives and goals. In general, these were organized armies with proper unit divisions and ranks, who had actual armor (this channel yet again shows Aztec soldiers wearing Jaguar pelts like cave men, when they had padded gambeson and then thick warsuits and tunics worn over that just made to look like jaguar spots and other patterns via via a mosaic of differently colored feathers), bespoke weapons (swords/macuahuitl, different kinds of clubs, maces, axes, spears, glaives, pikes, bows, atlatl, slings etc) and we have records of complex tactics like pincer formations, feigned retreats, ambushes, and so on. Captive taking seems to have primarily happened after enemy lines broke as a "mop-up" thing, and you probably wouldn't have seen soldiers going out of their way to avoid killing during the middle of a battle. The fact that captive taking was so important to rank advancement itself suggests that it was a rare/impressive feat, rather than it being the norm instead of killing an enemy: We actually know that different Aztec kings would give decrees where captured soldiers from different states would then be "worth" more or less in terms of granting rank promotions, based on how strong or how much of a desired military target they were perceived to be. Finally, Flower Wars: As I alluded to before, not all wars were Flower wars. In fact, they seem to not even be that particularly common: While i've read some contradictorily information on this, the Mexica seemingly only regularly employed them against Tlaxcala, Huextozinco, etc in an offensive capacity. They were sometimes done between the Mexica and existing subjects, but sources assert these were mutually agreed on in special circumstances like to cement alliances (though this fact allegedly was kept secret from commoners, so they wouldn't know their lives were being spent on political pageantry). Next, these were not just ritual conflicts about getting captives (in fact I've seen some assertions that they did involve killing in battle too, or that captives were released, etc), but also had pragmatic military utility. As applied against enemy states, Flower Wars were a way to dip your toes into the water with lower intensity warfare, which could then escalate into full normal warfare, or could be called off: We see this with the wars against Chalco which gradually evolved from Flower Wars to become increasingly pragmatic and serious over time. Inversely, their smaller scale meant they could be waged year round (unlike normal wars) or longer, and therefore could be used as a sort of extended siege to wear enemy states down (Traditional siege warfare wasn't as much a thing in Mesoamerica, tho this is debated somewhat). Flower wars also kept soldiers trained and fit when they might otherwise not have been in the field, and provided opportunities to collect captives and to keep soldiers invested in a military career as a result. Actually, some researchers even believe the entire idea of Aztec flower wars against Tlaxcala etc was just revisionism by Aztec sources to justify when they could never conquer the state(s)! There's more I could say, and again, there is some details around how Flower Wars functioned or what I said with sieges/garrsions that are debated by different researchers or there's inconsistent information on, and to be clear, again, captive taking WAS still important and there were ritual elements to it/warfare in Mesoamerica (some researchers have argued that the view currently common by Aztec historians which is that Aztec warfare was mostly pragmatic, which my comment is based on, has overcorrected prior literature and now ritualism is downplayed too much vs before where it was overemphasized/pragmatism was downplayed) but tactical and economic pragmatism was also important too, is my point, and certainly the overall objective in Aztec expansionism was primarily economic and political.
Just wanted to let you know that your review on Aztec motivations & means was a very interesting read, the depth of your knowledgebase is evident. This also makes me question more on how well-reasearched Cody's other videos or even other scenarios in this very video may be.
Harald Hadrada won multiple victories for the Byzantines, he would have been familiar with the concept of heavy cavalry as the Byzantines had cataphracts.
Also the version I know has him invade after William is defeated, only beating a single enemy that was already exhausted. Basically flipping the real series of events.
@@kingofhearts3185 Why not a defection of one or both of the northern lords Edwin and Morcar? An alliance with Tostig might be unlikely but it is far from unheard of. Osulf could be popular and is waiting in the wings too. Malcolm III might be persuaded for the right price. The English born Sweyn II of Denmark is a wild card as well.
Familiar with the concept or not, his army that he brought to England had no way to deal with said cavalry. So he could be as familiar with the cavalry as he wanted to be, wouldn't change anything
@@admiralthrawnstein9943 there are strategies and tactics he could have used to counter the cavalry, Godwinson stationed himself on a hill, Hardrada would have done something similar to negate the enemy calvary,
Kinda surprised Operation Sealion didn't make the list, talking about military operations where step one is "three miracles happen in close succession."
Short answer: Laughs in Royal Navy Long answer: The British actually war gamed this and set best case scenario for the Nazis and the only option for the Nazis would have had is to control a small section of the channel and feed men into a meat grinder of machineguns, artillery and airstrikes if troop carriers and supplies weren't sunk by the infinitely more power Royal Navy. The fact that the Nazis themselves called it off as impractical even after the British Army was operationally gutted due to losing all that equipment at Dunkirk speaks volumes about how dumb Operation Sealion was, hence why they went with terror bombing which itself is operationally questionable in terms of strategic value but way more practical.
@@QuentinofVirginia Well yeah, that's kinda what I meant. Sealion's been the gold standard of Impossible AH since the days of Usenet. (Yeah, I'm old.) I'm just a little surprised it didn't make the list.
Even if you get most of the territories you wanted beforehand? Sure, Austro-Hungarian policians would have never let that happen but just pretend they would.
@@schwarzenegger_arnold Even if we ignore the deitalianization policy by Austria-Hungary, the attempted austri-hungarian invasion after the earthquake in Messina in 1908, the non respected articles of the triple alliance by Autria-Hungary which annexed balkan territories without italian compensation (yes it was an article), the austri-hungarian unwillingness to even think about giving up more than Trentino, the anti austrian sentiment of the italian population Even if we ignore that you have colonies left to die in Africa, an economy paralyzed (90% of our coal was from Britain) and a defensive approach against the french not an aggressive one which the germans asked (one of the reason why Italy was so fragile at austrian offensive was because we spent 40 uears fortifying the french border only to fight the austrians).
@@schwarzenegger_arnold And even if we ignore ALL of the factors andreamarino mentioned, which are reason enough to make it so Italy would NEVER join the Central Powers... People who think that Italy joining the Central Powers would lead them to win WW1 cannot answer HOW Luigi Cadorna actually is useful to the Central Powers. Like when he was on the Entente side, he was near useless, had no defense in depth and just wasted men and moral attacking across the Isonzo. The only reason the Austria's didn't push him off his position earlier then they did in our timeline was they were busy elsewhere. And that's Austria, who are considered one of the more incompetent sides in the war, even if the Italian front general was more intelligent then most. In what universe does Luigi Cadorna have the skills and knowledge to best Joseph Joffre or Ferdinand Foch.
@@Peregrine1989 I never thought of them as a competent ally to the Germans, but maybe as enough of a distraction for the Schliefen-Plan to work. If that would have led to the capitulation of France is debatable. Of course I know there was no way the Italians joined the Central Powers, but I just wanted to know if there would have been a chance if the Austrian government would have been more lenient. A question that has know been answered.
I recognize that you were just glossing it over and weren't going into detail, but there is a common misconception many people have about Japanese Manchuria that I hope wouldn't be inadvertently reinforced by what you said. - Firstly, the Japanese didn't care about Manchuria as such. I mean, they did, but with Allied naval supremacy by that point, they could hardly make any use of its resources (at that point). The loss of the territory was not a serious factor. -They clearly didn't care about loss of the army there; they had lost hundreds of thousands of men along with their materiel in many battles up to that point without considering surrender. -The idea of any Japanese concern about Soviet invasion of the home islands is also absurd; they had neither the materiel nor the experience, and everyone knew it. BUT, the Japanese had been hoping to broker a negotiated peace through the Soviets. The important effect of the Soviet invasion was to dash that hope. That, along WITH the atomic bombs, pushed the Japanese to surrender. I liken it to if the US had invaded, say, Venezuela, and made use of its resources for a decade. Then Brazil (through whom the US was negotiating with its enemies) invades Venezuela, and separately, Columbus, GA and Norfolk, VA get nuked. While the loss of Venezuela isn't nothing, it would be absurd to say that the nukes had no effect on the decision to surrender. (Yes, a ridiculous scenario, but I hope it helps people understand that the weight of the Soviet invasion was diplomatic, not strategic.) Again, not that you were making those assertions, but I wouldn't want others to think you were implying them. Whatever the morality of the use or threat of atomic bombs, it does not have to be related to their effectiveness as a tool of persuasion. Terrorism can be effective, for example, but it is still evil. We do ourselves a disservice when we twist historical realities to support a particular moral narrative.
And if you read the Japanese surrender speech from Hirohito, it explicitly mentions the atomic bombs as one of the main reasons for the surrender. Very little is mentioned of the Soviets. On top of that, they still attempted a coup when the emperor wanted to surrender.
I always laugh out loud when I see scenarions that involve an actual invasion of the US. The sheer magnitude of the logistics and support required is mind boggling. We'd be talking of something that would make _Downfall_ look small. And yet, we still get these ideas thrown around...
I'm reminded of the first two episodes of Enterprise Season 4, where Manny Coto had to figure out how to salvage the "Time Traveling Space Nazis Help Germany Invade the USA in WW2" cliffhanger. Because one thing that the episodes do bring up is that, even with some Time Traveling Space Nazi technology backing them up, the Nazis are still getting bogged down like hell in America, only having taken a small section of the nation, and are very vulnerable to a conventional counter-attack. Interesting things can happen when a good writer is forced to salvage a dogshit premise :D.
I think the Hadrada scenario could work if the change is that he lands in England later, so that he fights the Harold's army after the battle of Hastings rather than before. This way he doesn't have to defeat both armies consecutively, but rather only the now weakened victor of the William and Harold.
I was actually going to say the same thing. From what I gathered, it was a fairly close battle against William the Conqueror. If he had landed first, he very well might have been defeated by the English still fresh from not having already fraught. Which then would have to quickly march north to face the Vikings that landed.
Was going to say, if you just have William land first then there's a decent chance that William fails and then English forces have to march North, but then I think there'd be a good chance that English forces are reseted before marching North before fighting a longer campaign.
@@PosisDas Yeah, King Harold had assembled like 20,000 men to fight William before bad weather had prevented William from crossing, after which Harold disbanded them to collect the harvest.
Ok, I know I'm late to the party, but here's an interesting little titbit I vaguely remember from first year history (roughly 30 years ago); Edward the Confessor, the king prior to Godwinson had named William as his successor. Do with that nugget what you will.
Your analysis of the Ming Dynasty trip to the West Coast is spot-on. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, about 200 A.D., a group of Buddhist monks sailed north around what is now Russia and followed the Aleutian Islands to the North American mainland and south along the coast to Monterey Bay in what is now California. They drew detailed maps, contacted the natives, found nothing of interest, and sailed back the same way.
I find it hilarious how you said “it’s like overanalyzing blade runner as not being realistic.” Philip K. Dick wrote the book that inspired blade runner
While Blade Runner is kinda fast/loose with the specifics of Androids, I do think it is fair to say that it is based on it, I’d be hesitant to say it’s adapting the book, but the story is absolutely based on it
Not inspired it’s literally an adaptation of “do android’s dream of electric sheep” but they thought that name wouldn’t sell so they gave it the name blade runner which is a different book about a scifi dystopia. Also he’s point was Philp k dick is a scifi author who didn’t worry too much about realism which is why he used the man in the high castle and blade runner two examples of his work.
Did you think that was an accident? That was entirely the point. Although it's a malformed point; how cogent it is depends on whether you're talking about a premise for your story (which can be handwaved away) or a result of that premise (which needs must be grounded in reason, given your premise.) _The Man in the High Castle_ isn't about how occupied!America came to be; it's about what happens after. By the same token, _Blade Runner_ isn't about androids, but how the creation of disposable people changes humanity.
That more "realistic" Man in the High Castle idea about America becoming fascist after an Axis victory would be an interesting concept for a video for your channel
I'd recommend checking out The New Order mod for Hearts of Iron 4 (There are videos and wiki entries about it). The Americas remains independent but lots of Europe is under German occupation, same with Asia and the Japanese. It's a really well thought-out setting because the geopolitics largely make sense and it doesn't feel like the creator just gave the Germans laser guns or a cheat code to the universe in order to win. The Germans have immense political and economic instability, and the old allies like Italy are actually considering swapping sides.
So about the Viking one, why couldn’t the point of divergence just be the weather of the English Channel meaning that William would be the one fighting first and Harold would land mostly unopposed?
OP meant the other way around -- Godwinson's army was already in the south when Harald landed first because he was anticipating William to fight him first, but the latter didn't because the winds prevented him from sailing from Normandy. OP is asking what if the Channel weather had been different so that William landed first rather than Harald, so that Hastings (or its equivalent) takes place first and gives Harald the bye for the title bout of King of England.
Reminds of that cancelled alternate history show for HBO called “Confederate” that was gonna be about the confederacy winning the American Civil War and surviving all the way to the 21st century, still practicing slavery…somehow???
By 1895 even Brazil would be wondering why the Confederates wouldn’t emancipate under that scenario. I’d expect if the Confederacy won, and even if they were able to expand to the Caribbean, they’d have to emancipate eventually, but it would be gradual and compensated and civil rights would be a farther way off than they were in our timeline unless some major shake-up in government occurred. I’d also expect the Richmond government to be unusually centralized and industry building to be in some part state-directed, which could cause tensions in politics, and going into the late 20th century the CSA would be as much an international pariah as South Africa unless significant government reform happened.
As a very cynical person, I'd like to note that the Confederates planned to keep slavery going as far as possible, even through industrialization, and even expand it into the south americas through conquest, due to both the wealth brought by slavery, and the idea that if the blacks were freed they'd be violent savages that would attack civilized white people and live as criminal thugs due to "inferior natures". The idea that the Confederacy would give up slavery without a massive fight is laughable.
I don't think the concept of a modern day Confederacy still practicing slavery that far fetched. I mean nations like China basically use slave labor in all but name. Slavery would look different, sure, they wouldn't have black people tilling the fields with 18th century farm equipment while being whipped, but they could have unpaid black laborers in industrial factories and the system would function just "fine" (for a given definition of fine).
@@nekoking8330 It could happen, especially since the Confederacy was built around slavery, they were extremely reactionary for the time, and they already had plans in place for industrial slavery.
Thank you for debunking the "Man in High Castle" thesis. The number of people who in the 21st century still cry the "WE'D ALL BE SPEAKING GERMAN!!!" hysteria is truly astonishing.
Yeah, I have come to understand that WWII just wasn't an existential war for the US in any way. Maybe it felt that way to some people at the time, but the idea that Japan was going to invade the US when they couldn't even pacify China is laughable. Same for Germany, at least after the Battle of Britain (which ended before the US entered the war).
21:49 Even more problematic, the 2 MASSIVE mountain ranges that are only really passable due to interstates and other roads. If those roads got wiped, either by intentional sabotage or unintentional attack, the Appalachians and ESPECIALLY the Rockies would be almost completely impassable by any army. Even if they landed in the US, they would nominally control the coasts of both, but miss out on most of the really important resources and logistics networks of the american interior (and by American I mean both Canada and Mexico as well as the US)
Now we need 10 real historical scenarios that would probably be on this video in an alternate timeline in which they were considered too dumb to happen.
Actually, if you play a colonizing Ming you see how ludicrous it actually is. You either have to settle parts of Siberia and go for Alaska or you have to go through dozens of small islands to get to the Americas. While you are better of to settle the unsettled areas of Indonesia because the provinces are better and you can secure a very powerful trade node. Also you can turn a lot of nations in this area into tributaries which greatly boosts your mandate.
@@whaleofdarkness You are 100% correct and as he said logically it would make zero sense for any Chinese dynasty to bother with the Americas. Which only drives the EU4 player to do something just completely insane for the hell of it!
I do think the Hadrada scenario could still be different. Maybe he doesn't take all of England, but beds down around York, fortifying while William deals with local revolts, leading to England being split in two long-term.
I don't think Hadrada's pride would let him be satisfied with keeping only the north. The Normans were the ones that brought many of the innovations that made England such a hotbed for castles and fortifications. So it wouldn't be as defensible being held by the norwegians. The south is also more fertile and can raise larger armies than the north with Normandy also being closer than Norway for reinforcements. Fun fact, the Duchy of Normandy had a larger population than the Kingdom of Norway at the time.
@@kristijanmadhukar516 I'll grant most of the geography, but I'm not saying the intent would be to split England, just that that's what might have happened. Hadrada waiting for the right opportunity, William having more trouble with the locals (especially if Hadrada is giving them support). If they can survive the first century, the southern kingdom would probably be more interested in holding on to it's more valuable French possessions until the 1500s.
@@charlieputzel7735 True. That being said, the Norman army landing in England was definitely a superior force to Hadrada's mostly infantry army, and in our timeline, he got defeated handily by Harold Godwinson, a seemingly more able commander than himself who was in turn defeated by William. I think in a few decades, William could have easily taken back the North. Of course, a stalemate is possible.
@@MrGksarathy Very true, though I think there's also a lot of credit to be given to luck at Stamford bridge. The Norsemen were caught unprepared. The soldiers were arguably better than the Anglo Saxons one on one, they were just out numbered and unprepared, with their leader dying mid battle. Of course a better timeline sees William cross the channel sooner, defeating Harold Godwinson (but probably coming out much worse due to facing a fresher army) before he can even go North in the first place.
I usually don't do this, but do you have some sources on Japan being ready to give up? Even in books about WW2 & classes in college, I've been taught that Japan's supreme council were unwilling to surrender until the emperor himself decided to intervene (post Okinawa). To this end, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria & the atom bombs both act as significant factors influencing a Japanese unconditional surrender. Are there any sources from the Japanese supreme war council that demonstrate an unwillingness to conduct a Downfall-esque defense of Japan? Further, are there any that can point to the Soviet invasion alone being substantial enough to force Japanese surrender?
Unwilling to surrender unconditionally, yes. Unwilling to surrendered at all, no. To quote Dwight Eisenhower post war: “I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.” There's also records of communications between Kyoto and the Japanese ambassador to the soviets of the former urging the latter to get the soviets to help them negotiate a peace. Besides, from the point of few of Japanese high command, what's the difference between a nuke completely destroying a city, and a normal bombing raid completely destroying a city? Also, Noone said the Japanese government wouldn't have fought on if invaded. The point is that an invasion would have been unnecessary to get a negotiated surrender. And additional fun fact, the minium conditions some in the council were pushing for are exactly what Japan got anyway, the primary ones being immunity for the emperor, preserving the imperial institution, and keeping the home islands.
A large part of the general population were ready to surrender. The Navy was willing to surrender. But they didn't run the government, the Army did and a lot of them *didn't* want to surrender. And if the invasion did happen they would have forced everyone to fight a horrifically bloody loosing battle. Even after the Emperor got the council to agree to the surrender, there was an attempted coup against him just so they could continue the war. I totally agree with the points you made and just wanted to add a bit of info for others because I think you know most of this already. sm
i wanna note, i think there is a strong chance that Operration Downfall could have happend, but not in the way we think. The nuclear bomb played a pivitol role in convincing the Japanese populace and civilian goverment to give up, the military was convinced by the Manchurian invasion I think that there was a real possibility that, if the atomic bomb was not developed the Japanese as a whole would not surrender until US troops were on Japanese Soil. I dont think it'd be thousands of loyal japanese citizens kamakaziing themselves, but a short battle in the south, a beachhead being made and then a surrender from the japanese citizen goverment and the Emperor telling his subjects to stop.
The war would stop the moment the Soviets got foothold in Hokkaido for a very simple reason: The Emperor. Operations Coronet and Downfall would be massive but in the Japanese minds the Americans could be reasoned with, the military goverment believed they could still reach *some* agreement with the USA(and they did), meanwhile the Soviets on other hand were not known to return ANY territory they occupied, and you know, communists and Emperors don't mix well together, they would surrender to the allies the instant the Soviets could realisitic threaten the Emperor and the home islands.
