Comments by "Fredinno" (@innosam123) on "Whatifalthist" channel.

  1. Fun fact: The Chinese-Russian-Iranian alliance roughly corresponds to the borders of the Mongol Empire.
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  2. Korea: The Ireland of Asia.
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  3. “There are 4 Chinese for every American, a kill ratio that’s almost never been matched in history.” Nazis and Mongols: laughs
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  4. “We’re long overdue and living on borrowed time.” Humans: Oh, I don’t think so.
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  5. The Suez would probably be built by the Athenians as well, since it doesn’t require locks or complex machinery, just a lot of effort to dig a giant trench to let ocean-going ships through (a pseudo-Suez was actually built by ancient Egypt), so they would get a colonial empire by expanding into the Indian Ocean (East Africa, India, Indonesia, Australia, Arabia) as well as likely moving down the Nile to Ethiopia and Sudan via railroads.
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  6. Wasn’t Japan generally anti-Russia and pro-Britain? Why would they join Russia’s side- Japan was mostly focused on trying to take over China, and Russia was a hindrance to those efforts. Also, I would like to see more medieval alternate histories.
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  7. You have to remember that China never conquered Taiwan until the 17th century for a reason. Taiwan is a fortress island that’s geographically as difficult to invade as Japan itself. Also, there’s only a few months and beaches where an invasion is possible. Naval invasions are already difficult against a prepared and determined enemy. Japan in WW2 would have been able to give the Americans a bloody nose despite having already lost control of the seas and air. Taiwan is much smaller, but any invasion of Taiwan would be, long, brutal, and simply impossible without complete naval and air dominance. If the Chinese actually felt they could invade Taiwan by 2020, they would have already invaded when the world was facing COVID.
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  8.  @mappingshaman5280  Poland, Georgia, and Hungary were not part of the Mongol Empire. They were invaded by them, but never annexed.
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  9. “Check me out on Twitter.” Oh, you poor soul... what have you done?
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  10. 14:00 Ironically, Star Wars itself was highly inspired by the Vietnam War, where the ‘rebels’ weren’t really better than the ‘empire’. I don’t think George Lucas was intending for Star Wars to create a view of underdog=good. The Prequels actually tried to address this problem, with the Jedi Order itself being corrupt to an extent and flawed in a way that led to its downfall, and the outnumbered underdog Sith using its flaws against it. The Clone Wars were horrifically brutal, extended, and accomplished very little other than to expand Palpatine’s power despite being based on genuine political grievances. Unfortunately, the Prequels have their own problems that prevented them from becoming as influential as the Original Trilogy, and the Sequel Trilogy just copied off the Original Trilogy.
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  11. That’s still a bad thing, because Greece is in a debt crisis, and that sort of tax evasion was one of the biggest problems that lead to it. Also, grey market workers are generally less efficient than normal workers and have less protections.
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  12. “The Chinese Elite think in terms of Centuries.” Remembers One-Child Policy. Hmm.... The “think in centuries” part is honestly kind of overblown and is the perception is partially a product of Chinese Propaganda. I would also point out a minor point that, as a Korean, I doubt Japan would be a Chinese Ally even with a honorable government due to the pains of WW2. Korea still hates Japan due to its occupation by the Japanese. Ireland still hates Britain from the Potato famine. Arguably, the hatred amongst the South Slavs goes back to at least the rise of the Ottoman Empire, several centuries ago. Some wounds never properly heal.
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  13. Zoomers are already slightly more conservative than millennials on average, it’s not a hard prediction to make.
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  14. I'm not sure about the population of Latin America being larger. Their Birth Rates are higher in the modern day than the USA, which counteracts a lot of the early advantage. Also, Northern Mexico has horrid geography (minus California) that really make it difficult to make wealthy, especially as an independent state. It's comparable to Afghanistan in terms of geography, and the Americans can use the Mississippi's tributaries to secure all the land in its watershed- taking most of the actually decent land (minus California) and thus still being a global power.
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  15. 16:20 I would point out that there’s also an innate and animal fear of death, much more ingrained than the taboo against immortality. I seriously doubt people would choose to die outside their own terms of given the choice, regardless of the consequences or taboos.
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  16. Russia is only allied with China because they have a common enemy.
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  17. This isn’t What if Japan went Catholic in the 16th century....
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  18. PIRATE99A The Japense Islands are hell to invade. Even if they land, the Soviets would end up likely only getting Hokkaido, at best. People always put North-South Japan in these TLs because that happened si many other places.
