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It works for me, but I keep getting warnings about unsafe connections. Maybe Ian has forgotten to update his security and your browser is refusing to expose you.
Shitty Alternate History Thread - If only the Romans had AK-47's they would've survived...
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Could be. Thing is, the forums were down too long for this actually be the case. Tested it with multiple browsers, tor, etc. I suspect some broken/old hardware and/or the software itself.
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My browser says the certificate is valid and is from 16 November.
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What if during Elvis' meeting with Nixon they did like a kids movie and bitch to each other about how hard their lives are, agree to swap, and then Elvis served out the rest of Nixon's term in a disguise while Nixon became a rockstar as an Elvis impersonator?
LikeHumansDoFive
kiwifarms.net
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Any of you ever read Rumsfeldia? It was an alt-history story where Donald Rumsfeld became president in the 80s and how everything went to shit from therd. Wasn't that good to he honest
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I read it a while ago, but I don't remember much. Didn't it descend into a Handmaid's Tale tier depiction of the Christian right? Regardless, IMO the author should have stopped with the earlier Fear and Loathing.
LikeHumansDoFive
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Apparently Rumsfeld tries to implement Anarcho-Capitalism or smth, felt like a character assassination
(A Rummy presidency probably looks similar to Reagan's, expect he probably invades Nicaragua or something)
LikeHumansDoFive
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Wasn't this guy also sperging out about Trump's comments about annexing Canada?
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Yep. Pathetic.
LikeHumansFiveDo said it tried to turn America into anarcho-capitalism and like you and Skeletonized Cow said, it was genuinely not good - shock writing for shock writing's sake by that point. But it's worshipped by leftier members of AH.com as what will totally happen if Republicans keep winning elections.
LikeHumansDoFive
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I now want him to do it so we watch this guy meltdown
America collapses... because it has to alright!
LikeHumansDoFive
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Aside from that, I've enjoyed reading it so far, Scheubner-Richter seems like an underused figure
Chuckwagon
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Yeah, I somewhat recall that one all right. Shit story with increasingly little grounding in reality, but an illuminating look into the demented mind of the libtard and how such creatures perceive anyone to the right of George Soros. How Drew, the author, portrayed Rumsfeld was bugfuck insane character assassination - turned a frankly supremely boring & stodgy neocon, practically a Republican equivalent to Robert McNamara who wasn't ever particularly close to the Christian right faction and was certainly as loathsome to libertarians (and regarded them with similar enmity) as Dick Cheney, into King 'Christofascist'. IIRC the dude was written to lock his political enemies in asylums to be tortured & sedated in isolation (a Soviet tactic IRL), repeals environmental regulations and encourages coal mining like a Captain Planet villain, creates a 'Liberty Battalion' paramilitary that burns books & euthanizes wounded US Army troops in an occupied Cuba (I think) to save on medical costs (still more merciful than the real-life VA), etc. And that's all before he gets replaced by RL Evangelical bigwig Douglas Coe, who turns America into a theocracy and nukes cities that resist his rule.
Just pure frothing insanity from start to finish, no less terrible a hive of terminally online leftism than TV Tropes had to concede that Rumsfeld's portrayal in that story was a perfect example of a 'Historical Villain Upgrade'. Before 2020 or so I might have believed that the author was probably tormented by Rummy as his sleep paralysis demon or something, now I can only think that someone so completely detached from reality (historical and otherwise) and consumed with hatred for his political opponents should be put down for the safety of everyone around him, lest he start taking an ax to inconvenient friends & family members like some other shitlibs already have in the wake of the Donald's second electoral W. Nigger seriously should've just gone out on Fear, Loathing and Gumbo instead of posting that overly long schizo screed.
Anyway, I've seen plenty of people asking the usual 'WI/can Germany win WW1/WW2' questions, or what if WW1 didn't happen at all, but how about a WW1 that ends in stalemate & compromise peace? How could this be achieved (well, I'm thinking no American entry late in the game will be one of the requirements, at least) and what might such a compromise look like?