I disagree, there cities were leveled by the firebombing campaigns. Why would the atomic bomb really make that much of a difference? I really think the invasion of Manchuria is what truly broke the Japanese resolve.
@@Scarface_1b No, Japan wanted to negotiate using the Soviets as a intermediary and we know this. The Americans also knew that as Stalin simply let the Japanese think that since he needed time to move the troops for the follow up operation. There is a huge flaw with the idea that is that it hinges on the "unconditioned surrender" being acceptable terms, they werent because the previous war Germany did surrendered after the Hindenburg Line was breached as the Kaiser wanted to spare the civilian occupation (as well they already being close to a civil war) and Japan had a first row seat to the negotiations, they expected to get a worst version of the Versailles Treaty and that one is also a big reason why Japan ended up making the decisions they made. This is why WWI ended when neither the German or Austrian armies were any shape to continue to fight and why WWII ended when they almost reached their bitter end. I could say thank the French and their desire for revenge as well a return to their position as a European power (that they lost to the German Empire) but good old Teddy is also a cause since this is when Japanese attitudes towards the West turned sour. ... in fact, Alternative History, what if Teddy accepted the racial equality clause that was rejected because of the Jimmy Crow laws? Japan didnt want to surrender since they still had hopes over a negotiated deal, with the Soviets entering the war that was pretty much over and it would be over the moment they entered the war, also there are a few other things. The occupation of Japan also was similar to the occupation of Germany, the Soviet troops did move towards their occupation goals and yes, Stalin would been very happy if Soviet troops managed to reach the Home Islands and their posturing post-war in the occupation was more if they could maybe get a bit more but they never really expected anything out of that as well they werent *interested* in anything like that, a Soviet Japan would be nice but a Soviet China and a Soviet Korea was more that enough, they were buffer states and the Far East was not the Soviet primary concern, Eastern Europe was. In short, its true the Soviet entry into the Pacific War had a great deal of weight on the Japanese decision to surrender but not because they were afraid Soviets would make the People's Republic of Nippon in their occupation zone but rather that it ended any idea of a possible agreement with the Allies since it required the Soviets to act as intermediaries. And honestly, they werent entirely wrong on that reasoning., the Soviets had a non-aggression pact with then and didnt hold much of a interest in the Far East, they simply didnt seeming had a horse in that race (since they werent aware of what happened in Yalta the Japanese could know) and entering the war would mean having to move their armies across all of Asia ... of course there were already signs as their build up in preparation for the occupation of their assigned zones as well being informed of the non-renewal of the Neutrality Pact in 5 April 1945 even if they assured then they would respect the 12 months as other signs, like recalling their embassy staff and their families but I can understand why, after all ... things just worked out due to Hirohito being more useful in the throne for the occupation so what the Japanese wanted ended up being what they got in the end.
It was less about the nuclear bomb and more about the Soviet Union declaring war too. Up to that point, the Japanese were counting on the neutral soviets coming to their aid to hem in growing US influence or atleast aid them to negotiate a less than total defeat. When they attacked and their intention to also invade Japan was revealed, defeat was inevitable.
16:31 So Cody is basically saying that the nuclear bombs weren’t the reason for Japans surrender, and instead it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. This is a somewhat controversial topic among historians but I’m just going to say that Cody is cherry picking here. The reason for Japanese surrender was because of the atomic bombs *and* the invasion of Manchuria. There is usually not one single reason for a country to surrender and that statement is the same in the case of Japan.
The US had been firebombing them for a bit by then, they didn’t care about the nukes. It was the realization that the Soviets wouldn’t help them combined with the US finally nudging them to accept the Surrender by sneakily saying that sure it’s Unconditional but the Emperor will play a role in the after-war period.
@TysonRex37 The thing is that a single atomic bomb killed as many people as the total casualties of the firebomb campaign. Not to mention that Japan, whether it wanted to admit this or not, had been slowly losing in China and to a lesser extent Manchuria for awhile. And while yeah Japan hoped the USSR would be a mediator at peace talks, it's not like they weren't aware that the Soviets didn't care for them at all, given the fact Japanese soldiers tried to start a war with a border skirmish, and now that Germany had fallen, could easily turn around and launch into East Asia, especially considering that the USSR had already been supporting the communists for some time now. The thing is that this was all a part of Operation Ketsu-gō, which was essentially a last-stand doctrine that saw Japan fight until the bitter end to bleed American forces dry so that they would leave Japan alone when peace came. But with the multiple nukes dropped on Japan proper, AND the invasion of their holdings on the continent, it finally proved to the Japanese executive council that this doctrine to try and take down as many allies with them couldn't work, because now what land they did hold both in Asia and the home island were now fully vulnerable to devastating attack that, no matter what, they would be unable to repel as much as they wanted.
we do actually in the alternate timeline where alexander the great actually defeated persia and didn't die on some godforsaken battlefield trying to be achilles at age 14
imagine us living in one of these weird timelines, where alternatehistory in another timeline tells us "what if alexander lived the longest. i know, weird as hell. we all knew he died of a random arrow at deladonin when he was 12 years old"
When a random 12-year-old prince dies in the 4th century bc, we usually barely know their name. He'd have been long-forgotten even 50 years after his death.
@@loganroy3381makes you wonder how many 12 year old princes in our timeline would’ve grown up to be great conquerors like Alexander, but died before they could do anything.
Anyone who thinks you can just "invade" USA has played too many Paradox games and has no idea how logistics work. The US troops landing in Europe worked, because they have this slightly industrialized island nation just a swimming distance from the mainland away as an ally. Even then operation Overlord was a huge mess. Same issues would've popped up with any actual invasion of Japan to be fair, the supply lines would have been very taxed and any troops on land would've most likely spent more time building infrastructure and logistics than actually fighting the Japanese.
but japan had korea and russia and china next door that was very much in Allied hands, plus various islands the US had conquered, while japan itself is very poor on resources and its navy and airfroce was basically broken and without fuel. in the case of Europe, besides britain, the largest number of axis troops were stuck fighting the soviet union and could not devote the resources nor the man power to really defend the west. plus the germany navy could not control the waters nor could the german air force defend the skies. invading the us would be harder than both, you would have to conquer Mexico and/or canada and use them as a spring board or be able to decisively suppress the US navy and air force in order to be able to build up in say, cuba for an invasion and even then, you would want the us army to be distracted else where in the mean time instead of building defenses.
I think the "isolationist USA" thread used to be more common. The war in Europe is still going on, but Lend-Lease and/or a US entry in the war never happens. The war in Europe and the Japanese expeditionary wars still drag on, none of them immediately becomes a superpower. The USA is still a giant industrial power, but much more isolated in a world with shrinking liberal democracy.
I bet there’s also the idea that Japan is a smaller nation, so a landing and subsequent conquest could be more possible. Still extremely difficult if it proceeded, but nowhere near what it would take to conquer the US.
@@TuShan18 The Imperial Japanese command has a lot of rosy optimism, but they talk about delaying the USN with island garrisons or culling the carrier build up.
About rome industrializing: i think it's more plausible than it's given credit for, it sounds dumb but a possible scenario is that one person thinks "hey, this steam thing is producing force, maybe a bigger steam thing could propel an aquaduct wheel" and that would lead to something? Or maybe im just dumb idk
Our own timeline had Samuraïs vs Conquistadors in 1582 so we're already stranger than fiction. We had so many weird events and plot armored/ASB conquerors. Could you predict the mongol empire if it wasn't in History ? Could you predict Napoléon ?
Jeanne d'arc is my favorite, "Look how weird actual history is," person. Random French maid finds an actual buried sword and then rallies the French army to her banner.
What’s so outlandish about Conquistadors v Samurai? Portuguese colonialism was still at large in the far east, and Samurai were a warrior class. There’s nothing weird about them meeting and even fighting.
Most of actual history is weirder than anything our imaginations can come up with, honestly. The British and Mongol Empires, the emergence of Industrialization, hell even the fact that humanity developed civilization in the first place is something we still can’t entirely explain. Scenarios where the most likely outcome occurs are honestly the ones with the most amount of changes.
In the CK2 version of Sunset Invasion, the idea was actually that the Aztecs (and generally Mesoamerica) somehow teched up faster than in real history; so they actually discovered Europe BEFORE Columbus and were on par with them technologically. If you import a CK2 save with the invasion enabled to EU4, you actually find a big, advanced Aztec Empire in America that has tech on par with Europe. Which y'know, also probably not very realistic, but "what if Mesoamerica had technology on par with Europe when it was discovered?" is a fun scenario to consider too.
To be fair, too, the whole point of the sunset invasion was to counterbalance the Mongol invasion of the east, which left the western half virtually untouched so now you have to contend with an Aztec invasion
If I Remember correctly, its the Vinland explorers that learn from the local tribes that a powerful kingdom (the Aztecs) exist to the south, encroaching into the plains. The Vinlanders then journey south anyway, get interrogated about Europe, and their ships reverse engineered. The ship part is why the cover art here in the video has an Aztec style longship.
Mesoamerica _did_ have technology on par with Europe when it was 'discovered'. What it didn't have was the local resources that Europe did. You have to remember that for a couple centuries there, Western history writing was 90% people coming up with reasons why Europeans came to dominate much of the world that wasn't just 'we lucked into it'... But 'we lucked into it' was absolutely the actual answer. The coastal areas of Western and Northern Europe were, before humans started draining them, almost completely composed of bogs and swamps. Which is a huge advantage, because a bog, when drained, provides very fertile soil. It also has another very valuable resource: Bog Iron. Created by iron-rich water flowing from mountains meeting the acidic waters of a bog. This, with the assist of specific microbes, causes big porous clumps of iron oxides close to the surface. Bog iron is much easier to find, work and refine into decent quality iron than iron ores mined from deposits in rock. Even then, early European iron wasn't much to write home about, being inferior in every way to the high quality bronze used in the Fertile Crescent, Minoan Greece and Egypt. The methods that Europeans would eventually use for refining iron of genuine quality were first developed around 2000 BCE somewhere in the Middle East. The Middle East didn't have bog iron, but it did have some areas with iron ores in solid rock close to the surface. The amount of ore they could extract was limited, but they developed techniques for making maximum use of what little they could. While it took almost a millennium and a half for Middle Eastern iron smelting techniques to reach Europe, once they did Europe's ability to produce and use iron, and the quality of said iron, increased exponentially and even outpaced that of the Middle East. Having access to a lot of iron ore that was easy to extract and refine let Europeans make lots of tools to get at iron that was harder to extract and refine, but produced even better quality iron (and steel). The European Iron Age was only made possible by knowledge from the Middle East eventually filtering through to Europe through the powerful nations during the Mediterranean Bronze Age. And, likewise, the Age of Sail was only made possible by the fact that the native evergreens of the Northern hemisphere, like spruce and pine, make excellent material for large sea-going ships (especially when held together with iron and brass fittings). The various nations of West Africa (also rich in bog iron, also got those Middle Eastern refining techniques, a little earlier than the Europeans even) were on-par with or ahead of Europe 'technologically' for most of history _until_ the Europeans started sailing the open sea. While the spruce and pine so common in Europe made for excellent sea-going ships, the more fibrous, less straight-grained woods of afro-tropical climates did not, so the ships of West African empires were restricted to rivers, lakes and local coastal waters. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the species of microbe that created the massive bog iron deposits of Europe wasn't present. There was another microbe from the same family in the bogs of what is now New England, but it didn't produce nearly as much (to the point that while there is still bog iron to be found in the soil of Europe in various locations, nearly all the bog iron in the whole of the Eastern Seaboard of North America was dug up and smelted by European Colonists and their descendants before the end of the 19th century). Native Americans never had access to metal in any significant amounts besides copper (and arsenic bronze) and gold, neither of which make for very good tools. So without metallurgy to focus on, the various cultures of the Americas developed in other areas. When Europeans first arrived in Mesoamerica, the locals were, for instance, light years (heh) ahead of them in terms of astronomy and mathematics. And a lot of people don't get how significant that is: Europeans only arrived in Mesoamerica in the first place because Christopher Columbus sucked at both, assumed that the earth was smaller than it was based on his bad calculations and believed that the distance between Europe and the East Indies (Indonesia) was smaller going west than it was going east. And the only reason he managed to convince the royal family of Spain to fund his expedition was that the development of this kind of knowledge was still relatively new in Europe and while they were fairly sure he was wrong, they weren't 100% sure it was impossible for him to be right. If Europe hadn't been much more _primitive_ in those areas of knowledge than the Mesoamericans, Europeans would never have colonised the Americas.
@@RvEijndhoven Mesoamerica was barely recovering from the cataclysmic events that wiped the Tehotihuacan culture and caused the Aztec migration. As impressive as Tenochtitlan was, it was the exception, not the rule. They clearly maintained an advanced understanding of engineering and math through the famine and migrations. But their technology and logistics was at a stone age level. In a fair fight simulacrum, age of discovery mesoamerican armies could have defeated bronze age armies, maybe. Probably even iron age armies. But not medieval european armies, much less Spain in it's golden age.
@@Stroggoii I'm not saying they could have won any kind of war, I'm saying that judging 'technological advancement' solely by how good a nation's weaponry is, is incredibly gamer-brained. Europe wasn't more technologically advanced than any of the nations it colonised, it was simply in a better position regarding local natural resources. And the whole thing that kicked off the rise of European dominance of the globe was a technology that Europeans didn't even develop themselves, but that was developed in the Middle-East and took nearly two millennia to filter down to Europe, but it was one that Europeans were in a much better position to exploit than its original developers. Tech levels are bullshit, is what I'm saying.
I still think Operation Downfall isn't completely implausible. If you consider a more complex scenario involving the Kyujo incident succeeding, American leadership refusing to allow the emperor to remain, etc. While improbable (like most althistory), i wouldnt say it is nearly as impossible as the Sunset Invasion, Man in the High Castle, or most of the others on this list
Also the Plan was basically to Bleed the Allies for a more "acceptable" Peace term so they were planning for Downfall to happen, its just that the Emperor and Government made up their mind that they would surrender after both the Bombs and the Soviets invalidated Ketsu-go. So while not likely had the Government or the Emperor been delayed Downfall might still have happened its just that Japan would have still surrendered and not fought till Tokyo explodes or gets occupied because that was never the plan, the plan was to fight the Allies to a Peace negotiation not have the Allies occupy it because the Japanese resisted till the end.
It would only take a small string of mistakes by a small group of people, and that would be a plausible tragedy. After all, the Japanese High Command was willing to lead their country to the bitter end. And the fact the Kyujo incident even happened showed at least a chunk of the military wasn't shocked to surrender by the successive bad news.
Japan was even more prepared than the allied intelligence thought it was. They would have find it the hard way and then oh man, debate should be what would have NOT being used...
Hard agree. You could also simply have the Manhattan project delayed. Any easy way to do this, is no Tizard mission from the UK. Einstein never writes his letter urging the US to start work and the refugee German and Commonwealth scientists in the UK never urge the US to do the same or share how plausible it is along with their research in Tube alloys not being folded into the Manhattan project. With the Belgian government in exile following British directives the Uranium sources are mostly held by Britains empire (Canada) and the Belgian Congo. With a delay in the atomic bombs the shock factor is decreased and the land war in Manchuria maybe seen as less pressing, after all the Russians can’t invade the home islands on their own, they don’t have naval logistics or experience for such an ambitious amphibious assault. You could also have a scenario where US progress to bombing range of the Japanese home islands is way slower. Again adding more time for the invasion. Ultimately they were planning and preparing for it. It’s not that unrealistic. I think dropping of the bombs was worth it over losing thousands of your own men. Particularly when level fire bombing swarms of B-29s were doing the same damage as a single nuke, perhaps more initial casualties even and again still civilian bombing…
Yeah, Downfall is entirely possible. Mayhaps unlikely but certainly in no way deserving of being ranked alongside Sunset Invasion and Man in the High Castle.
This is why I started liking more and more your channel over other alt-hist. There are so many factors that made history turn into what it is today, that alternate history is almost preposterous. There are plenty of moments where a single decision could have changed history, but they are still insignificant to the huge amount of factors, conditions, resources, ideology, social development, and other things that I can't imagine that set the course of events as we know them. I am not sure if the future can be predicted, but it does have a huge element of determinism.
19:06 the fact that Panama and its canal aren't even mentioned in this world where the entirety of Africa and Latin America are divided between imperial powers is pretty stunning.
@@MouldMadeMind Not inherently so, but in this case, it's an over-correction. There were many factions within the Japanese government, many of which favoured do-or-die resistance (or at least, conditional surrender). Others were convinced to give in to the Allies' terms either by the atomic bombings, the Soviet invasion or both. Some even attempted to take over and continue the war even after the Emperor's capitulation (the Kyujo incident). Most importantly, while not every Japanese was cartoonishly devoted to the Emperor, they were statistically far, far less likely to voluntarily surrender than any other participant in the war. It's likely that most would have fought to the bitter end if ordered to do so. All in all, I'd say Operation Downfall was unlikely, but to compare it to "Sunset Invasion" scenarios is just bad history.
@@samg.5165 It's not like a Spanish Republican victory is on the same level as a Roman industrialisation either. This is a ''dumb scenarios'' video, not an ''equally dumb scenarios'' one.
Devil's advocate: scenario 3: What if Hadrada landed in England after the Normans? Part of what delayed William was the unfavorable wind that kept him anchored in Normandy. What if instead the wind was favorable to William but bad for Hadrada which meaning he would land after the other 2 parties exhausted themselves?
@@KasumiRINA Only to be invaded by the somehow unified Germans I guess... English (Anglisch) would be a German dialect... as intelligible as the Swiss...
When I heard your Harald Hadrada scenario, I thought, "Stamford Bridge is not the correct point of divergence." William the Conqueror was ready to cross as early as August 12. If the wind had been favorable, he might have. King Harold would not yet have dismissed his militia, which means Hastings becomes a much harder battle for William. In turn, this leads to possible scenarios: Suppose King Harold actually wins, but has fewer troops once he still dismisses the militia on September 8. Does Harold still win Stamford Bridge with a diminished force? Suppose William still wins, but again, has fewer troops. In our timeline, it took William over two months to stabilize his position enough to even be crowned. He would have six weeks before he would have to respond to Hadrada. Does he still have it then?
Plus why does Hardrada have to go south when he had control of York. York has more significance to Norway. Is closer to Norwegian controlled territories in Scotland and he could easily garnered support from the Northumbrians whom had Norse influence plus he ignoring the possibility of Hardrada potentially getting more allies. It's not unreasonable for hardrada to ask king of Scotland that if he joins, Scotland can have Sutherland or Hebrides. Or ask Gwynedd and give back some of land Mercia took from them. Normandy couldn't do that with Scotland as he has no territory to give nor the ability to take. But hardrada did.
@@-._A2._- If Harald Godwinson was slain at Stamford Bridge, the northern Anglosaxon lords could well have crowned Hardrada as the next king. His claim was just as flaky as William's. "My uncle thought he should be king here, so..." vs. "The previous king told me that I would be king, no witnesses but for real bro".
This video reminds me of a book series I read once called The Clash of Eagles. Romans have conquered Europe and have remained stable so they sail across the Atlantic and start trying to conquer the Indigenous American people. It’s absolutely crazy, especially when the Mongols get involved because they went across the Pacific, so it felt right in line with everything else in this video.
