(Part 2) Best products from r/HistoryWhatIf

Here is a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Victory (wikipedia article listing all the books and the overarching plot) http://www.amazon.com/How-Few-Remain-Southern-Victory/dp/0345406141 (amazon for the first book)

I've got a link.

The other answers here have been sufficient, it was the last period a war like that could have been survivable in some recognizable shape.

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I will link you this though if you want to read more about it : Bombs Away

Depends on when. If you're interested, I'd recommend "The Hot War" but Harry Turtledove:
https://www.amazon.com/Bombs-Away-Hot-Harry-Turtledove/dp/0553390724

The POD is MacArthur uses nukes in the Korean War.

Take note that your arguments are dubious because you are applying Jared Diamond's theory of geography and natural resources in the economic development of today's nations.

Jared Diamond has been criticized by a lot of scholars and academics that his arguments are irrelevant and do really nothing to explain the economy of nations.

Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson have butchered Diamond's theories in their book Why Nations Fail? They argue that geography and natural resources have little to do with today's development and that it is more the result of political and economic institutions influencing the economy. - https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity-ebook/dp/B0058Z4NR8. They even spend some time refuting Diamond's theories in a chapter in their book.

The croplands map you provided actually debunks your own theory. For example, Korea and Japan are one of the most prosperous countries yet contains very little cropland and fertile land. India, for example contains lots of fertile land but still remains a poor country mired in poverty and wealth inequality.

Posted this over in /r/HistoricalWhatIf on the same question as well, but I'm sharing here too because I spent two hours on this answer goddammit, so I've earned this!

Part 1/2

I think this massively depends on why the Famine never happens. There were a lot of factors that came together in a perfect storm to make the Famine as devastating as it was, so depending on which of these are considered the point of divergence from OTL changes a lot of things for the outcome. That said, some things happen the same regardless.

Let's briefly run through how the Great Famine (An Gorta Mór) happened in OTL:

Massive Disclaimer: _Many parts of this are simplified for the purposes of a more coherent answer and easier reading. If you want to go a bit more in-depth, try reading This Great Calamity by Christine Kinealy, Famine: A Short History by Cormac Ó Gráda, or if you want something visual (that's not to abysmal), you could watch Extra Credits' series on the Irish Potato Famine._

Now, on with the context.

Irish lands were owned by British landlords - many of whom were absentee and represented by middlemen - and divided out among tenant farmers. These farmers (around two-thirds or so) lived on plots of land ranging from about 0.4 hectares to 6 hectares. The land was so small because the middlemen were given the entire estate to manage and just told to collect rent for it. As such, dividing it up meant more farmers and, therefore, more rent. The small plots of land, combined with the fact that tenancy was "at will" (tenants' rights really only existed in Ulster, and - not coincidentally - this is where the Famine had the lightest impact) meant that farmers had to use very little land to grow enough food to both pay their extortionate rents and feed their (usually quite large) families. Since the potato is a very efficient crop, that can grow in almost any soil type and produces a lot from very little, this meant that tenant farmers were pretty much growing only potatoes. So there was no real grain plots and definitely no animal rearing.

Once the blight caught on, the potato harvests were absolutely destroyed. And since most of the impoverished farmers were almost totally dependent on the potato, the result was widespread collapse of both the Irish economy (such as it was at the time) and the Irish populace. The British government could've stepped in and eased the suffering, but the situation was severely mismanaged - either through incompetence in their efforts, misunderstanding of the situation or (in some cases) a belief that the poor needed to be culled anyway - so this was just nature's way of balancing itself. It also wasn't helped that those in power in Westminster who could've mobilised support tried using the situation to advance their own political agenda. Sir Charles Trevelyan - secretary of the treasury - made efforts to delay and suppress famine relief aid from abroad (American maize, for example) so as to not impact free market ideology and undermine British international trade. This meant that aid wasn't getting to those who needed it. Many were forced into workhouses, made to emigrate, or straight up left to die. The political instability also caused many people to take up arms to fight against British rule in attempts to feed themselves and their families.

Thus, the stage is set; the actors are in place; the curtain rises; and disaster is inevitable. A combination of over-reliance on a single crop due to a massively corrupt and unregulated system of land ownership, a disconnection from the reality of life in rural Ireland, a general feeling of contempt for the poor (especially the Irish poor), and the willingness to sacrifice human life and wellbeing for political gain, all created a massive powder keg on the Emerald Isle; ready to blow at the first sign of trouble. Indeed, the blight itself was merely the spark that ignited the whole thing.

