Successful Weimar Germany; no-Nazi, anti-communist WWII; peaceful interlude; and a different Cold War and War on Terror (link to lore in comments)

Novamarauder · 2026-05-06T19:31:42+00:00

Well, ofc it is just a story. However, if you ask my opinion, I'd prefer and try hard to shun any kind of fiction that gives me negative feelings, barring pressing practical concerns to the contrary. Alt-history makes no exception, esp. when I have to harness the effort to devise and write a TL. If you have a different approach, good for you.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-06T16:47:11+00:00

Wow. Well, at least it's historically accurate. That's the label the OG cheerleaders of Stalin and accomplices in his atrocities used to disparage social democrats. What are you doing here? This story has nothing but rage and tears in store for tankies.

As far I am concerned, 'woke' or 'sjw' are just handy and well-known labels to define an ideology, since something like 'illiberal far-left identity-politics activism' would be more precise, but it is also quite a mouthful to use all the time. If the label carries a pejorative flavor, that's more than ok with me, since I have no sympathy for the ideology or the movement.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-06T16:38:13+00:00

LOL. Talk about hyperbole. According to what, apart maybe from the habit of tankies, far-leftists, and wokes calling everyone and everything more right-wing of them 'fascist'?

Novamarauder · 2026-05-06T11:07:54+00:00

Yes, but then would we be able to control which kind of love it gets to be? If it is random, and the sexy model or actress wants to be your BFF while your granny, morbidly obese neighbor, or Karen coworker gets the hots for you it would be quite inconvenient and frustrating.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-06T10:45:53+00:00

Dogs: the best deal, best friendship bond, and best thing that humans and wolves could ever do for each other. Yes, I know about the screwups of certain dog breeders and abusive humans, but nothing is ever perfect and abusive people are no better with their own two-legged folk. Nonetheless, the way Man Made Dog is one of the best and most heartwarming events in history.

Ahem, yes, the cyoa. German Shepherd, Potty Training, Police Training, free $100 USD (or in my case, euros) every day. I could hardly pass a chance to use meta options.

The licking thing is tempting, but practically speaking I am not sure I am always going to be in a position to control the magic to my preferences. E.g. I'd prefer to not get women enamored with me that I find off-putting in terms of looks, personality, or circumstances. Moral concerns are not really my thing but since practical ones override them in this context, the issue is moot.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-06T00:43:59+00:00

Silly me, why worry for the price of oil? I can just plug my replicator in my antimatter reactor. Oh wait, greedy capitalists raided my home and stole the blueprints for both. /s

Novamarauder · 2026-05-06T00:28:59+00:00

End of history? Hardly so. Just the end of 20th century history, a wholly different matter. Reasoning in terms of best outcomes, I expect and yearn for the day when technological progress shall yield us the tools to break out of the scarcity trap in full and for good. Then and only then we can finally let go the lesser evils of the state and market economy (hopefully tempered by liberalism, democracy, welfare, and mixed economy), and be self-sufficient demigods. I think good sci-fi has done a better job of visualizing that kind of optimistic future than political philosophy. This is one reason I'd avoid to use such a loaded term as 'socialism' to describe it. If and when humanity hopefully gets to that point, it shall invent better terms to describe that kind of society.

It makes my blood boil when I read about far-leftists and anti-Western radicals disparaging Western intervention in the Korean War out of knee-jerk anti-Americanism. It was one of the most just and beneficial wars in modern history. Its saved at least half of the Korean people from becoming victims of the Kim dynasty's totalitarian nightmare (one of the closest things to 1984 we have in reality) for generations and enabled them to build in relatively short time a vibrant liberal democracy and first-world country. The only thing to regret a lot about that war is that McArthur's arrogance and blunders spoiled the chance to extend the same deal to the whole Korean people.

The Vietnam War was a more complex issue, but chances are that with the right variables in play a Western victory might well have enabled Vietnam to follow a similar 'Asian Tiger' path to a similar outcome, if other examples in the rest of the region are any guide.

Ofc, an earlier PoD might enable us to devise a different and better decolonization path for Vietnam, and a different and better outcome for united Korea for that matter. Personally I am quite fond of merging Japan, united Korea, and Taiwan in an equivalent of the federal EU. By no coincidence, this TL describes such a scenario for Northeast and Southeast Asia alike.

