Short AH: Churchill Retires From Politics After Gallipoli

The First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, was forced out of office after the failure of Gallipoli as part of the price from the Conservative Party to join an all party coalition under Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Churchill, in a rather characteristic display, went a step further and resigned his seat in the House of Commons in late 1915. The army gave him a temporary rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and was put in charge of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. While in the trenches, Churchill was brave and devoted, leading multiple sorties into No Mans Land. By the summer of 1916, Churchill had developed a personal bond with his men, well known for his rousing speeches, his wit, and his willingness to do as the soldiers did. However, an artillery barrage in August, 1916 killed Churchill and other men of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He was buried in a military cemetery in France, and Churchill's name became a footnote in the history of World War One.

Decades later, American writer Phillip Dick postulated an interesting alternate history scenario in his book Man in the High Castle, where Churchill didn't give up his seat in the House of Commons, and returned to the UK a few months later to sit in and speak after his brief sortie in the front line. In this scenario, Churchill would have been the one lone voice of opposition to the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany lead by Adolf Hitler, and would have pushed the UK government to confront him, increase the military, and end appeasement. The start of the war in May of 1939, when Poland was overrun and England and France watched and did nothing, would have been viciously attacked by Churchill, and when Hitler invaded the Low Countries and France in surprise, though they were neutral, the UK finally went to war. However, the British army was in no shape to send troops to France, and the nation fell in six weeks. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was disposed from office, and, this was the big change, instead of Lord Halifax being named Prime Minister, Winston Churchill was selected instead. 

Churchill, using his sharp tongue, his flair for the dramatic, and his strategic mindset that only failed him at Gallipoli, would organize the British to stand up to Nazi Germany, instead of meekly rolling over and signing the "Pact of Berlin" in 1941, where the Nazis and Britain didn't interfere with each other's empires, and would not have ended up fighting. Instead, Churchill leads Britain in a long, bloody war with Nazi Germany that for three years was mostly fought on the oceans and air. However, by this point the Germans were strong enough to invade England itself, and in a long, brutal Battle of Britain, Churchill is forced to a mountain redoubt in Scotland (making him the so-called "Man in the High Castle") where he continued to fight the Nazi's as they fully occupied England. Unfortunately, the story ends at this point, and the promised sequel never came.

It was an interesting bit of alternate history, but many dismissed the plot as nothing short of incredulous, considering how the Third Reich currently dominates most of Europe, and the weakness of the leaders of Britain since the rise of the superior Nazi's. The fact that the British Empire hasn't been fully taken over is seen as Hitler's fondness of their history and empire, despite their weakness and political infighting over the past two decades. The thought that one man could have convinced the British to fight the Nazi's still seems rather implausible, even if you went back in time.

-Book Review, Man in the High Castle, 1984.

This scenario is taken from a suggestion made by James McGregor on Facebook! Thank you!

But what do you think? How different would a world without Winston Churchill really be? Or if you have a topic or idea you would like me to talk about, please leave comments below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter @tbguy1992.

Short AH #2: Nazi Germany Loses World War Three

The following is an excerpt from Dr. Julian Denwich's newest work "Why Germany Lost World War Three," which will be released next week. It's an interesting, accessible look into why one of the largest empires in world history failed in what many saw as a foregone conclusion. Utilizing documents and information that for years had been thought lost with the destruction of Berlin, along with primary documents, interviews, and scholarly research, Dr. Denwich presents a fascinating, and ultimately chilling view of how close the Nazi's may have actually gotten to winning the Third World War, and the reasons why they lost.


"The heart attack and death of Josef Stalin in the first few days after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR, and the devastating political struggle that followed, allowed Operation Barbarossa to succeed in it's goal of destroying the Communist threat before it could properly mobilize and try to slow down and eventually halt the invasion. The fact that the Germans were, more often than not, stumbling on military divisions and entire armies that were turned on each other to support rival leaders trying to claim the Kremlin only made it easier. Of course, the brutal Nazi occupation, the execution and starvation of prisoners and civilians in the demented Nazi racial policies that were conducted during the invasion and afterward led to partisan fighting against each other and the Nazi's that continued for decades, right up until the Nazi's tried to invade America."

"Commentators in the US had, ever since the fall of Europe to Hitler, been in one of three camps: splendid isolation, the believe that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would be able to protect the homeland from invasion so it was best to just not care and not pay attention; Foreign intervention, where the US should use it's power to engage in those nations that were trying to take over the world for evil; and Fascist Revolution, who saw the US as weak and ineffectual, and sought to have the US adopt some of the obviously successful Nazi policies that saw them recover from the Great Depression and take over an entire continent... The attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, and the Pacific War that followed, seemed to have confirmed all three trains of thought. The fact that the Japanese could only reach Hawaii, thousands of miles from the US homeland, and the eventual defeat thanks to the US Navy proved isolation could work. Then there were those that saw the war that was fought that eventually lead to the defeat of the Japanese Empire and their reformation into the Republic of Japan and the democratization of the former European colonies, that foreign intervention was the duty of the most powerful democratic nation in the world to undertake. Those that called themselves Fascist claimed that the government failed during the early war due to not drafting all citizens and mobilizing all factories to produce war materials, but they applauded the internment of the vast majority of those of Japanese descent for the duration of the war."

