Your favorite alternate history timelines?

WolfBear

Well-known member
What are some of your favorite alternate history timelines? I'm especially thinking of the extremely long and detailed ones.

For me, here are some of mine:



A Blunted Sickle ; continued here: A Blunted Sickle - Thread II

The first TL here is about Robert E. Lee getting captured in 1864 and having world history proceed differently from that point in time, including having the Ottomans win their 1877-1878 war with Russia and having a different World War I and World War II.

The second TL here is about Charles Evans Hughes winning the US Presidency in 1916 and subsequently bringing the US into World War I.

The third TL here is about France not falling in 1940 and the Anglo-French subsequently winning World War II.
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
I really liked Decisive Darkness: What if Japan hadn't surrendered in 1945?

I liked the forlorn hope, the "against all odds" feel of seeing everything crumble, rooting for the Japanese to perhaps go underground and one day retake Japan. Lots of sacrifices. Gripping read. Sadly it ends with Japan turning into a ruined 3rd world country scorned by everyone and the US dangling nukes over everyone to enforce their global rule. Also MacArthur standing on top of the dirty bomb... and it not going off was disappointing.
 

History Learner

Well-known member
I really liked Decisive Darkness: What if Japan hadn't surrendered in 1945?

I liked the forlorn hope, the "against all odds" feel of seeing everything crumble, rooting for the Japanese to perhaps go underground and one day retake Japan. Lots of sacrifices. Gripping read. Sadly it ends with Japan turning into a ruined 3rd world country scorned by everyone and the US dangling nukes over everyone to enforce their global rule. Also MacArthur standing on top of the dirty bomb... and it not going off was disappointing.

I haven't read it all the way through, the author annoyed me with the Soviet landings bit in Hokkaido simply because such is insanely ASB. The Soviets didn't have the NGF, the landing craft or the airpower to make anything beyond an administrative landing, which was actually what they were planning instead of going straight into the teeth of 100,000+ IJA and 450 planes lol.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
I haven't read it all the way through, the author annoyed me with the Soviet landings bit in Hokkaido simply because such is insanely ASB. The Soviets didn't have the NGF, the landing craft or the airpower to make anything beyond an administrative landing, which was actually what they were planning instead of going straight into the teeth of 100,000+ IJA and 450 planes lol.

What exactly do you mean by administrative landing here?
 

History Learner

Well-known member
What exactly do you mean by administrative landing here?

They basically planned to make a landing after the expected Japanese surrender; i.e. no resistance expected because the war was over. This has since been morphed by Soviet boosters into a D-Day for the Red Army with its grand total of six LCI...out of an original nine because they lost like three in landing on one island in the Kurils.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
They basically planned to make a landing after the expected Japanese surrender; i.e. no resistance expected because the war was over. This has since been morphed by Soviet boosters into a D-Day for the Red Army with its grand total of six LCI...out of an original nine because they lost like three in landing on one island in the Kurils.

Would something like this as the new border for the Soviet sphere of influence in Japan be plausible? :


Romoi-Kushiro_Line.png
 

History Learner

Well-known member
Would something like this as the new border for the Soviet sphere of influence in Japan be plausible? :


Romoi-Kushiro_Line.png

I'm on record as stating a continuing World War II is more likely to see the Soviet zone including all of Korea than any mainland Japanese territory, including the Kurils. The one island the Soviets landed on saw them at a 1:1 parity with the Japanese but the latter was inflicting a casualty rate of 1:1.5 and basic math explains where that goes...
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
I'm on record as stating a continuing World War II is more likely to see the Soviet zone including all of Korea than any mainland Japanese territory, including the Kurils. The one island the Soviets landed on saw them at a 1:1 parity with the Japanese but the latter was inflicting a casualty rate of 1:1.5 and basic math explains where that goes...

Are you talking about Shumshu or about another island here?

And is it possible that the US could trade northern Hokkaido or even all of Hokkaido for South Korea in the post-World War II peace negotiations? In Germany, Thuringia was traded for West Berlin, after all.
 

ATP

Well-known member
I'm on record as stating a continuing World War II is more likely to see the Soviet zone including all of Korea than any mainland Japanese territory, including the Kurils. The one island the Soviets landed on saw them at a 1:1 parity with the Japanese but the latter was inflicting a casualty rate of 1:1.5 and basic math explains where that goes...
Since it was 1:15 for american,it imply that in possible USA-soviet war 10 soviets would die for one american.
 

History Learner

Well-known member
Since it was 1:15 for american,it imply that in possible USA-soviet war 10 soviets would die for one american.

The Japanese ratio at Okinawa and Iwo Jima was 1:1 or better, by late in the war the Japanese had adjusted their tactics to the extent they were inflicting casualties at an equal rate even on the Americans. If you exclude starvation deaths, which were the majority of the IJA's losses in WWII, the ratio looks even better overall.
 

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant

PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
It's not just starvation (or starvation related) deaths, poor state of medical support meant that during island battles many wounded succumbed to infections and of course during the island battles, there was no other choice than dead or prisoner, so irrecoverable casualties were 100%, while Americans had normal irrecoverable/recoverable rates, even if their casualties were heavy or in case of Iwo Jima exceeding the Japanese total losses.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
The Japanese had far more irrecoverable losses though.