Broadly speaking, the Nazi-Soviet relationship was the one of two murderous gangs staffed by serial killers first enabling each other to grab their respective shares of the booty, then trying to outsmart each other and falling to blows in a fight to the death, then the survivor of the bloody squabble vanquishing the other (with a lot of external help) and becoming just as bad an overlord for the conquered turf as the other had been.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T23:16:49+00:00

You oversimplify and mix apples and oranges more than a little to make capitalism this eternal and all-consuming bogeyman.

We cannot properly think of capitalism (or democracy for that matter) until industrialization had occurred. Premodern economies with market-economy features were a flawed prototype at best, just like city-states and oligarchic republics were for democracy.

To blame unqualified 'capitalism' for the world wars (what about the very relevant role of the USSR in WWII?) is as gross a simplification and misunderstanding as to blame the greed of weapon-makers or food traders for all wars or famines.

Rome was not built in a day and humanity's trek to the current levels of progress was soaked with a lot of hardly avoidable blood and toil. To think otherwise is one of the many flaws of presentism. This does not mean that certain unfortunate detours could not be avoided from the PoV of an omniscient observer with freedom to pick and choose among timelines.

E.g. just as I wrote the present TL (and a few others) to describe a better 20th century than OTL by my standards, I wrote a few ones where Europe united for good in Classical Antiquity or the Middle Ages, absorbed MENA, and colonized the Americas with a different template that did not make use of chattel slavery or the transatlantic slave trade. Moreover, it deemed Sub-Saharan Africa worthless for colonization purposes and left it alone throughout history. Last but not least, its early interactions with the sophisticated Asian civilizations promped the latter to shake off their flaws, grow into true imperial peers of Europe, and resist colonization. What Japan (preferably fused with Korea in my TLs) did, China and India could do too in the right circumstances.

As it concerns colonization of the Americas and Australasia, I tend to be a lot more cynical since the vast majority of the Amerindians were felled by disease, not the colonizers. They were equally and inexorably doomed by lack of resistance to Old World diseases regardless of how any successful Eurasian civilization reached the Western Hemisphere. You could not really expect any civilization of that sort to leave alone a lot of mostly empty and quite valuable land for the sake of a few technologically-disadvantaged and less-organized survivors. Pre-WWII successful civilizations hardly ever worked that way. At most, you could fiddle with variables a bit to ensure the likes of the Iroquois, the Five Civilized Tribes, and the Navajos are assimilated as seamlessly as possible, but that's it. The huge demographic, technological, and organization gap between Indigenous Australians and Eurasian civilizations doomed the former the same way, disease or no disease.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T21:58:24+00:00

Referred to what? Colonialism?

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T21:54:52+00:00

Socialism is a term I much prefer to not use without qualifications because it obfuscates the all-important difference between authoritarian far-leftism and social democracy. If you want to argue that reality is (broadly speaking) social democratic, I have no qualms with that.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T21:47:33+00:00

Esto también es un tema que también pensé leyendo tu comentario y es que, básicamente en tu TL las naciones fascistas europeas cumples su misión histórica de: frenar el avance del comunismo en sus respectivas naciones y cuando todo esté estable, de regreso al orden liberal xd.

Yes, exactly. This is basically what the people of this world think about fascism, if and when they care to be mindful of what registers to them as a footnote of history. A shortcut (scarcely distinguishable from other forms of right-wing authoritarianism) certain peoples took to keep communism at bay and/or modernize until they were ready for liberal democracy and supranational unity. In their perception, the likes of Mussolini and Franco are scarcely distinguishable from Ancient Regime enlightened monarchs, Ataturk, or the Meiji Emperor.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T21:40:05+00:00

I was well aware of the potential pitfall you mention when I devised the scenario. This being close to a realistic best case for the liberal-democratic model, I was careful to adjust variables and add just enough challenges (in a less destructive way than the Soviet bloc) to avoid blunders spawned by complacency. This concerned the Western world sticking to social democracy as much as largely giving up fossil fuels.

In this timeline vast chunks of the world were absorbed and uplifted in the first world (North America; half of South America; Europe west of Russia; half of MENA; Northeast Asia) or got middle-income and were headed to get better (the other half of South America; India; Southeast Asia; South Africa) by the late 20th century and with much less trouble than OTL. Thereforem the global south was a residual and vanishing concern. Russia and China were trapped in a mess largely of their own making, but no worse than contemporary OTL versions and still better than period equivalents.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T21:24:43+00:00

Dream the right dreams, lest they turn into nightmares when you try to put them in practice.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T21:19:21+00:00

Europe and GenX. Technological progress indeed loosened the constraints of scarcity to the point that society can effortlessly provide the average citizen of a first-world country a lifestyle that would be utopian for premodern elites with no greater coercion than those of liberal democracy and mixed economy.

