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Post-Cold War

2019-03-24T03:50:13Z

2600:8803:1C00:BB00:90A1:84C:A62B:C235: /* New World Order: The 1990s */

{{Topquote|What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the [[The Cold War|Cold War]], or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such … That is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.|Francis Fukuyama, ''The End of History and the Last Man''}}

After the end of the communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of [[The Cold War|Cold War]]. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had finally ende with the prevalence of capitalism as the dominant economic model and with western-type democracies as the most favoured political models (at least in the West and the Ex-Soviet States). The End of the World through nuclear means, [[grimdark|while almost seen as a certainty during many periods of crisis]], had not come to pass, and [[noblebright|a feeling of peace and relief spreaded through the world]]. While the old fear of a world war pretty much dissapeared, the problems of the Cold War were replaced by many other and smaller conundrums all around the globe. This aspect is important, since due to technological advancements and the development of computers and the Internet, the world is more interconnected than ever before, and events that decades ago would've been isolated to a small region could have massive reverberations throughout the globe.

This period of history is being studied and analyzed by historians as we speak, considering most of the relevant events of this period happened less than 30 years ago, and thus their true effects might not be easily or fully seen as of yet.

==New World Order: The 1990s==
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall or transformation of communist regimes worldwide, the United States found itself catapulted into a position of undisputed supremacy over the globe. Following a short, brutal war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq (which ended in a rather hilarious roflstomp victory for the U.S-led Coalition, which took casualties in the low hundreds compared to Iraq having 85% of it's pre-war armed forces completely wiped out), the U.S began perhaps one of it's greatest decades of economic and cultural prosperity under leaders like President Bill Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich. With it's military might guarding the vital sea and air routes of the world, the 1990s began a period of interconnectivity and increased trade that would be later known as "globalization" (Though for some, the term "Westernization" would be better suited, as much of the world has adopted, at least in part, American cultural, military, and economic doctrines).

This isn't to say that things were all peaches and sunshine for the U.S, however. In many cities across the U.S, many African and Hispanic Americans became utterly fed up with the way the police forces often treated them (in the case of L.A, it was little better than dirt). A boiling point was reached when Rodney King, an African American man, was brutally assaulted by two white police officers on camera. This action triggered the Los Angeles race riots, which would leave a scar on the collective consciousness of Americans everywhere. Another dark side to this otherwise happy time was the military debacles in Somalia and Yugoslavia, as well as the heavy-handed response the FBI took to dealing with the Young Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, amongst other things.

Meanwhile, in the newly reformed state of Russia, things were looking a bit...well, let's just say that the immediate post-Heresy Imperium had it much better than what happened to Russia. Problems ranging from a severe economic collapse, the rise of oligarchs and criminal mobs, a major rebellion in the majority Islamic province of Chechnya, and the government is about as morally pure as your average Tzeentchian cultist all contributed to the post-Soviet Russians generally feeling pretty damned hopeless. Boris Yeltsin, the first President of Russia, tried his damndest to fix things, but turning the country around proved to be beyond his skills, and left the office in relative disgrace. Enter one Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer and someone with a more [[God-Emperor of Mankind|authoritarian and straightforward way of doing things]]...

In Europe, the European Union was officially ratified by the Maaschirt Treaty in 1992, marking for the first time since Rome that a singular power has held complete sway over all of the continent. The EU's goal, amongst many things, was to promote economic and military cooperation amongst its member states. To that end, most nations in the EU abandoned their national currencies for the euro, with only Britain retaining its own.

In the Middle East, however, tensions were steadily rising. Due to events like the discovery of oil in large parts of the region, the disaster that was the Sykes-Picot Agreement, and the formation of the Jewish state of Israel in was formerly Arab land, the various Muslim tribes and nations of the Middle East began to look at the Christian and secular nations of the West and Russia with barely restrained hatred, feeling that they had been cheated, stomped on, and oppressed by the ungodly European and American powers. Many began to long for the glory days of the Golden Age of Islam in the Early Middle Ages, and so started to turn to increasingly radical sects of Islam that promised such a return to power and prestige, such as the Wahhabist sect of Sunni Islam. A few began to carry out acts of terror against their Israeli and American foes, such as in the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut and the attack on the USS Cole. But the worst was yet to come, as a new, much more disciplined and organized group of Sunni radicals known as Al-Quaeda (in Arabic, literally "The Base") came into being, led by wealthy Saudi billionaire and former muhajedeen commander Osama bin Laden. Their strike against the heart of their perceived enemies would forever shatter the ideal of Western triumph and total American supremacy, and usher in a new, long, bloody period of conflict.

==9/11 and the War on Terror==

==The Great Recession==

==The Rise of Extremes==

==The World Powers nowadays==

With the fall of the Soviet Union and the massive economical crisis Russia suffered while adapting to the new capitalist system, the United States appeared as a global power with no real competition. For a while at least. The United States had to focus their attention in the War against Terror, a massive campaign against terrorism around the globe, in particular after the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001, which ended up with the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings through kidnapped planes. Since then, the United States has been present in the Middle East in one way or another. The world in general has had to adapt their military systems, being prepared to deal with another massive world war, and now have to fight small skirmishes against global terrorism, usually with a heavier weitght of intelligence and counter-intelligence over actual military power.