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Definitely to Probably:
-America can't get in it, or be convinced to really make it more fair for Germany, somehow.
-France will not rest till it gets Alsace-Lorraine.
-German colonies go to Britain and France as in OTL.
-Germany doesn't lose German-speaking Belgium and Danzig and keeps the conquered Luxembourg (hey, it's the little things).
-Germany likely takes a stranglehold over eastern Europe via Brest-Litvosk.
-Italy takes Istria and Trent from Austria-Hungary.
-Russia still gonna Russia and becomes the USSR.
Possibly:
-I suspect Germany still loses its Polish territories and Memelland both due to nationalism of the time and sheer war exhaustion. Referendums see the Posen and Pomerania voivodeships and Memelland go to Poland and Lithuania. Humiliating as it is, they still are tied into the German orbit and Germany basically lets it happen to win the peace.
-If Austria-Hungary splits up, you know the drill - German-Austria to Germany in time, Hungary tries to bullyboy around its old borders but probably gets held back by western Europe, etc.
-Italy possibly gets Dalmatia in the above. Then again, maybe not, I'm sure not many looked favorably upon its opportunism in OTL either. If not, it'll still go fascist, maybe tie the angry Hungary into its orbit.
-Belgium probably goes back to neutrality, this time ensured by Germany alongside the western allies. Possibly gets plenty of investment into it or reparations Germany won't be paying out otherwise to get a good seaport into the Channel.
Chuckwagon
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Maybe I've put too much thought into this scenario the last couple days, because for the first time in a long time, I'm actually feeling the temptation to start sketching out a proper alternate timeline...
Best I can think of in this matter is that Germany very grudgingly agrees, for the sake of peace and in exchange for territorial concessions in Belgium/Luxembourg as well as Russia, to cede the French-speaking parts of A-L (so basically the southern half of Lorraine and a few tiny counties in south-southwestern Alsace), perhaps under the cover of a referendum to make it seem more democratic. France will probably still be sneeding about not getting the rest of the province but this is the only concession I could see that 1) can get them to not try to continue the war and 2) the Germans have even the remotest chance of entertaining. And even then it would probably require a major Western Front victory to offset the fall of Russia - maybe the German high command refuses to retreat to the Hindenburg Line (a controversial strategic decision IRL, opposed by many of the frontline commanders on the Somme) and that results in the Nivelle Offensive actually succeeding against the still-existing Bapaume-Noyon salient, boosting French morale to a point where they avoid their mutinies (but not improving their situation so much that they're able to throw the Germans out of France entirely) while Germany is compelled to consider some meaningful concessions in the West.
Since Germany doesn't have infinite military power to apply out east, they might be hobbled by a lack of viable puppets or general sense of nationalism to support them in Ukraine and Belarus: in Ukraine their main collaborator, Pavlo Skoropadskiy, was actually a Russophile who only joined with them because the alternative seemed to be Bolshevik (mis)rule so he might not sell out if the White Russians seem to be in a better position, and the liberal Ukrainian nationalists were very weak to the point of losing every major battle in their failed war for independence vs. the White Russians/Red Russians/Poles/Makhno's anarchists. The Belarusians were even weaker & more ephemeral. But I could imagine a stronger Germany minus the chaos of the 1918-19 revolution managing to push & hold as far as the Dnieper, at least, and they would definitely go for the rest of the Baltics where they actually had a sizable & fairly strong bunch of local collaborators in the form of the Baltic German nobility (also puts them within striking distance of Petrograd in case of a future round of hostilities with Russia).
To balance Russia being thrown under a German-Austrian bus, the Central Powers might do the same with Turkey (which would then provide Britain & France with the lion's share of their territorial gains from this war). Assuming a late 1917/early 1918 armistice, the OE's situation is already really bad, they've already lost both Jerusalem & Baghdad by mid-late 1917 and the Russian Caucasus Army hadn't totally disintegrated yet (which historically allowed Enver Pasha to push all the way to Baku). So yeah, maybe Britain and France allow Russia to get Brest-Litovsk'd in exchange for Germany & A-H allowing them to Sèvres the Ottomans. Unfortunately for Ataturk, since they didn't gain much elsewhere the Entente will have a much bigger interest in throwing everything they've got into securing their Middle Eastern concessions (as opposed to RL where they decided it was too tough a nut to crack and they could do fine with what they already took elsewhere) and the butterfly effect might = the pro-Entente Greek king Alexander not randomly getting bitten to death by a monkey and completely fucking up the Greek political sphere & military hierarchy at the worst time possible, meaning the Great Turkey Roast actually happens and the Sick Man of Europe gets put down hard.