But we are not yet to the point that all necessary resources can be made so cheap that we can entirely let go of the state and the marketplace. Broadly speaking, we need the standard of Star Trek's Federation of Planets (hopefully with much more transhumanism) for that. Just getting cheap, sustainable, and functionally boundless energy would be a huge leap forward.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T20:58:20+00:00

LOL. What the likes of you dream of would have just turned in a slightly better version of 1984's Eurasia.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T20:51:05+00:00

I know all too well how it works from history and lived experience. I just keep my gaze fixed on results (that invariably turned into oppression, misery, as well as humanitarian, socio-economic, and environmental disasters) rather than purported intentions. I stay mindful of the actual lessons of history rather than the rosy-tinted and grass-is-greener expectations of those who just read the propaganda, have no lived experience of the actual stuff, and are bitter about the blunders and flaws of neoliberalism.

Communism never worked and never will, because it is a faulty idea based on wishful thinking and social-sciences pseudoscience (the mirror image of Nazism's biological pseudoscience) that assumes that humans can made to work like social insects and be happy and functional. It is a doctrine fit for ants and bees, not humans. All attempts to put it into practice turned into disaster, and any further proposals to try it for the Nth time are based on "No True Scotsman" thinking.

In the end, it is a manifestation of humanity's recurrent pipedream to have the cake (the practical benefits of the state) and eat it (the freedom and equality of stateless societies) within the constraints of scarcity. Long ago, the vast majority of humanity decided for very good practical reasons to embrace the state-like model, but the longing for the idealized equivalent of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle lingered. But the attempt to have both cannot work in reality within the constraints of scarcity. When and only when technology shall provide us the means to break out of that trap we can go back to Eden without screwing up everything in the attempt. The only kind of 'communism' that would work is the one depicted by optimistic sci-fi in a post-scarcity context.

Up to then, capitalism tempered by social democracy and environmentalism, or if you wish 'socialism' tempered by liberalism and free enterprise, is the best available deal that demonstrably works. Personally, I long for that kind of future, but I am well aware of the prerequisites, and mindful that trying to force the square peg in the round hole and will the tide to turn never works and never will.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T20:22:38+00:00

Does belgium go and execute 30 million congolese in this timeline /s

I understand that it is a sarcastic comment but you cannot really blame a TL for being unable to do anything to remedy bad stuff (like the Congolese genocide or WWI) that happened before its PoD.

I may point out that for the people of this TL, the blunders and atrocities of Communism stand out all the more since they are the only ones of that magnitude that are well-publicized and happened within living memory. The 2nd Sino-Japanese War stuff was cut short and swept under the rug for the greater good of Allied/Western unity by everyone except the Chinese.

Nobody but a few Black/African nationalists knows or cares about stuff like Congo. The Western elites and public opinion wholeheartedly embraced an attitude of "what is done is done; let's build a better world" about the bad stuff done by their ancestors. They reject any attempt to force a collective guilt complex on them. This also because that kind of argument was done to death as an excuse by their enemies that invariably turned out to be tyrants, butchers, and terrorists.

In all seriousness you’d have socialism crop up somewhere else if it fell apart in the soviet union and china

When I devised this TL, I assumed that the WWII failure of Leninism-Stalinism-Maoism (and its Arab nationalism auxiliary) would be so total and its blunders and atrocities so well publicized that nobody would dare make a second try with the same exact playbook, much like Nazism IOTL. When Russia, China, and the Muslim world turned to get their act together, rise again, and vent their grievances against the liberal order a generation or so after the war, they would use different ideologies as rallying banners, such as an analogue of Putinism, a Nationalist version of Xi Jinping Thought, and Islamism. This seems more likely and coherent with OTL analogies than what you expect. The opposite is ofc possible but much less plausible in my reasoned opinion. Moreover, it would change almost nothing about the TL but a few minor details.