Lovely video, the operation downfall part has a few inaccuracies though 1. The soviet invasion of Manchuria did not play a role in the surrender of Japan, this is for a few reasons. The Japanese were aware of a soviet plan to invade. This is corroborated by a diary entry from one of the big six (supreme war council), stating that the soviets invaded earlier than expected, or something along those lines anyways. Many Manchurian forces were moved to southern Kyushu to bolster forces for the Olympic invasions, which meant the forces still remaining were ordered to do a fighting retreat into northern Korea. You are right that Manchuria supplied a lot of food to the Japanese mainland, but that was before the American naval blockade stopped any trade with Japan way before the soviet entry into the war. 2. Easing up on the terms was a very unlikely option considering Truman was against it, he believed unconditional surrender would not be victory, and repeat the mistakes of the end of WWI. It’s true that the calculations of the troops on southern Kyushu were inaccurate in early stages of the planning, which was discovered soon before the end of the war. This would mean a reconsideration of the plan. General MacArthur was still trying to get the operation going for the glory of commanding the largest naval invasion of the war, but especially the navy was against the plan. George Marshall was looking at using up to 9 nukes in Kyushu and then going in with marines. The navy was in favour of a continued naval blockade and bombing. This would’ve meant the death of possibly millions more in the Japanse co-prosperity sphere and would starve Japanese civilians. The reality is that the nuke posed the idea that a decisive battle in the homeland might not take place, which was the hope of Japanese leaders, because that would mean that they could inflict as much casualties as possible to ease up the surrender terms. Access to a nuke meant that they could destroy entire cities at a distance, with a single b29 bomber. That’s why Japan would’ve ultimately surrendered.
If the Ming sailed to America, I think it would have to have been in some way because of the Polynesians? If they made contact with Polynesians, who may have had trade with Amerindians, they could have learned about them there, and decided to show off to them. It’s incredibly contrived, but it’s a way that contact could have happened, no matter how implausible.
@@runeanonymous9760I also think it would have been the likeliest way for any Chinese contact with the Americas, but I think it relies on too many coincidences happening together. Without European travel, it may have happened eventually, but I’d put a timeframe around 1650-1800. But the absence of Europe in any interaction with Eastern Asia or the Pacific would alter the course of Chinese domestic policy so much that any action by then would be nearly unpredictable.
Fun fact, you made the "Chinese name for Los Angeles" but that IS the actual Chinese name for the city. 洛杉磯 (Luò-shān-jī) Basically, the Chinese language can and will use it's own name for you and/or your city/country rather than whatever you came up with. Perhaps the most "well known" historical example is when Marco Polo asked the Chinese what that island off their coast was called, they said it was named the land of the rising sun, or "Ja-pon", despite the locals of the island calling it "Ni-hon" instead.
@@Okada_Caelun Traditional does not equal Cantonese. Traditional is the writing style while Cantonese (very roughly) is the spoken dialect. HK uses Traditional plus Cantonese, but Taiwan uses Traditional plus Mandarin. I believe Guangdong (province of Mainland China) uses Cantonese plus Simplified.
If the Chinese treasure fleet had gone west, i think you're right that they wouldn't have conquered America. However, a brief diplomatic visit to the Aztecs would have introduced them to Eurasian diseases. Fast forward 100 years, snd Cortez encounters Aztecs who are now somewhat immune to those same diseases, and things could go very differently...
Or he finds Aztecs with significantly reduced populations (though not nearly as much as they would have reduced under Spanish control) and it’s still about the same difficulty to conquer the empire unless they acquired Chinese technology and weapons.
@@SirAntoniousBlock Now *that* would be hilarious, given he'd actually have 'proof' in some trade goods Although it feels like the reality would've been found out soon enough There wouldn't be consistent, if any, trade to the New World. There's nothing really worth getting for a journey that long. But I'd still find it absolutely hilarious for the head-scratcher of "how did we find chinese goods **here** ???"
With the Harald Hadrada scenario, what if Harold Godwinsson stayed in the south and waited for the Normans, defeated them, and then went to Stanford bridge after and then lost. The way I predict Harold Godwinsson to beat the Normans is that he remains in control of his shield wall so they don’t charge down or William does actually die when everyone thought they did.
For the timeline where Harald Hardrada conquers England: What if Harold Godwinson just meets the Normans in battle first, defeats them (like he almost did) and is then defeated by the Norwegians? Hardrada doesn’t have to meet the superior Normans and might actually stand a chance against the Anglo-Saxons. Bob‘s your uncle
Yeah, even if the Normans won against the Anglo Saxons they would still lack the benefit of having a fresh army that wasn't weary from battle. A far easier challenge no matter what. I mean this one should have been the more obvious alternative history example. The Normans where greatly delayed because the winds where going in the wrong direction. So the Anglo Saxon forces had to travel far to the north east, to fight the Norwegians first, and then travel far back again to face the Normans. This contributed greatly to the Norman victory. The troops where weary from battle, travel, and having to wait for the Normans in the first place.
@@MegaBanne and the anglo saxons nearly won after all that as well. despite the fact that godwinson didnt wait for much of his army to be ready, despite the long march and previous battle. william won basically by pure luck, as he was kind of an idiot
@@hashtagrex In this case, I'd say Harold was still more of an idiot for not withdrawing and regrouping when his entire army was present. Still, what probably really screwed him over was getting that arrow to the eye.
As I understand, the events of 1066 turned out the way they did because prevailing winds led to a Viking invasion before a Norman crossing of the Channel. Had the weather allowed a Norman invasion first, maybe things could have turned out the way you described.
I think Hadrada could be more plausible with a different PoD, the normans were delayed about a month by storms, if that didn’t happen, the would put the battle of Hastings before Hadrada’s arrival, leaving the victor worn down, and possibly defeatable.
18:12 " they never anticipated that the allies and commies would work together" - that's a silly statement by Cody. The Allies had worked with the USSR for years by the time the USSR invaded Japanese territories. If anybody wants a better take on WWII, go watch the World War Two channel.
Japan's leadership was in denial about that. The ambassador tried to convince them that Russia wasn't going to help but they didn't listen. Imperial Japan's leaders were not smart people.
Your idea about Alexander already getting as close to a perfect outcome as one can in our timeline is really fascinating to me. Makes me wonder what history would look like if people like Alexander the Great never lived up to their full potential. Like the inverse of the (outdated) Great Men Theory of history, where history is dominated not by the achievements of great men, but by their utter mediocrity. A timeline where Alexander failed his conquests, where Caesar never became dictator for Life, where Napoleon flunked out of officers school, etc.
I mean for everyone with Alexander the Great level plot armor there were probably a good number of potentially world-changing people who history didn't remember because they never got the chance to change the world. I consider it a near certainty that every potential alternate timeline has at least a few "Great Men" who achieved Alexander-level significance.
Flunking out of officer school wouldn't necessarily hamper Napoleon. Ulysses S. Grant was in the lower half of his West Point class and had been discharged from the Army for drunkenness before the Civil War. Then he won the Civil War, in part because he wasn't held back by preconceptions of how wars should be fought.
There would just be other people other people to replace them that we either wouldn't know of, or weren't (as) important to us. Like if Chamberlain didn't get sick and step down, meaning Churchill didn't get his position.
11:45 In December 1862, the Lancashire cotton workers wrote to Abraham Lincoln saying they supported his campaign against slavery, despite the hardship it was causing in the local economy. At the time, Britain’s industrial working class was very powerful and an intervention by the UK on the Confederate side could have led to massive unrest.
To be fair, scenarios like Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Cortes' conquest, Napoleon, the tangle of alliances that led to WWI, Hitler even ruling Germany let alone the Nazi's coming as close as they did to taking Europe, Russia becoming a superpower, and the Apollo Program are all completely nuts. Also Trump. I mean, come on. That's just bad satire.
I feel like the dumbest is actually WWII being an Axis victory. American production by 1944 and 1945 had been so massive that there was over 300,000 planes in the U.S. military and over 7600 ships in the USN including 99 aircraft carriers and 23 battleships by VJ Day. Just for some sort of Axis stalemate where it’s not an unconditional surrender would require extremely different circumstances.
Production ain't all there is to winning wars. Just ask the Vietnamese. Worse decision making by the allies and better decision making by the axis could have changed the outcome of the war.
@@sharpspoon7371 I’m talking about something more realistic like a stalemate where the Axis doesn’t take Moscow but the Axis isn’t driven out of Eastern Europe or some other end where there’s still Fascist Italy/Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan surviving in some form. Like nothing like Wolfenstein ever was gonna happen where the U.S. itself gets conquered. Just something a lot more realistic like a stalemate in Eastern Europe would be something that required things to be a lot different.
Only way I can see it is Germans somehow take over Soviet oil fields and a badly planned D day failed so badly USA go full non intervention in europe. Even this is very unlikely.
Actually, the Japanese received word of the Soviet Invasion BEFORE they learned of Nagasaki’s destruction. I think you put too little stock in the importance of the nukes.
Also addendum on the impossibility of Ming Dynasty in America: To note it's not that China doesn't have any interest in other places overall, as most dynasties pre-1200s were highly engaged with other countries, but by Ming dynasty it definitely reached a point where there wasn't as much of a significant interest anymore, couple with the Ming dynasty having no real adversaries that could feasibly overtake it so there's also less priority to compete with neighbours, though obviously trade and diplomatic relations were still upheld and frequent.
This assumption was made with the idea of the emperor being a fool with money, which isnt the case, it was rather practically a armed diplomatic trade mission. Go to a south eastern prince, negotiate trade, leave. If that emperor instead considered the benefits of establishing foreign settlements, or was just about as obsessed with it as he was trade (which other emperors were scared of, due to a fear of a rising merchant class) could instead change the direction of imperial rule, and spur a direction of increasing free trade, such a change in decision, if not reaching California, is a snowball of changing winds in the East.
13:14 I will also add that no one in the Italian government ever thought to join ww1 on the side of Germany, it was a question of neutrality or war against Austria. Also the majority of Italians were against war, so a war along side the Austrians would be super unpopular
war was never about entente vs alliance but "what do we REALLY want to gain?" there were reds who saw an armed war-tempered people as the possibility of starting the proletariat revolution
Regarding the UK dependency on southern cotton, in the long term I think you are correct, the British would have found other sources of raw cotton to make up the difference. But that shouldn't downplay the short term impact of the so-called "cotton famine" the civil war had on parts of the UK, particularly north west England where most of the mills were located. Hundreds of mills shut down and hundreds of thousands become unemployed. It was basically a severe economic depression contained to a single industry that certain region was heavily dependant on. Most ended up surviving on charity handouts during the period, and there were some deaths from starvation and similar. After the war some mills did reopen, but many had gone bankrupt and needed new buyers to start them up again.
While there were closures, by 1863 Egypt was already supplying cotton to the UK and as mentioned the UK had outlawed slavery in 1833. Just imagine David Livingston who was fighting slavery in Africa would have reacted?
@@kurtsteinert7569 To be fair fair geo-politics and morals don’t need to align. Depends a lot on pragmatism also, had UK seen the US more as a rising rival looking to supplant them rather than a growing friendly ally, they might have took a different approach. The French were also already somewhat eager. If they had actually gone for it, I don’t see why they wouldn’t win. In the 1860s the US wasn’t the power house it would be for a good while yet. In the midst of a civil war, split forces and dealing with Crimean war veterans and a total loss of international trade would definitely have a huge impact.
@@GG-ir1hw I think that the French would be the more likely to support the South, as long as the South did not interfere with its actions in Mexico. Once the North showed that the likelihood of the South would gain independence Lincoln started pressuring France to leave.
@@kurtsteinert7569The UK did already have other sources, but they weren't enough to compensate for the supply shock during the war. Maybe if it had dragged on longer things might have improved a little? Who knows. But you're right to mention the moral dimension over slavery. Most of the mill workers, and even quite a few of the mill owners, were abolitionists, so there was some level of solidarity that their suffering may help end slavery in the US, which probably increased the amount of aid the workers received. Some mill owners did let their employees stay in their homes, which were generally owned by the mill, during the closure so they were at least not homeless.
@@GG-ir1hwThe slavery issue was way too much of a non-starter for Western Europe though. Being a “civilizing force” as they saw it was a core part of the British and French imperial identity. Ideology is often a way bigger driver than pragmatism.
The timeline is kinda skewed in the downfall scenario. The Soviet invasion came in between attacks not after Nagasaki, yet the council vote to not surrender. So I don’t find it compelling for a surrender reason
@@g.ricepad9470 And it took all that to push the needle to surrender, it's not unlikely that it's simply not enough to force the surrender. And then Downfall.
How to make High Castle the perfect alt-hist show: 1. Dump the universe meditation transfer shit. This isn't Fringe, we don't need that in a Nazi show 2. Get rid of the BCR in its entirety. If you think for one second that Hitler would allow a group of non-German Communists to exist anywhere near the Reich's borders, I have a collapsed bridge to sell you in Baltimore 3. Kill Juliana in the first season and base the rest of the show around John Smith and his family 4. REWRITE THAT ENDING. I would prefer an ending where Smith, after gaining control of all of North America, reinstates the United States and a cold war begins against the newly freed America's and the old Reich in Europe, but I'll take literally anything except an ending where a portal to our reality opens up for Time Tourists
I wouldn't have minded the BCR if they didn't feel like the result of some rushed executive meddling halfway through. And do they really think the other rebel groups would be friends with a bunch of people who basically want to cleave off their own ideologically opposed ethnostate after the occupation ends? At best they'd barely tolerate each other, more likely they'd be gearing up for a post occupation civil war.
I think Philip K. Dick wasn't a very factual author. Reading Dick is always like reading a multi-level drug hallucination. I like how Deckard is trying to retire a replicant but gets busted by a cop. And suddenly he is arrested, hauled to a secondary LAPD headquarters he never knew about, complete with staff and cells and arrested suspects, gets booked and held. And none of them have any idea the "real" LAPD headquarters he works at even exists. So if you want to go the Dick route, make it even more weird and unexplained. A Scanner Darkly is another Dick movie adaptation that embraces the weirdness of it all. And Total Recall does it pretty subtly, at all time you remember that this Mars spy plot is very close to the dream-trip he ordered at the beginning.
That bit about the 15 steps to Industrialization is super interesting, do you have some more info or sources on that, i would like to read more about it.
Axis (and confederate) victory alternate history scenarios just feel so deeply unserious. Like even if you put aside aaaaaaallllllll the logistics and such the most probable outcome is that they end up self cannibalizing their civilization or just run out of resources
In which ways are "historical analysis of alternate outcomes" not fiction, tho? In another video from Cody (can't remember which, but it's a pretty recent one), he himself says that alt-history is basically fanfiction. Having the point(s) of divergence with our timeline being more or less realistic or plausible (based on our own timeline) doesn't make one alternate scenario less fiction than the other.
@Alfonso162008 The difference is possibility. Let's say that Germany gives top Jewish scientists amnesty so they get a bomb before the US. Since this would demand the nazis to be atleast a tiny bit accepting of Jews. We are now so far from a possible reality that it becomes fiction. Alt-history hangs on some sort of plausible fact, while fiction are free to do what it wants. If alt-history the video is more or less pointless. Since if all alt-history is fiction, who cares if the Aztecs had the technology to cross the Atlantic?
It's all fiction at the end of the day. I mean, sometimes history can be as "unrealistic" as some of these scenarios. Sometimes things just happen by pure luck or coincidence.
Basically, there are two types of alternate history; "What if...?" and "Wouldn't it be cool/interesting if...?" My favorite AltHist scenarios take a little bit of both, leaning towards the former, but throwing in a few elements of the latter even if they aren't the "most likely" outcomes.
@@CABRALFAN27 I'm not a big alt history follower, so I don't know the community much (I love history, but this is basically the only channel I follow that specializes in alt history), but something I seemed to gather is that apparently there is "good" and "bad" alt history, and it's all based on if the scenarios are strictly the ultra most likely outcomes, and only if those outcomes are one of the possible ones following exactly what already happened in our timeline, and you can't tweak previous conditions. Idk if I'm explaining myself, but I feel like saying a scenario is dumb because "the people in charge never had any plans to do this invasion" is kinda harsh, imo. Or maybe I'm just misinterpreting this whole thing, idk 🤷♂️
You can make a decent argument that the Japanese would have surrendered without the nukes, but putting operation downfall-a real plan that was scheduled to take place-on the same list as susnet invasion and man in the high castle is just absurd
@@coh2conscript851Yeah, I kinda got those vibes. I kinda disagree that the Soviets invading Manchuria was as big as he makes it out. In his surrender speech, Hirohito specifically says the nukes were the reason. He only mentioned Manchuria in the surrender speech specifically addressed to the Japanese Army.
The nuclear weapons were the most significant part of convincing the civilian part of the government to surrender. After all, the army had been fighting the entire time, what’s so different with the Soviets? The Soviet invasion was the most significant part of convincing the army part of the government to surrender. After all, the Home Islands had been getting bombed the entire time, what’s so different with these nukes? The nukes were necessary, and it’s so tiring to see people pretend they weren’t.
@@sirboomsalot4902 Didn't respond to you yet but the latest comment pretty much says everything. The Soviets coming in AND the nukes affected both sectors of the government in negative ways.
21:29 -- I don't know why I never thought of this before, but what would happen with Canada and the European Caribbean territories if the Axis managed to conquer and control Europe?
Literally what happened to france, the main part, in europe was conquered and the african collonies and some french generals created Free France and continued to fight with the allies.
Canada's a good question (would it fight on itself, would George V and family retreat there to fight on, etc.), but the threat of Nazis in the Caribbean real close to America was one of the ways FDR helped get I think the "destroyers for bases" deal through Congress and the isolationist types - they didn't want to intervene, but apparently, they weren't too keen on the idea of having the swastika flying just off their doorstep (relatively speaking) either.
With Hadrada conquering England, a much easier way to make it possible would be if Godwinson defeats William at Hastings *first* and then has to fight the Norwegians with an exhausted army, none of the three armies present could beat the other two back-to-back.
@@jacobwilliams1223 Yeah I was really shocked at this scenario's inclusion in the video bc of this. Our timeline is *less likely* thank the Hardrada victory
you know how in war of the worlds, the thing that defeats the martians in the end isn't human weapons, but human diseases? yeah that's what would have happened in any sunset invasion scenario.
@@Reiver-93 so somehting to site iwth the whole sunsent invasion, one it happans in the 11 hunderds (Which has its own issues) but does shorten the gap tech wise but like in it the aztec are jsut a comepltly differnt empire, they seem to be centrlzied with a beruacracy. and yah they become insanely weakened after awhile due to disease from slaves they bring back. also msot of the time in ck2 the invasion gains a foothold and then ..dies. who ever wrote about it I think just explained it badly. also i dont think its realistic just what cody described is NOT the sunset invasion as presented in its source matrial.
@@Yingyanglord1 it's more feasible if the Norse settled successfully in North America during the Viking Age. If they continued exploring southward and settling further, they will encounter Mesoamerican civilizations. Perhaps the Maya, not the Aztecs, will adopt steel weapons and armor, and longships, since the Aztec only became an empire in the 1400s. A sunset invasion is more feasible in this scenario in 1200 or 1300.
not that dumb its more off a belgium submits kind of like austria and the Czechs in ww2 simple answer is the germans beat the french easily the russians sue for peace and the french nation barely loses land the austrians commit war crimes in serbia and we have a massive worldwide conflict a few years later
I do think that if Rome did not have slaves they would have industrialized. Slaves are usually cheaper than industrial equipment, so Rome had no reason or initiative to industrialize.
they already had big organised plantations and specialised huge workshops, and the origins of medieval guilds, with enough literacy and social mobility to have a middle class. There are just so so many little things that added up to our industrial revolution though, and theres no way it would stay a unique Roman secret either
This is dumb. A corner stone of the industrial revolution was the age of enlightenment. The Romans where just impressive if you compare them with the shit that came right after its fall. The Romans where not impressive based on late medieval standards.
