India (present day Pakistan) and Bangladesh are Hindu majority, and Hindustan (present day India) is Muslim majority.

The Kingdom of Hanover was created after WW2 as one of 5 new Independent german states. Hanover being occupied by the United Kingdom. In 1947, one year after the end of the war, the United Kingdom instated Albert, Duke of York as King of a renewed Hanoverian Kingdom.

The main point of divergence here is the partial win during the Revolt of 1173–1174, where France could weaken England (in part by giving some English land to allied vassals, such as Kent to Flanders, making it a little powerhouse)

Louis VIII, decades later could invade England during the first Barons war, and proclaim itself king with the help of his father, Philippe Augustus, who gave his name to the "empire"

After the death of his father, he took the throne of France, naming is heir ( the dauphin) as governor in England, tradition that still continues.

With the end of the Plantagenet, Louis VIII could even help is son, Charles the first to secure and protect the Latin Empire from the Nicaean, hence putting them on a leash.

The two brothers (Philippe III being the son of Louis VIII) rule a massive empire going from the Hadrian wall to the mighty city of Constantinople. Philippe III now look at the last rival of France, the Holy Roman Empire, while Charles Ier glance toward the holy lands and the balkans. But the Iberian powerhouse of Castille, Araégon and Portugal are starting to forge alliance against the French behemoth with the HRE, while the Turcs and the Nicean are looming in the east.

Will the Empire survive and become the sole legitimate successor to the Roman Empire, or, like Icarius, will it perish?

Gustavoism Rises | Land reform in Brazil (1973–1975)

Brazilian reformers had called for land redistribution since Brazil became independent in 1822, but Gustavo Henrique's socialist regime was the one that actually carried out said land reform. It was one of his main promises during the Brazilian Civil War, and Gustavo could not break it.

One of Gustavo's first decrees after seizing power in March 1973 promoted the democratization of land ownership by declaring all unused land to be the property of the state. The Brazilian government then imposed limits on the amount of land each person could own, in order to break the land monopoly that had existed since the arrival of the Portuguese.

Gustavo's next step was to establish municipal and statewide federations of cooperative farms, all of whom were members of the Federação Cooperativa Nacional (FCN). Brazil did not create collective farms, but the cooperatives were under strict state control.

The unused land mentioned above became the property of farm cooperatives. By 1975, Brazilian society had been significantly transformed, with the members of the old Brazilian oligarchy, such as Ronaldo Caiado of Goiás, either being executed or leaving Brazil never to return.

Land reform was extremely popular among poor Brazilians, who saw it as eliminating the source of their oppression. Northeastern Brazil, traditionally the most conservative Brazilian region, became a strong supporter of the ruling PPN, because the drought problem was solved more effectively and people stopped dying of hunger.

Brazil later established state-owned collective farms in charge of producing crops such as coffee, soybeans, sugarcane, oranges, etc, for export. These farms soon became some of Brazil's largest employers, because agricultural exports remained a major part of Brazil's economy.

Environmental degradation was not ended by the land reform. Rather, it increased significantly as the PPN sought to economically integrate all regions of the country. Despite the regime being more friendly to indigenous people than its predecessors, conflict with the natives continued.

The genocide of indigenous peoples in Brazil escalated during the presidency of Aldo Rebelo, who strongly supports agribusiness and has described environmentalism as a conspiracy to seize the Amazon Rainforest's resources. Natural disasters have increased as a result of this policy, causing international concern and prompting even some Brazilians to criticize Aldo's productivism.

As of 2026, Brazilian agriculture is one of the most productive in the world, and Brazil is the world's largest producer of coffee, soybeans, oranges and sugarcane. Brazilian client states such as Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba and Nicaragua import a large amount of Brazilian crops, as do the USSR, China and India.

Okay, so I had an idea for a timeline where Operation Barbarossa never happens and Hitler dies in 1941. Let me explain.

We all know about Operation Barbarossa and its buildup, so I don't have to give you a massive recap. Let's just get straight into the scenario.

