Re: Help design the ideal Presidential candidate

Tim McDaniel <tmcd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Nate Edel <archmage@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> It's not just getting us into the war, although the fact that World
>> War I probably beats Vietnam in the deaths-to-stupidity ratio
>> definitely counts very heavily against him.  100k Americans dead,
>> for absolutely nothing, ...

> France and Britain were slammed badly by Germany's last spring
> offensive (Operation Michel, March - July 1918).  My impression is
> that the promise of coming American troops, and sometimes the troops
> themselves, were crucial to France and Britain holding on.  In Our
> Time Line, Austria-Hungary didn't start obviously cracking until
> October or so, and I think the Ottoman Empire then as well.  Had
> Germany cracked France in the spring, I think they might have been
> able to enforce a peace on the Entente.  Knowing Imperial Germany,
> it would have been vindictive and greedy: farewell Belgium and large
> chunks of northern France, and central and Eastern Europe out into
> the Ukraine.

I'm not convinced that would have been any worse than what did happen.
Belgium and France weren't innocent victims.  The Belgian Congo, for
instance, was one of the worst regimes in the world.

> That would have been even more unstable than Versailles, but it
> would still have led to a general war and revolutions to reverse it.

Perhaps.  It's even possible, though unlikely, that France or Belgium
would have a revanchist dictator as bad as Hitler.  But unless they
get nuclear weapons before the US -- which seems very unlikely -- I
doubt the results would be worse than in our timeline.
-- 
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
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