A bit better luck & pacing, more coordination between their disparate armies, and possibly a little German support - nothing major because they were at war until recently, but Germany could very well be content with releasing Russian POWs into White service and they would also certainly have to crush Nestor Makhno's anarchist Black Army to secure any ambitions they might have in Ukraine anyway - and they'd have their victory. (Makhno historically fucked with the Whites' logistics, crippling their offensive on Moscow when they actually got close to the Bolshevik capital, and Lenin promptly repaid him the same way actual commie leaders repay their anarchist useful idiots again & again throughout history, by slaughtering said Blacks.)
Also to soothe Russian seething over the B-L concessions being recognized, I could see the Entente agreeing to give Kolchak's Russia the Armenian gains from Sèvres (and generally recognizing Armenia as part of Russia still, as it's obviously too weak to stand on its own). Apparently Bolshevik support for the Turks was actually a huge boost for Ataturk's nationalist faction historically, and without that - indeed with Russia joining the rest of the Entente in breaking out the heavy roach spray, as even after having been weakened by the revolutions & civil war, they would now have a chance to get something to slightly balance out their territorial losses in the west and lift up the spirit of 'Great Russian' nationalism again - it may well be curtains for Turkey. (Also if the frogs really want to troll Rosbif later for whatever reason, they could always cede their Cilician salient to Russian Armenia, allowing the Russians to skip past Constantinople to reach the Mediterranean.)
Worth noting that Karl was willing to concede on revenge against Serbia & toss A-L under the bus when he mounted his own failed attempt at peace negotiations in 1917 historically.
100% agreed, the American intervention has to go. This whole thing might have to start with a POD putting someone, anyone other than extreme Anglophile and proto-neolib internationalist Woodrow Wilson in the White House - someone who isn't fishing for excuses to join the Entente from the start, taking every chance to stoke pro-Entente and anti-Central Power sentiment at home with incidents like the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, and willing to push the Entente to the peace table simply by not providing them with infinite credit.
This is honestly probably the biggest stumbling block to get around in a stalemate-forged compromise, I do agree that the French would be absolutely repulsed by any peace treaty that doesn't give them the province they've been vindictively tardraging for nearly 50 years over (and have just lost 1 million dead, 4+ million more wounded for). But on the other hand, Germany will not cede it under any circumstance if the French aren't physically occupying the place (and if they are, then you're already looking at an Entente victory, considering the French never managed that IRL).
Best I can think of in this matter is that Germany very grudgingly agrees, for the sake of peace and in exchange for territorial concessions in Belgium/Luxembourg as well as Russia, to cede the French-speaking parts of A-L (so basically the southern half of Lorraine and a few tiny counties in south-southwestern Alsace), perhaps under the cover of a referendum to make it seem more democratic. France will probably still be sneeding about not getting the rest of the province but this is the only concession I could see that 1) can get them to not try to continue the war and 2) the Germans have even the remotest chance of entertaining. And even then it would probably require a major Western Front victory to offset the fall of Russia - maybe the German high command refuses to retreat to the Hindenburg Line (a controversial strategic decision IRL, opposed by many of the frontline commanders on the Somme) and that results in the Nivelle Offensive actually succeeding against the still-existing Bapaume-Noyon salient, boosting French morale to a point where they avoid their mutinies (but not improving their situation so much that they're able to throw the Germans out of France entirely) while Germany is compelled to consider some meaningful concessions in the West.