Outside of the US, Europe continued the process of developing an unified political entity, which ended in the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 with the birth of the European Union. With the fall of the Soviet Union, many ex-republics and other european countries under soviet control joined the EU, event that caused certain frictions with Russia. Also in this period we saw the fracture of Yugoslavia, with the conflicts that followed being some of the most bloody and brutal in Europe since the end of World War II.

[[Japan]], after the economic boom they enjoyed during most of the 80s, suffered one of the biggest asset price crashes in history, sinking their economy. Badly. This was a catastrophic event for many japanese, and this crisis lasted for over a decade (technically they've haven't recovered from it yet). While they are still one of the wealthiest countries in the world, the effects of the 90s crash has had a massive impact on their financial, business and general culture, to the point of being very difficult to find any Japanese work set in modern day that doesn't reference the crisis in any way.

Many of the old communist countries quickly changed into capitalist economies during the 80s and 90s. Nowadays, there are only a handful of countries that would title themselves as communists, with none of them following a purely pre-91 planned economy (China, Laos and Vietnam changed their economy into a capitalist-like system, North Korea is basically an absolute monarchy at this point, and Cuba is steadily changing and opening their economy to the world).

After the massive humanitarian, agricultural and economical crisis that Mao's "Great Leap Forward" caused, China adapted their communist system into an capitalist one hidden under a communist name, and became the ''de facto'' factory of the world, developing a massive industry and becoming a world power from the first time since more than a century. It's economic and political influence in the world is extremely important in world politics, and it has taken the place of the Soviet Union as the main political and economic rival of the US. However, China has had plenty of problems during the last decades, and things such as the failed "one child" policy and constant political disidence against the Communist Party (from things such as Tibet, the Tiannanmen Square Protests and the economic growth not being accompanied by an increase in liberties) keep the current "communist" system on its toes.

Russia as well tried to recover its influence in world politics, with different degrees of success. After somewhat recovering from the massive economic crisis of the 90s, Russia is still one of the most powerful and influential countries worldwide, due to its military weight and to its growing economy. While levels of tension between Russia and the West have not reached Cold War levels, there are clashes from time to time. They still have more nukes than anyone, but they have reduced that number considerably due to it's not necessary to have so many nukes anymore, and they are reeeealy expensive to build and maintain.

==Technology, science and culture==

After the world stopped fearing the nuclear holocaust that a MAD would've been, there were many shifts in technological interest. In particular, computer science grew and developed exponentially, with computers becoming a part of everyday life. Modern communications have been affected as well. It is difficult to grasp how big of an impact has the Internet had in shaping modern life but suffice to say it affects every aspect of our lives. Readers of this article are well aware of this since they are using the internet to read it. In particular, the world of entertainment has become really big thanks to this technological level. Videogames replaced movies as the biggest and most profitable entertainment media (thanks in part to the growth of mobile gaming).

Many of the concerns of the Cold War era still persist, and in many cases, they've only grown with time. Without a nuclear war to worry about, things as environmentalism has changed focus on global warming and the waste of polluting elements into the ocean. Another issue relating to culture would be the rise of populist movements in various regions around the globe, from every bend of the ideological spectrum, mostly as a result of the increasing globalization and the presumed decline of what was once the nation-state.

==The appeal of Post Cold War world==
Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on in their fight against the new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West- the radical Islamist "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, whose goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country, to establishing a global caliphate.

Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years), pitting the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting.

[[Urban Fantasy]] and Superheroes are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different.

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

The World Wars

2019-03-24T03:11:18Z

2600:8803:1C00:BB00:90A1:84C:A62B:C235: /* World War inspired Games, Factions and Settings */

During the [[Industrial Revolution]], Europe was comparatively peaceful for the most part. The 19th century started with the Napoleonic Wars when Industrialization was building up steam in England and afterwards there were a series of colonial conflicts and small to middling wars between the various industrial powers*. The Civil War was on the upper end of conflicts in this era but was limited to the US, was still fought with muskets and saw about 600-750,000 people dead. The Franco Prussian war was won in six months. Things changed in 1914 when Arch Duke Ferdinand was assassinated, starting the Great War, also known as the First World War. This would be followed up by the Second World War in 1939-45. The ''World Wars'' Conflicts which would spread across the world and saw conflict and destruction beyond anything that was ever seen before or since.