It was a bad situation. Slaves were working so well for them, so they had no reason to attempt to change, but it was also clear that slavery would be the reason the whole thing collapsed. Rome simply didn’t have much lifespan left.
I'm pretty sure this is not the best method of relaying ideas (considering the Discord and everything), but I just thought up a scenario: What if the USS William D. Porter actually killed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Secretary of State, and Joint Chiefs of Staff? He was on his way to the Cairo and Tehran Conferences (after the US already had war declared on them by the Axis powers), but it is unknown how Henry Agard Wallace (FDR's VP at the time) would have handled the war in the face of such humiliation.
Well first I imagine that every other ship in the convoy would turn the Porter's pronouns from He/Him to Was/Were, so you can go ahead and jot that one down
I struggle with the "realism" of alternate history media because in this timeline our current political situation stems from the font selection on the ballot in Dade County Florida in 2000, the decision to retool Star Trek Voyager after its second season, the decision to ban Hent@i from Something Awful and a single pangolin with a weird cold
I think a more plausible point of departure for the Harold hardrada scenario is if the wind just got better sooner for William the conqueror. Then the Normans would have arrived in England first and hardrada would have arrived later.
16:32 The Operation Downfall bit is historically incorrect and includes what I consider historical revisionism by the Russians, Japanese, and Anti-Nuclear Activists. The Russian invasion of Manchuria, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands was not the nail in the coffin; the Atomic Bombings were. Russia had a land border on Sakhalin, and the Kurils were largely undefended. Furthermore, the Japanese initially reached out to the Russians after Hiroshima and because of Hiroshima to negotiate a conditional surrender; during that meeting, the Russians announced a breaking of the non-aggression pact. Furthermore, the civilian government's reasons for the surrender were explicitly the Atomic Bombings. The Japanese military, despite being the ones who were facing the full force of the Russians, refused to surrender and attempted a last-minute coup to continue the war, but the military failed. But the fact the military refused to give up fighting despite being the ones facing the Russians, along with the fact the Japanese Government and Military both knew the Russians would require allied aid to ford any invasion of Hokkaido and Northern Japan, utterly discredits the false narrative of the Russians being the reason for the Japanese surrender.
this but you can not deny the active effort to have the soviets join, even risking a blockade of the supply routes to Vladivostok. The USSR made its part and was enough
The Japanese were cut off from manchuria by allied blockade anyway. Japanese merchant shipping was obliterated by 1945 and allied submarines and aircraft were hunting fishing boats for lack of actual merchant vessels to prey on.
Meanwhile the Soviets would have been capturing more territory that they wouldn't willing give up and in the months of continued conventional bombing, more Japanese lives and property would have been lost than the total of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks. That certainly would have happened while the surrender without invasion was no foregone conclusion.
@@dlxmarks implying it only conventional warfare Truman had to fight tooth and nail to veto poison attacks over rice fields, but still stockpiled mustard gas as retaliatori measure like in Italy (see Bari incident)
I think that the Republicans winning in Spain is a lot more credible that Cody is giving it credit for. The Spanish Right had some very serious divides between the Falangists and the Carlists. Franco basically set up a shotgun wedding between these two groups, and kept them from breaking down into factionalism like happened on the Left. If Sanjurjo and Mola hadn't died in plane crashes, the Carlists would have had a much stronger role in the Nationalist camp. The shotgun wedding between the Carlists and the Falange that happened in 1937 probably wouldn't have occurred, and there would likely have been a three way split between Carlists, Falangists, and military officers that would have paralleled what happened in OTL on the Spanish Left.
4 месяца назад+3
About the Sunset Invasion, there is an uchrony that uses that point but with a twist: Columbus dies when returning to Spain, leaving some people in America. They teach all they know about weapons, sailing, sea faring, ... and decades later comes the invasion. And without the resources from America and being at war on Europe, the outcome is not nice for the European countries. The saga is called "Chronicles of the Feathered Snake", from Edgardo Civalledo.
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nuh uh
Can you do a what if napoleon gifted Brazil to his brother who was king of the Netherlands making Brazil a Dutch colony after he occupied Lisbon, but the Britain annexes it along with South Africa and Sri lanker after 1812, giving us British Brazil
Yes, which ones wont work!?
Just a wacky idea
What I personally don't like in alternative history communities, is when they ignore logic. Yes, sometimes we can make outrageous scenarios. But in principle it is asking about cause and effect and how specific changes would impact history. And not space Nazis taking control over America, just because space magic! (too common)
The Mongolian-Yugoslav-Confederate States-Carthage Entente is, sadly, not a viable competitor to BRICS.
Yes is
The Confederacy and Carthage would probably fight each other enough to destabilize the alliance.
Does this make them the China and India of this analogy?
Can't make a decent acronym out of that.
"Those Carthaginians worship Satan, which means we must burn their Capital to the ground.
Our Mongols allies are brave men, and raise fine horseflesh, though."
--J.E.B. Stuart, maybe.
Source: Trust Me Bro
@@daniellewis5533 I mean the Confederates would have thought Spartans to be based, never mind pre-Christian polytheism.
Whenever I hear about Sparta it reminds me a lot of antebellum South Carolina, where the majority of residents had to toil for a wealthy few, and those on top were constantly fearful of being annihilated by a major revolt. I can’t even be sure Spartan citizens were the original settlers of Laconia and Messenia.
I’m willing to bet that references to Sparta appear in some Confederate literature or speeches.
Being totally honest, the scenario where the dual invasions of England result in two separate English kingdoms (with the north being aligned with Norway and the south being aligned with Normandy) sounds more interesting than "England has vikings now".
And it very well could have happened. Why does Hardrada a Norseman have to go to London when York has more significance to Norway. He can just stay in York. What is William gonna do? Send his Calvary to attack essentially a castle? Yeah nice try there.
England had a whole slew of little kingdoms, city-leagues and a romanized London already. Even the Danelaw for a while. These are now gone.
The Normans were Vikings anyway.
Yep, totally agree here. Hardrada defeats Godwinson at Stamford Bridge & takes the Earldom/Kingdom of Northumbria & probably the 5 Boroughs of the East Midlands (where there's a lot of common bonds between the Scandinavians & the local population). William lands unopposed in Wessex & takes the south. Earls Edwin & Morcar (grandsons of Leofric & Godiva of Mercia) are stuck in the middle wondering what to do next. Do they submit to William who has effectively crowned himself King of England or throw their hand in with the Norse? Either way, being young & inexperienced they would get manipulated/killed off by the 2 new powers & there'd be a few years (decades) of chaos/raids/civil war until a new unified kingdom of England emerges. Two probable outcomes: no Harrying of the North (it being too strong); a lot less French influence, especially in language and land ownership north of the Trent.
If we are tweaking history slightly, in favour of Hardrada, why not have the Norman's arrive slightly earlier and as such the Anglo Saxons are ready, waiting and not tired and more likely to beat them then have to trek North quickly to beat Hardrada. That produces a Hardrada win more easily than beating two armies.
Ain'tHappenin'Hub strikes again
@@EmperorTigerstar emperor of mapping videos Strikes again
lmao
@@PakBallandSami Rep. Of Pakistan and Sami polandball strikes back
Haha⚛️
Nothing ever happens
I have an alt-hist where Rome industrialized, but I literally had to bring in an undead time-traveler with the book "How to invent Everything. A survival guide for the stranded time traveler." to even make that happen.
As cool industrial Rome was. They dont even have the Metal work to even make a Usable Boiler.
@@arnowisp6244 Exactly! Which is why they need a timetraveler and that book, it tells you how to get to radio from practically scratch.
@@BasicallyBaconSandvichIV And now I'm curious; it sounds kinda like a modern version of _Lest Darkness Fall._
(For those who aren't familiar, _Lest Darkness Fall_ (by L Sprague deCamp) is a novel where a 1930s time traveler keeps Ostrogoth _post-_ Roman Italy together enough to fend off the Byzantine invasion and its years of devastating war from OTL. He also manages to introduce the printing press and double-entry bookkeeping centuries early, though his attempts at clocks and gunpowder are failures.).
And for those who haven't read it, I _highly_ recommend _How To Invent Everything,_ by Ryan North (author of _Dinosaur Comics_ and a number of other things*).
(Reposted with revisions.)
* He's written for a few comic book series too. And he wrote the books _To Be or Not to Be_ and _Romeo and/or Juliet_ -- which are funny choose-your-own-adventure retellings of _Hamlet_ and _Romeo and Juliet._
@@AaronOfMpls Oh, you've also read the book? It's a very good read!
But I haven't really written any story for it. I've got a vague idea of how it would come to be, but the most I have currently is a 4th century map with a very big Rome indeed.
Sounds like Ancient Aliens.
"What do you mean, China and Russia won't unite to invade America?"
-Every Call of Duty dev ever
"It'll totally be North Korea!"
*Homefront devs after snorting a long line of bad cocaine*
Meanwhile the new Red Dawn had North Korea invade and occupy the U.S.
I think Fallout was more realistic in that China would only really be able to strike at Alaska, but then still lose.
@@Edax_Royeaux that or to take over Hawaii and it becomes a cluster f'cker of ships, bombs and blood. Well then again the USA couldn't really invade China or take major gains. So I guess it would be a battle of stalemates in the Pacific Ocean.
@@Edax_Royeaux*MAYBE* LA but besides that,yeah.
I read somewhere that the Roman writer Pliny wrote one of the first althistories wondering if Alexander invaded Rome. Being a good Roman, he said he would lose.
Whilst inflating Rome's contemporary military and extent, since he might as well.
My man, at the time of Alexander Rome was barely in control of all of Latium. They fought with neighbouring italic tribes over a few hills to graze their sheep. They needed a century more until they fought Carthage for the first time and barely won. For Alexander Rome didn't even exist. Just another village.
@@yaldabaoth2Great insight, you should tell Pliny that
@@yaldabaoth2 not to mention they got slapped around phyyrrus who was alexander light and only won because they had more manpower alexander would of rolled them so hard it would of been comical
@@nukesomething5518Pyrrhus did in fact NOT “slap the Romans around” the Romans would’ve won both battles if not for Pyrrhus war elephants which turned the tide in both battles (battles which Pyrrhus was badly losing before using his elephants.)
Hardrada conquering England, to my understanding, is more typically justified by Godwinson fighting William first, winning, then getting defeated by Hardrada
Yeah, isn't it that but in reverse what allowed William to win, also?
And William winning against Godwinson was by no means a given. He NEARLY lost. And that's if he even lands. The only reason he was able to land in the first place is because Harold Godwinson spent ages waiting for him to arrive. Unfortunately, William was trapped in port, due to bad weather. So Harold Godwinson sent his army home (as it was expensive keeping a semi-professional militia in place, when they were needed for farming).
Then Hardrada lands in the North. Godwinson has to high tail it all the way up North, gather a new army from Northumberland and do battle with the Norwegians. William then has a stroke of luck and the weather unexpectedly changes, allowing him to sail before Godwinson can make it South again. This means the fyrd, the semi-professional militia that would have prevented William from making a safe landing was never able to be called up again. Instead, Godwinson had to march his exhausted army on a forced march all the way back down South ... where he still nearly manages to beat William.
So, an easy way for Hardrada to win is ... just to change the weather. Either, 1) the weather is worse. William is trapped in port for longer. Hardrada wins at Stamford Bridge and takes London. He consolidates his position and is elected King by the Witan. (England was an elective monarchy under the Saxons. If Hardrada can bully the Ealdormen to elect him, he will be the legitimate king in the eyes of the saxon nobility.) Hardrada inherits Godwinson's position, except he has more soldiers and less opponents. It is entirely plausible he could beat William in a battle.
2) The weather is better. William sails on time and meets Harold Godwinson in battle. Godwinson had a very long time to plan the battle site and signal fires to rapidly respond. William has enough supplies to land and campaign for less than a week. After securing a landing site, he must fight Harold Godwinson on a site of his choosing, or withdraw back to Normandy. With the addition of the Wessex Fyrd, and rested troops, as well as a strong defensive position, it is highly unlikely William wins. At Hastings, William's knights will be forced to charge up a muddy hill, against a larger and more professional force than in Our Timeline (a battle William nearly lost). It's very unlikely William emerges victorious. Hardrada can then land unopposed in the North.
The North of England at this time was inhabited by the Anglo-Norse. These were the descendants of the old Danelaw, and has only recently risen against the Godwinsons of Wessex. The Godwinsons were Saxons, and were seen as foreigners by the Anglo-Norse. By contrast, Hardrada was a Norwegian. It's entirely plausible that he would be seen as the successor to Harold Harefoot, the last native viking king of England, to whom Hardrada was actually distantly related. Hardrada could well have been seen as a liberator and established York as a strong base, sparking an English Civil War.
I love all of you so much
I was thinking the same thing
I could see Hardrada seizing some northern lands, while William was busy pacifying the. South. They might avoid fighting each other initially to secure their new possessions. And then the Saxon lords would be forced to try to unite or choose sides.
So the alternate history I want to see is this: during the US Civil War the king of Siam offered Lincoln a bunch of war elephants for the campaign. I want the movie mostly historically accurate until like Antietam, and then suddenly Elephants.
The union had lots of cannons, and spammed them. Maybe the elephants could do stuff in the forests, but on open land like Gettysburg, they'd get mowed down.
@@pierrecurie
Captain Obvious awakes from his slumber to once again overanalyze and ruin what is clearly a joke online.
Sherman crashes through Atlanta on a war elephant half way through the movie too.
we used elephants in ww2 but not in battles more like cart horses on steroids
@@charliebasar9068 southerns still talk about the march to the sea. Imagine the generational trauma of elephants on that and nobody ever has fun at the circus again 😅
Alternate History Hub: Here's a list of the most unrealistic alternate history scenarios
Wolfenstein:
If maybe unrealistic, but by golly if it ain’t fun. 👍
@@crusader2112True
I mean, in Wolfenstein the Nazis essentially acquired sci-fi level tech/magic at some point, right?
I also think that Napoleon may win his invasion of Russia if he's handed mechanized horses or some shit. lol
(Hyperbole but you know what I mean)
@@Nobody-zl3kk Yeah I just see it as dumb fun
@@oliversherman2414 Oh no I agree.
I also just wanted to point out to anyone who wasn't aware (saying it as if I was an expert on the lore, I am not lol) that Wolfenstein only gets to be as wacky because the alternate history in this case is not caused by a divergence but by injecting future tech into the past. Lol
I did my bachelor's paper on the German bomb and boy howdy the story is even sillier than people realize. On top of what Cody said, we have:
Discounting uranium as a viable atomic energy source.
Insisting that more Neptunium (their alternative) than actually physically existed would be needed to get anything done with atomic energy.
Backtracking everything in the 60s and insisting that they knew all of Einstein's stuff all along and that they were "this close" to completing a functional bomb before the German surrender.
It was wild.
''I was just pretending to not know ha ha''
um...I hate to ask, but can you link that paper? It sounds like an interesting read; I've heard a lot of theories on Germany and the bomb it would be nice to have some factual clarification.
1) Germany had plans and prototypes for kamikaze bomber jets called "New Yorkers."
2) The German nuclear program was plagued by sabotage from the director, who went full Thomas Edison on it, insisting they keep pursuing and pushing ideas that he knew would go nowhere, just to use up money and encourage Nazi high command to abandon the project.
Oscar Schindler somewhat famously did something similar: using his munitions factory to produce intentionally defective ammunition while expropriating Jews slated for Auschwitz (including children) to "work" in his "factory."
Nazi's lied and were incompetent, colour me shocked!
Just replying so if you ever decide to link the paper I'll be informed.
The whole "Rome industrializing" thing really ticks me off every time I see it, because it took a mega-uber-nerd named Whitworth to finally establish the principles of close-tolerance-manufacturing needed to properly ramp up production, and even then it was the final hurdle in centuries of iterative changes in manufacturing techniques. Everything before then, even close-tolerance machining for complex machines like clocks and steam engines were each bespoke projects hand-fitted to purpose and incredibly precious and irreplacable (at least not exactly 1-to-1 replacable).
It also doesnt help that Rome lacked the system of international banking we had, a huge part of the industrial revolution hinged on financing and logistics. Slavery was a huge issue too, you really had no reason to industrialize if you could just enslave more people to do things for free.
I read somewhere that someone actually pitched the idea for a steam locomotive back in ancient Rome but they laughed it off because at the time, they said it just couldn’t be done
There's also the fact that the industrial revolution kind of occurs in a way that's just things happening at the right place at the right time. The steam engine was not initially meant for anything other than pumping water out of coal mines, which then led to steam engines being used to drag out coal from the now expanded coal mines, which finally led to someone considering we can use those coal movers to move things other than coal.
Also isn't the idea that the whole of humanity went backward after the fall of Rome, like mentionned in the video, complete bullshit ? Europe sure did, the rest of the world was fine, multiple golden ages for different civilizations happened in that time period. Kinda irks me to hear "dark ages" type bullshit on a history channel.
@@PP-ok2xt Rome had wealthy families which were patrons of the arts and extensive logistics to supply its army and people. Slaves weren't free, they were a valuable good and needed food and training. Rome used many machines which increased the power of human labor.
Fun fact: The Germans DID try to make a nuclear bomb, but when the Allies invaded the facilities they found that it looked more like a garage than an industrial laboratory. When the war ended, they put all the German scientists in a house with hidden microphones and played radios that gave the news of the bombings in Iroshima and Nagasaki, to which one of the Germans responded: "How did the Americans get 200 tons of plutonium just for one bomb?" It's not just that they weren't interested, it's that when they tried it they didn't even know how to make one.
Interesting
@@Üser.alt.666Yeah, that's what happens when you throw out and kill millions of your people, a LOT of those people being great scientists and engineers.
Truly German science.
Also another fun fact is the reason they were so confused is because their research was leading them to try heavy water from the Norwegian territory. Still a possibility of nuclear capability but they weren't able to continue that research for long until the allies fully took over. But we also took a lot of german scientist with their information on the nuclear concept and used that to greatly increase our progress to the nuclear bomb.
The fact Nazi Germany handicapped themselves by being antisemitic towards nuclear fission never fails to kill me 😂
They also had the lead scientist of their version of the Manhattan project being... Oddly incompetent whenever something could have been done for the project.
Which is just what you said but moreso to an individual level.
Poetic, ain’t it?
@Nobody-zl3kk he (Heisenberg) almost fucking killed himself in his first criticality experiment and never really got close again, though he did try. Based on his failure and hubris (japanese did this too) they figured if he can't do it there was no way anyone else could. Then America went freedom on their fascist asses!!
In all fairness, it wasn't like they would have made much progress anyways. The US would have always beaten them in an atomic race and not bothering would have freed up some much valuable resources, even if the resources would just be wasted on wunderwaffe.
Ironically any form of nuclear development would probably be a disadvantage for the nazis, because they lack a good method of deployment with the air supremacy of the allies and it would be a huge resource sink
To be good at Alternate History is to be great at History in the first place. So many new people creating alternate history "scenarios" who have little knowledge of history makes the wildest and most out-of-character events ever.
I've always had the opinion that you've got to make it sci-fi in those cases, kinda like how Fallout does
Cof cof *Whatifalthist* cof cof
On the other hand, it’s a great litmus test to see how good someone actually is at history.
@@mrjaman3752 Cof cof *Monsieur Z* cof cof
Alexander the Great is my favorite personal example: the casual, first impulse is to wonder what would happen if he lived longer; but the far more realistic question is what if he got his brains turned into soup at the Granicus?
I've heard this guy talk about Roland Emmerich movies so much it's weird hearing him actually talk about alternate history.
@@thomaspunt2646 Emmerich directed Wolfenstein movie when?
Or transformers
@@aidangordon2713 That would actually be interesting.