This book is all about that: Going to Tehran
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Tehran-America-Islamic-Republic/dp/1250043530

When Nixon decided to "go to China",
1- The US had to dump Taiwan as an ally which until then was officially recognized as "China" by the US

2- Opening to China was meant to undermine the threat of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which is over and no equivalent of the Soviet threat insists

So the policy continues to be driven by lobbyists and billionaires like Sheldon Adelson who buy senators

The Japanese believed that since it took the Allies 4 years to build the first atomic bomb, that it would take 4 years to build the second one. We knew this because we were reading their codes. They knew what an atom bomb would do because they had their own atom bomb project. The Soviet Union, in compliance with the Potsdam Agreement, declared war 90 days after Germany's surrender. It was when the Soviets reneged on their non-aggression treaty with Japan and declared war, the Japanese high command knew that they had unequivocally lost the war.

Some books covering the history of atom bomb projects:
The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
Dark Sun, this contains a lot of updates to the first book that came out after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

There's a couple issues with your premise. First, if you're including minorities and "criminals," the number is higher. The U.S. Holocaust Museum estimates 17 million people were killed in the Holocaust: 6 million Jews, but also Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Serbs, Slovenes, Romani, people with disabilities, homosexuals, political opponents, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics, Freemasons, and criminals.

But your question specifically dealt with Jews, so let's rule out minorities and "criminals" and just stick with 6 million Jews.

This is the second issue with your premise: Of those 6 million Jews, only about 160,000 to 180,000 were German Jews. The Germans also killed Jews from Poland -- about 3 million Polish Jews, in fact. They also killed Jews in the countries they occupied -- France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, and Norway. (Almost all the Jews of Denmark were saved.) Jews in German-occupied Italy were rounded up after Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943.

They also killed Jews in Nazi-allied countries like Hungary and Bulgaria who are presumably eligible for "recruitment."

So the vast majority of Jews murdered by the Germans were not in fact subject to recruitment, they were enemies of the Germans. It's true that some people in occupied countries joined the Germans, but a very small percentage... certainly less than 33 percent of the total population.

TL;DR - No, you're not adding 2 million more soldiers.

However, you can make an interesting argument about how the Manhattan Project fares without all the refugee scientists from Europe...

No. Absolutely no.

They would, however, have been able to seize control over islands, trade guns, and profit massively from trade between Eurasia and America, and they would have dominated the world scene probably just as much. The conquest of the Americas was a steamroller effect on the rest of the world, the power it gave European Nations allowed them to be far more overreaching in their ambitions, to punch above their weight, so to speak. But the benefits of trade and the exchange between continents still would have dramatically transformed the world and Europe would have been at the center of it: they had the ships.

In North America the pilgrims' first settlement was a village that had only recently been abandoned - the Pilgrims uncovered the shallow graves of the majority of people who were hit by that plague. Guns were an important wildcard in colonial times, but historical accounts of Prince Phillip's War and other conflicts show how easy it was for nations like the Mohawk to get guns (and gunsmiths). Guns in battle are particularly overplayed as both the Ottomans and the Comanche later on showed time and time again. (In battle, though. A wound from an arrow usually took a soldier out of the battle, a wound from a gun usually took a soldier out of the war)

In both the Aztec Triple Alliance and with the Incan Empire, both communities were experiencing massive disruption caused by smallpox, which in Mexico emboldened former tributary states, and in Peru, caused a devastating civil war right when Pizarro arrived -- and Pizarro only arrived to conquer because he wanted the prestige of conquering a civilization as what happened in Mexico. If other Europeans had arrived with a different intent, all of that would have gone very differently.

Other places, like in Brazil, we can only imagine. We're only in the last few years using satellite imagery to uncover the cities that used to be there.

Sources:

• On the Comanche: Empire of the Summer Moon, S.C. Gwynn
  
  
• On guns and the First Nations: Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America, David J. Silverman
  
  
• On why the Incan empire fell: Last Days of the Incas, Kim MacQuarrie
  
  
• On the ecological and economic changes caused by international trade: 1493: Uncovering the World Columbus Created, Charles C. Mann