There are two important factors in the World Wars: Technology and Nationalism. Technology is the easier of the two to understand, in the Napoleonic War the average soldier had a flintlock musket that could shoot 2-4 bullets a minute with an effective range of 100 meters, was supported by muzzle loading cannons that could shoot accurately to about 1km was supported by and steam engines were just beginning to propel boats and move loads of coal around mines. In 1914 the average soldier had a rifle that could shoot 15-30 bullets a minute (which could go through three men and still be deadly) at ranges of over a kilometer and was backed up by cannons that could fire shells six kilometers or more on ballistic courses which exploded in the air raining a spray of balls over a wide area and machine guns which could shoot 450 bullets a minute and airplanes. By the end of the Great War tanks, Sub Machine Guns and Poison Gas had been added to the arsenal. Tactics devised based on 19th century ideas of fighting were useless on this new battlefield and the book needed to be re-written from page one. Other technologies such as mass production, mechanized farming, railways and automobiles, mass education, telecommunications and modern bureaucracies meant that an Industrial Nation could turn more of it's population into soldiers than any medieval nation could ever hope to do (Rome was hard pressed to keep up a standing army of about 1% of it's population, Germany mobilized nearly 20% during the Great War). Through bloody experience generals gradually put together some idea of how to operate in this new battlefield near the end of the Great War and between the wars they'd continue to build on it with experience in small scale wars. Even so people were still making it up as they went in WWII.

Nationalism is more abstract but just as important. In the Middle Ages people generally identified themselves as being "a Christian Journeyman Blacksmith from London" or "a Jewish Master Cobbler from Munich" and so forth (their job, class, religion and hometown, things which they dealt with face to face day to day). If a Civil War happened and they ended up with a new noble house was put in charge, they would not care too much as long as the new lord upheld his feudal duties. There was a king and he ruled a bunch of land and tried to keep the peace, which was all good but the specifics of this was not a fact which defined them. This began to change with the Protestant Reformation and had a bit of build up through the Age of Enlightenment as propaganda for the masses took form leading to the Birth of Nationalism with the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. People began to see their country as more than just where they lived and the guy in a funny hat they were ruled by, but rather as a community of people united by common ideas, languages, beliefs, customs, ideals and (often) ancestry. People that need to band together and set aside their differences and defend what's theirs against those stinking foreigners with their differentness. Public Education caught on during the Industrial Revolution, which made it possible to give these ideals to everyone from the richest businessman to the lowiest begger. When you have two nations which have nationalistic populations and governments and other groups fond of egging nationalism on together it does not take much to get them at each others throats.

Footnote * The Taiping Rebellion in china killed some 20-30 million people, but neither side in it was industrialized beyond buying some foreign weapons to equip some of their troops.

== The First World War ==
To understand the beginning of the major, globe-shaking clusterfuck known as the First World War, we must first look at several key issues that preceded it.

The first and probably one of the biggest contributing factors was the race for Empire. During the preceding centuries, imperialism and expansionism became extremely popular among the industrializing and booming nations of Western Europe. Entire large swathes of Africa and Asia were carved out by global powerhouses such as Great Britain and France, in order to fuel their industry and economy back home, often at the expense of the natives (the treatment of which varied on which European power dominated that particular region, with those under Belgium's sway being the worst off). For a while, the competition was 'merely' a case of rivalry, as each generally avoided the other's territories in order not to repeat disasters like the Seven Years' War or the Napoleonic Wars. Everything was going more or less splendidly (barring some wars of independence in the Balkans against the increasingly corrupt and stagnating Ottoman Empire), until one key event forever shattered the balance of power so carefully put into place by the Congress of Vienna:

The unification of Germany by Otto Von Bismark (a political genius so astute that he coined the modern term 'realpolitik')

With Germany now unified, it presented a major threat to the established powers of Europe. Not helping matters was the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, looking at Britain with barely restrained jealousy and thus deciding that Germany deserved it's own overseas empire and place as top dog. Complicating matters further is the fact that the royalty and nobility of Europe were all largely related to one another. In some ways, this made the coming shitstorm seem more like the biggest family feud in centuries. The race for who controlled the biggest slice of the planet was kicked into overdrive, with factories pumping out new, relatively untested weapons such as the machine gun, the repeating rifle, and the howitzer, while shipyards around Europe churned out awe-inspiring steel battleships and cruisers, complete with the largest cannons mankind had ever seen up to that point.

To counterbalance each other, the great powers formed increasingly complex and entangling military alliances, which coalesced into two pacts- the Triple Entente (France, Britain, and Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, and Austria)

Meanwhile, various nationalist and liberal revolutionary movements were sweeping the continent like a new disease from the Plaguefather. Some of their demands were met, particularly in Britain where the House of Commons gained more power. Other revolutions were violently crushed or flat-out ignored, while still others were successful in their goals through sheer force of arms. The hardest hit, however, were not the more liberalized and industrious Western nations. Instead, the hardest hit by these successive waves of revolution was none other than the two oldest empires in Europe at that time- Austria and the Ottomans, both of whom were weary, tired states in dire need of reform. While some in both powers saw granting people increasing amounts of autonomy as the way to keep their state from collapsing (such as the formation of the dual monarchy and the recognition of Hungary as an equal partner, transforming the Austrian Empire into Austro-Hungary), others insisted on a more hardline approach, trying to keep the state afloat by using terror. All of this breed resentment, particularly in the Balkans, which increasingly became a powder keg that was waiting for the right spark.