"It seemed to have always been one of Hitler's goals to knock the US down a few pegs: he considered America one of the greatest sources of "international Jewry" in the world, and if the greedy capitalists, decadent Hollywood movies and "Negro and Jewish infiltration" of society were allowed to continue, then it would eventually destroy Nazi Germany as well. So by the lat 1940s, even as the army was still fighting in the Ural Mountains to suppress the Russian partisans, he was already making plans for the invasion of the United States."

"The original plan was, in the usual Nazi style, both simple and grandiose. It involved transporting 200,000 men in the first wave alone to land in Newfoundland, where military bases and supply depots could be established. Then, another amphibious attack to capture Halifax a major port and the ability to allow fighters and bombers range to attack most of Northeastern America, and then from there, landings near Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. Never mind that the peace deal with the United Kingdom and the British Empire was to last for 20 years. Never mind that the first attack would mean sending 15-20 divisions of soldiers 3000 miles across the ocean, then get them to land on a hostile shore and sweep aside all opposition. Never mind that not a single aircraft carrier was still available to provide even a rudimentary air cover*. The sheer force of Nazi soldiers, battle hardened veterans all, should be able to overcome every obstacle."

"The US had a secret weapon, one that was secretly given to them from England: the Enigma Code. Broken in 1941, a few months before the British signed the Treaty of Dunkirk. It didn't play a huge role in the war in Europe, but the fact that the Nazi's still believed in the late 1940s that it hadn't been broken, it was only in 1948 that a replacement was even being considered but constantly pushed back later and later. During the invasion in 1950, the Enigma machine was still the primary source of sending coded messages between Berlin and it's armies. Within weeks of Hitler's order to prepare for an invasion of the US in October 1950, American codebreakers were telling President Warren that war was inevitable. He knew he had to prepare for the fight, but, with an isolationist Congress, he had to tread carefully, almost too slow for what the events demanded."

"The Battle of the Grand Banks is often called by naval observers as 'shooting fish in a barrel.' The vanguard of the German navy, with the battleships Bismarck, Triptiz, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Barbarossa leading the way, were obliterated by American aircraft carrier pilots. Of the nearly 320 German ships sent to Newfoundland, only 98 made it home... There is some confusion as to who shot first: Admiral Nimitz, in charge of the US fleet, claimed that it was only when the USS Ward was fired upon by a U-boat that he ordered the attack (as was his orders: if the Nazi's attacked or did reach Newfoundland, they could then be attacked, but otherwise they were to be left alone), but German survivors claimed that the Americans struck first. The argument is more academic than anything else, as it was clear that the Nazi's had a huge fleet, almost the entire German merchant marine hauling thousands of soldiers, and were sailing for North America. World War Three had begun."

"By 1952, Hitler was more or less completely detached from reality. Strategic bombing raids by the British and Americans, the defection of their Italian, Spanish, and Vichy French allies, the uprisings in Poland, Northern France, the Low Countries and pressure from Russia all lead to his issuing of deranged, insane, and often contradictory orders. Destroy the dykes in Holland. Build the dykes higher to prevent an invasion. Destroy the town of Krakow, and build an entire replica to be populated by Germans. Invade Switzerland to prevent them from stabbing Germany in the back...He was paranoid, sick, turing into a hypochondriac, and, as has been revealed recently, often high on
Methamphetamines and in late stages of syphilis sickness. By this point, a small group of leading Nazis: Hermann Goering, secretary Martin Bormann, SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, Propaganda maestro Joseph Goebbels and Minister of Economics Arthur Seyss-Inquart were actually in charge as a secret cabal, limiting access to Hitler, but trying to reduce the damages of Hitler's increasingly delusional orders. It's remarkable that these five men managed to keep Nazi Germany fighting as long as they did, though they were often at each other's throats, and often ended up causing more confusion than Hitler caused. But there was absolutely no thought to having Hitler step aside: the Fuhrer was the Fuhrer, and he was still in charge."