My favourite timeline would be Vivat Stilicho which is about Stilicho surviving his betrayal and continuing propping up the crumbling Western Roman Empire. Ongoing.

Another would be The consequence of an errant shell, where during the Battle of Yellow Sea Russians get a lucky hit on ammo storage of Togo's flagship, also Nicholas II dies early. There is also story only thread. Concluded.
Hey, thanks - I'm seriously flattered that my timeline has already made it onto someone's favorites list :D

As for TLs that I myself like, The Footprint Of Mussolini is a big one. It's the best take I've seen on 'what if fascism wasn't totally evil' without going overboard and just absolutely whitewashing Mussolini & his ideology. It also has the audacity to portray Israel and the European colonial empires as factions which aren't completely, cartoonishly villainous and exist to be eradicated by Mary Sue commie/socialist Third World freedom fighter types, which might have flown smoothly in the AH.com of 2012 but (as you can guess from the arguments people have had over the TL even off the board) inevitably drew tons of outrage in 2022. Frankly I'm downright astonished that the author has managed to write a story in which Fascist Italy and Israel are good guys and not get banned (yet) by Ian the Admin.

And for a less modern pick, I'm a fan of Historia Arturii Aureliani (a quasi-historical rendering of King Arthur's legend in the style of a chronicle written by a Romano-British clergyman who's also his adoptive grandson) as well.
 

TheRomanSlayer

Unipolarity is for Subhuman Trogdolytes
My all time favorite: Zhirinovsky's Russian Empire. It's about a different development of post-Soviet Russia where instead of drunkard Yeltsin, we have the late Mad Vlad in charge of the former USSR. However, instead of Russia getting screwed by crony capitalism on steroids, we have an alternate USSR that somehow plays the role of OTL Yugoslavia under Milosevic, which inevitably means more genocides, rebellions, and civil wars.
 

Skallagrim

Well-known member
These are all on AH.com and I've provided the links. I've sorted them into competed TLS, WIPs and abandoned TLs. I've posted a more extensive list at some point in the past, but in this case I've whittled it down to three TLs in each of the aforementioned categories. (In each category, the TLs are listed chronologically by POD.)


1) Timelines that are completed:

The Book of the Holy Mountain - An Alternate Seminar in Alternate Pre- and Ancient History by Salvador79 (completed; published November 2017 - November 2018). I won't spoil the exact POD since Salvador doesn't reveal it immediately, but the POD is several thousand years BC. The timeline is presented as an academic seminar, which works amazingly well.

Decades of Darkness by Jared (completed; published 2004 - 2009). Thomas Jefferson dies during a crucial stage of the debate over the Embargo Act, and this dominoes into the secession of New England. The result is a slavocratic and increasingly expansionist ATL version of the USA. This being a more realistic take on the Draka (with America itself into the role of the horrifying "Anti-America"), it was rather inevitable that the TL has become a standard example of what a well-written dystopia looks like.

A Greater Britain, Mk2 by EdT (completed; the TL ran from November 2007 through February 2008). The very different career of one Oswald Mosley.



2) Timelines that are still being updated:

"And All Nations Shall Gather To It" - A Crusades TL by Rdffigueira (still being updated; the timeline has been going since 2017). With a POD in 1098, during the Siege of Antioch, the seeds for a genuine alliance between Byzantium and the Crusaders are preserved.

Look to the West by Thande (continued here, here, here, here, and here, with Volume VIII now completed, and Volume IX presumably forthcoming -- the timeline has been going since 2007). George II trips at his coronation. His son laughs. His son is sent across the Atlantic for his insolence. The world will never be the same again. But that's just the premise. This timeline cannot be described in any short summation. It's quite literally as detailed as real history, and is no more inclined to limit its scope. As far as I'm concerned, this is the single most impressive work of alternate history that's ever been written, bar none.

Wrapped in Flames: The Great American War and Beyond by EnglishCanuck (still being updated; the timeline has been going since 2016). Britain gets involved in the American Civil War. We are by now in 1864, in-universe.



3) Timelines that are unfinished and on a (seemingly) permanent hiatus:

Μηδίζω! The World of Achaemenid Hellas by Daeres (TL ran from January 2015 through September 2020). The title sort of tells you exactly what it's about; the POD is that the Greeks lose at Salamis.

"The Caesariad" by EdT (TL ran from April 2011 through August 2011). The fall of the Roman Republic and the struggle for power, but not as in OTL, all predicated on the initial POD that the child of Julia and Pompeius survives childbirth.

If they will not meet us on the open sea (a Trent TL) by Saphroneth (discontinued due to the author getting banned; the TL ran from May 2016 through June 2017). Britain gets involved in the American Civil War. We had arrived at January 1866, in-universe.
 

WolfBear

Well-known member
I really like this AH.com Wikibox TL about a world with a surviving Franz Ferdinand:


Here's a relatively short but still very good TL along the same topic:

 

WolfBear

Well-known member
Here's an interesting AH.com TL about a Soviet coalition government emerging in Russia in late 1917 and thus Russia avoiding decades of Bolshevik rule and tyranny:

 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top