That spark came in the form of the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, at the hands of Gavrilo Princip, who was a member of the infamous Serbian nationalist organization, Black Hand. Austria-Hungary gave an ultimatum to Serbia, which included some frankly ridiculous and cruel terms. When the Serbs rejected a few of these terms, the Austrians took it as a casus belli and declared war on Serbia. In response, Russia declared war on Austria, to which Germany declared war on Russia, to which France declared war on Germany, etc.

Thus began a conflict that would last for four bloody long years, see eleven million deaths as the result of horrific industrial warfare in the trenches and bombed-out fields, diseases such as the flu, and the breakup of several empires to form new nations. Truly, an entire generation of Europe's men was decimated as a result and gave rise to later extremist philosophies, the proponents of whom were all too eager to amass power for themselves by blaming it on the subversive "other".

Terrifying new weapons of war earned their fearsome reputation in this conflict. Machine guns and air-burst artillery shells rendered the old tactics of Napoleonic warfare suicidal, while mustard gas and the like created a new age of massive destruction. Tanks made their first debut in this war, slowly rumbling forth like invincible metal monsters, shrugging off most resistance and dealing punishing firepower themselves, only to breakdown in the middle of the battle due to being rudimentary designs. The airplane, as well, saw use in a combat role, and it would swiftly become an invaluable strategic and tactical tool, for he who dominated the skies dominated the flow of battle.

The bloodiest war in human history up to that point ended with Germany's surrender at 11:00 A.M, on November 11th, 1918, after being exhausted, starving, and dangerously close to collapse in the face of a communist uprising.

== The Interwar ==
Near the end of the first World War, the world was thrown into yet another cataclyism. The Spanish Flu, named such because neutral Spain was the only place that paid much attention to it over the ongoing war, spread rapidly and killed many thanks to the conditions caused by the war (overcrowding, malnourishment ect.). The death toll was horrendous, with the minimum estimate of 50 million being over double the entire war's death toll. After this Europe spent decades to recover from the horrible destruction the war and flu had caused.

America however was having its best years ever. The so called "Roaring Twenties" saw a rapid increase in the standard of living. President Harding managed to do the impossible and eliminate the deficit, though some of his appointees trying to sell [[Wikipedia:Teapot Rock|some government owned rock in the middle of nowhere]] marred his legacy (looking back historians realize there's a lack of evidence suggesting he had any knowledge or involvement). The American Economy of the time was doing well as unlike that of the other powers of Europe it had not been strained extensively by being in a War Economy for four years which strained productivity, had much of it's prime farmland turned into no mans land like France, had it's economy pushed to the Breaking Point like Germany, was broken up into squabbling states like the Austro-Hungrarian Empire or had all of that and worse, fought a subsequent civil war and was taken over by communists while having basically everyone in Europe owe American Bankers to pay for the war.

After Harding's death during the scandal his Vice President, Calvin Coolidge, took over. This was rather sudden and Coolidge was sworn in during the middle of the night by his father on the family Bible, with his first act was to pray to God to bless the American people and give him the strength to lead them. Unlike Harding, Coolidge proved wildly popular despite (or because of) his quiet nature. His economic policies really kicked off the Roaring Twenties and he was popular enough he was elected by a landside in an election ''he didn't campaign for'' (having his Vice President candidate do all the work). Coolidge continued Harding's deficit free budgets to the point the US was able to repay most of the national debt. Despite his wild popularity, Coolidge shocked the world with his announcement that [[Wikipedia:I do not choose to run|"I do not choose to run"]] for reelection and, true to his nature, did not really explain why (He would later elaborate in his autobiography that he did not wish to break the (then unofficial) rule set by Washington of a max of two terms among other issues). He would be followed by Herbert Hoover, who largely road on his success. This would change in October of 1929 when the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression.

There had been a series of stock market crashes through the the 19th century in the US every decade or so, each with increasing severity and effects in the US as more people moved into cities and were more dependent on wages. The 1920s saw a rise in consumer culture, payment plans, investment and a lot of scams which culminated in the biggest crash yet. Moreover since the US was now linked to a bunch of other countries thanks to improved communications, transportation and so forth the crash not only tanked the US economy, but that of basically every other developed country (save for the USSR under Stalin, which had it's own Stalin related problems) which further hindered recovery. The old ways of dealing with things did not work and people turned to new ideas. In the US this was various public works projects and assistance programs called the New Deal to get people back working and build confidence in the economy and financial regulations. In Germany the response was more severe and was seen as a failure of Democracy which contributed to the rise of the Nazi party. Responding to the collapse gave the Nazis the political currency to get into power, stimulate the economy by gearing it up with war and made the UK less willing to intervene to stop them while they were rising.