"The invasion of Nazi Europe in May 1953 on the North Sea coast of Germany, with paratroopers, amphibious assaults and massive air raids was, in comparison to the botched and thrown together invasion of Newfoundland by the Nazi's, a master plan that only the likes of Chief of Staff of the US Army General George Patton could have come up with. While the area was heavily defended by concrete bunkers and troops, the Kreigsmarine was no where to be seen, either sheltered in the Baltic or at the bottom of the sea. The Luftwaffe was gone from the skies, leaving US, UK, and Canadian air forces to have free reign. The fighting on the landing zones was tough, but the inability of the Nazi High Command to go against Hitler's orders to prepare for a landing in Northern France meant that when the Germans were finally pushed back, there were no reinforcements. But the Allies were not quite capable of pushing forward 'All the way to Berlin,' as Patton claimed."

"The Wermacht had had enough. The trench warfare in Northern Europe for the past six months was only going against the Germans. The Nazi regime in Europe was coming apart at the seems. Entire platoons of troops in France and Poland just vanished thanks to the partisans. Food and supplies were failing to reach the front lines. Morale was at an all time low. The Soviet idea of 'Commissars' to stand behind troops ordered to go forward to make sure that there was something scarier behind them was starting to be put in place by the SS. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, asked to do the impossible by the Nazis, finally did the unthinkable. He began to plan to have his entire command surrender to the Allies, and turn on the Nazis and overthrow them."

"The mythical 'Battle of Berlin,' where every living Nazi soldier would fight to defend the capital from the Allies never happened. The Provisional Republic of Germany, with the 'Desert Fox' and the 'Knight of the Steppes' leading it - and perhaps more importantly, three square meals a day and offering, at least, peace at home - was more alluring to the average, conscripted German soldier than the delusional and mad Nazi regime. There were the loyalists, true, that would fight to keep the National Socialists in power, but they were outnumbered 10 to 1. The Battle of Berlin was more a mopping up by the Allies, fighting the few pockets of resistance, capturing Nazi leaders, and ending the Nazi nightmare in Europe...It was only on March 19, 1954, that the body of Adolf Hitler was found. It turned out he had died five months before from the third stroke in two years, but the Nazi Junta never revealed the information."

"The Nazi regime was, perhaps, one of the most inefficient regimes ever constructed. The fact that in 1950, before the start of the war, that there was two general staffs, bureaucratic offices that were often created with overlapping areas of authority, leading to examples such as four agencies devoted to economic matters, three managing railroads, five in charge of acquiring warplanes and, most infamously, two with the sole purpose of actually trying to reorganize the government! There was also wasted money on "superweapons," often with multiple groups working on one project. Three worked on intercontinental ballistic missiles, four on developing what we today would call "railguns", and four in the pursuit of developing an atomic bomb. Most of the research duplicated each other, and when American nuclear engineers looked over the documents, they found out that most were redeveloping techniques and theories that people like Albert Einstein had figured out years before, all to avoid 'Jewish' science."

"The discovery of the concentration camps, most of which had already been destroyed as having completed their usefulness, forever made the word 'Nazi' synonymous with 'evil.' The fact that at the end of the Third World War, in the land that Nazi Germany directly controlled, there were at most 7,000 Jewish men, women and children, out of nine million Jews that lived in Europe before the Nazi's came to power in 1933. An entire subset of people wiped out all for one man's demented ideas of race. Millions more were killed in what is now Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, the Novgorod Republic, and the Russian Republic, and tens of thousands of 'political opponents', making Nazi Germany the home of the worst genocide in history. We should thank God that the Thousand Year Reich lasted only 21 years. But it was 21 years too long."

*(note earlier in book: even after the end of World War 2 in Europe, the Kreigsmarine and Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe could not decide, of all things, who would be in charge of the airplanes on aircraft carriers. Goering claimed superiority in "everything that flew" while the navy rightly pointed out that since the planes would be on a ship, it would be best that they would be under the navy's control. Hitler, as per his management style, let the two argue about it. They continued to argue about it until, finally, in the last days of World War Three, it was decided that the Kreigsmarine could have the planes. By then, there were no planes left.)



But what do you think? How would Nazi Germany fight a Third World War? Or if you have a topic or idea you would like me to talk about, please leave comments below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter @tbguy1992. 

Short AH #1: The USA Falls to Communism

How the United States of American Finally Collapsed

The final collapse of the United States of America in 2004 was the death knell of Capitalism, as forecasted by Marx, Lenin, and Gorbachov. The problems of America were many: those that owned the means of production where too rich, and used their wealth to control the government to pass laws that directly affected the workers. Unions were stripped of their power, the "welfare net" was destroyed, and jobs were shipped overseas to countries that didn't care to provide satisfactory wages or even safe working environments. The greed and fear of the wealthy lead to the collapse of the system, as the rich head ate the poor legs that sustained it, the arms that defended it, and attacked their own heart, the belief in their ideas of democracy, until soon nothing was left.