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  19. What if France's demographic decline did not happen in the Victorian Era, and the birth rate was comparable to Britain or Germany?
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  20. Why is it that every timeline that Germany is on the losing side of WW2 does Germany end up with the Oder-Neisse borders? They don’t make sense for anyone unless you’re Stalin and deliberately trying to move Poland and Germany as far away from you as possible and have no problem with forced expulsions and genocide. Though this is kind of a minor gripe as well, it seems unlikely Romania and Bulgaria would still surrender to the Soviets, since the Allies could easily capture Adrianopole and move north- and neither wanted to be under Soviet domination. Hungary might become a Soviet puppet if Operation Margarethe still works out, but with the allies closer and Soviets farther, that seems to be more a toss-up. Bohemia was also mostly unoccupied when the war ended and isn’t the easiest part of Europe to invade, so unless it’s specifically doled out to the Soviets, it would also likely go to the West. Basically, the Warsaw Pact wouldn’t exist. Would Morocco and Tunisia remain French? Also, Algeria kind of means there’d be a lot more Arabs in France. So you could end up with the awkward situation where there are more Muslims in France than Catholics. France doesn’t have the demographics to assimilate Algeria without it also going a lot the other way around. Though, overall, pretty good video. I went into this thinking that nothing would change because the Axis would mop up the weak forces left in Algeria, but then I remembered- this is Benito we’re talking about here.
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  21. Wouldn’t it be more realistic for Siberia to become a vassal of Poland? Since Siberia kind of has to depend on Poland or China for trade. The Poles would have to conquer the Caucasus to actually get defensible borders as well. At least as vassal states.
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  22. An invasion of Taiwan COULD also be a Crete-style paratrooper landing, not just a naval one.
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  23. Because US progressives have more control over the education system. Also, Gen Z is statistically about as politically left (or less than) Millennials. Millennials are also disproportionally large in the Anglo-sphere compared to most of the developed world.
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  24. Space Expansion is unlikely compared to ocean/polar expansion. The Earth’s gravity well is a bitch. The ISS costs billions just to maintain 7 people, and each Dragon seat is only accessible to the ultra-wealthy ($55mil/seat). Costs have only gone down modestly. Once we develop algal aquaculture, we can see a massive expansion in aquaculture and the marine economy as a viable basis for a wider Marine colonization effort can be made.
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  25. AltHistHub made one on Zealandia. Problem is that Australia is shaped wrong and is at the wrong latitude for inland seas and wet interiors. Lake Eyre even if filled, isn’t really an inland sea, more a mini- Aral Sea.
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  26. You forgot the most chad German partition plan, the Churchill plan…. Austria-Hungary lives again!
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  27. I still don't see how falling Birth rates result in the Sons if Jacob coming to power... Nations like Japan, Lithuania, and Signapore have far lower birth rates without religious or ideological backlashes... Like a global Depression, and an enormous refugee Crisis in Mexico due to a civil war there.
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  28. The issue with desalination isn't the cost, it's the energy requirements. We know how to solve that problem. Nuclear Energy. The issue is getting there.
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  29. “You must be truly desperate to come to me for help.”
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  30. 00:04 This man has Coronavirus.
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  31. The advantage to that is that you didn’t get incest from royal inbreeding because you didn’t have constantly intermixing lines of the same royal houses because those dynasties would have been dead by then. 😂
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  32. Latin America is doing better now than ever before. Mexico in particular is on the verge of breaking the Middle Income barrier, and has an incredibly diversified economy and businesses and show no sign of slowing down due to NAFTA2. The US also has free trade deals with every Latin American nation except Bolivia, the Guyanas and Brazil, and the Americas are pretty reliably in the American SOI (not that they have a choice.) Also, doing so would end the threat of mass immigration and drug cartels, so there are quite a few reasons for Latin America’s industrialization to be encouraged. Argentina has everything to succeed if it can stop figuring out ways to screw itself over. It has good geography, a highly educated population, good demographics, and even tons of domestic businesses that were doing OK before COVID. COVID has been handled so poorly by the current Peronist government, we’re likely to see some more economic reforms come through. Hopefully. Columbia and Chile are also doing pretty well and will likely become outlets for American investment once Mexico starts to reach higher-income status. Brazil is probably going to have difficulty though.
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  33. Peter Mann The problem is that the Ethiopians themselves never heard of Prester John, and people eventually accepted that they weren’t. Because Prester John was just a myth.
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  34. Most areas with huge populations abolished slavery on their own. Slavery only makes sense with low populations, like in the Americas, where labour is so expensive you have to artificially force the price down via slavery. Either that, or you’re a Muslim empire.