What are Roland Emmerich movies but the alternative history takes of a madman
He's been talking about alternate history for longer than he's been talking about Roland Emmerich movies. This is his main channel, PointlessHub is his secondary channel that he barely created four years ago.
These scenarios seem pretty likely when compared to a multi-book series based around a race of alien lizards arriving during WW2.
I have all Harry Turtledove's novels about the invasion by The Race and its aftermath.
Tbf the world war series is more just straight up fiction and can be fun to read if you don't mind skipping though some sections
It's the same with all of Turtledove's books. Lots of repetitions, lots of mentioning how things cannot be helped etc. It does make his novels easy to read.
*Fun fact:* Speaking of Alexander, there's a cancelled a tv show in which the macedonian was played by William Shatner. Only the pilot was made and can be found on RUclips. It's pure 60's style
I want the alternate history where that show happened and got as big as Star Trek.
Yesssss @@purplecat4977
Ironically, he could still meet Apollo onscreen 😂
@@purplecat4977 Yesssssss
Oh yeah. Wasn't that the one where he wore a short tunic and no pants?
The anarchists weren’t even “with” the republicans, they considered themselves a separate faction that was fighting alongside the enemy of their enemy
Well they were technically part/aligned with the republican government in the first few months of the war before the CNT-FAI briefly took over eastern parts of Iberia for itself.
Tsundere anarchists
didnt yugoslavia fight in the cnt?
I still don’t think it was IMPOSSIBLE for the Republicans to beat the nationalists.
Like the nationalists very much were also divided between facists, monarchists, Carlists. And I could see it where someone who wasn’t as good as Franco at uniting them also dividing into civil war.
Note how the monarchist and Carlists had pretty opposing views on what a restored Spanish monarchy should be.
Not to mention the Falangists who believed in a Nazi germany style republic.
I’m just saying it would’ve been very easy for the Nationalists to lose.
@@seanmcloughlin5983It’s a lot easier to get monarchists, fascists, and centre right groups to unite then communists, socialists, anarchists and centre left wing factions to. Even without Franco, the right side would still be very close
As someone into Mesoamerican history/archeology: While obviously Sunset Invasion is impossible, the "mindset of warfare" point isn't really true. Firstly, grouping in the Inca and Maya here just doesn't work: The Inca are an Andean civilization, the Maya, Aztec etc are Mesoamerican. The two regions had very little contact and are as far apart as London is from Baghdad: They don't share cultural practices much. Even for the Aztec specifically, captive taking, while a part of their warfare, was not the primary goal, and Flower Wars are heavily misunderstood/not normal warfare.
To clarify on the Aztec: Their main goal in expansionism was getting economic resources and goods like gold, cacao, jade, fine feathers, obsidian, etc by forcing city-states and kingdoms into relatively hands off tax-paying arrangements. Asia isn't my area, but from what I understand about the Mongols, it's sorta similar to that where if you cough up taxes, you mostly got left alone to self-manage, but if you didn't, you'd get invaded. Even when a city did refuse/resist though, or even when subjects stopped paying taxes, the Aztec response was (usually) not instant escalation to razing, massacres, and mass enslavement: They did that stuff sometimes (especially if a city incited OTHERS to also stop paying taxes), but usually just demanded steeper and steeper taxes the more a city resisted prior to it finally surrendering, and even in those cases still usually left local rulers and laws and infrastructure in place, though sometimes they did place military governors onto subjects or soldiers in garrisons to dissuade rebellions.
The goal was to get economic goods, but specifically without them needing to assert hands on administrative effort and manpower to do so: Mesoamerican did not have draft animals, and the terrain is basically mostly either inland arid to temperate valleys and mountain ranges, or lowland and costal jungles and swamps. Long distance administration and military campaigns were difficult, you really could not directly govern a wide empire easily: it's more efficient to be hands off and leave local power in place and coerce it, then to order things in a top down manner. But if you're razing cities, burning fields, enslaving or sacrificing whole populations, how are they gonna cough up the cacao, gold, etc? You'd be expending valuable political and military force to trek, on foot with no draft animals, across that terrain just to annihilate the place you're trying to take advantage of and then have to rebuild or repopulate it.
If what they cared about was mostly collecting captives for sacrifice, then that wouldn't be a concern. But the primary goal was economics (not just for the sake of it, but also because having a big economic network was part of courting alliances/political marriages and getting voluntarily vassals: Constant expansion also flexed military power and kept subjects in line: Since their political model was hands off, nothing was actually stopping subjects/vassals from seceding other then these forms of influence), and we see the Aztec specifically target city-states and kingdoms with rich economic resources during their expansion, not just areas with people to capture: A fantastic example of this is Soconusco/Xoconusco, which is all the way down in Chiapas, almost in Guatemala, which was secured as subject province as a source of Cacao.
Demanding captives/slaves as taxes tribute wasn't common either: It only shows up ONCE in the Codex Mendoza compared to the dozens and hundreds of listings for tax demands of the other economic resources i've mentioned, for example, and the one time it does come up in the Mendoza, it's for some towns in the province of Tepeacac, where they're not being told to give up their own people as taxes/tribute, but rather the demand is that they supply captured soldiers taken from Tlaxcala, Huextozinco, Cholula etc: States the Aztec were enemies with: This was an indirect demand to help the Aztec besiege those states. (That being said, slaves/captives of noncombants were often given, in addition to soldiers captured in the battle, as part of offer by a state when it surrendered after losing to an invasion: It's just regular payments of captives as annual taxes after that point was rare)
Okay, so what IS the deal with taking captives? It was certainly a common and important practice in warfare, to be clear, but at least for the Aztec, the consensus is now that it was secondary to actual tactical military objectives and goals. In general, these were organized armies with proper unit divisions and ranks, who had actual armor (this channel yet again shows Aztec soldiers wearing Jaguar pelts like cave men, when they had padded gambeson and then thick warsuits and tunics worn over that just made to look like jaguar spots and other patterns via via a mosaic of differently colored feathers), bespoke weapons (swords/macuahuitl, different kinds of clubs, maces, axes, spears, glaives, pikes, bows, atlatl, slings etc) and we have records of complex tactics like pincer formations, feigned retreats, ambushes, and so on.
Captive taking seems to have primarily happened after enemy lines broke as a "mop-up" thing, and you probably wouldn't have seen soldiers going out of their way to avoid killing during the middle of a battle. The fact that captive taking was so important to rank advancement itself suggests that it was a rare/impressive feat, rather than it being the norm instead of killing an enemy: We actually know that different Aztec kings would give decrees where captured soldiers from different states would then be "worth" more or less in terms of granting rank promotions, based on how strong or how much of a desired military target they were perceived to be.
Finally, Flower Wars: As I alluded to before, not all wars were Flower wars. In fact, they seem to not even be that particularly common: While i've read some contradictorily information on this, the Mexica seemingly only regularly employed them against Tlaxcala, Huextozinco, etc in an offensive capacity. They were sometimes done between the Mexica and existing subjects, but sources assert these were mutually agreed on in special circumstances like to cement alliances (though this fact allegedly was kept secret from commoners, so they wouldn't know their lives were being spent on political pageantry). Next, these were not just ritual conflicts about getting captives (in fact I've seen some assertions that they did involve killing in battle too, or that captives were released, etc), but also had pragmatic military utility.
As applied against enemy states, Flower Wars were a way to dip your toes into the water with lower intensity warfare, which could then escalate into full normal warfare, or could be called off: We see this with the wars against Chalco which gradually evolved from Flower Wars to become increasingly pragmatic and serious over time. Inversely, their smaller scale meant they could be waged year round (unlike normal wars) or longer, and therefore could be used as a sort of extended siege to wear enemy states down (Traditional siege warfare wasn't as much a thing in Mesoamerica, tho this is debated somewhat). Flower wars also kept soldiers trained and fit when they might otherwise not have been in the field, and provided opportunities to collect captives and to keep soldiers invested in a military career as a result. Actually, some researchers even believe the entire idea of Aztec flower wars against Tlaxcala etc was just revisionism by Aztec sources to justify when they could never conquer the state(s)!
There's more I could say, and again, there is some details around how Flower Wars functioned or what I said with sieges/garrsions that are debated by different researchers or there's inconsistent information on, and to be clear, again, captive taking WAS still important and there were ritual elements to it/warfare in Mesoamerica (some researchers have argued that the view currently common by Aztec historians which is that Aztec warfare was mostly pragmatic, which my comment is based on, has overcorrected prior literature and now ritualism is downplayed too much vs before where it was overemphasized/pragmatism was downplayed) but tactical and economic pragmatism was also important too, is my point, and certainly the overall objective in Aztec expansionism was primarily economic and political.
@@MajoraZ Great analysis.
I never even knew that Aztec warriors wore armour before
This is great. Ive always wanted to learn more about Azteca culture and history and learning about any common misconceptions we have about them.
@@MajoraZ Good to know. I did know about the armor and weapons, but not all this stuff about actual flower wars.
Holy book essay Batman
Just wanted to let you know that your review on Aztec motivations & means was a very interesting read, the depth of your knowledgebase is evident. This also makes me question more on how well-reasearched Cody's other videos or even other scenarios in this very video may be.
Harald Hadrada won multiple victories for the Byzantines, he would have been familiar with the concept of heavy cavalry as the Byzantines had cataphracts.
Also the version I know has him invade after William is defeated, only beating a single enemy that was already exhausted. Basically flipping the real series of events.
Exactly
@@kingofhearts3185 Why not a defection of one or both of the northern lords Edwin and Morcar? An alliance with Tostig might be unlikely but it is far from unheard of. Osulf could be popular and is waiting in the wings too. Malcolm III might be persuaded for the right price.
The English born Sweyn II of Denmark is a wild card as well.
Familiar with the concept or not, his army that he brought to England had no way to deal with said cavalry. So he could be as familiar with the cavalry as he wanted to be, wouldn't change anything
@@admiralthrawnstein9943 there are strategies and tactics he could have used to counter the cavalry, Godwinson stationed himself on a hill, Hardrada would have done something similar to negate the enemy calvary,
Kinda surprised Operation Sealion didn't make the list, talking about military operations where step one is "three miracles happen in close succession."
Would've been the dumbest idea in the history of sucking.
That one already has its own video: ruclips.net/video/tFpd8_-nkH8/видео.html
Short answer: Laughs in Royal Navy
Long answer: The British actually war gamed this and set best case scenario for the Nazis and the only option for the Nazis would have had is to control a small section of the channel and feed men into a meat grinder of machineguns, artillery and airstrikes if troop carriers and supplies weren't sunk by the infinitely more power Royal Navy. The fact that the Nazis themselves called it off as impractical even after the British Army was operationally gutted due to losing all that equipment at Dunkirk speaks volumes about how dumb Operation Sealion was, hence why they went with terror bombing which itself is operationally questionable in terms of strategic value but way more practical.
@@QuentinofVirginia Well yeah, that's kinda what I meant. Sealion's been the gold standard of Impossible AH since the days of Usenet. (Yeah, I'm old.) I'm just a little surprised it didn't make the list.
Bizarre that the Germans actually prepared for such a ridiculous operation.
Their navy kept telling them it was impossible.
As an Italian, trust me, you would have more luck convincing a fish to fly than us to join Austria in WW1
Even if you get most of the territories you wanted beforehand? Sure, Austro-Hungarian policians would have never let that happen but just pretend they would.
@@schwarzenegger_arnold
Even if we ignore the deitalianization policy by Austria-Hungary, the attempted austri-hungarian invasion after the earthquake in Messina in 1908, the non respected articles of the triple alliance by Autria-Hungary which annexed balkan territories without italian compensation (yes it was an article), the austri-hungarian unwillingness to even think about giving up more than Trentino, the anti austrian sentiment of the italian population
Even if we ignore that you have colonies left to die in Africa, an economy paralyzed (90% of our coal was from Britain) and a defensive approach against the french not an aggressive one which the germans asked (one of the reason why Italy was so fragile at austrian offensive was because we spent 40 uears fortifying the french border only to fight the austrians).
@@schwarzenegger_arnold And even if we ignore ALL of the factors andreamarino mentioned, which are reason enough to make it so Italy would NEVER join the Central Powers...
People who think that Italy joining the Central Powers would lead them to win WW1 cannot answer HOW Luigi Cadorna actually is useful to the Central Powers. Like when he was on the Entente side, he was near useless, had no defense in depth and just wasted men and moral attacking across the Isonzo. The only reason the Austria's didn't push him off his position earlier then they did in our timeline was they were busy elsewhere.
And that's Austria, who are considered one of the more incompetent sides in the war, even if the Italian front general was more intelligent then most.
In what universe does Luigi Cadorna have the skills and knowledge to best Joseph Joffre or Ferdinand Foch.
@@Peregrine1989 I never thought of them as a competent ally to the Germans, but maybe as enough of a distraction for the Schliefen-Plan to work. If that would have led to the capitulation of France is debatable. Of course I know there was no way the Italians joined the Central Powers, but I just wanted to know if there would have been a chance if the Austrian government would have been more lenient. A question that has know been answered.
The only way Italians would've hated Austrians more is if they broke their pasta before cooking
What if Hitler was betrayed by Kami and trapped in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber
What If Hitler was tossed to Mr. Popo?
Mr Popo takes his place
Pecking Order replaces that of the New World
Two words: Mr Popo
The Hyperglycemic Lion Tamer
And then has kids with Vados por
.. Some reason
I recognize that you were just glossing it over and weren't going into detail, but there is a common misconception many people have about Japanese Manchuria that I hope wouldn't be inadvertently reinforced by what you said.
- Firstly, the Japanese didn't care about Manchuria as such. I mean, they did, but with Allied naval supremacy by that point, they could hardly make any use of its resources (at that point). The loss of the territory was not a serious factor.
-They clearly didn't care about loss of the army there; they had lost hundreds of thousands of men along with their materiel in many battles up to that point without considering surrender.
-The idea of any Japanese concern about Soviet invasion of the home islands is also absurd; they had neither the materiel nor the experience, and everyone knew it.
BUT, the Japanese had been hoping to broker a negotiated peace through the Soviets. The important effect of the Soviet invasion was to dash that hope. That, along WITH the atomic bombs, pushed the Japanese to surrender.
I liken it to if the US had invaded, say, Venezuela, and made use of its resources for a decade. Then Brazil (through whom the US was negotiating with its enemies) invades Venezuela, and separately, Columbus, GA and Norfolk, VA get nuked. While the loss of Venezuela isn't nothing, it would be absurd to say that the nukes had no effect on the decision to surrender. (Yes, a ridiculous scenario, but I hope it helps people understand that the weight of the Soviet invasion was diplomatic, not strategic.)
Again, not that you were making those assertions, but I wouldn't want others to think you were implying them.
Whatever the morality of the use or threat of atomic bombs, it does not have to be related to their effectiveness as a tool of persuasion. Terrorism can be effective, for example, but it is still evil. We do ourselves a disservice when we twist historical realities to support a particular moral narrative.
And if you read the Japanese surrender speech from Hirohito, it explicitly mentions the atomic bombs as one of the main reasons for the surrender. Very little is mentioned of the Soviets.
On top of that, they still attempted a coup when the emperor wanted to surrender.
I always laugh out loud when I see scenarions that involve an actual invasion of the US. The sheer magnitude of the logistics and support required is mind boggling. We'd be talking of something that would make _Downfall_ look small. And yet, we still get these ideas thrown around...
I'm reminded of the first two episodes of Enterprise Season 4, where Manny Coto had to figure out how to salvage the "Time Traveling Space Nazis Help Germany Invade the USA in WW2" cliffhanger.
Because one thing that the episodes do bring up is that, even with some Time Traveling Space Nazi technology backing them up, the Nazis are still getting bogged down like hell in America, only having taken a small section of the nation, and are very vulnerable to a conventional counter-attack. Interesting things can happen when a good writer is forced to salvage a dogshit premise :D.
@@Wraithfighter yep, that was a good one.
implying there is not a pseudo-pacifist 5th column working hard to sabotage an effective response or planning for open civil war...
My favorite one is Homefront, where America is conquered by Kim Jong Un and North Korea.
I pulled it off in Strategic Command WWII once that should totally represent how easy it is /s
This video should be called "10 Alternate History Scenarios Cody is TOO SCARED To Consider For Videos"
(NUMBER █ WILL SHOCK YOU!)
_thumbnail shows red circle around AltHist with large arrow for clarity_
The horror
The funny thing is he DID cover some of these scenarios
Either a 10 year old or an Indian
@@RossWilson-tr5rm What
I think the Hadrada scenario could work if the change is that he lands in England later, so that he fights the Harold's army after the battle of Hastings rather than before. This way he doesn't have to defeat both armies consecutively, but rather only the now weakened victor of the William and Harold.
I was actually going to say the same thing. From what I gathered, it was a fairly close battle against William the Conqueror. If he had landed first, he very well might have been defeated by the English still fresh from not having already fraught. Which then would have to quickly march north to face the Vikings that landed.
Was going to say, if you just have William land first then there's a decent chance that William fails and then English forces have to march North, but then I think there'd be a good chance that English forces are reseted before marching North before fighting a longer campaign.
I think if one of the Northern lords, like Edwin and Morcar had defected he would have had a chance
@@PosisDas Yeah, King Harold had assembled like 20,000 men to fight William before bad weather had prevented William from crossing, after which Harold disbanded them to collect the harvest.
Ok, I know I'm late to the party, but here's an interesting little titbit I vaguely remember from first year history (roughly 30 years ago);
Edward the Confessor, the king prior to Godwinson had named William as his successor.
Do with that nugget what you will.
Your analysis of the Ming Dynasty trip to the West Coast is spot-on. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, about 200 A.D., a group of Buddhist monks sailed north around what is now Russia and followed the Aleutian Islands to the North American mainland and south along the coast to Monterey Bay in what is now California. They drew detailed maps, contacted the natives, found nothing of interest, and sailed back the same way.
They never sailed to siberia
Ah yes, the detailed maps with characters that weren't invented until the communist regime took over. Yep, definitely totally happened...
I find it hilarious how you said “it’s like overanalyzing blade runner as not being realistic.” Philip K. Dick wrote the book that inspired blade runner
While Blade Runner is kinda fast/loose with the specifics of Androids, I do think it is fair to say that it is based on it, I’d be hesitant to say it’s adapting the book, but the story is absolutely based on it
@@AHumanBeingNamedAlex I agree there
Not inspired it’s literally an adaptation of “do android’s dream of electric sheep” but they thought that name wouldn’t sell so they gave it the name blade runner which is a different book about a scifi dystopia. Also he’s point was Philp k dick is a scifi author who didn’t worry too much about realism which is why he used the man in the high castle and blade runner two examples of his work.
Let's not forget about Total Recall either.
Did you think that was an accident? That was entirely the point.
Although it's a malformed point; how cogent it is depends on whether you're talking about a premise for your story (which can be handwaved away) or a result of that premise (which needs must be grounded in reason, given your premise.)
_The Man in the High Castle_ isn't about how occupied!America came to be; it's about what happens after. By the same token, _Blade Runner_ isn't about androids, but how the creation of disposable people changes humanity.
That more "realistic" Man in the High Castle idea about America becoming fascist after an Axis victory would be an interesting concept for a video for your channel
Possible History did a really good video on that, I recommended it for a pro-axis US scenario.
I'd recommend checking out The New Order mod for Hearts of Iron 4 (There are videos and wiki entries about it). The Americas remains independent but lots of Europe is under German occupation, same with Asia and the Japanese. It's a really well thought-out setting because the geopolitics largely make sense and it doesn't feel like the creator just gave the Germans laser guns or a cheat code to the universe in order to win. The Germans have immense political and economic instability, and the old allies like Italy are actually considering swapping sides.
