July 7, 2001 Note: This was posted on the newsgroup 'soc.history.what-if' on June 2, 2001. Also, some minor editing was done.

I have not posted any extended what-ifs. There are two reasons for this: one, I don't get that many ideas, and, two, I have not been able to develop properly those ideas I do get. Perhaps the standard that I am using for "properly" is too strict (I have been somewhat intimidated by some of the what-ifs that had been posted on 'soc.history.what-if' and earlier on 'alt.history.what-if'). Here are two examples of failed development (working titles were "Charles Alexander Stuart the Great, King of Scotland, England, France, Spain, Holy Roman Emperor" and "Operation Sealion"). Incidentally, both ideas are several years old.

The origin of the first came to me upon reading an excerpt of John Keegan's The Mask of Command (IIRC, it is from the first page). As part of an illustration on how extraordinary the compaigns of Alexander the Great were, he mapped the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 onto them, resulting in the Scots overwhelming all of Western, Central, and Southern Europe. This is, of course, beyond outrageous (from what I have heard of MoC, that is part of his point). However, I started to think of parallels. Macedonia, before Phillip, had rather turbulent politics; Scotland before the mid-18th century had, on occasion, rather turbulent politics. What would happened if a very competent Stuart (if there could be such a thing) spent a lifetime forging a nation and an army?

First of all, it is necessary that this hypothetical Stuart is paying exclusive attention to Scotland. The easiest way to ensure this is to have the Stuarts not inheriting the throne of England (c. 1600). There are several ways to do this, the one I assumed was that Anne Boleyn, 2nd wife and queen of Henry VIII, bears a son ("Edward") on September 7, 1533. A Regent would be needed when Henry VIII dies (as in OTL) in January 1547 ("Edward" is 13). I haven't tried to identify possible Regents (need for research). There will be an immediate crisis because Spain would certainly claim that Mary was the legitimate heir. After "Edward" survives this, there will be over a century of political history to map out (I suspect that the 17th century will be a bit more quiet than in OTL). There is also Scotland history to create. Just as an example, do the Stuarts stay Catholic, become Protestant, or change back and forth? However, all of this is really filler, because the main event starts around 1700 when the King of Scotland marries the oldest daughter of the King of England.

Their son, "James Phillip," inherits the crown (c. 1723) and starts his life work (more research on Scotland needed). Just for fun, I was planning for the army that "James" would be creating to have much of the organization and tactical book of the French Army c. 1795. For those who don't know, they should be aware that the Napoleonic Army did not emerge, ready for battle, from Napoleon's brow, but instead had been developed before the French Revolution. For that matter, many of the ideas had been in the air for years (perhaps even decades, I have a vague memory of reading that Maurice de Saxe wrote a long letter with many of the ideas sometime around 1730).

In 1745, his cousin dies without descendents; without surviving siblings, without descendents of those siblings, without surviving brothers of his father, without descendents of those uncles. "James" claims the throne of England and takes it after a brief compaign (a cousin whose mother was a younger sister of his mother disputed the succession - perhaps a reason to keep the Stuarts Catholic). At which point, with the Scots (with the English army as well) on the verge the great adventure, my suspension of disbelief crashed. There aren't enough people in the British Isles to do the job (even assuming troops would be raised from conquered peoples). They could be very busy intervening in any war between France and the Hapsburgs, wrecking havoc on a broad scale (probably larger than that done by Sweden in OTL 17th century), but conquer France? Germany? Italy? No way. And I couldn't think of a way to fix it.

Nov 22, 2001 Note: I thought of a partial fix of the manpower problem: "James Phillip" gathers in all of Scandinavia - this requires Swedish and Danish princesses married into the Stuarts. Have to think of something more though (must add "Tsar of all the Russias" to the title list for "Charles Alexander Stuart").

As for the 2nd failed what-if, this was my attempt to solve the Operation Sealion question. The problems with the 1940 plan of OTL are basically too few planes (by about half an order of magnitude or more), too few warships (by about 1 order of magnitude) and no true landing craft (thousands needed). Germany needs an ally (or several) to build those planes, ships, and landing craft. Since the USA had, by a considerable margin, the largest industrial plant in the world (c. 1940), I chose them to be Germany's ally (actually, I thought of Germany of being USA's ally). How to do this?

I tried a POD during WWI. The basic idea was that the American army divisions ended up under British-French command and they are accused of carelessness (and protecting their own soldiers) when the Americans take heavy casualties (I am not assuming that these casualty numbers would actually be heavier than in OTL). Since President Wilson was adamant on the idea that the AEF would be under American command, this is a problem. My solution was to kill off Pershing and his commanders at a time close enough to the beginning of AEF deployment to leave Wilson with no other options. I had several ideas to test though research:

1. Ship sunk by a sub while crossing the Atlantic (but when did they cross? did they cross on one ship? and wouldn't Wilson still have time to appoint another commanding general?)
2. Headquarters (with everybody important attending a meeting) hit by a shell from the Paris gun (where was the HQ? it might not have been close enough to Paris to be hit).
3. Gotha bombing raid on said HQ (but did they attack in daytime?).
4. Something else, say a gas explosion (I was afraid that I would have to resort to this).

Oh, yes - I killed off Hitler in WWI as well.

The immediate post war politics will be somewhat different with a higher level of American bitterness about the war (but this would most likely be expressed as isolationism, which is not what I want - another problem to fix). Thus, the British renew the navy treaty with Japan (this might have interesting knock-on effects) and there are no multi-party navy treaties causing enforced retirement of battleships and cancelled ship building programs. I am not certain whether there would be a Great Depression in this timeline (but if there was, Americans would be blaming British and French bankers).

In the later part of the 1930s, the USA (with a substantially larger navy then in OTL) goes on an anti-colonial crusade against the English and French empires (and Japanese now that I think of it). Germany signs on for vengence. By August1940, most compaign objectives have been met; the US Navy rules the Atlantic; Germany has crushed France; and the landing craft the USA had built the previous years (to overrun English, French, and possibly Japanese colonies) are assembled opposite the English coast. At which point, my suspension of disbelief crashed and burned. Why invade? Why didn't England sue for peace? (they almost certainly have to be more sane than the Japanese in 1945 in OTL). Without any oil supplies, the Royal Air Force can't fly. The oil-fired ships of the Royal Navy can't move (just how many coal burners were there left in the Royal Navy by 1930 in OTL?). The tactical mobility of the British Army will be somewhat impared. And this is assuming that there is enough food production to feed everybody.

There must be a reason to invade and win the war immediately. It is a Presidential election year, could it be that popular support for the war was in the process of crashing? That sounds like ASB string pulling at work. Or perhaps I should keep Hitler and the problem is popular revulsion against the NAZIs as allies (but the American public swallowed Stalin in OTL).

Afterword

Perhaps my problem is that I won't make the effort to put together a long series of posts (I am also a slow writer, even this one took close to two hours to write, spread out over 11 days) unless the result is somewhat extraordinary. And extraordinary might be too difficult to do.

However, I have more Sealion ideas. What about a German-Russian alliance? They were military allies of convenience in the 20s in OTL. A communist Germany+Soviet Union would probably alarm the Americans so much that they might intervene in 1940 (having the US Navy and hundreds if not thousands of American planes in England is not going to help Operation Sealion at all). A less radical successor to the Czars shouldn't be too difficult to justify. But Germany is a problem; the NAZIs are too ambitious for a sane Russian government to trust and any other German government probably wouldn't blunder into a war. So, what about a German-French-Italian alliance to curb English meddling in the continent? Might not be sufficient and I don't have a clue for the POD.