Makes sense, this would be one of the main things Britain takes away from the negotiating table. Arguably the German decision to compete with the much better-established French & British colonial empires so late in the game was a retarded waste of resources in the first place, anyway.
Agreed, they could hold everything up to & including Liège/Lüttich (site of Belgium's biggest fort at the time) a their main gain in the West and compensation for having to give Metz up to the French. On the balance, between this & their eastern gains, even an armistice and negotiated peace would be to the Central Powers' advantage ultimately.
Yeah, probably. I could see Germany settling for the original, more limited Brest-Litovsk gains before Lenin/Trotsky went full retard and decided on a 'neither war nor peace' foreign policy which simultaneously shat on those terms while disbanding the Russian Army (that was how Germany grabbed Ukraine, Belarus & the Baltics IRL) - perhaps this is the deal that Kerensky's hung out to dry on by the Western Entente powers ITL, even - but then going for additional landgrabs when Russia spirals into civil war (almost certain with Kerensky in charge, that man was the archetypal feckless libcuck who had no idea what he was doing and alienated literally everyone on both the right & left wings within a few months of grabbing power).
Since Germany doesn't have infinite military power to apply out east, they might be hobbled by a lack of viable puppets or general sense of nationalism to support them in Ukraine and Belarus: in Ukraine their main collaborator, Pavlo Skoropadskiy, was actually a Russophile who only joined with them because the alternative seemed to be Bolshevik (mis)rule so he might not sell out if the White Russians seem to be in a better position, and the liberal Ukrainian nationalists were very weak to the point of losing every major battle in their failed war for independence vs. the White Russians/Red Russians/Poles/Makhno's anarchists. The Belarusians were even weaker & more ephemeral. But I could imagine a stronger Germany minus the chaos of the 1918-19 revolution managing to push & hold as far as the Dnieper, at least, and they would definitely go for the rest of the Baltics where they actually had a sizable & fairly strong bunch of local collaborators in the form of the Baltic German nobility (also puts them within striking distance of Petrograd in case of a future round of hostilities with Russia).
To balance Russia being thrown under a German-Austrian bus, the Central Powers might do the same with Turkey (which would then provide Britain & France with the lion's share of their territorial gains from this war). Assuming a late 1917/early 1918 armistice, the OE's situation is already really bad, they've already lost both Jerusalem & Baghdad by mid-late 1917 and the Russian Caucasus Army hadn't totally disintegrated yet (which historically allowed Enver Pasha to push all the way to Baku). So yeah, maybe Britain and France allow Russia to get Brest-Litovsk'd in exchange for Germany & A-H allowing them to Sèvres the Ottomans. Unfortunately for Ataturk, since they didn't gain much elsewhere the Entente will have a much bigger interest in throwing everything they've got into securing their Middle Eastern concessions (as opposed to RL where they decided it was too tough a nut to crack and they could do fine with what they already took elsewhere) and the butterfly effect might = the pro-Entente Greek king Alexander not randomly getting bitten to death by a monkey and completely fucking up the Greek political sphere & military hierarchy at the worst time possible, meaning the Great Turkey Roast actually happens and the Sick Man of Europe gets put down hard.
This doesn't seem likely to me. Trento/Südtirol, maybe Kaiser Karl would give that up for the sake of peace, though it's a big ask post-Caporetto and pre-Vittorio Veneto when the Central Powers are still sitting on a fair bit of Italian territory (same problem as the French wanting Alsace-Lorraine while the Germans are camping on Belgium & much of northern France). But Istria would require a Vittorio Veneto-level collapse for the Italians to have any hope of taking/A-H to concede, and if that's happened then A-H is out of the war entirely and a total Entente victory becomes more likely. I think Italy being compensated with southwest Turkey as planned at Sèvres is more likely than even getting Trento. Probably will still have to deal with a lot of domestic discontent due to their failure to achieve even a 'mutilated victory', maybe the Red Biennium will escalate to a proper civil war in this timeline.