The whole premise is unrealistic from the start though, so whats the point?
@@strategossable1366 HOLY FUCKING SHIT IS THAT A MOTHEFRFRUKIN TNO REFERENCE??!??!?!??!
@@strategossable1366 motherfucking tno reference
So about the Viking one, why couldn’t the point of divergence just be the weather of the English Channel meaning that William would be the one fighting first and Harold would land mostly unopposed?
That’s…that’s basically already what happened. Harald landed without opposition; Harold Godwinson had to rush his army north and then back south.
So basically if Harold godwinson fought the Normans first and won then fought Harald and lost?
OP meant the other way around -- Godwinson's army was already in the south when Harald landed first because he was anticipating William to fight him first, but the latter didn't because the winds prevented him from sailing from Normandy. OP is asking what if the Channel weather had been different so that William landed first rather than Harald, so that Hastings (or its equivalent) takes place first and gives Harald the bye for the title bout of King of England.
Thought about that too, now that's the interesting and plausible scenario we want!
Also the norse did have horses.
0:03 my mango
his mango
Cyn stop replying on ur alts
@@DinoRicky ?
mang0 the goat
What all of these are his alt accounts… what if I’m an alt account… dear god
Do what if the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Booper didn't happen?
This
I like pop culture alternate history and wish it was done more
Player Two Start is a good one though
Well, I don’t think we’d have the absolute master piece that is “American Pie.” The song that is.
@@pixelproductions150 Never heard of Player Two Start, can you tell me what it's about?
@@theworstchannelyouhaveever9573Sony and Nintendo's SNES CD peripheral is made. Real good shtuff
American Pie (the classic song) would never be made
Reminds of that cancelled alternate history show for HBO called “Confederate” that was gonna be about the confederacy winning the American Civil War and surviving all the way to the 21st century, still practicing slavery…somehow???
By 1895 even Brazil would be wondering why the Confederates wouldn’t emancipate under that scenario.
I’d expect if the Confederacy won, and even if they were able to expand to the Caribbean, they’d have to emancipate eventually, but it would be gradual and compensated and civil rights would be a farther way off than they were in our timeline unless some major shake-up in government occurred. I’d also expect the Richmond government to be unusually centralized and industry building to be in some part state-directed, which could cause tensions in politics, and going into the late 20th century the CSA would be as much an international pariah as South Africa unless significant government reform happened.
that was a satyrical work rather than actual counterfactual history
As a very cynical person, I'd like to note that the Confederates planned to keep slavery going as far as possible, even through industrialization, and even expand it into the south americas through conquest, due to both the wealth brought by slavery, and the idea that if the blacks were freed they'd be violent savages that would attack civilized white people and live as criminal thugs due to "inferior natures".
The idea that the Confederacy would give up slavery without a massive fight is laughable.
I don't think the concept of a modern day Confederacy still practicing slavery that far fetched. I mean nations like China basically use slave labor in all but name. Slavery would look different, sure, they wouldn't have black people tilling the fields with 18th century farm equipment while being whipped, but they could have unpaid black laborers in industrial factories and the system would function just "fine" (for a given definition of fine).
@@nekoking8330 It could happen, especially since the Confederacy was built around slavery, they were extremely reactionary for the time, and they already had plans in place for industrial slavery.
Thank you for debunking the "Man in High Castle" thesis. The number of people who in the 21st century still cry the "WE'D ALL BE SPEAKING GERMAN!!!" hysteria is truly astonishing.
Well, not everyone is America so for a lot of those who says this, it's true
Midwestern American communities where many people _were_ speaking German before the 20th century:
Even those that love military history end up forgetting that "unfun, boring" things like logistics, geography, and planning exist.
Yeah, I have come to understand that WWII just wasn't an existential war for the US in any way. Maybe it felt that way to some people at the time, but the idea that Japan was going to invade the US when they couldn't even pacify China is laughable. Same for Germany, at least after the Battle of Britain (which ended before the US entered the war).
Yes everyone in this world will have been speaking German if Germany had won, just as like I'm typing in English right now.
21:49 Even more problematic, the 2 MASSIVE mountain ranges that are only really passable due to interstates and other roads. If those roads got wiped, either by intentional sabotage or unintentional attack, the Appalachians and ESPECIALLY the Rockies would be almost completely impassable by any army. Even if they landed in the US, they would nominally control the coasts of both, but miss out on most of the really important resources and logistics networks of the american interior (and by American I mean both Canada and Mexico as well as the US)
Now we need 10 real historical scenarios that would probably be on this video in an alternate timeline in which they were considered too dumb to happen.
Prussia winning the 7 Years' War
Yes
Here a few I could think of:
Columbus surviving
Bolcheviques winning the Russian Civil War
Cold War remaining Cold
PRC fleeing to Taiwan
The best one I can think of is the reason world war 1 started (How did the duke die), assassination or Jf Kennedy
EU4 having China colonize America has always been one of my favorite memes and ways to show just how cursed the world had become
Only if a Time-traveler Industrialized Shang Dynasty China
Actually, if you play a colonizing Ming you see how ludicrous it actually is. You either have to settle parts of Siberia and go for Alaska or you have to go through dozens of small islands to get to the Americas. While you are better of to settle the unsettled areas of Indonesia because the provinces are better and you can secure a very powerful trade node. Also you can turn a lot of nations in this area into tributaries which greatly boosts your mandate.
@@whaleofdarkness You are 100% correct and as he said logically it would make zero sense for any Chinese dynasty to bother with the Americas. Which only drives the EU4 player to do something just completely insane for the hell of it!
@@NinjaMan47
Only if a Time-traveler Industrializes the Ming
Paradox alt-history scenarios are hilarious. There is even an acknowledgement that a democratic Japan is unthinkable with the title of that focus.
I do think the Hadrada scenario could still be different. Maybe he doesn't take all of England, but beds down around York, fortifying while William deals with local revolts, leading to England being split in two long-term.
A divided England.
***Alfred the Great and his son making sad noises***
I don't think Hadrada's pride would let him be satisfied with keeping only the north. The Normans were the ones that brought many of the innovations that made England such a hotbed for castles and fortifications. So it wouldn't be as defensible being held by the norwegians. The south is also more fertile and can raise larger armies than the north with Normandy also being closer than Norway for reinforcements. Fun fact, the Duchy of Normandy had a larger population than the Kingdom of Norway at the time.
@@kristijanmadhukar516 I'll grant most of the geography, but I'm not saying the intent would be to split England, just that that's what might have happened. Hadrada waiting for the right opportunity, William having more trouble with the locals (especially if Hadrada is giving them support). If they can survive the first century, the southern kingdom would probably be more interested in holding on to it's more valuable French possessions until the 1500s.
@@charlieputzel7735 True. That being said, the Norman army landing in England was definitely a superior force to Hadrada's mostly infantry army, and in our timeline, he got defeated handily by Harold Godwinson, a seemingly more able commander than himself who was in turn defeated by William. I think in a few decades, William could have easily taken back the North.
Of course, a stalemate is possible.
@@MrGksarathy Very true, though I think there's also a lot of credit to be given to luck at Stamford bridge. The Norsemen were caught unprepared. The soldiers were arguably better than the Anglo Saxons one on one, they were just out numbered and unprepared, with their leader dying mid battle.
Of course a better timeline sees William cross the channel sooner, defeating Harold Godwinson (but probably coming out much worse due to facing a fresher army) before he can even go North in the first place.
I usually don't do this, but do you have some sources on Japan being ready to give up? Even in books about WW2 & classes in college, I've been taught that Japan's supreme council were unwilling to surrender until the emperor himself decided to intervene (post Okinawa). To this end, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria & the atom bombs both act as significant factors influencing a Japanese unconditional surrender. Are there any sources from the Japanese supreme war council that demonstrate an unwillingness to conduct a Downfall-esque defense of Japan? Further, are there any that can point to the Soviet invasion alone being substantial enough to force Japanese surrender?
Unwilling to surrender unconditionally, yes. Unwilling to surrendered at all, no.
To quote Dwight Eisenhower post war: “I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender, and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”
There's also records of communications between Kyoto and the Japanese ambassador to the soviets of the former urging the latter to get the soviets to help them negotiate a peace.
Besides, from the point of few of Japanese high command, what's the difference between a nuke completely destroying a city, and a normal bombing raid completely destroying a city?
Also, Noone said the Japanese government wouldn't have fought on if invaded. The point is that an invasion would have been unnecessary to get a negotiated surrender. And additional fun fact, the minium conditions some in the council were pushing for are exactly what Japan got anyway, the primary ones being immunity for the emperor, preserving the imperial institution, and keeping the home islands.
A large part of the general population were ready to surrender. The Navy was willing to surrender. But they didn't run the government, the Army did and a lot of them *didn't* want to surrender. And if the invasion did happen they would have forced everyone to fight a horrifically bloody loosing battle. Even after the Emperor got the council to agree to the surrender, there was an attempted coup against him just so they could continue the war. I totally agree with the points you made and just wanted to add a bit of info for others because I think you know most of this already. sm
@@mattwoodard2535Yeah I have to agree with you Matt I think his denail operation downfall is flat out wrong and it could of happened.
What if Cody did a list of his favorite fictional settings in media that he likes and talks about the factions and characters that are featured?
That's literally PointlessHub
I'd love For All Mankind to make an appearance. Season 2 is ripe for such a video.
Hey RUclips, let me know when you shadow ban my comments so I don't waste my time.
@@Spongebrain97 He already does that. Its called PointlessHub.
You forget to mention the scenario where my parents start loving me 😢
Lmao
Wow, that's surely even more unrealistic than The Man In The High Castle (jks).
Unrealistic perhaps, but also insignificant?
F
What if in an alternate timeline my dad came back with the milk?
i wanna note, i think there is a strong chance that Operration Downfall could have happend, but not in the way we think.
The nuclear bomb played a pivitol role in convincing the Japanese populace and civilian goverment to give up, the military was convinced by the Manchurian invasion
I think that there was a real possibility that, if the atomic bomb was not developed the Japanese as a whole would not surrender until US troops were on Japanese Soil. I dont think it'd be thousands of loyal japanese citizens kamakaziing themselves, but a short battle in the south, a beachhead being made and then a surrender from the japanese citizen goverment and the Emperor telling his subjects to stop.
That makes sense to me considering what I know of this part of of the WW2 History
The war would stop the moment the Soviets got foothold in Hokkaido for a very simple reason: The Emperor. Operations Coronet and Downfall would be massive but in the Japanese minds the Americans could be reasoned with, the military goverment believed they could still reach *some* agreement with the USA(and they did), meanwhile the Soviets on other hand were not known to return ANY territory they occupied, and you know, communists and Emperors don't mix well together, they would surrender to the allies the instant the Soviets could realisitic threaten the Emperor and the home islands.
I disagree, there cities were leveled by the firebombing campaigns. Why would the atomic bomb really make that much of a difference? I really think the invasion of Manchuria is what truly broke the Japanese resolve.
@@Scarface_1b No, Japan wanted to negotiate using the Soviets as a intermediary and we know this. The Americans also knew that as Stalin simply let the Japanese think that since he needed time to move the troops for the follow up operation.
There is a huge flaw with the idea that is that it hinges on the "unconditioned surrender" being acceptable terms, they werent because the previous war Germany did surrendered after the Hindenburg Line was breached as the Kaiser wanted to spare the civilian occupation (as well they already being close to a civil war) and Japan had a first row seat to the negotiations, they expected to get a worst version of the Versailles Treaty and that one is also a big reason why Japan ended up making the decisions they made. This is why WWI ended when neither the German or Austrian armies were any shape to continue to fight and why WWII ended when they almost reached their bitter end. I could say thank the French and their desire for revenge as well a return to their position as a European power (that they lost to the German Empire) but good old Teddy is also a cause since this is when Japanese attitudes towards the West turned sour. ... in fact, Alternative History, what if Teddy accepted the racial equality clause that was rejected because of the Jimmy Crow laws?
Japan didnt want to surrender since they still had hopes over a negotiated deal, with the Soviets entering the war that was pretty much over and it would be over the moment they entered the war, also there are a few other things.
The occupation of Japan also was similar to the occupation of Germany, the Soviet troops did move towards their occupation goals and yes, Stalin would been very happy if Soviet troops managed to reach the Home Islands and their posturing post-war in the occupation was more if they could maybe get a bit more but they never really expected anything out of that as well they werent *interested* in anything like that, a Soviet Japan would be nice but a Soviet China and a Soviet Korea was more that enough, they were buffer states and the Far East was not the Soviet primary concern, Eastern Europe was.
In short, its true the Soviet entry into the Pacific War had a great deal of weight on the Japanese decision to surrender but not because they were afraid Soviets would make the People's Republic of Nippon in their occupation zone but rather that it ended any idea of a possible agreement with the Allies since it required the Soviets to act as intermediaries.
And honestly, they werent entirely wrong on that reasoning., the Soviets had a non-aggression pact with then and didnt hold much of a interest in the Far East, they simply didnt seeming had a horse in that race (since they werent aware of what happened in Yalta the Japanese could know) and entering the war would mean having to move their armies across all of Asia ... of course there were already signs as their build up in preparation for the occupation of their assigned zones as well being informed of the non-renewal of the Neutrality Pact in 5 April 1945 even if they assured then they would respect the 12 months as other signs, like recalling their embassy staff and their families but I can understand why, after all ... things just worked out due to Hirohito being more useful in the throne for the occupation so what the Japanese wanted ended up being what they got in the end.
It was less about the nuclear bomb and more about the Soviet Union declaring war too. Up to that point, the Japanese were counting on the neutral soviets coming to their aid to hem in growing US influence or atleast aid them to negotiate a less than total defeat. When they attacked and their intention to also invade Japan was revealed, defeat was inevitable.
16:31 So Cody is basically saying that the nuclear bombs weren’t the reason for Japans surrender, and instead it was the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. This is a somewhat controversial topic among historians but I’m just going to say that Cody is cherry picking here. The reason for Japanese surrender was because of the atomic bombs *and* the invasion of Manchuria. There is usually not one single reason for a country to surrender and that statement is the same in the case of Japan.
What's this? Someone leaving an actually nuanced comment on that part of the video?
Unthinkable.
The US dropped the demand for unconditional surrender and offered to let Japan keep their emperor.
The US had been firebombing them for a bit by then, they didn’t care about the nukes. It was the realization that the Soviets wouldn’t help them combined with the US finally nudging them to accept the Surrender by sneakily saying that sure it’s Unconditional but the Emperor will play a role in the after-war period.
@TysonRex37 The thing is that a single atomic bomb killed as many people as the total casualties of the firebomb campaign.
Not to mention that Japan, whether it wanted to admit this or not, had been slowly losing in China and to a lesser extent Manchuria for awhile. And while yeah Japan hoped the USSR would be a mediator at peace talks, it's not like they weren't aware that the Soviets didn't care for them at all, given the fact Japanese soldiers tried to start a war with a border skirmish, and now that Germany had fallen, could easily turn around and launch into East Asia, especially considering that the USSR had already been supporting the communists for some time now.
The thing is that this was all a part of Operation Ketsu-gō, which was essentially a last-stand doctrine that saw Japan fight until the bitter end to bleed American forces dry so that they would leave Japan alone when peace came. But with the multiple nukes dropped on Japan proper, AND the invasion of their holdings on the continent, it finally proved to the Japanese executive council that this doctrine to try and take down as many allies with them couldn't work, because now what land they did hold both in Asia and the home island were now fully vulnerable to devastating attack that, no matter what, they would be unable to repel as much as they wanted.
Oh no, now people are using my comment saying that both sides are correct to argue about what side is correct.
we do actually in the alternate timeline where alexander the great actually defeated persia and didn't die on some godforsaken battlefield trying to be achilles at age 14
Yeah, Alexander the great is fucking whack, dudes insane!
Alexander single - handedly creating Hellenistic civilization is so freaky.
He profoundly altered the history of the world.
imagine us living in one of these weird timelines, where alternatehistory in another timeline tells us "what if alexander lived the longest. i know, weird as hell. we all knew he died of a random arrow at deladonin when he was 12 years old"
what do you mean, we already live in the Bad 1985 from BTTF
Alexander the Pretty Alright
if alexander had died earlier he wouldnt be worth talking about
When a random 12-year-old prince dies in the 4th century bc, we usually barely know their name. He'd have been long-forgotten even 50 years after his death.
@@loganroy3381makes you wonder how many 12 year old princes in our timeline would’ve grown up to be great conquerors like Alexander, but died before they could do anything.
Anyone who thinks you can just "invade" USA has played too many Paradox games and has no idea how logistics work.
The US troops landing in Europe worked, because they have this slightly industrialized island nation just a swimming distance from the mainland away as an ally. Even then operation Overlord was a huge mess.
Same issues would've popped up with any actual invasion of Japan to be fair, the supply lines would have been very taxed and any troops on land would've most likely spent more time building infrastructure and logistics than actually fighting the Japanese.
the other allies listened to what the British were saying at overlord, and did pretty well. but admiral King knew better!
but japan had korea and russia and china next door that was very much in Allied hands, plus various islands the US had conquered, while japan itself is very poor on resources and its navy and airfroce was basically broken and without fuel.
in the case of Europe, besides britain, the largest number of axis troops were stuck fighting the soviet union and could not devote the resources nor the man power to really defend the west. plus the germany navy could not control the waters nor could the german air force defend the skies.
invading the us would be harder than both, you would have to conquer Mexico and/or canada and use them as a spring board or be able to decisively suppress the US navy and air force in order to be able to build up in say, cuba for an invasion and even then, you would want the us army to be distracted else where in the mean time instead of building defenses.
I think the "isolationist USA" thread used to be more common. The war in Europe is still going on, but Lend-Lease and/or a US entry in the war never happens. The war in Europe and the Japanese expeditionary wars still drag on, none of them immediately becomes a superpower. The USA is still a giant industrial power, but much more isolated in a world with shrinking liberal democracy.
I bet there’s also the idea that Japan is a smaller nation, so a landing and subsequent conquest could be more possible. Still extremely difficult if it proceeded, but nowhere near what it would take to conquer the US.
@@TuShan18 The Imperial Japanese command has a lot of rosy optimism, but they talk about delaying the USN with island garrisons or culling the carrier build up.
About rome industrializing: i think it's more plausible than it's given credit for, it sounds dumb but a possible scenario is that one person thinks "hey, this steam thing is producing force, maybe a bigger steam thing could propel an aquaduct wheel" and that would lead to something? Or maybe im just dumb idk
Our own timeline had Samuraïs vs Conquistadors in 1582 so we're already stranger than fiction. We had so many weird events and plot armored/ASB conquerors. Could you predict the mongol empire if it wasn't in History ? Could you predict Napoléon ?
Jeanne d'arc is my favorite, "Look how weird actual history is," person. Random French maid finds an actual buried sword and then rallies the French army to her banner.
Francisco Pizarro on a killing streak of 7000 - 0 against the Inca because plate armor made him invulnerable:
@@riograndedosulball248 Virgin Plot Armor vs Chad Plate Armor
What’s so outlandish about Conquistadors v Samurai? Portuguese colonialism was still at large in the far east, and Samurai were a warrior class. There’s nothing weird about them meeting and even fighting.
Most of actual history is weirder than anything our imaginations can come up with, honestly. The British and Mongol Empires, the emergence of Industrialization, hell even the fact that humanity developed civilization in the first place is something we still can’t entirely explain. Scenarios where the most likely outcome occurs are honestly the ones with the most amount of changes.
In the CK2 version of Sunset Invasion, the idea was actually that the Aztecs (and generally Mesoamerica) somehow teched up faster than in real history; so they actually discovered Europe BEFORE Columbus and were on par with them technologically. If you import a CK2 save with the invasion enabled to EU4, you actually find a big, advanced Aztec Empire in America that has tech on par with Europe.