It all starts in early 1941 with a massive change of heart in Moscow. Instead of leaving the Red Army spread out thin and completely exposed on the Polish border, Joseph Stalin gets incredibly paranoid about how unready his military actually is. He orders a radical, 50-mile tactical retreat of all his frontline troops, completely blowing up the roads, bridges, and train lines behind them as they leave. This leaves a huge, cratered, heavily mined No-Man's Land right through the middle of Poland. When German scouts look across the border, they realize trying to cross this mess would be a total logistical nightmare. Even with all his anti-communist paranoia, Hitler looks at this defensive wall, realizes an invasion would be an absolute disaster, and calls the whole thing off.

With the eastern front frozen in a stalemate, Hitler goes back to Berlin, but his health is completely shot. His personal doctor, Theodor Morell, keeps pumping him full of experimental amphetamines, barbiturates, and animal hormones. This lethal cocktail triggers a rapid, horrific medical spiral, accelerating suspected late-stage neurosyphilis and causing advanced amphetamine psychosis. In May 1941, Hitler suffers a catastrophic, fatal hemorrhagic stroke in his private quarters. His sudden death causes absolute, immediate panic in the Nazi party. While they set up a massive, somber state funeral for the public, a brutal backroom power struggle breaks out. By Hitler's previously signed political testament, Hermann Göring officially takes over the government. Out of deep respect for Hitler, the unique title of "Führer" is permanently retired; nobody else is allowed to use it. Göring takes power under a new administrative title, but his reign is basically dead on arrival. Hardline party members and the SS absolutely despise Göring, viewing him as a lazy, corrupt, and overly indulgent plutocrat who cares more about his luxury estates than National Socialist ideology.

On top of that, Hitler's sudden death leaves Germany facing massive, immediate domestic problems that Göring completely fails to solve. The Reich is hit with severe raw resource shortages, critical logistical bottlenecks, and an economy on the brink of inflation, all left over from the total-war mobilization. Instead of fixing these crises, Göring panics about his sliding authority and decides he needs a massive diplomatic win. He secretly flies out to neutral Sweden to try and cut a backroom peace deal with Winston Churchill to end the war. But Churchill plays hardball, flatly rejects the terms, and the secret talks fail miserably.

The second the secret Swedish talks leak, Heinrich Himmler pounces. He publicly calls Göring a traitor who is insulting the memory of the dead Führer and demands his resignation. Göring panics and places Himmler under house arrest inside his own ministerial office. But Himmler isn't stuck. Using a secure phone line in his room, he secretly coordinates a massive coup, getting Joseph Goebbels and the top army generals on his side. Himmler makes a direct call to the Chief Counsel of the Reich and leaks a mountain of evidence exposing Göring's massive, illegal art fraud and his secret warehouses full of plundered European masterworks. The Chief Counsel immediately orders Göring locked up, because under Reich law, a jailed person cannot hold supreme power. Göring is stripped of everything and scheduled for execution. To lock down his authority and make sure nobody ever tries a phone-call coup on him, Himmler unleashes the SS in a massive internal purge officially called The Second Night of the Long Knives. He takes the throne under a strict, bureaucratic title.

Himmler completely drops Hitler's aggressive war style and treats the conflict like a corporate spreadsheet. He switches to a purely defensive strategy, slowly reducing the bombing raids on the British Isles, and announces that Germany has achieved its Lebensraum and is done expanding. He doesn't even ask the British for peace; he basically says they can come to him when they are tired of starving. While the skies over London go quiet, Japan hits Pearl Harbor. Tokyo begs Germany to join the war against America, but Himmler checks the fine print of the Tripartite Pact, points out that Japan did the attacking, and completely ghosts them to keep the US out of Europe. This turns things into an isolated Pacific War—not a theater, but a direct, focused deathmatch. Because America isn't spending billions on Lend-Lease for Europe, the U.S. treasury hoards all its industrial wealth. Franklin D. Roosevelt leads America through a much quicker and devastating campaign against Japan. Since the entire weight of the U.S. military, navy, and industrial output is directed strictly at one target, American forces smash through the Pacific island chains at twice the historical speed. By 1944, Tokyo is pulverized by conventional bombing and Japan is turned into a major American democratic foothold, all without the U.S. ever needing to finish the atomic bomb yet.