I wouldn't be so quick to rule out the White Russians. Lenin was useful to get Russia out of the war, but Kaiser Wilhelm & his generals wouldn't actually want to share a border with a Bolshevik Russia either and the Whites increasingly got their shit together in late 1918-early 1919; by then they had finally united at least in principle under one guy, naval hero & polar explorer Aleksandr Kolchak, and one government. Not coincidentally, they also made their biggest advances against the Reds in 1919, with both Kolchak & the southern White generals coming alarmingly close to Moscow and the northern Whites of Nikolai Yudenich almost taking Petrograd (the Reds originally wanted to evacuate the city, but Trotsky personally forced them to fight for it & win).
A bit better luck & pacing, more coordination between their disparate armies, and possibly a little German support - nothing major because they were at war until recently, but Germany could very well be content with releasing Russian POWs into White service and they would also certainly have to crush Nestor Makhno's anarchist Black Army to secure any ambitions they might have in Ukraine anyway - and they'd have their victory. (Makhno historically fucked with the Whites' logistics, crippling their offensive on Moscow when they actually got close to the Bolshevik capital, and Lenin promptly repaid him the same way actual commie leaders repay their anarchist useful idiots again & again throughout history, by slaughtering said Blacks.)
Also to soothe Russian seething over the B-L concessions being recognized, I could see the Entente agreeing to give Kolchak's Russia the Armenian gains from Sèvres (and generally recognizing Armenia as part of Russia still, as it's obviously too weak to stand on its own). Apparently Bolshevik support for the Turks was actually a huge boost for Ataturk's nationalist faction historically, and without that - indeed with Russia joining the rest of the Entente in breaking out the heavy roach spray, as even after having been weakened by the revolutions & civil war, they would now have a chance to get something to slightly balance out their territorial losses in the west and lift up the spirit of 'Great Russian' nationalism again - it may well be curtains for Turkey. (Also if the frogs really want to troll Rosbif later for whatever reason, they could always cede their Cilician salient to Russian Armenia, allowing the Russians to skip past Constantinople to reach the Mediterranean.)
I can't see this happening at all. Germany actually had plans on the books to ethnically cleanse western Poland for mini proto-lebensraum, would have the strength to enforce that plan in a 'negotiated end to WW1' scenario, and would absolutely not want to lose more ground in the east if they've had to give Metz away in the west. There's absolutely no reason for them to willingly cede Memel to a Lithuanian puppet kingdom either, IIRC the region actually had a plurality of Germans in the interwar period (about 40-45% of the population identified as German, 26% as Lithuanians and the rest were based enough to call themselves 'Memelanders').
I think A-H might be able to avoid collapse if the armistice happens before Vittorio Veneto, but it will still be a very dicey proposition to keep the empire together for even another decade. Karl will have his work cut out for him and good intentions aside, I'm not sure the would-be saint has the chops to keep his still very volatile empire from imploding entirely. His own peaceable temperament aside, it's another very good reason as to why A-H might take little to nothing from the negotiating table (maybe reparations from Serbia for the Black Hand's assassination of Franz Ferdinand, if they could even afford to pay) even though they're technically still sitting on Italian/Serbian/Romanian territory, the Habsburgs absolutely can't afford to add even more hostile minorities to their fragile realm.
Worth noting that Karl was willing to concede on revenge against Serbia & toss A-L under the bus when he mounted his own failed attempt at peace negotiations in 1917 historically.
If they can't get Istria from a non-collapsed Austria, I can't see an Italian Dalmatia happening either. But this could feed into a two or even three-part Italian Civil War for sure, depending on whether the disillusioned fascists still ally with the severely discredited monarchy or not. The Italian fascists were after all originally of a republican persuasion, Mussolini just changed his mind to get establishment support to bury the commies in 1922 historically, and if it's looking like aligning with the Savoia would hurt rather than help him politically, well...
Agreed that a truncated & (literally) 'neutralized' Belgium with no further significant role to play in European politics is that country's likeliest future. They might still get Ruanda-Urundi as their compensatory penny for losing their eastern territories to Germany, but that & reparations is pretty much all I can see them reasonably getting with Germany still standing strong.
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- May 20, 2019
Disagree with this.