Which y'know, also probably not very realistic, but "what if Mesoamerica had technology on par with Europe when it was discovered?" is a fun scenario to consider too.
To be fair, too, the whole point of the sunset invasion was to counterbalance the Mongol invasion of the east, which left the western half virtually untouched so now you have to contend with an Aztec invasion
If I Remember correctly, its the Vinland explorers that learn from the local tribes that a powerful kingdom (the Aztecs) exist to the south, encroaching into the plains. The Vinlanders then journey south anyway, get interrogated about Europe, and their ships reverse engineered. The ship part is why the cover art here in the video has an Aztec style longship.
Mesoamerica _did_ have technology on par with Europe when it was 'discovered'. What it didn't have was the local resources that Europe did.
You have to remember that for a couple centuries there, Western history writing was 90% people coming up with reasons why Europeans came to dominate much of the world that wasn't just 'we lucked into it'... But 'we lucked into it' was absolutely the actual answer.
The coastal areas of Western and Northern Europe were, before humans started draining them, almost completely composed of bogs and swamps. Which is a huge advantage, because a bog, when drained, provides very fertile soil. It also has another very valuable resource: Bog Iron. Created by iron-rich water flowing from mountains meeting the acidic waters of a bog. This, with the assist of specific microbes, causes big porous clumps of iron oxides close to the surface.
Bog iron is much easier to find, work and refine into decent quality iron than iron ores mined from deposits in rock.
Even then, early European iron wasn't much to write home about, being inferior in every way to the high quality bronze used in the Fertile Crescent, Minoan Greece and Egypt.
The methods that Europeans would eventually use for refining iron of genuine quality were first developed around 2000 BCE somewhere in the Middle East. The Middle East didn't have bog iron, but it did have some areas with iron ores in solid rock close to the surface. The amount of ore they could extract was limited, but they developed techniques for making maximum use of what little they could.
While it took almost a millennium and a half for Middle Eastern iron smelting techniques to reach Europe, once they did Europe's ability to produce and use iron, and the quality of said iron, increased exponentially and even outpaced that of the Middle East.
Having access to a lot of iron ore that was easy to extract and refine let Europeans make lots of tools to get at iron that was harder to extract and refine, but produced even better quality iron (and steel).
The European Iron Age was only made possible by knowledge from the Middle East eventually filtering through to Europe through the powerful nations during the Mediterranean Bronze Age.
And, likewise, the Age of Sail was only made possible by the fact that the native evergreens of the Northern hemisphere, like spruce and pine, make excellent material for large sea-going ships (especially when held together with iron and brass fittings). The various nations of West Africa (also rich in bog iron, also got those Middle Eastern refining techniques, a little earlier than the Europeans even) were on-par with or ahead of Europe 'technologically' for most of history _until_ the Europeans started sailing the open sea. While the spruce and pine so common in Europe made for excellent sea-going ships, the more fibrous, less straight-grained woods of afro-tropical climates did not, so the ships of West African empires were restricted to rivers, lakes and local coastal waters.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the species of microbe that created the massive bog iron deposits of Europe wasn't present. There was another microbe from the same family in the bogs of what is now New England, but it didn't produce nearly as much (to the point that while there is still bog iron to be found in the soil of Europe in various locations, nearly all the bog iron in the whole of the Eastern Seaboard of North America was dug up and smelted by European Colonists and their descendants before the end of the 19th century). Native Americans never had access to metal in any significant amounts besides copper (and arsenic bronze) and gold, neither of which make for very good tools.
So without metallurgy to focus on, the various cultures of the Americas developed in other areas. When Europeans first arrived in Mesoamerica, the locals were, for instance, light years (heh) ahead of them in terms of astronomy and mathematics. And a lot of people don't get how significant that is:
Europeans only arrived in Mesoamerica in the first place because Christopher Columbus sucked at both, assumed that the earth was smaller than it was based on his bad calculations and believed that the distance between Europe and the East Indies (Indonesia) was smaller going west than it was going east. And the only reason he managed to convince the royal family of Spain to fund his expedition was that the development of this kind of knowledge was still relatively new in Europe and while they were fairly sure he was wrong, they weren't 100% sure it was impossible for him to be right. If Europe hadn't been much more _primitive_ in those areas of knowledge than the Mesoamericans, Europeans would never have colonised the Americas.
@@RvEijndhoven Mesoamerica was barely recovering from the cataclysmic events that wiped the Tehotihuacan culture and caused the Aztec migration. As impressive as Tenochtitlan was, it was the exception, not the rule. They clearly maintained an advanced understanding of engineering and math through the famine and migrations. But their technology and logistics was at a stone age level.
In a fair fight simulacrum, age of discovery mesoamerican armies could have defeated bronze age armies, maybe. Probably even iron age armies. But not medieval european armies, much less Spain in it's golden age.
@@Stroggoii I'm not saying they could have won any kind of war, I'm saying that judging 'technological advancement' solely by how good a nation's weaponry is, is incredibly gamer-brained. Europe wasn't more technologically advanced than any of the nations it colonised, it was simply in a better position regarding local natural resources.
And the whole thing that kicked off the rise of European dominance of the globe was a technology that Europeans didn't even develop themselves, but that was developed in the Middle-East and took nearly two millennia to filter down to Europe, but it was one that Europeans were in a much better position to exploit than its original developers.
Tech levels are bullshit, is what I'm saying.
I still think Operation Downfall isn't completely implausible. If you consider a more complex scenario involving the Kyujo incident succeeding, American leadership refusing to allow the emperor to remain, etc.
While improbable (like most althistory), i wouldnt say it is nearly as impossible as the Sunset Invasion, Man in the High Castle, or most of the others on this list
Also the Plan was basically to Bleed the Allies for a more "acceptable" Peace term so they were planning for Downfall to happen, its just that the Emperor and Government made up their mind that they would surrender after both the Bombs and the Soviets invalidated Ketsu-go.
So while not likely had the Government or the Emperor been delayed Downfall might still have happened its just that Japan would have still surrendered and not fought till Tokyo explodes or gets occupied because that was never the plan, the plan was to fight the Allies to a Peace negotiation not have the Allies occupy it because the Japanese resisted till the end.
It would only take a small string of mistakes by a small group of people, and that would be a plausible tragedy.
After all, the Japanese High Command was willing to lead their country to the bitter end. And the fact the Kyujo incident even happened showed at least a chunk of the military wasn't shocked to surrender by the successive bad news.
Japan was even more prepared than the allied intelligence thought it was. They would have find it the hard way
and then
oh man, debate should be what would have NOT being used...
Hard agree. You could also simply have the Manhattan project delayed. Any easy way to do this, is no Tizard mission from the UK. Einstein never writes his letter urging the US to start work and the refugee German and Commonwealth scientists in the UK never urge the US to do the same or share how plausible it is along with their research in Tube alloys not being folded into the Manhattan project. With the Belgian government in exile following British directives the Uranium sources are mostly held by Britains empire (Canada) and the Belgian Congo.
With a delay in the atomic bombs the shock factor is decreased and the land war in Manchuria maybe seen as less pressing, after all the Russians can’t invade the home islands on their own, they don’t have naval logistics or experience for such an ambitious amphibious assault.
You could also have a scenario where US progress to bombing range of the Japanese home islands is way slower. Again adding more time for the invasion. Ultimately they were planning and preparing for it. It’s not that unrealistic. I think dropping of the bombs was worth it over losing thousands of your own men. Particularly when level fire bombing swarms of B-29s were doing the same damage as a single nuke, perhaps more initial casualties even and again still civilian bombing…
Yeah, Downfall is entirely possible. Mayhaps unlikely but certainly in no way deserving of being ranked alongside Sunset Invasion and Man in the High Castle.
This is why I started liking more and more your channel over other alt-hist. There are so many factors that made history turn into what it is today, that alternate history is almost preposterous. There are plenty of moments where a single decision could have changed history, but they are still insignificant to the huge amount of factors, conditions, resources, ideology, social development, and other things that I can't imagine that set the course of events as we know them. I am not sure if the future can be predicted, but it does have a huge element of determinism.
19:06 the fact that Panama and its canal aren't even mentioned in this world where the entirety of Africa and Latin America are divided between imperial powers is pretty stunning.
Cody walking back Operation Downfall is wild
he should really walk back the walking back, revisionism has just been busted again
@@FlagAnthem are you arguing against learning new things, because its revisionism.
@@MouldMadeMind Not inherently so, but in this case, it's an over-correction.
There were many factions within the Japanese government, many of which favoured do-or-die resistance (or at least, conditional surrender). Others were convinced to give in to the Allies' terms either by the atomic bombings, the Soviet invasion or both. Some even attempted to take over and continue the war even after the Emperor's capitulation (the Kyujo incident).
Most importantly, while not every Japanese was cartoonishly devoted to the Emperor, they were statistically far, far less likely to voluntarily surrender than any other participant in the war. It's likely that most would have fought to the bitter end if ordered to do so.
All in all, I'd say Operation Downfall was unlikely, but to compare it to "Sunset Invasion" scenarios is just bad history.
@@samg.5165 Meh
@@samg.5165 It's not like a Spanish Republican victory is on the same level as a Roman industrialisation either. This is a ''dumb scenarios'' video, not an ''equally dumb scenarios'' one.
Devil's advocate:
scenario 3: What if Hadrada landed in England after the Normans? Part of what delayed William was the unfavorable wind that kept him anchored in Normandy. What if instead the wind was favorable to William but bad for Hadrada which meaning he would land after the other 2 parties exhausted themselves?
william would be in no rush to defeat hadrada because he hasnt done his harrying of the north by then, so he practically didnt really control it.
"What if the aztecs tried to conquer Spain?"
They would be turned into swiss cheese in the first battle
Harold Godwinson defeating the Normans sounds like a pretty fascinating alt-history to be honestly. The Battle that changes the world
If Harold won, you'd be speaking English and not French... Wait.
@@KasumiRINA Only to be invaded by the somehow unified Germans I guess... English (Anglisch) would be a German dialect... as intelligible as the Swiss...
@@KasumiRINA English would't have such a large Romance vocabulary, but more Norse influence.
When I heard your Harald Hadrada scenario, I thought, "Stamford Bridge is not the correct point of divergence."
William the Conqueror was ready to cross as early as August 12. If the wind had been favorable, he might have. King Harold would not yet have dismissed his militia, which means Hastings becomes a much harder battle for William. In turn, this leads to possible scenarios:
Suppose King Harold actually wins, but has fewer troops once he still dismisses the militia on September 8. Does Harold still win Stamford Bridge with a diminished force?
Suppose William still wins, but again, has fewer troops. In our timeline, it took William over two months to stabilize his position enough to even be crowned. He would have six weeks before he would have to respond to Hadrada. Does he still have it then?
Plus why does Hardrada have to go south when he had control of York. York has more significance to Norway. Is closer to Norwegian controlled territories in Scotland and he could easily garnered support from the Northumbrians whom had Norse influence plus he ignoring the possibility of Hardrada potentially getting more allies. It's not unreasonable for hardrada to ask king of Scotland that if he joins, Scotland can have Sutherland or Hebrides. Or ask Gwynedd and give back some of land Mercia took from them. Normandy couldn't do that with Scotland as he has no territory to give nor the ability to take. But hardrada did.
@@-._A2._- If Harald Godwinson was slain at Stamford Bridge, the northern Anglosaxon lords could well have crowned Hardrada as the next king. His claim was just as flaky as William's. "My uncle thought he should be king here, so..." vs. "The previous king told me that I would be king, no witnesses but for real bro".
This video reminds me of a book series I read once called The Clash of Eagles.
Romans have conquered Europe and have remained stable so they sail across the Atlantic and start trying to conquer the Indigenous American people.
It’s absolutely crazy, especially when the Mongols get involved because they went across the Pacific, so it felt right in line with everything else in this video.
Lovely video, the operation downfall part has a few inaccuracies though
1. The soviet invasion of Manchuria did not play a role in the surrender of Japan, this is for a few reasons. The Japanese were aware of a soviet plan to invade. This is corroborated by a diary entry from one of the big six (supreme war council), stating that the soviets invaded earlier than expected, or something along those lines anyways. Many Manchurian forces were moved to southern Kyushu to bolster forces for the Olympic invasions, which meant the forces still remaining were ordered to do a fighting retreat into northern Korea. You are right that Manchuria supplied a lot of food to the Japanese mainland, but that was before the American naval blockade stopped any trade with Japan way before the soviet entry into the war.
2. Easing up on the terms was a very unlikely option considering Truman was against it, he believed unconditional surrender would not be victory, and repeat the mistakes of the end of WWI. It’s true that the calculations of the troops on southern Kyushu were inaccurate in early stages of the planning, which was discovered soon before the end of the war. This would mean a reconsideration of the plan. General MacArthur was still trying to get the operation going for the glory of commanding the largest naval invasion of the war, but especially the navy was against the plan. George Marshall was looking at using up to 9 nukes in Kyushu and then going in with marines. The navy was in favour of a continued naval blockade and bombing. This would’ve meant the death of possibly millions more in the Japanse co-prosperity sphere and would starve Japanese civilians.
The reality is that the nuke posed the idea that a decisive battle in the homeland might not take place, which was the hope of Japanese leaders, because that would mean that they could inflict as much casualties as possible to ease up the surrender terms. Access to a nuke meant that they could destroy entire cities at a distance, with a single b29 bomber. That’s why Japan would’ve ultimately surrendered.
I am so sorry for this essay
New idea for an alt history: What if you did one of these scenarios?
If the Ming sailed to America, I think it would have to have been in some way because of the Polynesians? If they made contact with Polynesians, who may have had trade with Amerindians, they could have learned about them there, and decided to show off to them. It’s incredibly contrived, but it’s a way that contact could have happened, no matter how implausible.
@@runeanonymous9760I also think it would have been the likeliest way for any Chinese contact with the Americas, but I think it relies on too many coincidences happening together. Without European travel, it may have happened eventually, but I’d put a timeframe around 1650-1800. But the absence of Europe in any interaction with Eastern Asia or the Pacific would alter the course of Chinese domestic policy so much that any action by then would be nearly unpredictable.
Fun fact, you made the "Chinese name for Los Angeles" but that IS the actual Chinese name for the city. 洛杉磯 (Luò-shān-jī)
Basically, the Chinese language can and will use it's own name for you and/or your city/country rather than whatever you came up with. Perhaps the most "well known" historical example is when Marco Polo asked the Chinese what that island off their coast was called, they said it was named the land of the rising sun, or "Ja-pon", despite the locals of the island calling it "Ni-hon" instead.
Why'd you put "(Cantonese)" right after the pinyin for the, you know, Mandarin?
Italianized in "Cipango"
remember this was XIII century mandarin
@@FlamingKetchup i thought I had google translate set to "chinese (Traditional)"
@@Okada_Caelun Traditional does not equal Cantonese. Traditional is the writing style while Cantonese (very roughly) is the spoken dialect. HK uses Traditional plus Cantonese, but Taiwan uses Traditional plus Mandarin. I believe Guangdong (province of Mainland China) uses Cantonese plus Simplified.
@@FlamingKetchup Fair enough then.
If the Chinese treasure fleet had gone west, i think you're right that they wouldn't have conquered America. However, a brief diplomatic visit to the Aztecs would have introduced them to Eurasian diseases. Fast forward 100 years, snd Cortez encounters Aztecs who are now somewhat immune to those same diseases, and things could go very differently...
It would just mean that 90% of the Amerindians would've passed before Cortez's first contact.
Or he finds Aztecs with significantly reduced populations (though not nearly as much as they would have reduced under Spanish control) and it’s still about the same difficulty to conquer the empire unless they acquired Chinese technology and weapons.
@@laurencewinch-furness9450 Cortez would find a lower population size and the civilizations either fully collapsed or close to it.
Or Columbus finds Chinese merchants and Indians using Chinese goods, confirming that he had indeed found a sea route to China.
@@SirAntoniousBlock
Now *that* would be hilarious, given he'd actually have 'proof' in some trade goods
Although it feels like the reality would've been found out soon enough
There wouldn't be consistent, if any, trade to the New World. There's nothing really worth getting for a journey that long.
But I'd still find it absolutely hilarious for the head-scratcher of "how did we find chinese goods **here** ???"
With the Harald Hadrada scenario, what if Harold Godwinsson stayed in the south and waited for the Normans, defeated them, and then went to Stanford bridge after and then lost. The way I predict Harold Godwinsson to beat the Normans is that he remains in control of his shield wall so they don’t charge down or William does actually die when everyone thought they did.
For the timeline where Harald Hardrada conquers England: What if Harold Godwinson just meets the Normans in battle first, defeats them (like he almost did) and is then defeated by the Norwegians?
Hardrada doesn’t have to meet the superior Normans and might actually stand a chance against the Anglo-Saxons. Bob‘s your uncle
Yeah, even if the Normans won against the Anglo Saxons they would still lack the benefit of having a fresh army that wasn't weary from battle.
A far easier challenge no matter what.
I mean this one should have been the more obvious alternative history example.
The Normans where greatly delayed because the winds where going in the wrong direction.
So the Anglo Saxon forces had to travel far to the north east, to fight the Norwegians first, and then travel far back again to face the Normans.
This contributed greatly to the Norman victory.
The troops where weary from battle, travel, and having to wait for the Normans in the first place.
@@MegaBanne and the anglo saxons nearly won after all that as well. despite the fact that godwinson didnt wait for much of his army to be ready, despite the long march and previous battle. william won basically by pure luck, as he was kind of an idiot
@@hashtagrex In this case, I'd say Harold was still more of an idiot for not withdrawing and regrouping when his entire army was present.
Still, what probably really screwed him over was getting that arrow to the eye.
As I understand, the events of 1066 turned out the way they did because prevailing winds led to a Viking invasion before a Norman crossing of the Channel. Had the weather allowed a Norman invasion first, maybe things could have turned out the way you described.
I think Hadrada could be more plausible with a different PoD, the normans were delayed about a month by storms, if that didn’t happen, the would put the battle of Hastings before Hadrada’s arrival, leaving the victor worn down, and possibly defeatable.
8:13 "Everyone shall be interested in our conveniently priced dishware!"- The Emperor
🤣🤣🤣🤣
18:12 " they never anticipated that the allies and commies would work together" - that's a silly statement by Cody. The Allies had worked with the USSR for years by the time the USSR invaded Japanese territories. If anybody wants a better take on WWII, go watch the World War Two channel.
Japan's leadership was in denial about that. The ambassador tried to convince them that Russia wasn't going to help but they didn't listen. Imperial Japan's leaders were not smart people.
Absolutely correct. FDR had started recognizing and improving relations with the USSR as far as 1935.
Years of the Soviets and the Western Allies coordinating with each other and the Japanese didnt anticipate them working together?
@@fulcrum2951 Yes, the Japanese high command were deeply out of touch at this point.
Your idea about Alexander already getting as close to a perfect outcome as one can in our timeline is really fascinating to me.
Makes me wonder what history would look like if people like Alexander the Great never lived up to their full potential.
Like the inverse of the (outdated) Great Men Theory of history, where history is dominated not by the achievements of great men, but by their utter mediocrity.
A timeline where Alexander failed his conquests, where Caesar never became dictator for Life, where Napoleon flunked out of officers school, etc.
I mean for everyone with Alexander the Great level plot armor there were probably a good number of potentially world-changing people who history didn't remember because they never got the chance to change the world.
I consider it a near certainty that every potential alternate timeline has at least a few "Great Men" who achieved Alexander-level significance.
