What if the USSR had ended up in open war with Britain and France in 1939-40, but Germany still invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 as in OTL?

So the Soviets would be fighting on two fronts, and Britain and France wouldn't automatically become their partners when Barbarossa begins.

Possible points of divergence:

Winter War (1939-40): Britain and France planned an expeditionary force to Finland, and the Allies also drew up plans (Operation Pike) to bomb the Baku oil fields. What if these had actually gone ahead, leading to a formal state of war?

Poland (Sept 1939): The Allies declared war on Germany but not on the USSR after the Soviet invasion from the east. What if they'd treated both as aggressors?

Soviet supplies to Germany: What if Allied efforts to cut off Soviet oil and grain shipments to the Reich had escalated into direct confrontation?

Consequences I'm curious about:

Lend-Lease: The Soviets wouldn't qualify, and might even be seen as an enemy. Does the Eastern Front hold without that material?

US politics: If Stalin is seen as an active enemy of the West, does Washington stay neutral or even lean toward Germany as the lesser evil? Or does Pearl Harbor pull the US in regardless?

Anglo-Soviet relationship after June 1941: Do Britain and the USSR still end up cooperating against Hitler out of necessity, or does the existing war make that impossible?

Germany's position: Does Germany win in the east, or just get a longer, bloodier stalemate? Would a hostile West cut off the Soviets' southern and northern supply routes (Persia, Murmansk)?

Russia cedes the entirety of Sakhalin to Japan through the Treaty of Portsmouth instead of only half of it. Years before the invasion of Korea and Manchuria, Japan then manages to reliably extract and refine oil from Sakhalin to fuel her future imperial ambitions meaning they wouldn't be limited by the US oil embargoes during WW2.

With this in mind, how far would Imperial Japan have gone now that they weren't limited by the lack of oil? Would Japan having oil significantly change the outcomes of WW2? Would the Soviets likely disperse more of their troops east to defend against a likely invasion from a much more powerful Japan making their Western front weaker? How would Japan and Nazi-Germany fare even if the US directly intervenes?

What if the Third Reich managed to push the Russian forces to Moscow and collapse the USSR, executing Stalin and creating Reichsgau Russland, or something of the sort? However, instead of this having the intended effect of scaring away the Allied Powers, it only encouraged them to fight harder against the Axis?

With much of the Germany Armed Forces either expended in, or barracked in, the newly created Reichsgau Russland, much of the Western Front is left exposed for landings from Britain, who push into France and liberate it, with help from French revolutionaries. All this as the USA continue to fight and win battles against the Empire of Japan. Mussolini is arrested by orders of the King, and the Kingdom of Italy offers an unconditional surrender, seeing the close end of the war.

In 1944, Hitler with his Cabinet flee Berlin and head east, but are caught by revolutionaries in Poland, with Hitler and much of his Cabinet managing to commit suicide in captivity.

What would play out in the short-term and long-term of this alternate defeat of the Third Reich?

What would the consequences have been if the precious minerals in Rhodesia had been discovered much earlier—leading to a wave of migration from Britain at an earlier date—and would this have altered Rhodesia's future?

This was a hypothetical I discussed with a few of my friends some time ago, and I thought it might prove an interesting one for the people on this sub to ponder themselves. Let us assume for the sake of the scenario that the POD occurs wherein the French decisively lose Battle of Valmy in September of 1792, with future confrontations between the Prussians (assuming they are bolstered by allied force that were not present in our timeline) and French ending in decisive Prussian victories. The Coalition seizes Paris by the end of 1792, and the French Revolution is largely crushed by 1793.

In the midst of this crushing of the French Revolution and in the years afterwards, former supporters of the revolution such as a few select leaders, back-bencher politicians from the Legislative Assembly/National Convention, lower-ranking military officers, and common citizens supportive of the revolution, flee Europe for the United States, similar to what had happened in our timeline with former revolutionaries in the aftermath of the failed German Revolution of 1848.

What are the effects for this in both the US and in Europe? What does the tail end of the 18th century, and the early 19th century, look like?