== The Second World War ==

=== The War in the West ===
See also [[Nazi]]s

=== The War in the East ===
Since at least 1853 when Commadore Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor the Japanese feared the day when the powers of Europe would stomp all over them like they did China. In response they began building up their industrial base importing guns, ships, factory machinery, engineers, textbooks and professors. Some Japanese people came to the idea that the best way to fend off Imperialism was to become Imperialists themselves and they began gobbling up their neighbors from the late 19th century onward and they kept doing into the 20th century when general militarism came to power in Japan as the military was not kept on a tight leash. In the 1931 they invaded Manchuria and in in 1937 they invaded China, killing millions as they went. The rest of the world was outraged and cut Japan off from trade, which caused them to dig their heels in and keep it up. Tensions built until eventually the overconfident Army managed to push the Imperial Japanese Navy into launching an attack on Pearl Harbor.

The idea was that if everything went right and Hitler fighting in the pacific the IJN could control the pacific and force the US to the table. The Pearl Harbor attack did work very well and they did overrun a lot of allied holdings around Asia, but the fact was that the US had more than 10 times the Industry that Japan did as well as plenty of fuel. As time went on the Allies were able to roll back the IJA and push back the IJN to the home islands.

=== The Manhattan Project ===
At the tale end of the 20th century, scientists began to work out some odd properties of matter, which eventually got them to realize that you could make an explosive device millions of times as powerful as any conventional chemical bomb. Such a weapon would be a game changer for warfare and if the Nazis became able to make first was an intolerable state of affairs. As such the Brits and the Americans pooled their scientific and industrial resources at Los Alamos to work out how to make enough U-235 and to build a bomb. They were not ready in time to deal with the Nazis, but the first two of them were dropped on Japan to end the war quickly and avoid a long costly slog that would have involved millions dead, instead settling on killing a couple hundred thousand in one go.

== The appeal of The World Wars ==
These are the biggest armed conflicts of world history, rolling across continents using modern weapons, from tanks to planes to automatic weapons. Modern War was born in the trenches of the Somme, in the skies above London and over the fields of Poland during the Blitzkrieg.

Of the two wars, World War One gets relatively little media attention and what it gets is somber. Part of it is because it's hard to craft a heroic action-packed adventure out of trench warfare, the other part is that the morality of the war is very very grey. The Great War is largely seen as a great tragedy. Because of some damn fool thing in the Balkans millions of good people in Germany, France, Austria, Russia and England get riled up by the news and propaganda campaigns that they were now at war. Men join the army one way or another, get cheered as they parade down the streets as being righteous heroes in the making going forth to defend hearth, home, family, friend and Nation and are shipped out to battlefields where they get torn apart by rifle fire, machine guns and artillery by the tens of thousands. The survivors dig in, make their trench lines, take pock shots at each other and live in dread of the hour when they'd be sent off on a suicidal charge across no mans land which will achieve nothing but fill a few more graves. There was no clear right side, with both the Central and Allied powers equally chomping at the bit for a fight (at least to start with), and ready to start shooting for ''any'' convenient reason. The ''only'' motivation the common people had (besides being drafted and having no choice anyway) to go fight was the extensive propaganda campaigns telling them how totally awful for realsies the enemy was, and anyone asking questions or doubting was shut down ''hard''. When it was all over the country blamed and punished for the whole mess wasn't even the one that started it. In fact, neither of the original belligerent nations survived the conflict. All told, the First World War was quite possibly the most pointless and wasteful war in all of human history.

The Second World War is a much more palatable conflict of more or less Good vs Evil. The Nazis raised up an army and went about conquering Europe with plans on exterminating millions as a key objective while Imperial Japan was out conquering China and being really nasty themselves with the rapes and everything. When even Stalin looks favorable to someone, you know they're bad. The Axis Powers provided a clear and easy villain for the rest of the world to rally against (as well as providing easy media villains for the rest of the century and into the next millennium).

The majority of Alternate History fiction is set in WWII one way or another.

== World War inspired Games, Factions and Settings ==
* A lot of stuff from the [[Imperium of Man]], especially the Death Korps of Krieg.
* [[Bolt Action]], [[Flames of War]] and other similar military tabletop games
* [[Star Wars]] takes a great deal of inspiration from this time period, and in regards to the Prequels, it especially takes a lot of inspiration from the transformation of the democratic-but-ineffectual Weimar Republic into the nightmarishly totalitarian Third Reich.

{{Skub}}
{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Post-Cold War

2019-03-24T00:44:16Z

2600:8803:1C00:BB00:90A1:84C:A62B:C235: /* Technology, science and culture */

Post-Cold War

2019-03-24T00:43:46Z

2600:8803:1C00:BB00:90A1:84C:A62B:C235: /* Technology, science and culture */ Usually the populist movements referred here are either rightist or leftist in nature.

