u/NEETscape_Navigator

Japan still maintains a small skeleton fleet of ships in Southeast Asia, enough to run their empire and hold their territories. But the bulk is in Germany. So they can't conduct any meaningful offensive operations in the Pacific like Pearl Harbor.

Let's also say that returning all the way to Japan during wartime would be impossible to due hostile ports and Royal Navy activity.

So the Japanese navy's only meaningful option is to assist Nazi Germany, in the hope of eventually being able to return home by subduing Britain. They carry blueprints with them so that German ports and industries could manufacture spare parts and ammunition for the Japanese ships.

How would this play out? Would Operation Sea Lion succeed if Germany + Japan could rely on Japanese aircraft carriers for air superiority and troop transport?

Had a very bad case of PSSD and could barely get hard for months. Numb genitals and comically low sex drive. Genuinely thought I was cooked.

But as we speak I've jacked off 4 or 5 times within the last 24 hours and get rock hard every time. I've never had the drive to jack off that many times in a 24 hour period before in my life. My usual rhythm was doing it 2-3 times a WEEK.

So my sex drive is actually higher now than before going on SSRI and getting PSSD. The only thing I can think of that might have helped is getting some sun and vitamin D.

I got PSSD last fall and had it during the entire winter and early spring. But as soon as May hit, I experienced a massive surge in sex drive.

So yeah, maybe try to get some sun or at least take vitamin D supplements. Worked for me, even though I can't be completely sure if it's just a coincidence of course.

And stay away from alcohol completely. What I noticed is that every time I got drunk while having PSSD, it set me back weeks. I've been completely sober for several months now and it's starting to pay off.

Mathias Rust took a famous unauthorized flight from West Germany to Moscow in a small Cessna and landed by the Red Square in 1987.

But what if he had a supposedly home-made bomb on board which he manually dropped over the Red Square before landing, and the bomb killed Gorbachev?

Would the Soviets actually believe Mathias was a lone nut, or would they assume the West German state or NATO was behind the attack and that Mathias was a patsy or secret agent? If so, how would they retaliate?

How would the rest of the Cold War play out? Since Gorbachev was instrumental in destabilizing the Soviet Union, would his death delay the break-up?

The Nazis held the Courland pocket, a rather sizable portion of Latvia, with around 200,000 troops from August 1944 to May 1945.

By 1945, this was deep into enemy territory, but the Soviets did not prioritize liberating the area since they could just go around it. The German forces in the area were ultimately ordered to lay down their weapons when Germany surrendered.

But what if the Allies decided to turn Courland into a monument of Nazi shortcomings? A cautionary tale for future generations. What if they figured that the limits of Nazism could best be understood by seeing them firsthand, so that no one would ever think that Hitler was hindered from building a utopian society?

To this end, the Allies let all the soldiers stay and even transport their families to them. They also invite a cadre of hardcore Nazis with civic leadership experience to relocate there. This cadre would function as the ruling class responsible for organizing society. They try to pick Nazis with as little blood on their hands as possible to placate the Red Cross etc. So no former concentration camp commanders or anything like that.

Then the Allies fortify the hell out of the border with Courland so that the Nazis could never hope to break through. Then they isolate Courland from the international community and just let them trade just enough to survive.

The Allies hope that Courland will quickly devolve into a hellhole with no real functioning economy, totally dependent on foreign aid just to survive. All while the Nazi propaganda machine keeps on churning, making a mockery of themselves.

The people of Courland aren’t allowed to leave, of course. Neither by the Soviets or the dogmatic Nazi leadership.

The Soviets also won’t allow Courland to starve. They’ll send food shipments and medicine to avoid famine and epidemics, but that’s it. Other than that, the Nazis are on their own.

How do you think this would play out in the long run?

If the USA never supported Israel in any way and were completely indifferent to them, would Israel have gone under by now?

If so, during which war? And what would the aftermath look like? What would happen to the Israelis and who would gain their territory?

If not, how close would they get to losing a war with the arabs? Perhaps they could avoid complete defeat by using nukes. But I’m not sure they’d even have them without US help in the first place.

The scenario I’d specifically like you to examine is what if the American intelligence agencies were sure the Soviets were behind the assassination, but the Soviets denied it and it wasn’t public knowledge yet.

This is different from the Soviets openly taking responsibility. That would limit the American options and basically force the US to react very forcefully to send a message to the whole world. But in my scenario, it’s possible for the US to keep it under wraps to avoid risking a full nuclear war.

Here’s a non-complete list of possible responses:

1. Bury the evidence since it’s hard to act on. Pretend it was a lone nut who did it.

2. Secretly intimidate the USSR behind the scenes and force them to pay reparations and make military concessions. The public never gets to know anything.

3. Assassinate the Soviet leader in retaliation. If the Soviets complain, go public with the evidence and intimidate the Soviets into not escalating.

4. Release the evidence immediately. But then what? Triggering a nuclear winter by spamming nukes on the Soviets (and risk getting nuked in return) seems like overkill even if the assassination of course was a heinous act.

Ultimately, the assassination was probably planned and carried out by just a handful of people in power, who weren’t even democratically elected. Why punish hundreds of millions of people for it and risk having millions of Americans wiped out as well?

How do you think the US would react if they knew the Soviets were behind it but they denied it and it wasn’t public knowledge yet?

In order to celebrate their victory in WW2, the commonwealth nations arrange a special edition of the Commonwealth Games. They transport the entire armies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand to a neutral location (say South Africa) and let them duke it out.

So Australia and New Zealand team up on Canada. Who would win?

Thinking primarily about sub-Saharan Africa.

Would any sub-Saharan nation reach the level of a western European country today?