The President Ronald Reagan, an actor and lunatic who sought to destroy the few small socialist ideals of the US, such as their Social Security and the unions, was the first to face the wrath of the people, being killed by Hero of the People John Hinckley Jr., who was then gunned down by the bodyguards of the corrupt tyrant. The Vice President, Herbert Walker Bush, tried to continue the policies of his predecessor, but was defeated in the election of 1984.

The next few Presidents were ineffectual: George McGovern, Walter Mondale, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., and the Christian "Televangelist" Pat Robertson lead the nation deeper and deeper to ruin, the failing of the old American system. Elections that prized speeches and personality to policies and ideas lead to a worsening government. The Congress couldn't agree on anything. The success of the Persian Gulf War, which the USSR and other nations helped participate to overthrow the dictator Saddam Hussien (and later led to the General being elected as a "war hero," though his army didn't even enter Iraqi territory until Soviet troops were already besieging Baghdad) was a short lived victory, as the economy stagnated, and the "voodoo economics" of tax cuts to the wealthy to trickle down to the poor continued to fail, but the insanity of the system led to the government of the rich, with no care for the poor and downtrodden workers, continue to cut taxes for the richest.

The Revolution began in the American province of Michigan in June 1999, as a strike by workers at the auto factory owned by the Ford family turned violent, and the National Guard that was sent suppress the fighting was fired upon by angry workers, who, due to the idiocy of their Constitution, was allowed to keep powerful weapons that could be used against the state, and soon a full scale battle broke out. Other cities, like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Atlanta also faced the brunt of riots and fighting. President Robertson, blinded by his devotion to the Christian Bible, sought to destroy the workers, and so sent in the army, a violation of "American ideals" now ignored. But the workers would not be suppressed easily. The American people, shocked at what was happening, were divided between themselves on supporting a corrupt, inefficient government or aiding the poor workers and laborers, and more and more people began to support the oppressed.

The fighting was brutal, and long. The United Nations, the one place that symbolized peace in the world, had to flee New York City as the jewel of the oppressors, Manhattan, was set to the fire. Soldiers, shocked at the conditions of the poor, and furious of their government, began to defect to the workers. The Liberals who sought to aid the poor also joined the movement, the blinding ideology of American Exceptionalism torn from their eyes, aided the Revolution. But the rich, the powerful, the ideologically blinded, the easily swayed, remained on the side of the Tyranny of Pat Robertson, who used the war to declare himself President without an election.

The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, seeing the plight of the downtrodden, sought to aid them by declaring war on the US, and landing troops and supplies and weapons to the resistance. NATO sought to respond, but without the Americans to prop them up, they were quickly defeated in battle in Germany and Italy. The US Navy, rocked by the same revolution as the American people, was unable to withstand the Soviet Navy, and they retreated, with the President and his lackeys, to the American province of Hawaii, where they remain to this day.

The fighting was long and brutal as brother fought brother, son fought son, entire families were torn apart. But by 2004, the reactionary forces of the corrupt, decadent US finally surrendered. The rich capitalists tried to flee to Canada and Mexico, but both nations, propped up by American power for so long, also faced revolution, and many were killed or retreated further, to Australia and South Africa.

The Revolution in 2004 saw the end of the United States of America, Canada and Mexico. In it's place, many nations arose. The People's Republic of Cascadia, the Union of American Socialist States in the former "Midwest" and Central Canada, the People's Republic of the South, the People's Republic of Texas, the Sovereign Socialist States of New England, the People's Republic of Quebec, and the People's Socialist State of Mexico. While wars have raged in North America ever since the failure of the USA over things like borders and resources, all the nations have agreed to hand over their nuclear stockpiles to the USSR and China for destruction, so that nuclear war will not break out. Europe was able to keep their positions as social democratic nations, but without the US, their capitalist systems will soon crumble, and they too will join the new World League of Socialist States, the successor to the failed United Nations.

NOTES: This will be a new series I will try, mostly with scenarios that I want to explore, but don't want to go into super long details of how they would go. I tried for weeks to write this article, but I just couldn't think of a good enough POD, and then how the changes would occur afterwards. So, I decided to not focus on that, and instead write a POV of the fall of America.

There are most likely a lot of problems with this scenario, but I didn't have the time to cover everything. That's what a TL on the AltHistory Wikia is for, after all. But, I know I didn't talk about Culture, Africa, the Middle East, or really explained why the US finally went for a communist revolution besides a few details. And, tbh, I feel it works best that way. This is what a through-fully indoctrinated Communist American would write about how their nation had fallen, as history is shaped by the victors to glorify the successes and increase hatred of the defeated capitalists.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy! GLORY TO THE UNION OF AMERICAN SOCIALIST STATES!

But what do you think? How do you think the United States would fall to the Red Menace? Or if you have a topic or idea you would like me to talk about, please leave comments below, email me at tbguy1992@gmail.com, or tell me on Twitter @tbguy1992.