Flunking out of officer school wouldn't necessarily hamper Napoleon. Ulysses S. Grant was in the lower half of his West Point class and had been discharged from the Army for drunkenness before the Civil War. Then he won the Civil War, in part because he wasn't held back by preconceptions of how wars should be fought.
Other great people would've taken their place
Where Hitler failed to get into art school... wait.
There would just be other people other people to replace them that we either wouldn't know of, or weren't (as) important to us. Like if Chamberlain didn't get sick and step down, meaning Churchill didn't get his position.
19:06 that line through Northern South America will never not be funny
11:45 In December 1862, the Lancashire cotton workers wrote to Abraham Lincoln saying they supported his campaign against slavery, despite the hardship it was causing in the local economy. At the time, Britain’s industrial working class was very powerful and an intervention by the UK on the Confederate side could have led to massive unrest.
That whole _Civil War_ (2024) movie premise of California and Texas joining together.
We don't know history of that setting, so it's impossible to tell. Perhaps their Texas is blue.
if the presient was killing people on mass and drone striking cities they would very likely be on the same side.
@@martinsriber7760doesn't matter. Reality, It'd be locals vs federals and the federals wins by a landslide
For the last time, they're both in rebellion against the Federal government.
They both were fighting together against the Loyalists. They had no intention of any union
What if there is a Cody in another universe saying that our history couldn't happen in his timeline? AltAlthistory
Surely people wouldn't be THAT stupid with a contagious virus, right?
To be fair, scenarios like Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Cortes' conquest, Napoleon, the tangle of alliances that led to WWI, Hitler even ruling Germany let alone the Nazi's coming as close as they did to taking Europe, Russia becoming a superpower, and the Apollo Program are all completely nuts.
Also Trump. I mean, come on. That's just bad satire.
I feel like the dumbest is actually WWII being an Axis victory. American production by 1944 and 1945 had been so massive that there was over 300,000 planes in the U.S. military and over 7600 ships in the USN including 99 aircraft carriers and 23 battleships by VJ Day. Just for some sort of Axis stalemate where it’s not an unconditional surrender would require extremely different circumstances.
Depends on what you call a victory, like do the axis conquer the USA? Or does Germany win against the Soviets? It's nuanced
Production ain't all there is to winning wars. Just ask the Vietnamese. Worse decision making by the allies and better decision making by the axis could have changed the outcome of the war.
@@sharpspoon7371 I’m talking about something more realistic like a stalemate where the Axis doesn’t take Moscow but the Axis isn’t driven out of Eastern Europe or some other end where there’s still Fascist Italy/Nazi Germany/Imperial Japan surviving in some form. Like nothing like Wolfenstein ever was gonna happen where the U.S. itself gets conquered. Just something a lot more realistic like a stalemate in Eastern Europe would be something that required things to be a lot different.
Only way I can see it is Germans somehow take over Soviet oil fields and a badly planned D day failed so badly USA go full non intervention in europe. Even this is very unlikely.
that is why the man in the high castle says that the Great Depression never ends, that would destroy the US production
Actually, the Japanese received word of the Soviet Invasion BEFORE they learned of Nagasaki’s destruction. I think you put too little stock in the importance of the nukes.
Yes
Also addendum on the impossibility of Ming Dynasty in America: To note it's not that China doesn't have any interest in other places overall, as most dynasties pre-1200s were highly engaged with other countries, but by Ming dynasty it definitely reached a point where there wasn't as much of a significant interest anymore, couple with the Ming dynasty having no real adversaries that could feasibly overtake it so there's also less priority to compete with neighbours, though obviously trade and diplomatic relations were still upheld and frequent.
This assumption was made with the idea of the emperor being a fool with money, which isnt the case, it was rather practically a armed diplomatic trade mission. Go to a south eastern prince, negotiate trade, leave. If that emperor instead considered the benefits of establishing foreign settlements, or was just about as obsessed with it as he was trade (which other emperors were scared of, due to a fear of a rising merchant class) could instead change the direction of imperial rule, and spur a direction of increasing free trade, such a change in decision, if not reaching California, is a snowball of changing winds in the East.
13:14 I will also add that no one in the Italian government ever thought to join ww1 on the side of Germany, it was a question of neutrality or war against Austria. Also the majority of Italians were against war, so a war along side the Austrians would be super unpopular
war was never about entente vs alliance
but
"what do we REALLY want to gain?"
there were reds who saw an armed war-tempered people as the possibility of starting the proletariat revolution
Luigi Cadorna the head of the Italian army thought they would join germany and how drawing up plans on how to assist them.
What do you mean alternate history will never happen?!?!
-Every singular certain austrian painter's supporter
What does that mean?
@@juan-ij1le It means that the austrian painter supporters cannot have the alternate history where he wins happen in the real life.
@@Mynameissomethinglol that a given
10:30
Additionally, the Atzteks would even lose their advantage of numbers they still had back at home.
Regarding the UK dependency on southern cotton, in the long term I think you are correct, the British would have found other sources of raw cotton to make up the difference. But that shouldn't downplay the short term impact of the so-called "cotton famine" the civil war had on parts of the UK, particularly north west England where most of the mills were located. Hundreds of mills shut down and hundreds of thousands become unemployed. It was basically a severe economic depression contained to a single industry that certain region was heavily dependant on. Most ended up surviving on charity handouts during the period, and there were some deaths from starvation and similar. After the war some mills did reopen, but many had gone bankrupt and needed new buyers to start them up again.
While there were closures, by 1863 Egypt was already supplying cotton to the UK and as mentioned the UK had outlawed slavery in 1833. Just imagine David Livingston who was fighting slavery in Africa would have reacted?
@@kurtsteinert7569 To be fair fair geo-politics and morals don’t need to align. Depends a lot on pragmatism also, had UK seen the US more as a rising rival looking to supplant them rather than a growing friendly ally, they might have took a different approach. The French were also already somewhat eager. If they had actually gone for it, I don’t see why they wouldn’t win. In the 1860s the US wasn’t the power house it would be for a good while yet. In the midst of a civil war, split forces and dealing with Crimean war veterans and a total loss of international trade would definitely have a huge impact.
@@GG-ir1hw I think that the French would be the more likely to support the South, as long as the South did not interfere with its actions in Mexico. Once the North showed that the likelihood of the South would gain independence Lincoln started pressuring France to leave.
@@kurtsteinert7569The UK did already have other sources, but they weren't enough to compensate for the supply shock during the war. Maybe if it had dragged on longer things might have improved a little? Who knows.
But you're right to mention the moral dimension over slavery. Most of the mill workers, and even quite a few of the mill owners, were abolitionists, so there was some level of solidarity that their suffering may help end slavery in the US, which probably increased the amount of aid the workers received. Some mill owners did let their employees stay in their homes, which were generally owned by the mill, during the closure so they were at least not homeless.
@@GG-ir1hwThe slavery issue was way too much of a non-starter for Western Europe though. Being a “civilizing force” as they saw it was a core part of the British and French imperial identity. Ideology is often a way bigger driver than pragmatism.
The timeline is kinda skewed in the downfall scenario. The Soviet invasion came in between attacks not after Nagasaki, yet the council vote to not surrender. So I don’t find it compelling for a surrender reason
At least not alone
@@g.ricepad9470 And it took all that to push the needle to surrender, it's not unlikely that it's simply not enough to force the surrender. And then Downfall.
How to make High Castle the perfect alt-hist show:
1. Dump the universe meditation transfer shit. This isn't Fringe, we don't need that in a Nazi show
2. Get rid of the BCR in its entirety. If you think for one second that Hitler would allow a group of non-German Communists to exist anywhere near the Reich's borders, I have a collapsed bridge to sell you in Baltimore
3. Kill Juliana in the first season and base the rest of the show around John Smith and his family
4. REWRITE THAT ENDING. I would prefer an ending where Smith, after gaining control of all of North America, reinstates the United States and a cold war begins against the newly freed America's and the old Reich in Europe, but I'll take literally anything except an ending where a portal to our reality opens up for Time Tourists
I wouldn't have minded the BCR if they didn't feel like the result of some rushed executive meddling halfway through. And do they really think the other rebel groups would be friends with a bunch of people who basically want to cleave off their own ideologically opposed ethnostate after the occupation ends? At best they'd barely tolerate each other, more likely they'd be gearing up for a post occupation civil war.
It's Philip Dick material.
After having read Valis this would sound even more solid
I think Philip K. Dick wasn't a very factual author. Reading Dick is always like reading a multi-level drug hallucination.
I like how Deckard is trying to retire a replicant but gets busted by a cop. And suddenly he is arrested, hauled to a secondary LAPD headquarters he never knew about, complete with staff and cells and arrested suspects, gets booked and held. And none of them have any idea the "real" LAPD headquarters he works at even exists.
So if you want to go the Dick route, make it even more weird and unexplained. A Scanner Darkly is another Dick movie adaptation that embraces the weirdness of it all. And Total Recall does it pretty subtly, at all time you remember that this Mars spy plot is very close to the dream-trip he ordered at the beginning.
That bit about the 15 steps to Industrialization is super interesting, do you have some more info or sources on that, i would like to read more about it.
Making Alt history scenarios without mentioning germany winning ww2
Challenge impossible
Axis (and confederate) victory alternate history scenarios just feel so deeply unserious. Like even if you put aside aaaaaaallllllll the logistics and such the most probable outcome is that they end up self cannibalizing their civilization or just run out of resources
The thing is in alt-history everyting can happen but after a while it stops being historical analysis of alternate outcomes and becomes fiction.
In which ways are "historical analysis of alternate outcomes" not fiction, tho? In another video from Cody (can't remember which, but it's a pretty recent one), he himself says that alt-history is basically fanfiction. Having the point(s) of divergence with our timeline being more or less realistic or plausible (based on our own timeline) doesn't make one alternate scenario less fiction than the other.
@Alfonso162008 The difference is possibility. Let's say that Germany gives top Jewish scientists amnesty so they get a bomb before the US. Since this would demand the nazis to be atleast a tiny bit accepting of Jews. We are now so far from a possible reality that it becomes fiction.
Alt-history hangs on some sort of plausible fact, while fiction are free to do what it wants.
If alt-history the video is more or less pointless. Since if all alt-history is fiction, who cares if the Aztecs had the technology to cross the Atlantic?
It's all fiction at the end of the day. I mean, sometimes history can be as "unrealistic" as some of these scenarios. Sometimes things just happen by pure luck or coincidence.
Basically, there are two types of alternate history; "What if...?" and "Wouldn't it be cool/interesting if...?"
My favorite AltHist scenarios take a little bit of both, leaning towards the former, but throwing in a few elements of the latter even if they aren't the "most likely" outcomes.
@@CABRALFAN27 I'm not a big alt history follower, so I don't know the community much (I love history, but this is basically the only channel I follow that specializes in alt history), but something I seemed to gather is that apparently there is "good" and "bad" alt history, and it's all based on if the scenarios are strictly the ultra most likely outcomes, and only if those outcomes are one of the possible ones following exactly what already happened in our timeline, and you can't tweak previous conditions. Idk if I'm explaining myself, but I feel like saying a scenario is dumb because "the people in charge never had any plans to do this invasion" is kinda harsh, imo. Or maybe I'm just misinterpreting this whole thing, idk 🤷♂️
You can make a decent argument that the Japanese would have surrendered without the nukes, but putting operation downfall-a real plan that was scheduled to take place-on the same list as susnet invasion and man in the high castle is just absurd
Cody is a really hardcore nukes bad guy and that gets in the way of his better judgement.
@@coh2conscript851Yeah, I kinda got those vibes. I kinda disagree that the Soviets invading Manchuria was as big as he makes it out. In his surrender speech, Hirohito specifically says the nukes were the reason. He only mentioned Manchuria in the surrender speech specifically addressed to the Japanese Army.
The nuclear weapons were the most significant part of convincing the civilian part of the government to surrender. After all, the army had been fighting the entire time, what’s so different with the Soviets?
The Soviet invasion was the most significant part of convincing the army part of the government to surrender. After all, the Home Islands had been getting bombed the entire time, what’s so different with these nukes?
The nukes were necessary, and it’s so tiring to see people pretend they weren’t.
@@sirboomsalot4902 Didn't respond to you yet but the latest comment pretty much says everything. The Soviets coming in AND the nukes affected both sectors of the government in negative ways.
susnet, while being obviously a type, is still a very funny word to me
21:29 -- I don't know why I never thought of this before, but what would happen with Canada and the European Caribbean territories if the Axis managed to conquer and control Europe?
Literally what happened to france, the main part, in europe was conquered and the african collonies and some french generals created Free France and continued to fight with the allies.
Canada's a good question (would it fight on itself, would George V and family retreat there to fight on, etc.), but the threat of Nazis in the Caribbean real close to America was one of the ways FDR helped get I think the "destroyers for bases" deal through Congress and the isolationist types - they didn't want to intervene, but apparently, they weren't too keen on the idea of having the swastika flying just off their doorstep (relatively speaking) either.
With Hadrada conquering England, a much easier way to make it possible would be if Godwinson defeats William at Hastings *first* and then has to fight the Norwegians with an exhausted army, none of the three armies present could beat the other two back-to-back.
This might even work if William was able to sail when he originally wanted to had the winds blew in his favor. Rather than have to delay his advance.
@@jacobwilliams1223 Yeah I was really shocked at this scenario's inclusion in the video bc of this.
Our timeline is *less likely* thank the Hardrada victory
I like that a video has been made on this topic. Alternate histories definitely can range from realistic to really far feached. Keep up the good work!
Sunset invasions were the dumbest. Reminder that most of the local kingdoms under them hated the Mexica and Smallpox was the true genocider
you know how in war of the worlds, the thing that defeats the martians in the end isn't human weapons, but human diseases? yeah that's what would have happened in any sunset invasion scenario.
Fun ck2 event though
@@Reiver-93 so somehting to site iwth the whole sunsent invasion, one it happans in the 11 hunderds (Which has its own issues) but does shorten the gap tech wise but like in it the aztec are jsut a comepltly differnt empire, they seem to be centrlzied with a beruacracy. and yah they become insanely weakened after awhile due to disease from slaves they bring back. also msot of the time in ck2 the invasion gains a foothold and then ..dies. who ever wrote about it I think just explained it badly. also i dont think its realistic just what cody described is NOT the sunset invasion as presented in its source matrial.
@@Yingyanglord1 it's more feasible if the Norse settled successfully in North America during the Viking Age. If they continued exploring southward and settling further, they will encounter Mesoamerican civilizations. Perhaps the Maya, not the Aztecs, will adopt steel weapons and armor, and longships, since the Aztec only became an empire in the 1400s.
A sunset invasion is more feasible in this scenario in 1200 or 1300.
@@madmarvshighwaywarrior2870 agreed, just I would prefer if he critzed it for it's actual flaws
I have a dumb alternate scenario aswel: what if Belgium joint the central powers when Germany wanted to get to France through Belgium.
not that dumb its more off a belgium submits kind of like austria and the Czechs in ww2 simple answer is the germans beat the french easily the russians sue for peace and the french nation barely loses land the austrians commit war crimes in serbia and we have a massive worldwide conflict a few years later
"Apart from being centuries off" that's a DISTANT second.
I do think that if Rome did not have slaves they would have industrialized. Slaves are usually cheaper than industrial equipment, so Rome had no reason or initiative to industrialize.
they already had big organised plantations and specialised huge workshops, and the origins of medieval guilds, with enough literacy and social mobility to have a middle class.
There are just so so many little things that added up to our industrial revolution though, and theres no way it would stay a unique Roman secret either
This is dumb.
A corner stone of the industrial revolution was the age of enlightenment.
The Romans where just impressive if you compare them with the shit that came right after its fall.
The Romans where not impressive based on late medieval standards.
I don't think Rome could have survived long enough to industrialise without slaves.
@@gmmd7807 without the enlightmen movement there would be no industrial revolution
It was a bad situation. Slaves were working so well for them, so they had no reason to attempt to change, but it was also clear that slavery would be the reason the whole thing collapsed. Rome simply didn’t have much lifespan left.
I'm pretty sure this is not the best method of relaying ideas (considering the Discord and everything), but I just thought up a scenario: What if the USS William D. Porter actually killed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Secretary of State, and Joint Chiefs of Staff? He was on his way to the Cairo and Tehran Conferences (after the US already had war declared on them by the Axis powers), but it is unknown how Henry Agard Wallace (FDR's VP at the time) would have handled the war in the face of such humiliation.
Well first I imagine that every other ship in the convoy would turn the Porter's pronouns from He/Him to Was/Were, so you can go ahead and jot that one down
I struggle with the "realism" of alternate history media because in this timeline our current political situation stems from the font selection on the ballot in Dade County Florida in 2000, the decision to retool Star Trek Voyager after its second season, the decision to ban Hent@i from Something Awful and a single pangolin with a weird cold
I think a more plausible point of departure for the Harold hardrada scenario is if the wind just got better sooner for William the conqueror. Then the Normans would have arrived in England first and hardrada would have arrived later.
16:32 The Operation Downfall bit is historically incorrect and includes what I consider historical revisionism by the Russians, Japanese, and Anti-Nuclear Activists. The Russian invasion of Manchuria, Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands was not the nail in the coffin; the Atomic Bombings were. Russia had a land border on Sakhalin, and the Kurils were largely undefended. Furthermore, the Japanese initially reached out to the Russians after Hiroshima and because of Hiroshima to negotiate a conditional surrender; during that meeting, the Russians announced a breaking of the non-aggression pact.
Furthermore, the civilian government's reasons for the surrender were explicitly the Atomic Bombings. The Japanese military, despite being the ones who were facing the full force of the Russians, refused to surrender and attempted a last-minute coup to continue the war, but the military failed. But the fact the military refused to give up fighting despite being the ones facing the Russians, along with the fact the Japanese Government and Military both knew the Russians would require allied aid to ford any invasion of Hokkaido and Northern Japan, utterly discredits the false narrative of the Russians being the reason for the Japanese surrender.
this
but you can not deny the active effort to have the soviets join, even risking a blockade of the supply routes to Vladivostok.
The USSR made its part and was enough
The Japanese were cut off from manchuria by allied blockade anyway. Japanese merchant shipping was obliterated by 1945 and allied submarines and aircraft were hunting fishing boats for lack of actual merchant vessels to prey on.
Meanwhile the Soviets would have been capturing more territory that they wouldn't willing give up and in the months of continued conventional bombing, more Japanese lives and property would have been lost than the total of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks. That certainly would have happened while the surrender without invasion was no foregone conclusion.
@@dylanmilne6683 japan did not need further stock
they were ready
and only recently we got to know it
@@dlxmarks
implying it only conventional warfare
Truman had to fight tooth and nail to veto poison attacks over rice fields, but still stockpiled mustard gas as retaliatori measure like in Italy (see Bari incident)
I think that the Republicans winning in Spain is a lot more credible that Cody is giving it credit for. The Spanish Right had some very serious divides between the Falangists and the Carlists.
Franco basically set up a shotgun wedding between these two groups, and kept them from breaking down into factionalism like happened on the Left.
If Sanjurjo and Mola hadn't died in plane crashes, the Carlists would have had a much stronger role in the Nationalist camp. The shotgun wedding between the Carlists and the Falange that happened in 1937 probably wouldn't have occurred, and there would likely have been a three way split between Carlists, Falangists, and military officers that would have paralleled what happened in OTL on the Spanish Left.
About the Sunset Invasion, there is an uchrony that uses that point but with a twist: Columbus dies when returning to Spain, leaving some people in America. They teach all they know about weapons, sailing, sea faring, ... and decades later comes the invasion. And without the resources from America and being at war on Europe, the outcome is not nice for the European countries.
The saga is called "Chronicles of the Feathered Snake", from Edgardo Civalledo.