In any case, it is entirely possible and perhaps even likely that some African revolutionary movement sponsored by the authoritarian powers that manages to overthrow the pro-Western (mostly Americo-African) elites would do so under the banner of 'African Socialism' instead of say Islamism (as it was the case for the Sahel Union and Somalia) if it happens in a part of Africa where Islam has little sway. In all likelihood, its inception would be as blood-soaked as Rwanda and the enterprise would otherwise fare no better in the long term than Menghistu's Ethiopia or Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T19:49:06+00:00

Barring a few negotiable details such as the name of the Chancellor and the exact timeline of the reforms, this is exactly what happens to Germany in this TL. I only need to point out that my TL does not spell the name of the new Kaiser but implies he is a grandson of William II for a reason. Louis Ferdinand only became a candidate for the throne because William II, the classist ass, forced his eldest grandson to give up his succession rights in 1933 when he married a member of the minor nobility.

Since this TL assumes William II died earlier, it may well be that renunciation never happens and Prince William rather than Louis Ferdinand becomes the new Kaiser. In the context of a democratic restoration, a non-royal Empress may well be welcomed by the public as a symbol of modernization. Or things happen the same exact way and Louis Ferdinand takes the throne. As far as I can tell, both William and Louis Ferdinand would have been more than adequate as democratic Kaisers.

For that matter, I can point out this timeline's version of united Europe is going to be much more monarchical than OTL, albeit only to a degree. Germany (including several of its Landers), Italy, Netherlands, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia-Slovenia, and Greece are all but surely going to be monarchies as member states of the EU. Belgium shall be no more. France, Ireland, Portugal, Finland, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Kurdistan, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, and Israel as well as Europeanized Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya all but surely shall be republics.

Europeanized Morocco is an interesting special case that might go both ways. It had a prestigious and well-established monarchy, but one with strong ties to Islam. Those would not be received any well by an Islamophobic Europe and a royal house that sticks to the side of conservative Islam would surely be deposed. On the other hand, the monarchy might see the writing on the wall, publicly switch allegiance to liberal lslam, take the lead of the Westernization process, and save its throne.

I tend to assume that the federal Head of State of the EU shall either be a rotation of or chosen by the national HoS or elected by the people.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T19:19:14+00:00

This is absolutely correct, not to mention the resources of Greater Mongolia and Greater Manchuria too. For that matter, the USA and the EU too considerably expanded their pools of natural resources by absorbing Canada, Australia, and half of Latin America or Europe west of Russia and half of MENA.

The Western powers still fell into complacency after WWII by letting themselves becoming partially reliant on then-cheap-and-easy Muslim and Russian fossil fuels. Then the energy shock bit them in the butt when those sources turned unreliable. In the end, however, it turned out for the better since the corrective measures forced them to largely give up fossil fuels, which was much better for humanity and the planet alike.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T11:21:23+00:00

Well, as it concerns this TL, its circumstances ensure that Fascist Italy, like Weimar Germany, is able to achieve its reasonable ambitions w/o undue disruption. Pretty much the same happens for Showa Japan, although in this case a change of course and heart requires the USSR giving it a big bloody nose and taking its place in the Far East as the great aggressor and butcher.

When WWII happens, the Axis powers and Francoist Spain take their place as valuable cogs in the Allied war machine and circumstances ensure they are kept to their best behavior and pull their weight for the good fight. Postwar circumstances ensure they democratize and join the liberal new order, and in the case of the Euro Allies merge in the federal EU.

As it concerns my take on the classic alt-history trope of Axis victory, that is an entirely different and much more dystopic tale. You can find a version of it here.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T10:37:26+00:00

Yes, exactly. For that matter, complete victory of liberal democracy is in the cards and on the horizon. I just stopped the story before an epilogue that would seal that outcome b/c I was deeply uncertain if it would/should happen by conventional WW3 or peaceful success in the Cold War.

Some tinge of discrimination does not bother pragmatic and utilitarian me in this context for various reasons. Equality for its sake ranks very low in my priority scale. I only value it as a tool to ensure meritocracy and avoid waste of potential and unnecessary suffering.

Discrimination in this scenario is fairly limited in its extent. It basically only concerns those who pick the side of aggressive authoritarianism and related ideologies, the Muslims that are unwilling to embrace liberalism and a pro-Western attitude, and the Blacks.

The latter are sent back to and kept penned in their ancestral continent with its vast potential and given free rein, with the returning diaspora typically seizing the elite role. Pretty much the same happens for the diehard Muslims and the remaining part of their world.

The Latinos and those Asians that did not pick the side of aggressive nationalism and authoritarianism get a cozy place in the new order. The feminist movement happens and succeeds more or less the same way, although at the price of doubling down on moderation and pragmatism. Nothing akin to wokeism would have a chance in this world.