The World Wars

2019-03-23T22:25:05Z

2600:8803:1C00:BB00:90A1:84C:A62B:C235: /* The First World War */

During the [[Industrial Revolution]], Europe was comparatively peaceful for the most part. The 19th century started with the Napoleonic Wars when Industrialization was building up steam in England and afterwards there were a series of colonial conflicts and small to middling wars between the various industrial powers*. The Civil War was on the upper end of conflicts in this era but was limited to the US, was still fought with muskets and saw about 600-750,000 people dead. The Franco Prussian war was won in six months. Things changed in 1914 when Arch Duke Ferdinand was assassinated, starting the Great War, also known as the First World War. This would be followed up by the Second World War in 1939-45. The ''World Wars'' Conflicts which would spread across the world and saw conflict and destruction beyond anything that was ever seen before or since.

There are two important factors in the World Wars: Technology and Nationalism. Technology is the easier of the two to understand, in the Napoleonic War the average soldier had a flintlock musket that could shoot 2-4 bullets a minute with an effective range of 100 meters, was supported by muzzle loading cannons that could shoot accurately to about 1km was supported by and steam engines were just beginning to propel boats and move loads of coal around mines. In 1914 the average soldier had a rifle that could shoot 15-30 bullets a minute (which could go through three men and still be deadly) at ranges of over a kilometer and was backed up by cannons that could fire shells six kilometers or more on ballistic courses which exploded in the air raining a spray of balls over a wide area and machine guns which could shoot 450 bullets a minute and airplanes. By the end of the Great War tanks, Sub Machine Guns and Poison Gas had been added to the arsenal. Tactics devised based on 19th century ideas of fighting were useless on this new battlefield and the book needed to be re-written from page one. Other technologies such as mass production, mechanized farming, railways and automobiles, mass education, telecommunications and modern bureaucracies meant that an Industrial Nation could turn more of it's population into soldiers than any medieval nation could ever hope to do (Rome was hard pressed to keep up a standing army of about 1% of it's population, Germany mobilized nearly 20% during the Great War). Through bloody experience generals gradually put together some idea of how to operate in this new battlefield near the end of the Great War and between the wars they'd continue to build on it with experience in small scale wars. Even so people were still making it up as they went in WWII.

Nationalism is more abstract but just as important. In the Middle Ages people generally identified themselves as being "a Christian Journeyman Blacksmith from London" or "a Jewish Master Cobbler from Munich" and so forth (their job, class, religion and hometown, things which they dealt with face to face day to day). If a Civil War happened and they ended up with a new noble house was put in charge, they would not care too much as long as the new lord upheld his feudal duties. There was a king and he ruled a bunch of land and tried to keep the peace, which was all good but the specifics of this was not a fact which defined them. This began to change with the Protestant Reformation and had a bit of build up through the Age of Enlightenment as propaganda for the masses took form leading to the Birth of Nationalism with the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. People began to see their country as more than just where they lived and the guy in a funny hat they were ruled by, but rather as a community of people united by common ideas, languages, beliefs, customs, ideals and (often) ancestry. People that need to band together and set aside their differences and defend what's theirs against those stinking foreigners with their differentness. Public Education caught on during the Industrial Revolution, which made it possible to give these ideals to everyone from the richest businessman to the lowiest begger. When you have two nations which have nationalistic populations and governments and other groups fond of egging nationalism on together it does not take much to get them at each others throats.

Footnote * The Taiping Rebellion in china killed some 20-30 million people, but neither side in it was industrialized beyond buying some foreign weapons to equip some of their troops.

== The First World War ==
To understand the beginning of the major, globe-shaking clusterfuck known as the First World War, we must first look at several key issues that preceded it.

The first and probably one of the biggest contributing factors was the race for Empire. During the preceding centuries, imperialism and expansionism became extremely popular among the industrializing and booming nations of Western Europe. Entire large swathes of Africa and Asia were carved out by global powerhouses such as Great Britain and France, in order to fuel their industry and economy back home, often at the expense of the natives (the treatment of which varied on which European power dominated that particular region, with those under Belgium's sway being the worst off). For a while, the competition was 'merely' a case of rivalry, as each generally avoided the other's territories in order not to repeat disasters like the Seven Years' War or the Napoleonic Wars. Everything was going more or less splendidly (barring some wars of independence in the Balkans against the increasingly corrupt and stagnating Ottoman Empire), until one key event forever shattered the balance of power so carefully put into place by the Congress of Vienna:

The unification of Germany by Otto Von Bismark (a political genius so astute that he coined the modern term 'realpolitik')

With Germany now unified, it presented a major threat to the established powers of Europe. Not helping matters was the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, looking at Britain with barely restrained jealousy and thus deciding that Germany deserved it's own overseas empire and place as top dog. Complicating matters further is the fact that the royalty and nobility of Europe were all largely related to one another. In some ways, this made the coming shitstorm seem more like the biggest family feud in centuries. The race for who controlled the biggest slice of the planet was kicked into overdrive, with factories pumping out new, relatively untested weapons such as the machine gun, the repeating rifle, and the howitzer, while shipyards around Europe churned out awe-inspiring steel battleships and cruisers, complete with the largest cannons mankind had ever seen up to that point.

