They have things like the atom bomb, so I think I'll stay where I ``om''

So now on to the important stuff: I got Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday installed on the new computer and could resume my game from the end of 1951, where I had left it. The game really flew by. Part of this was the speed of the new computer, which is much faster than mere clock speed increases suggest. Part of this was because when last we left the great threats to liberal democracy had been destroyed one by one, and peacetime is always faster than wartime what with having fewer events and less need to respond swiftly to them.

( Since the game was so peaceful, and the computer so fast, I can give a report on two years together, bringing me to the end of the game's simulated timeline, unless you let it run past the 1st of January 1954 with an Intelligence Briefing reporting the victory of the Allies left open over the screen.  )

And so that's my timeline. I don't believe I made any hugely ahistorical moves in it, but this was the most wildly divergent timeline I've experienced. I'm glad I started recording it; if I were the sort to write alternate histories this is definitely an intriguing setting for one. Even the simple points like how exactly the Allies ended up at war with Germany are the kinds of historical mysteries that great if slightly academic controversies would be made from.

Trivia: The neutralization of the Black Sea, regarded as a prime consequence of the Treaty of Paris (1856) settling the Crimean War, lasted fifteen years. The independent state of Romania, formed as a buffer state from Danubian provinces between Russia and Turkey at Austria's insistence, survived to 1941. Source: The Struggle For Mastery In Europe, 1848 - 1918, A J P Taylor.

Currently Reading: Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, Stephen Puleo.