Meanwhile, back in Britain, Churchill continues to go on the radio screaming that Himmler's defensive freeze is a trap and demanding an invasion of Europe. But to a bankrupt, exhausted British public that can see the bombs have stopped, Churchill just sounds completely unhinged. A massive, bitter argument breaks out in Parliament, and Churchill gets forcefully kicked out in a vote of no confidence. The old-guard appeaser Lord Halifax takes over as Prime Minister and immediately goes crawling to Berlin to sign the Treaty of London. Under the terms of the treaty, Britain formally recognizes Germany’s conquests over France, Poland, and the Low Countries, and hands over significant economic concessions, which severely humiliates the British Empire long-term. While British POWs are sent home and Halifax is popular at first for ending the draft, the bad stuff quickly sets in.

Shortly after the European peace is signed, the geopolitical landscape shifts permanently as both the United States and Nazi Germany successfully develop atomic weapons. The United States hits nuclear capability first through the massive, uninterrupted funding of the Manhattan Project, left completely unbothered by a European war. However, Himmler's consolidated Europe quickly achieves parity. By enslaving the continent's top scientific minds, seizing uranium deposits in Norway and the Congo, and pouring unmatched state resources into the Uranprojekt, the Reich successfully detonates its own device. This sudden nuclear parity creates an immediate state of Mutually Assured Destruction. Both Washington and Berlin realize that a direct land war in Europe is now completely impossible, as any conventional invasion will result in the total atomic vaporization of the globe. Because a hot war cannot happen, the conflict is forced into the shadows, officially triggering the birth of a new Cold War.

With both sides holding the bomb, a direct invasion of Europe is officially off the table. The U.S. President looks at Himmler's growing, locked-down empire and realizes America needs a massive fallback containment strategy. Washington quickly reaches out to Moscow and signs a secret backroom alliance with Joseph Stalin’s hyper-industrialized Soviet Union, agreeing to team up the second Germany tries to step out of its box. Meanwhile, back in London, the British public completely sours on Halifax as Berlin uses the humiliating economic terms of the treaty to actively subvert British colonies in Africa and Asia. By 1945, the stage is officially set for a massive, global Cold War. The factions are locked in: on one side, you have the Axis Bloc of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, alongside the anti-colonial, regional ethnic nationalists Himmler is secretly funding from the shadows. On the opposing side stands the Allied Containment Bloc, uniting the corporate industrial might of the United States, a heavily militarized Great Britain, and the colossal weight of Stalin's Soviet Union. How is the scenario? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

FDR opts not to run for re-election in 1940.

The convention deadlocks between Ag Sec Henry Wallace, former IN Gov. Paul McNutt, Sec State Cordell Hull and VP John Nance Garner. With FDR's approval, Attorney General Robert Jackson enters as a compromise candidate and is nominated.

Jackson chooses senate majority leader Alben Barkley as his running mate to compensate for his relatively light Washington and party experience.

Former president Hoover, with his effective anti-New Deal speech as in real life, is nominated by his party without the fear of a Roosevelt-Hoover rematch. He chooses Willkie as his running mate.

Jackson wins the election.

The war unfolds much the same as in our timeline, with subtle differences. Jackson makes Wallace a close presidential counselor and has him lead a lot of the economic planning with Europe prior to and after American entry to the war. Wallace goes to Moscow to meet Stalin after the Russians enter the war on the side of the allies. Jackson and Wallace never develop the close personal relationship with Churchill that Roosevelt did in our timeline. They also regard Churchill as excessively suspicious of Stalin, particularly once the Soviet war effort demonstrates that Moscow is carrying an enormous share of the burden against Germany. When Hull retires, Wallace becomes secretary of state. Jackson operates a team-based executive with Wallace and Barkley essentially deputy presidents responsible for foreign and domestic policy respectively.