To counterbalance each other, the great powers formed increasingly complex and entangling military alliances, which coalesced into two pacts- the Triple Entente (France, Britain, and Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, and Austria)

Meanwhile, various nationalist and liberal revolutionary movements were sweeping the continent like a new disease from the Plaguefather. Some of their demands were met, particularly in Britain where the House of Commons gained more power. Other revolutions were violently crushed or flat-out ignored, while still others were successful in their goals through sheer force of arms. The hardest hit, however, were not the more liberalized and industrious Western nations. Instead, the hardest hit by these successive waves of revolution was none other than the two oldest empires in Europe at that time- Austria and the Ottomans, both of whom were weary, tired states in dire need of reform. While some in both powers saw granting people increasing amounts of autonomy as the way to keep their state from collapsing (such as the formation of the dual monarchy and the recognition of Hungary as an equal partner, transforming the Austrian Empire into Austro-Hungary), others insisted on a more hardline approach, trying to keep the state afloat by using terror. All of this breed resentment, particularly in the Balkans, which increasingly became a powder keg that was waiting for the right spark.

That spark came in the form of the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, at the hands of Gavrilo Princip, who was a member of the infamous Serbian nationalist organization, Black Hand. Austria-Hungary gave an ultimatum to Serbia, which included some frankly ridiculous and cruel terms. When the Serbs rejected a few of these terms, the Austrians took it as a casus belli and declared war on Serbia. In response, Russia declared war on Austria, to which Germany declared war on Russia, to which France declared war on Germany, etc.

Thus began a conflict that would last for four bloody long years, see eleven million deaths as the result of horrific industrial warfare in the trenches and bombed-out fields, diseases such as the flu, and the breakup of several empires to form new nations. Truly, an entire generation of Europe's men was decimated as a result and gave rise to later extremist philosophies, the proponents of whom were all too eager to amass power for themselves by blaming it on the subversive "other".

Terrifying new weapons of war earned their fearsome reputation in this conflict. Machine guns and air-burst artillery shells rendered the old tactics of Napoleonic warfare suicidal, while mustard gas and the like created a new age of massive destruction. Tanks made their first debut in this war, slowly rumbling forth like invincible metal monsters, shrugging off most resistance and dealing punishing firepower themselves, only to breakdown in the middle of the battle due to being rudimentary designs. The airplane, as well, saw use in a combat role, and it would swiftly become an invaluable strategic and tactical tool, for he who dominated the skies dominated the flow of battle.

The bloodiest war in human history up to that point ended with Germany's surrender at 11:00 A.M, on November 11th, 1918, after being exhausted, starving, and dangerously close to collapse in the face of a communist uprising.

== The Interwar ==
Near the end of the first World War, the world was thrown into yet another cataclyism. The Spanish Flu, named such because neutral Spain was the only place that paid much attention to it over the ongoing war, spread rapidly and killed many thanks to the conditions caused by the war (overcrowding, malnourishment ect.). The death toll was horrendous, with the minimum estimate of 50 million being over double the entire war's death toll. After this Europe spent decades to recover from the horrible destruction the war and flu had caused.

America however was having its best years ever. The so called "Roaring Twenties" saw a rapid increase in the standard of living. President Harding managed to do the impossible and eliminate the deficit, though some of his appointees trying to sell [[Wikipedia:Teapot Rock|some government owned rock in the middle of nowhere]] marred his legacy (looking back historians realize there's a lack of evidence suggesting he had any knowledge or involvement). The American Economy of the time was doing well as unlike that of the other powers of Europe it had not been strained extensively by being in a War Economy for four years which strained productivity, had much of it's prime farmland turned into no mans land like France, had it's economy pushed to the Breaking Point like Germany, was broken up into squabbling states like the Austro-Hungrarian Empire or had all of that and worse, fought a subsequent civil war and was taken over by communists while having basically everyone in Europe owe American Bankers to pay for the war.

After Harding's death during the scandal his Vice President, Calvin Coolidge, took over. This was rather sudden and Coolidge was sworn in during the middle of the night by his father on the family Bible, with his first act was to pray to God to bless the American people and give him the strength to lead them. Unlike Harding, Coolidge proved wildly popular despite (or because of) his quiet nature. His economic policies really kicked off the Roaring Twenties and he was popular enough he was elected by a landside in an election ''he didn't campaign for'' (having his Vice President candidate do all the work). Coolidge continued Harding's deficit free budgets to the point the US was able to repay most of the national debt. Despite his wild popularity, Coolidge shocked the world with his announcement that [[Wikipedia:I do not choose to run|"I do not choose to run"]] for reelection and, true to his nature, did not really explain why (He would later elaborate in his autobiography that he did not wish to break the (then unofficial) rule set by Washington of a max of two terms among other issues). He would be followed by Herbert Hoover, who largely road on his success. This would change in October of 1929 when the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression.