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  35. Anti Mapping They got the cuisine down kinda. Just instead of Potatoes, it’s Kimchi.
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  36.  @diegoidepersia  The Channel of the Pharaohs couldn't take larger vessels.
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  37. Well, TBF, most of the military were in the rural areas. Later on, Rome became dominated almost entirely by the military, meaning it became dominated by the rural frontier regions.
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  38. Mark12 Strang Puerto Rico has no representation because it’s small. If you had Cuba and Haiti as well, the equation changes a bit, because they’re impossible to ignore.
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  39. I honestly think by the time the European powers could really get thinking much about dividing China, considering its distance, they were either already too overstretched, or defeated in WW1. Japan and Russia were always going to be the most agressive in the region, followed by Germany, while Britain and France would be less keen to see the Status quo fail.
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  40. Note that purging the military with left-wingers (including the lower ranks) means that they most likely just swell the ranks of paramilitaries and mercenary groups, which we have been seeing right now. There are also far more veterans than there are actual active soldiers. Also, a civil war starting almost certainly involves shooting at your own countryman. I can’t help but be reminded of Robert E Lee’s reluctance to join the Confederacy, but ultimately doing so for his state over his country, regardless of the consequences over slavery. Loyalty can mean a lot of things, but in particular, who you are loyal to.
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  41. @Metsarebuff 22 The soviet Army in 1945 was much more competent than that, you know. They weren't just swarming with higher manpower, otherwise, they would have lost to the Germans. But yeah, it probably wouldn't have worked very well for the Soviets.
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  42.  @solvency2690  The Soviets could have lasted into the 21st century without Gorbechev. They just would have become increasingly poor and irrelevant as the stresses of their poor domestic situation, Afghanistan, and SDI played their toll. I would imagine the bloc would start collapsing right around now, considering the increasing irrelevance of their only real export/source of hard currency, Oil/Gas. Economic Reform is difficult (the USSR was stuck at the Middle Income Trap).
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  43. What if Shaggy fought Chuck Norris?
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  44. I would also point out that the Empire was basically just an ad-hoc dynastic military dictatorship, not a true Monarchy.
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  45. I would point out that the Heavy plow arrived in Europe around the same time the Fall of the West took place, so the introduction of more advanced farming techniques likely increased production more than the fall of the Empire.
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  46. Watch Peter Zeihan’s presentations. He goes into pretty much most of the details about demographics and their effect on the global economy. But in summary: Economic Growth in the West outside America dies. America focuses inward after China is no longer a threat. China gets fucked in the ass either because of increasing sanctions and pressure from America or demographics (both cutting economic growth rates enormously) and either goes into Maoist tyranny or implodes. Russia and Germany fight over Europe in an attempt to keep their economies running by gaining total hegemony over Europe. Japan, France, and Turkey basically get free reign to do what they want.
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  47. 15:52 Germany would retain Prussia and Silesia without the extremity of the Nazis causing a retaliation by the Russians against the Germans.
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  48. That’s what happens when you build a tunnel system. There really aren’t many good ways to get people in tunnels out of them in a way where they won’t escape, so it kind of forces more drastic measures. Look at what happened in Tora Bora, for instance, and Osama’s escape from them.
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  49. @Whatifalthist New Mexico is pretty isolated and difficult to access in the grand scheme of things, esp. without railways- there's no way to get there by boat, leaving only wagons though desert until the invention of the railway. Most of Sonora has the problem South Africa had- no one would really want to live there, even if they could- they’d go to Argentina or America instead. Only California and Texas would be colonized until all their land was gone. It's also important to note so much of California and Texas are only arable due to wide-scale irrigation that may not be available to early settlers. If in Texas, there's no reason the Americans can't just take it over- I mean, they made it all the way to Quebec City in the American Revolution (Canada would have a smaller population, but it's arguably more defensible due to the Great Lakes and St Lawrence). The border with the Americans is also completely indefensible just from sheer size and scale.
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  50.  @bigbrothersinnerparty297  Taiwan is highly motivated to fight and unlike the Japanese in WW2, are not going to be starving due to blockade. China recovered the first from the pandemic. There was a window in April when China had mostly recovered and the rest of the world hadn’t. Secondly, missiles go the other way as well. Missiles can destroy any invasion craft, and they’re not that hard to hide away from bombers. Even just a basic speedboat laden with explosives can seriously harm an invasion vessel (the Japanese did this in WW2, with some success.) Assuming you even win the battle in the skies.
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