Belgium's location in the heart of western Europe and it's geography as a flat land (except the Ardennes) means it will always be a hotspot of warfare when there is an international conflict.
Additionally, Antwerp was a thorn in everyone's side.
The British saw its port as a loaded gun pointed at London, the perfect place to launch an invasion of the isles from.
The Germans saw it as a loaded gun pointed at the Ruhr, the perfect place for the British to unload from their troopships and launch an assault on the heart of German industry.
Belgium's ostensible neutrality OTL was purely the result of British Pax Britannica in the early 19th C, and with most of Belgium being occupied, with things like the front movement and Flemish, pro-german nationalism growing in strength, Belgium will probably shift its course from pro British to pro German, or with concessions to the Germans via the Flemish movement.
Chuckwagon
kiwifarms.net
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That & Belgium having to concede its eastern regions to Germany are actually the reasons why I think Belgium will continue to try to stay aloof from a future WW2 (which I do believe would be just as inevitable in a 'stalemate-->tenuous compromise peace' scenario as it was historically). Britain is the only relevant power that would be OK with them continuing to exist; Germany and France can both use its geography to gain a flanking advantage over the other, and the Germans can use a pan-Germanic 'we must gather all der Germanic-speakers under our tricolor' excuse to justify grabbing everything up to & including Flanders while France has the 'we must gather all ze Romance-speakers under our tricolor' to justify going for Wallonia (as far as historical claims go, Germany & France are about even on that count).
My guess is that Belgian diplomacy would probably be about balancing and staying out of the way of both to preserve its remaining independence & borders, in the process relying on the British guarantee to not just push back on the Germans but also on the French (who are unlikely to pose a severe threat to Germany without British support). Getting too close to Germany leaves them vulnerable to both French plans for restoring the latter's 'natural borders' while alienating their traditional British protector, and little recourse if Germany decides that actually they don't need to bother with keeping up the farce of Belgian independence & should just go right for Flanders (they're also going to need the rest of Belgium because that's in the way between Germany proper & their Flemish cousins).
Another factor I've come to consider are the volatile political developments in France. Failing to indisputably win WW1 will hurt the Third Republic's legitimacy considerably, even if they avoid an immediate collapse because they at least got something out of the deal via Metz, and anti-liberal forces on both their right & left wings can garner support by pointing & going '1 million of us didn't die, and 4+ million more sustain life-altering wounds, for less than 1/2 of Alsace-Lorraine/Cameroon/Togoland'. The Republic was generally friendlier to & enjoyed greater support from the left wing so maybe they'd be OK with propping it up in this timeline (as long as they're able to wrench greater concessions from the system of course), but historically they were almost overthrown by far-right 'leagues' despite winning the war: it's not hard to imagine that Charles Maurras and his cohorts would enjoy better luck, and probably earlier, with the support of many more angry veterans returning from the Western Front. Using a 'more successful Nivelle Offensive' POD to justify the Germans being willing to yield an inch on Metz, he would even have a ready-made stab-in-the-back legend to gin up such support ('we were winning but the chickenshit leftards in charge got spooked/mind-controlled by Judeo-Bolshevik fellow travelers into settling for way less than your blood was worth, bros').
A reactionary France further leads into an interesting change in military strategy: they would have to get rid of the republican-inclined high command, since the Third Republic's liberals actually did engage in a wide-ranging conspiracy to lock Catholic conservatives out of senior positions for fear that they'd launch a military coup and the RL French overall commander during WW2, Maurice Gamelin, was in part chosen because he was a staunch republican loyalist during a time of political turmoil. So Maurras and his chosen kings, the Bourbon-Orléans, would have to purge those guys as a matter of self-defense (lest they get tossed out in a republican counter-coup) and replace them with younger, royalist-inclined blood - officers like Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque and Charles de Gaulle, who (completely contrary to the senior French commanders) favored aggressive & mobile modern tactics and forces in the leadup to WW2. Hauteclocque was a lifelong monarchist conservative & a member of AF until they became Nazi collaborators IRL, so there's no problem there; as for De Gaulle, he hailed from a conservative Catholic family and was actually originally sympathetic to the far-right to the point of being an AF supporter, only moderating later in life & coming to dislike Maurras by the time of the Munich Treaty (1938 ) IRL - he'd have no reason to do so in this timeline, in fact I think he'd probably be even further disenchanted with the Republic since they failed to get a clean win over the Germans in this scenario.
