Indiana Beach Crow
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It's also a little unfair of me to use a photo of 6'7" tall Christian X next to Vittorio Emmanuel III, because everyone looks like a giant next to 5' 0" Vittorio Emmanuel.
Sequel de Mayo (Cinco de Mayo, Vol. II)
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Don’t find those reasons compelling at all.
Institutions matter way more than physical infrastructure and thus having good, responsive, transparent ones copy-pasted (to varying extents, admittedly) at American bayonet-point onto Europe’s largest economies post-WWII was transformative in terms of their convergence with American standards of living over the coming 5-6 decades.
My thesis is that not killing off a bunch of Europe’s young best and brightest in two world wars while most of Europe remains more authoritarian and illiberal for much longer will benefit *America* above all others, doubly so when it’s just entrenched a very favorable immigration environment for Western and Central Europeans, and a less closed one than OTL for Eastern Europeans.
The big problem in yout entire argument is that well not even the USA is safe from being more illiberal and less democratic ITTL as unlike OTL they get first hand the nice full experience of a World War, followed by a nasty and troublesome period of occupation that looked more as a (relatively) low level conflict and an economic crisis plus some 'little' resistance towards emigrants.
OTL European authoritarian reaction was due to the enormous shock of the Great War that really took away any support to the previous system and enstablishment and said that less democratic and liberal for longer than OTL doesn't mean going 1984 or even something approaching OTL fascism, nazism and communism dictatorship, even because just remain as they were at the moment mean that.
Second, just to know what nation had his government system copy-pasted from the USA at boynet-point? Finally and that is just my very personal opinion, not having millions of deaths united to apocalyptic devastation from the Pyreene to Oceania generally help a little
I always forget just how short Victor Emmanuel was; at 5’6”, I’m taller than him.
Eh, sure. I don’t disagree on the importance of institutions. But institutionally there was a lot about pre-war Europe that worked very well, in particular the academy being head and shoulders above the US by a wide margin (this was before well-funded research publics and when Harvard was basically just a continuing school for the New England aristocracy)
Perhaps, though a stabler Europe leaves more reason for them to stay. Even OTL, Einstein only decamped to the US due to Nazism rising exactly when it did; otherwise, he’d have stayed at KWI since Europe was where the exciting things in physics happened
Decent point that the US has gotten a much worse postwar here than OTL, too.
Not yet, no. But irredentism is nonetheless a popular and populist position
So putting aside the political and institutional aspect for a moment here, I think there's a potential for Europe to come slightly ahead of OTL on a human level due to the lack of two continent wide wars and a less severe 1918 flu epidemic.
However I think economically there's a chance that the lack of widespread destruction actually slows things down economically. I've seen compelling arguments that the ability of Germany and Japan to adapt so rapidly to post-war industrial changes was that they were rebuilding from scratch (alongside massive investment by the US), whereas the US had to retool existing factory infrastructure.
On a human level it's really hard for me to think of a continent spared from both world wars, Nazi genocides and the repression during the Cold War as not coming out ahead. I have no doubt that there are countless pepe who died in those wars, in their aftermath, and in the various repressive governments of the twentieth century that could have greatly enrich the human experience had they lived. That's not even getting into the interpersonal level of families and friends.
With the exception of the French Stat we don't know if various post-war governments turn out to be particularly authoritarian. If things stay on their general course of moderate constitutional monarchies largely winning out I can very easily see central and eastern Europe coming out on par or slightly of OTL. Similarly if Italy avoids fascist rule and the years of lead, and if Spain and Portugal continue on their current course I think southern Europe will almost certainly come out ahead. The only area I feel safe saying will be worse off is France and Belgium. I think it's highly likely that France sees net out-migration during the bulk of the twentieth century and that many of the artistic and cultural developments that came out of France OTL will either not exist or come out of emigre communities.
It occurs to me that this may have a particularly strong impact on European comics. I don't see any way that the Franco-Belgian bande desine isn't at least some what disrupted by what sounds like pretty nasty twentieth centuries in those countries. While something like Asterix or Tintin may still emerge, I can't see a conservative state being cool with something like Metal Hurlant. That does make me curious what TTL's comic scene will look like. North America and Europe are in such different contexts and without a US occupation bringing western style comics to Japan in massive quantities I don't think Manga as we know it emerges. We may see other areas be the big center for comics than OTL emerge or that particular art form might be much more minor.
(This kind of got away from me at the very end, feel free to ignore the comics digression 😂)
Oh this i agree with. What I’d say is that Europe grows slower, but from a higher baseline, thus getting to a similar QOL from an economic standpoint even if it’s quite different in practice.
Indeed. France and the Nordics are the only place I’d definitely say are well worse off, and even then Denmark keeping Ekofisk makes them the Norway of TTL so this *gasp* May become a Danewank!
No but It’s an interesting point! I don’t know much about comics so the points are great. A Japan that doesn’t produce manga is a Japan with a virtually unrecognizable culture to the West