There had been a series of stock market crashes through the the 19th century in the US every decade or so, each with increasing severity and effects in the US as more people moved into cities and were more dependent on wages. The 1920s saw a rise in consumer culture, payment plans, investment and a lot of scams which culminated in the biggest crash yet. Moreover since the US was now linked to a bunch of other countries thanks to improved communications, transportation and so forth the crash not only tanked the US economy, but that of basically every other developed country (save for the USSR under Stalin, which had it's own Stalin related problems) which further hindered recovery. The old ways of dealing with things did not work and people turned to new ideas. In the US this was various public works projects and assistance programs called the New Deal to get people back working and build confidence in the economy and financial regulations. In Germany the response was more severe and was seen as a failure of Democracy which contributed to the rise of the Nazi party. Responding to the collapse gave the Nazis the political currency to get into power, stimulate the economy by gearing it up with war and made the UK less willing to intervene to stop them while they were rising.

== The Second World War ==

=== The War in the West ===
See also [[Nazi]]s

=== The War in the East ===
Since at least 1853 when Commadore Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor the Japanese feared the day when the powers of Europe would stomp all over them like they did China. In response they began building up their industrial base importing guns, ships, factory machinery, engineers, textbooks and professors. Some Japanese people came to the idea that the best way to fend off Imperialism was to become Imperialists themselves and they began gobbling up their neighbors from the late 19th century onward and they kept doing into the 20th century when general militarism came to power in Japan as the military was not kept on a tight leash. In the 1931 they invaded Manchuria and in in 1937 they invaded China, killing millions as they went. The rest of the world was outraged and cut Japan off from trade, which caused them to dig their heels in and keep it up. Tensions built until eventually the overconfident Army managed to push the Imperial Japanese Navy into launching an attack on Pearl Harbor.

The idea was that if everything went right and Hitler fighting in the pacific the IJN could control the pacific and force the US to the table. The Pearl Harbor attack did work very well and they did overrun a lot of allied holdings around Asia, but the fact was that the US had more than 10 times the Industry that Japan did as well as plenty of fuel. As time went on the Allies were able to roll back the IJA and push back the IJN to the home islands.

=== The Manhattan Project ===
At the tale end of the 20th century, scientists began to work out some odd properties of matter, which eventually got them to realize that you could make an explosive device millions of times as powerful as any conventional chemical bomb. Such a weapon would be a game changer for warfare and if the Nazis became able to make first was an intolerable state of affairs. As such the Brits and the Americans pooled their scientific and industrial resources at Los Alamos to work out how to make enough U-235 and to build a bomb. They were not ready in time to deal with the Nazis, but the first two of them were dropped on Japan to end the war quickly and avoid a long costly slog that would have involved millions dead, instead settling on killing a couple hundred thousand in one go.

== Notes ==

== The appeal of The World Wars ==
These are the biggest armed conflicts of world history, rolling across continents using modern weapons, from tanks to planes to automatic weapons. Modern War was born in the trenches of the Somme, in the skies above London and over the fields of Poland during the Blitzkrieg.

Of the two wars, World War One gets relatively little media attention. Part of it is because it's hard to craft a heroic action-packed adventure out of trench warfare, the other part is that the morality of the war is very very grey. The Great War is largely seen as a great tragedy. Because of some damn fool thing in the Balkans millions of good people in Germany, France, Austria, Russia and England get riled up by the news and propaganda campaigns that they were now at war. Men join the army one way or another, get cheered as they parade down the streets as being righteous heroes in the making going forth to defend hearth, home, family, friend and Nation and are shipped out to battlefields where they get torn apart by rifle fire, machine guns and artillery by the tens of thousands. The survivors dig in, make their trench lines, take pock shots at each other and live in dread of the hour when they'd be sent off on a suicidal charge across no mans land which will achieve nothing but fill a few more graves. There was no clear right side, with both the Central and Allied powers equally chomping at the bit for a fight (at least to start with), and ready to start shooting for ''any'' convenient reason. The ''only'' motivation the common people had (besides being drafted and having no choice anyway) to go fight was the extensive propaganda campaigns telling them how totally awful for realsies the enemy was, and anyone asking questions or doubting was shut down ''hard''. When it was all over the country blamed and punished for the whole mess wasn't even the one that started it. In fact, neither of the original belligerent nations survived the conflict. All told, the First World War was quite possibly the most pointless and wasteful war in all of human history.

The Second World War is a much more palatable conflict of more or less Good vs Evil. The Nazis raised up an army and went about conquering Europe with plans on exterminating millions as a key objective while Imperial Japan was out conquering China and being really nasty themselves with the rapes and everything. When even Stalin looks favorable to someone, you know they're bad. The Axis Powers provided a clear and easy villain for the rest of the world to rally against (as well as providing easy media villains for the rest of the century and into the next millennium).

The majority of Alternate History fiction is set in WWII one way or another.

== World War inspired Games, Factions and Settings ==
* A lot of stuff from the [[Imperium of Man]], especially the Death Korps of Krieg.
* [[Bolt Action]], [[Flames of War]] and other similar military tabletop games

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Post-Cold War

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Post-Cold War

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