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Post by lee on Jul 13, 2023 14:49:26 GMT
I am desperately trying to get back into writing after a long dry spell and I have a question concerning the series I was working on.
What would the world be like if there was no World War One? Aside from World War Two, I mean.
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shlomo
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Posts: 83
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Post by shlomo on Jul 13, 2023 15:28:45 GMT
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Post by lee on Jul 13, 2023 15:31:34 GMT
I know the Allies spent approximately $125,266,000,000 compared to the Central Powers $61,215,000,000, so there would be a major economic change.
As far as casualties, there were approximately 40 million. It is assumed there were 10 million civilian deaths, 5.7 million Allied deaths and 4 million Central Powers deaths. That leaves 10.3 million casualties resulting from injury and sickness. Obviously, population would also be affected.
What else might be affected?
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Post by lee on Jul 13, 2023 15:32:59 GMT
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Post by dans on Jul 13, 2023 16:54:17 GMT
technology might not have advanced so quickly - particularly airplanes. Much civilian tech is adaptation of military advances. Might not have Daylight Savings Time. Some medical advancements were due to the war, particularly in antiseptic and anesthetic areas. Stainless Steel was invented during the war. Radio and telephone would not have advanced so rapidly. Probably there were advancements in vehicle technology too. I think machine guns are a WW1 development. Chemical warfare (and protection from chemical warfare) was still in infancy during WW2.
So maybe
telegraph is still the primary mode of long distance communication. Maybe the East Asian countries are leading the radio revolution because it is really difficult to send the symbols in their languages via telegraph key? most personal vehicles are steam powered the primary long distance transportation is steam powered dirigibles? the adoption and growth of mass production in practically every industry would be slowed. Drone technology would be delayed.
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Post by dave on Jul 13, 2023 20:43:53 GMT
The Spanish Flu might not have been as lethal. Machine guns were pre WWI tech, but using chemical warfare was not used until the war. The Depression may not have happened as Germany did not have such an overwhelming debt; or not as bad. The Austrian-Hungarian Empire would probably still break up into smaller states. Revolutions would probably occur throughout Europe.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Jul 14, 2023 0:54:11 GMT
Communism and Fascism would never have risen to power. They arose because people felt that World War 1 had discredited the idea of classical Liberalism, that all men should be free. Without World War 1, liberal regimes dominated by the wealthy aristocratic classes would remain the norm. Decolonization probably would not happen. If it did, the "independent" states would remain puppets of western democracies.
The world would not remain static. Russia would industrialize, and without the purges or the total cultural suicide caused by the communists it would become far more powerful than the Soviet Union, probably one of the most powerful nations on Earth. There would likely still be a World War, as Tsarist Russia would ally themselves with Japan (also a rising power trying to form their own empire and compete with the west) and go to war with everybody else. This would be around the time of World War2.
The British Empire would remain the strongest nation of Earth longer, and probably come into conflict with the rising power of the United States. A war might break out in the 1920s over oil right in Venezuela
The world would be much more religious, since religiosity declined sharply after the tragedy of the World Wars. Everybody would still be expect to attend church on Sunday, and nobody would curse in public. Western society would never become obsessed with avoiding harm of any kind. This idea emerged from the World Wars, as people decided that nothing mattered except staying safe, and abandoned the idea of noble suffering. Instead, nationalism and heroic military virtues would be highly admired. Frankly, people would probably be ruder (and more honest) with each other and less concerned about hurting people's feelings. There would be no such thing as politically correct speech
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Post by dans on Jul 14, 2023 21:52:22 GMT
probably submarine technology would lag behind - but if there is a Nemo in your world, that probably doesn't matter
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Post by dave on Jul 14, 2023 23:00:50 GMT
While I can agree that Fascism wouldn't rise, Communism would be a continuing festering problem in the autocratic European monarchies and to a lesser degree in the democracies. Especially in an economic downturn. Nationalism would also be a problem for the colonial powers, especially in India. The Chinese Civil would still happen, as would the Sino-Japanese war. I don't see Russia and Japan becoming allies as I think they would to go to was over the rich resources in Manchuria as well as the territory Russia gave Japan in the Russo-Japanese War.
The British Empire would be the only true global power. While the US would continue rely on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for defense and maintain only small army, her Navy would probably be the fourth largest in the world because of those same oceans with The British Empire remaining in the top spot and Germany second with the Imperial Japanese Navy third.