Instead of building the Maginot Line and hoping to defensively fight the Germans in Belgium, I think it is almost certain that we'd see interwar French doctrine & capabilities developing in pretty much the polar opposite way as IRL, with De Gaulle & likeminded 'young guard' military thinkers in France pushing for as many new armored & mechanized units as they can afford (based on the usage of early armor in the Nivelle Offensive) as well as a much more aggressive strategy for the usage of such units (they're not going to get the rest of A-L, much less the Saarland & Rhineland, by sitting behind fortifications after all). It might seem strange that the French would seemingly disregard the lessons WW1 taught re: the apparent supremacy of defense over offense, and downright retarded that they would go for a modernized take on the 'cult of the offensive' that cost them so much in WW1's early days, but then you could say the exact same about Germany's embrace of blitzkrieg IRL.
Speaking of which, it will probably be Germany (as the closest thing this WW1 would have to a winner) that goes for a more cautious & defensive strategy, since they have more gains to defend and a more comfortable position on paper compared to France. They might eventually attack, as their WW2 goal in the west would include taking the Briey-Longwy iron mines & steel factories to neuter France's industrial capacity, but there's not so much pressure for them to try to do it as quickly & aggressively as the Nazis did historically. Since they will actually own eastern Belgium in this scenario, their high command might well roll with Franz Halder's original plan for the attack into France from RL: essentially a modernized Schlieffen Plan with more modest aims for fear of overextension, one which very nearly made the same mistake the French did in taking away the wrong lessons from WW1. Fortunately for Germany Hitler, in one of his few genuinely clever military planning moments, went 'wait that's retarded, I like the cut of Von Manstein's jib better', but in this timeline there would realistically be no Hitler (at least not anywhere near the halls of power), nobody to countermand the entrenched aristocratic generals like Halder (I don't see any reason why Kaisers Wilhelm II or III would disagree with Halder's cautious assessment, they weren't very creative military minds, plus the latter was actually a commander at Verdun while he was Crown Prince and thus if anything would have personal reasons to believe that a bolder attacking strategy would be suicidal), and in fact it would seem like an actually good idea to use this plan which wouldn't even require them to invade Belgium again (since they should have the necessary eastern Belgian/Luxembourgian territories for their route already).
Tl;dr of the above autistic wargaming, Belgium can't afford to alienate either the Entente or Germany by straying from a policy of strict neutrality, and may actually be saved in the short to medium term anyway by the Franco-German border's extension at their expense (making it less likely that Germany would have to invade them again to get at France or vice-versa) as well as changes in doctrine brought on by the different post-war military geography, war objectives & politics. If anything I think it's more likely that we'll see De Gaulle & Hauteclocque planning a French armored offensive to punch through the now-German-controlled Ardennes and try to circumvent whatever defenses exist in German A-L/Wallonia. In the event that France actually wins WW2 they might become so ambitious as to seriously threaten Belgium in their pursuit of the 'natural French borders' and collapse their alliance with Britain that way, but that's rather beyond the scope of my planning right now; I don't believe it's realistic for the French to threaten Belgian neutrality or otherwise majorly piss the British off until and unless Germany, which would remain their public enemy #1 in a 'nobody wins WW1' scenario, has been dealt with first.
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Has anyone found anything interesting from Ian's Usenet days?
For a guy who works with tech, he is one lazy thinned-skin piece of shit when it comes to managing a forum. I bet he's had decades of experience over his career, and yet he still can't update a simple xenforo forum?
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That seems to be the end state of everyone who runs a forum, sometimes with lethal consequences as the case of Lowtax demonstrates. The only solution appears to be to sell the forum and vanish into the void like CJayC from Gamefaqs did.