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    • Pablo22510 wrote:

      Errr, you can see how the Polish server has voted a lot. Poland-Ukraine war? Really?
      Yeah, that got a chuckle. I'm not sure how the 1918-19 Polish-Ukraine war made the first round cut in the first place. Important to the Poles, yes, but obscure to anyone who is not Polish (or perhaps Ukrainian). Given the bitterness of that war, and the post-WWII border changes imposed by the former Soviet union, it's good to see that these two modern neighbors have reconciled -- largely on the basis of their shared distrust of the Russians.

      PetrusFons wrote:

      Maybe an in-game message should have . . .
      . . . been used.

      No kidding. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the overwhelming majority of persons who play the COW game never saw a message about the poll or voting. I participate in the COW forum two or three times per week, and I never saw the message. Not once. Only because I saw the headline listed in the forum topics page did I vote in the second round.

      Relying on the forum to advertise a user poll was short-sighted and foolish. If you want a representative sample of all users, it should have been advertised on the top of every game page in every language. The small number of total participants and the disproportionate number of voters from the Polish server tells anyone with an ounce of common sense that the poll was not "advertised widely."

      The post was edited 1 time, last by MontanaBB ().

    • purplepizza117 wrote:

      The world would be very different.
      Yes, in that alternate reality, it is entirely possible that Nazi Germany would have won World War II because there was no Stalin-led Soviet Union to sacrifice 12 to 20 million Russians and other Soviet citizens in order to defeat the Nazi invasion. I suppose we (I) should be careful what we (I) wish for. Very often historical tragedies were necessary to advance the cause of human civilization.

      Kidding and armchair general conjecture aside, the 20th Century history of Germany, Poland, Russia and Ukraine supplied more than those countries' reasonably bearable shares of human suffering. If only 21st century Russia could learn to respect and accommodate its smaller neighbors, that corner of the world would be a much better place.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by MontanaBB ().

    • MontanaBB wrote:

      Yes, in that alternate reality, it is entirely possible that Nazi Germany would have won World War II because there was no Stalin-led Soviet Union to sacrifice 12 to 20 million Russians and other Soviet citizens in order to defeat the Nazi invasion. I suppose we (I) should be careful what we (I) wish for. Very often historical tragedies were necessary to advance the cause of human civilization.
      Right. Then again, Hitler viewed Slavic people as inferior and thereby could quite possibly have invaded Russia anyway.
      It's been a while

    • Alternate history is a bit like differential equations: when you move or remove one piece the ripple effect changes others, so you would think you've done something good by putting an end to the Soviet Union before it really got started, thereby saving millions of lives in the process, only to have something worse come about as a result.

      I'm sure that if Roosevelt and Churchill could have glimpsed today's reality from April 1945 -- 70 years into the future -- they both would have been reasonably satisfied with where history has led Europe, America, Britain, Poland, Russia and most of the world in 2016. Churchill would have been saddened by the demise of the Empire, but cheered by an independent Poland and the fall of Communism, the success of British-spawned Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the rise of new, western-oriented India, and the continuing fraternal relations of the Commonwealth. Roosevelt was less ambitious in his hopes for eastern Europe, but I think he too would be pleased with the rise of independent and democratic states in eastern Europe, the end of European colonialism, and the success of his United Nations in avoiding another world war. I doubt either could have imagined how successfully today's Germany and Japan have been integrated into the western alliance and world economy. As we lurch from crisis to crisis in today's world, it pays to sometimes take stock of just how much worse off we could be if WW2 had ended differently.

    • MontanaBB wrote:

      Alternate history is a bit like differential equations: when you move or remove one piece the ripple effect changes others, so you would think you've done something good by putting an end to the Soviet Union before it really got started, thereby saving millions of lives in the process, only to have something worse come about as a result.

      I'm sure that if Roosevelt and Churchill could have glimpsed today's reality from April 1945 -- 70 years into the future -- they both would have been reasonably satisfied with where history has led Europe, America, Britain, Poland, Russia and most of the world in 2016. Churchill would have been saddened by the demise of the Empire, but cheered by an independent Poland and the fall of Communism, the success of British-spawned Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the rise of new, western-oriented India, and the continuing fraternal relations of the Commonwealth. Roosevelt was less ambitious in his hopes for eastern Europe, but I think he too would be pleased with the rise of independent and democratic states in eastern Europe, the end of European colonialism, and the success of his United Nations in avoiding another world war. I doubt either could have imagined how successfully today's Germany and Japan have been integrated into the western alliance and world economy. As we lurch from crisis to crisis in today's world, it pays to sometimes take stock of just how much worse off we could be if WW2 had ended differently.
      I can, of course, estimate that while Roosevelt and Churchill would be proud of the world today, they both were proud of their world in that day. They realised the world had issues and set out to fix them, Churchill attempting to eradicate communism/fascism while Roosevelt was more concerned with ending war altogether. The present is no worse than any time in history.
      It's been a while