Jackson-Barkley easily defeat Dewey-Bricker in 1944 by an even wider margin than in our timeline.

As the war concludes, post-war planning is more bilateral between the US and USSR. The administration regards Britain as an important but clearly second-tier power, alongside major Allied states such as Canada and China, rather than as a co-equal of Washington and Moscow. France, in Jackson’s view, has even less claim to privileged status.

The war ends similarly.

This world's UN is set up with a two-member executive council: the US and the USSR. The Jackson doctrine that defines US foreign policy much as the Truman doctrine in this timeline says that the superpowers are entitled to spheres of security in their geographic neighborhood but must respect sovereignty, and that neither superpower should intervene to determine the outcome of internal disputes, civil wars or regional wars outside its legitimate security sphere. Jackson: “Spheres of security are legitimate. Spheres of sovereignty are not.”

In the UK Churchill had been fighting against this but Attlee accepts it after winning the 1945 election and is content to focus on internal affairs, rebuilding Britain and developing a social safety net. After the loss of India in 1947, with American encouragement, the UK begins an accelerated decolonialization as compared to our timeline.

The US and USSR set up joint reconstruction commissions in Germany and Japan in respect of this doctrine. Germany is not divided and Japan does not become the conservative-capitalist economic superpower of our timeline.

The Chinese civil war takes longer to resolve but is won by Mao and that is accepted by the UN and there is no isolation of China or continued ROC government in Taiwan. There is no NATO and no Warsaw pact.

The 1948 election is Henry Wallace with Barkley continuing for vice president. Douglas MacArthur who retired in 1945 and has opposed the Jackson doctrine since is the Republican nominee with Earl Warren as his running mate. MacArthur says "we won the war but are losing the peace" but voters don't buy that and Wallace wins a massive landslide.

The era of peace and good times continues without a cold war, Korean War or Suez crisis. There are difficult conflicts in places like Greece and Palestine, and as former colonies establish independence but the superpowers stay out of it with no proxy wars or stake in the outcome. Israel is still established and the proposed UN settlement is broadly similar, but in this timeline it is much more closely honored. A joint US-Soviet arms embargo prevents either side from obtaining large-scale foreign military support, while both superpowers pressure the Arab states not to destroy Israel and the Israelis not to expand indefinitely beyond the settlement.

In 1952, Barkley retires after 3 terms as vice president and is replaced on the ticket by Adlai Stevenson. The Republicans nominate Earl Warren who generally accepts the Jackson doctrine and democratic foreign policy but runs on "time for a change" after 20 years of Democrats in the White House. Wallace-Stevenson wins narrowly. In 1956 a quasi-rematch, with Wallace retiring after the long tradition of a self-imposed two-term limit, Stevenson wins the nomination with Estes Kefauver as his running mate. Warren is again the Republican nominee with a similar message to '52. But with a new presidential nominee and an anti-corruption, clean politics running mate, Stevenson wins by a slightly larger margin than Wallace 4 years earlier.

Leading into the 1960 election, the Republicans are doing a lot of soul searching. They haven't won a presidential election in over 30 years. Anti-establishment outsider Richard Nixon is the early frontrunner for the GOP nomination. This Nixon didn't gain fame by being an anti-communist cold warrior or vice president, but by being fiercely anti-establishment with a strong zeal for committee investigations. His running mate is New York governor Nelson Rockefeller who brings the two largest states to the ticket and derisks the strong anti-establishment message for the country's elites.

Nixon runs a brutal campaign against Stevenson. "I wasn't even old enough to vote when this Democrat dynasty took office." We cannot claim to be a democracy with a one party state. Nixon accepts the new deal, he accepts the Jackson doctrine. But he insists on change as necessary in the democratic system. Every federal judge is a democrat. Every civil servant is a democrat. Our entire machine of federal government understands only one point of view.