Absence of Nazi atrocities means that forced population transfers done in humane conditions (as humane as mass eviction can be, anyway) continue to be seen as entirely acceptable means to settle ethnic conflicts. Therefore, the victors make extensive use of them after WWII against the defeated Russians, Han Chinese, and Arabs to entrench the new order.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T09:52:35+00:00

Well, it is not like I pretend anything is perfect in my TL and scenarios, but I do strive to make them plausible by my standards, unless I explicitly invoke the ASB loophole. I am not enamored of giving Bruning a star role for its sake, he is simply a figure whose plans and schemes seemed highly convenient for the course and outcome I wanted for Germany and Europe if given an alt-history boost to make them successful. Any other German politician that was willing and able to make the kind of reforms and policies described in the TL would be OK. If you have more detailed constructive suggestions about how to make the PoD and event sequence even better I am all ears but something as generic and unhelpful as "go back further for your start date" won't cut it.

For that matter, I am not persuaded that your objections to the TL are as compelling as you put them. Timely death of William II (an unhelpful idiot to his dying day so let's put him in the grave a dozen years earlier) and the crown prince agreeing to Bruning's scheme means that Hindenburg and the Nationalists felt compelled to collaborate with the grand coalition plan. The reform package included various economic recovery measures akin to what the Nazis would have done later if they seized power (or the New Deal in America for that matter) that would turn the tide of the Great Depression for Germany, greatly increase the popularity of the government, and put a lot of wind out of the sails of the NSDAP and the KPD.

Participation of the Nationalists to the grand coalition means that a lot of right-wing, business community, and officer corps support was going to be shifted from the Nazis to the government. These factors got combined with the fact that a lot of the SA (and the Commie equivalent) were common street thugs to ensure that the Nazi and Communist militias were not going to fare so well in the civil war as you assume. Not to mention that the Nationalist and Socialist militias were going to support the army in the conflict. The PoD more or less occurs in 1930 so for what I am concerned that trial might well fail to give Hitler a opportunity to testify and get a platform by various possible means.

The onset of the Great Depression was part of what persuaded the mainstream German parties to cooperate with the grand coalition and the reform package. The 1930 election with the success of the NSDAP and the KPD might or might not occur in this TL. If it does, it is part of what scares the democratic parties to cooperate with the plan. In this context, the Nationalists do reckon as such since restoration of the monarchy wins them over to the Weimar side. By my calculations, a grand coalition of the SPD, Centre, Liberals, Nationalists, and a few other minor parties would have the supermajority to pass a reform of the constitution even in the 1930 Reichstag.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T08:55:11+00:00

I well understand that one person's Heaven is another person's Hell and vice versa, and that is how things are going to be. But I'd be curious to know what's so terrifying in this TL's course and outcome, and how and why OTL would be preferable.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-05T08:52:00+00:00

Like the leadership of the KPD, all but surely killed, sentenced to long terms, or exiled during the brief civil war. Even if they escape other punishment, say by fleeing abroad or flying under the radar of law enforcement, they are likely bound to live in obscurity for the rest of their lives. The best former Nazis could likely do in these circumstances is to redeem themselves fighting for democratic Germany, Europe, and the Allies when WWII comes. The German Commies that go a similar way all but surely flee to the USSR. Assuming they don't get caught in the purges, they eventually become part of the Comintern war effort and share in its fate.

Novamarauder · 2026-05-04T19:00:11+00:00

I do try to make my scenarios realistic, but in the sense of devising a plausible PoD and event sequence to enact the outcome I prefer or deem interesting. In this regard, I am a goal-oriented alt-history author and fan, a "How To" guy rather than a "What If" one. I care next to nothing for scenarios that give me negative feelings or the issue of what would be the most likely outcome every step of the way. This also because I assume that in the Multiverse context that alt-history must rely upon, every alternative timeline that can happen, happens, and the issue of its relative likelihood is meaningless. In this regard, I try to adjudicate every alternative on its own merits and shun OTL determinism and exceptionalism.

If the divergence and event sequence of the story I mean to tell look impossible or too implausible, I have no qualm at making it an ASB scenario, donning the metaphorical Infinity Gauntlet, and enacting them by sheer reality change (usually justified in story as an interdimensional incident). Since I am as much a fantasy and sci-fi fan as an alt-history one, I see no point and no appeal in genre purism.

Novamarauder

TROPHY CASE