military history

The Schlieffen Plan, in fact the ‘Moltke Plan’ after 1905, became a failure during the first months of the First World War. In my opinion this is the responsibility of the German Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke the Younger. But what if this went different. What if Moltke dies in...

As the title suggests, I'm interested to hear people's ideas as to the CMP Programme's potential fate, in the event that Nazi Germany A) knocked out the Soviet Union and B) secured hegemony over Europe west of the Urals, with the Second World War reigniting in the mid-1950s. @CalBear used lack...

I have been looking for this information on google for some time now but i dont find it, i am sure i read somewhere a couple of years ago that Kennedy did fire or discipline one of the military officials behind operation northwoods?, is this correct?. Also, president Kennedy was against some...

What might've happened had Napoleon decided against invading Russia in 1812?

Despite its name the War of 1812 lasted three years, from 1812 to 1815. While the US saw its capital burned and the invasion of Canada failed, America didn't technically lose the war and the peace was negotiated on favorable terms. At the same time the US didn't decisively win either. So how...

The Korean War is often hailed as an example of a swift, decisive military intervention. After North Korea invaded South Korea, the UN launched a counteroffensive that pushed the Communists out of the South. Once the UN's mission was accomplished, President Harry Truman ordered his forces to...

In 1954, President Eisenhower wanted to intervene in Vietnam after the French lost the First Indochina War. However, the Democrats in Congress made their support for intervention contingent on British policy. Prime Minister Winston Churchill opposed intervention, so the Congressional Democrats...

John Kourkouas was a more-or-less popular but definitely underrated Byzantine nobleman and general notable for his campaigns in Armenia and northern Syria, securing the empire's eastern border and extending its influence towards the Euphrates, and even beyond. At one point, his political schemes...

Hey, y'all! I'm taking an Introduction to Military History course this semester and the prof has asked us think about who we'd put on a list of the best military minds before the modern day (twentieth century for this case.) Since this is the internet's finest hub of history freaks, I thought...

The explanations I've seen for the Prussian military's over-performance despite Prussia's relatively small size and population are mostly "great man of history" explanations. That Prussia had a lucky stretch of competent military reformers, and Frederick the Great was able to leverage that to...

Hello, fellow allohistorians. I'd like to discuss the development of a somewhat larger (but not overblown) Maltese Air Wing post-Maltese independence in the 1960s. This is part of my tongue-in-cheek LOSERS project. The main POD behind the changes to the Maltese Air Wing is a somewhat higher...

As with my older thread concerning a greater Icelandic standing military, I want to talk about the possibilities of a far earlier air force tradition in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg's military history. A tradition that leads to the existence of a proper (if small) permanent air force for the...

With a POD no earlier than the 1920s, try to ensure the creation of small, but official armed forces on Iceland. A defence force not that much bigger from the current one, but with a greater military capability, instead of just being a heavy-duty law enforcement supplement. Things I'd like to...