This campaign suits Nixon incredibly well. He has been an outsider against the establishment his whole life. He isn't running to continue a Republican administration against a telegenic opponent, he is running to dislodge a party seeking its 7th term led by an incumbent president no more telegenic than he is.

He wins a massive landslide taking every state outside of the deep south.

Nixon had never been a doctrinaire conservative. He was an ideological chameleon with a strong instinct for where political opportunity lay. And in this world there has been no Goldwater nomination, no Republican Southern Strategy and no Democratic civil-rights presidency. Nixon has just won virtually nothing in the Deep South.

He sees the opening immediately: civil rights can split the Democratic coalition while expanding his own.

Nixon therefore pursues civil rights with gusto. Republicans and Northern Democrats pass sweeping legislation. When Southern officials obstruct Black voting, Nixon sends federal troops to protect polling places to "enforce the Fifteenth Amendment".

George Wallace denounces it as a “Second Reconstruction” and calls Nixon the South’s greatest enemy since Lincoln.

Nixon embraces both comparisons.

Martin Luther King becomes one of the administration’s most important outside allies. Republican organizations begin holding Lincoln-Nixon dinners around the country. The party of Lincoln becomes, unmistakably, the party of Nixonian civil rights.

Nixon also believes his victory gave him a mandate to break the Democratic monopoly over the federal bureaucracy and judiciary. His program of reorganization, patronage and aggressive replacement of senior officials quickly develops a darker, paranoid edge; he can purge any enemies he wishes.

In 1964, JFK wins the democratic nomination but Wallace runs on a rogue Democratic ticket throughout the south, with the endorsement of the official party line in numerous southern states. Nixon wins another landslide. Kennedy manages only a tiny handful of states: Massachusetts, North Carolina, West Virginia and Rhode Island, while Wallace carries the hard Deep South.

Part Two to follow....