The middle and lower classes in America and Europe were restless for more liberty and prosperity so I think there would be more internal stress in each nation just like in our world
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Post by redsycorax on Jul 15, 2023 1:00:24 GMT
Warlord of the Air, a Michael Moorcock book from 1971, had its British Army captain protagonist, Oswald Bastable, fall into suspended animation in an Indian cave in 1903 and sleep for seventy years. When he awoke, it was 1973, but in an alternate universe where imperialism survived and the British Empire had never declined. Indeed, it still controlled India and utilised zeppelins for air travel purposes. Winston Churchill was one of its Viceroys on this Earth. Returning to London, Bastable finds what seems to be a utopian future, but then he encounters a group of transtemporal anarchists- who disclose that the continued existence of imperialism has resulted in brutality and domination over its colonial territories and repression of their indigenous populations*. Human rights and civil liberties are unknown. In this multipolar imperialist world**, the British Empire, French Empire, Tsarist Russia, German Empire, Italian Empire and Japanese Empire, as well as the US "Greater American Commonwealth" behave ruthlessly and despotically. The anarchists decide to remedy this -but tragically, it is through a nuclear attack on Hiroshima... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlord_of_the_Air*Think about the Belgians in the nineteenth century Congo, Japanese WW2 atrocities in China, the French in twentieth century Algeria, South African apartheid, the Vietnam War and the Soviet Afghan War on our own Earth and you'll see that Bastable's pessimism about the morality of such an imperialist alternate history is sadly justifiable. **There's no mention of the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Empire in this book, which suggests that their atrophy was too advanced even for the absence of any global war with a European theatre to save. Therefore, one imagines that the collapse of both enabled French, Germany, Russia and Italy to feast on the spoils of their prostate one-time rivals. Either Vienna, Budapest and Ankara are German and Russian-occupied cities, or these nations are allowed to retain nominal independence but under the economic and military dominance of adjacent, still-viable imperial powers. There are two other books in Moorcock's Bastable trilogy. In the next one, the Land Leviathan, runaway technological progress in the nineteenth century resulted in a cataclysmic global war which reduced the developed world to brutality and savagery, which provided an opportunity for Ciecero Hood, a humane African conqueror who rules a West African Ashanti Empire, to subdue and civilise the barbarians in Europe and the former United States. In the final volume, the Steel Tsar, Bastable is on a third alternate Earth where the South won the US Civil War, the First World War and Russian Revolution didn't happen, but where Japan's imperial ambitions grew unchecked, to the point where they conquer South East Asia much as they did in our Second World War. He's captured and imprisoned, but the Russian Imperial Airship Fleet is a British ally and enlists him in their war against the Cossacks, under the control of a theocratic AU Josef Djugashvili (Stalin). At last, Bastable finds himself able to freely control his cross-timeline travel.
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Post by DocQuantum on Jul 15, 2023 1:17:35 GMT
Communism and Fascism would never have risen to power. They arose because people felt that World War 1 had discredited the idea of classical Liberalism, that all men should be free. Without World War 1, liberal regimes dominated by the wealthy aristocratic classes would remain the norm. Decolonization probably would not happen. If it did, the "independent" states would remain puppets of western democracies. The world would not remain static. Russia would industrialize, and without the purges or the total cultural suicide caused by the communists it would become far more powerful than the Soviet Union, probably one of the most powerful nations on Earth. There would likely still be a World War, as Tsarist Russia would ally themselves with Japan (also a rising power trying to form their own empire and compete with the west) and go to war with everybody else. This would be around the time of World War2. The British Empire would remain the strongest nation of Earth longer, and probably come into conflict with the rising power of the United States. A war might break out in the 1920s over oil right in Venezuela The world would be much more religious, since religiosity declined sharply after the tragedy of the World Wars. Everybody would still be expect to attend church on Sunday, and nobody would curse in public. Western society would never become obsessed with avoiding harm of any kind. This idea emerged from the World Wars, as people decided that nothing mattered except staying safe, and abandoned the idea of noble suffering. Instead, nationalism and heroic military virtues would be highly admired. Frankly, people would probably be ruder (and more honest) with each other and less concerned about hurting people's feelings. There would be no such thing as politically correct speech The Arts and Architecture would have thrived. There would likely have been no Soviet-inspired "Brutalist" style of architecture that has inspired so many hideously ugly, square buildings. Beauty would be the ideal.
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