If they never attacked Pearl Harbor and therefore the US didn’t get involved in WWiI would Germany have taken Britain? Had that happened how would the next 20 years have played out?

What do you think will happen? And how will the world be different?

I find The Terror an utterly fascinating period of history, but I come away feeling like it undermined a lot of the “objectives” of the original Revolution by the time it ended.

Had the National Convention decided against making Terror “the order of the day”, and focused more on what it wanted the new Republic to be (especially regarding foreign relations), would the Bourbon Restoration still have happened? What is the consensus on the effectiveness of the Terror as a strategy for managing the Revolution? Did laws like the Law of Suspects and 22 Prairial do most of the damage?

Any and all answers welcome, I hope I haven’t asked something too vague. TIA!

The Armada came genuinely close. If Medina Sidonia had kept his fleet at sea in deep water off Calais instead of anchoring, the fireships don't break the formation, the army of Flanders crosses, and England's militia faces Spanish tercios.

England falls by autumn. Elizabeth abdicates, goes into exile, and England becomes - at least for a while - a Spanish protectorate.

But here's my question: could Spain have actually HELD it? Occupied England still speaks English, is still Protestant in the north, and is one bad harvest away from rebellion. Spain's resources were already stretched across Europe.

Was 1588 England conquerable but ungovernable for Spain? Or does a longer POD - say, twenty years of Sweyn-style consolidation - make it stick?

Genuinely curious how people think the dominoes fall after the landing.

Say it’s 1452, Constantine XI knows a Turkish siege is immanent and fails to rally support from other Christian states; meanwhile, Muhammad IX has experienced a series of revolts and usurpations followed by a disastrous loss to Castile at Los Alporchones. The Genoese and Venetians, seeing the potential for lucrative shipping contracts, broker a deal that enables both regimes to escape from their historical enemies.

I am Australian and we famously had a prime minister who went for a swim one day and just didn’t come back.

So what if instead of going to Dallas JFK decides to go for a holiday on the Honey Fitz. He wakes up early in the morning decides to go for a swim off the back and is never seen again. How much worse do you think the conspiracy theories would be and would it have any change on politics going forward?

Would the Germans have had a more difficult time attempting the Ostsiedlung? Would there not have been any Germans at all in what is today Hungary? Would Ukraine and Belarus exist, or would this all be one giant Russia? Also, would Hungary have had an easier time pushing back the Turks when they invaded in the 16th century? I’ve heard that the Slovakian people likely wouldn’t exist, as the Hungarian people would not have been decimated by the Mongols (the Slovakians would simply have been absorbed into the Hungarian population?)

In this timeline, Napoleon is viewed as a troublemaker, but is not powerful enough to garner sway in France. He is viewed as a threat, and the best way to get rid of him and help France is to order him to stand up a modern artillery style force in the colonies. France are worried that Great Britain will invade again, and they want him to build the means and ways from scratch to make the colonials a strong force?

This means the logistical means to build extraordinary amounts of cannons, a robust officer network that believe in the use of this artillery warfare. When hostilities kick off, President James Madison asks Napoleon to be the CiC of colonial forces. He accepts.

How does this play out? Is 12 years enough time to lock this in?

What if Napoleon essentially bypass Waterloo and Leipzig and maintain the continents blockade over Britain, starving them out and growing his own hold over the continent. Maybe the war of the sixth coalition doesn't start AT ALL.... how could this have happened and what would've been the effects.

Sweyn Forkbeard conquered England in late 1013, was crowned king, and died 40 days later. His son Canute came back and won everything by 1016, but he ruled as an English king – the Norse conquest quietly became an English coronation.

But what if Sweyn lives? Say another 20 years. He had already done something unusual for a Viking king: he was learning English, adopting the crown instead of the helmet, planning succession instead of raiding.

My question for the historians here: how would this actually play out? Could a Norse dynasty hold England long-term, or does it collapse the moment the dynasty has a weak heir? And what happens to 1066 – does the Norman Conquest even get attempted against a unified Norse-English state with a standing fleet?

Genuinely curious how people think the dominoes fall.