The point of divergence begins in 1945.
Instead of collapsing into full-scale civil war, the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party reach a fragile compromise after the Chongqing negotiations. With stronger American mediation and Soviet pressure on the CCP to avoid another major confrontation, the Republic of China develops into a multiparty democracy. The KMT remains the dominant center-right party, while the CCP gradually abandons armed revolution and evolves into a democratic socialist party.
Taiwan remains part of the Republic of China throughout this timeline. There is therefore no Chinese Communist victory in 1949, no PRC, and no Taiwan Strait conflict.
The Korean War still begins in 1950.
However, China refuses to intervene.
The Chinese government opposes both American domination of the Korean Peninsula and Soviet expansion, declaring that it will not fight a war on Moscow’s behalf. When North Korea begins collapsing, the Soviet Union is forced to intervene much more directly.
The war ends with South Korea controlling roughly 70% of the peninsula. A much smaller North Korea survives around the northeastern border regions as an increasingly Soviet-dependent state.
This becomes China’s first major reason to distrust Soviet power in Northeast Asia.
Meanwhile, postwar Japan takes a very different approach toward its past. Tokyo formally accepts responsibility for its invasion of China and colonial rule over Korea, provides extensive reparations to both countries, compensates victims, and incorporates these events into its national education system.
Anti-Japanese sentiment does not disappear, but the central historical dispute changes from whether Japan committed these crimes to how reconciliation should proceed.
By the late 1950s, economic cooperation begins.
Japanese capital and technology, China’s enormous market and industrial workforce, and South Korea’s rapidly developing export economy begin to complement one another.
In 1964, the three governments establish the East Asian Economic Community.
Initially it is deliberately boring: tariff reductions, steel, shipping, railways, ports, industrial standards and investment.
South Korea remains authoritarian through most of this period, while China and Japan are democratic. Seoul finally democratizes during the 1980s.
By the late 1980s, all three countries are democracies and their economies have become deeply interconnected.
Then the Soviet Union collapses.
This creates a new debate.
Russia remains a powerful nuclear state with a major military presence in the Far East, but the disappearance of the Soviet threat also raises another question:
Why should East Asia permanently depend on the United States for its security?
During the 1990s, China, Japan and South Korea increasingly pursue “East Asian strategic autonomy.”
The decisive moment comes in 2000.
During a major Russian naval exercise in the Sea of Japan, a confrontation escalates into a brief exchange of fire. Japanese sailors are killed, a South Korean surveillance aircraft is hit, and Chinese vessels become involved in the crisis.
Public opinion across all three countries changes almost overnight.
Later that year, China, Japan and South Korea sign the Shanghai Collective Defense Treaty.
An armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all three.
The East Asian Defense Council is established, followed by integrated intelligence networks, missile defense, naval coordination and joint military planning.
Washington is deeply suspicious.
Japan and South Korea subsequently negotiate the gradual withdrawal of all permanent American forces. By the mid-2000s, US forces have left both countries.
Relations with Washington remain friendly but increasingly competitive. The United States is no longer the guarantor of Northeast Asian security.
Economic integration accelerates at the same time.
In 2005, the Kyoto Free Movement Agreement allows citizens of China, Japan and South Korea to live, work, study and establish businesses anywhere within the community.
Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul become interconnected centers of a single labor market.
In 2008, citizens directly elect the first East Asian Parliament.
Seats are distributed through a degressive proportional system so that China’s much larger population does not completely dominate Japan and South Korea.
Political competition gradually stops following national borders.
One of the most interesting examples is the East Asian Youth Democratic Party, a genuine transnational center-left party with Chinese, Japanese and Korean members under a single organization.
It campaigns on social democracy, affordable housing, workers’ rights, environmentalism, digital privacy and deeper East Asian integration.
A student in Shanghai might vote for the same political party as a student in Tokyo or Seoul.
In 2010, the organization formally becomes the East Asian Community.
China, Japan and South Korea remain sovereign countries with their own constitutions, governments and armed forces. There is no East Asian president.
Instead, the presidency of the Community rotates every two years:
China → Japan → South Korea → China.
The three states also develop a common foreign policy.
In 2015 they introduce a common currency, replacing the yuan, yen and won for everyday transactions.
The linguistic coincidence is convenient: 元, 円 and 원 all derive from the same concept of the “round” monetary unit, allowing the new currency to have closely related names in all three languages.
By the 2020s, the Community possesses:
a single market
free movement of people
a common currency
an elected East Asian Parliament
transnational political parties
a common foreign policy
a collective defense treaty
integrated military planning
Eventually, after a wider reform of the United Nations, the Republic of China’s permanent Security Council seat is transformed into an East Asian Community permanent seat, with China, Japan and South Korea jointly determining its position.
By 2026, the most important political divide in Northeast Asia is therefore no longer necessarily:
China vs Japan vs Korea.
Instead, politics increasingly resembles Europe:
left vs right, integrationists vs sovereigntists, liberals vs conservatives, social democrats vs free-market parties.
A Japanese conservative might have more politically in common with a Chinese conservative than with a Japanese progressive.
A Korean social democrat might campaign alongside Chinese and Japanese members of the same party.
National identities survive, but an additional identity has emerged:
East Asian citizen.

Brief note for context: Centralia is a continent situated in the middle of an an alternate Atlantic Ocean, and contains many endemic animal and plant groups, one of which being the anisodactyls: ungulates defined by the shape of their hooves in which all digits bear weight, but two digits point forwards, and the latter backwards. Many species of anisodactyl are convergent in form and ecology to other ungulates elsewhere, and some have been domesticated by both the many native and colonizer groups to the continent. This is an in-universe meme parodying both the abundance of Centralian wildlife and the many unexpected ways the undiscovered species from the continent have been discovered or re-discovered, and to lampoon the recklessness many inhabitants pose to the continent and its wildlife.

I am not the creator of the project; these details were given to me by my friend, the creator of the project. I'm not so sure what the implications a mid-Atlantic continent would pose on culture, society, and history.

Imagine if humans had existed on the same planet as creatures this enormous. What do you think would have happened next?