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Eucatastrophe: Difference between revisions
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** ''[[Great Mazinger]]'': Several of them. Two of them stand out:
*** In the [[Gosaku Ota]] manga episodes, Great Marshall of Darkness sucessfully blackmailed Japanese army into destroying Great Mazinger and the Fortress of Science. The army bombarded the Fortress and stormed into the place before blowing it up completely, and the heroes were forced to flee and lie low for a while. Meanwhile, Mykene army conquered Japan.
*** In the last episodes of the anime and [[Gosaku Ota]] manga, the Mykene army struck the Fortress {{spoiler|and in the manga, Marquis Janus traped Misato and cut her in half}}, and attacked Mazinger-Z and Great Mazinger separately. Kouji and Tetsuya nearly got killed, and {{spoiler|Prof. Kabuto commited a [[Heroic Sacrifice]] to save Tetsuya.}} The generals of the Mykene army laughed. [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|Five minutes later they were not laughing]].
** ''[[UFO Robo Grendizer]]'': One of the best examples happened in the two-part finale of the first season. Grendizer had been beaten by two [[Robeast|Robeasts]] and forced to hiding, Kouji's TFO had been badly damaged, [[The Dragon|Blackie]] had taken control of the Science Space Center and tortured Dr. Umon. When Duke returned, {{spoiler|he managed beat both mechas, saving his friends and destroying Blackie's command ship.}}
* Occurs in all five of the final battles of ''[[Sailor Moon]]''
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* ''[[Tokyo Majin]]''. The heroes are up against a [[God Mode]] evil spirit (Yagyu Munetaka) who eliminates pretty much all the main & supporting cast heroes--which adds up to a fight of about TWENTY on ONE. Only the resident badasses are even able to deal damage to him. With all your typical anime Badass superpowers present. There is much buildup that they're likely to lose unless they unlock all four Godbeasts to turn Hiyuu into what amounts to the ultimate hero of awesomeness. So, as most of the cast lies there broken, dead or dying, in from left field comes the final Godbeast's vessel and bam, the Hero of Ultimate Bullshit is awakened. Screaming J-Rock in the background. {{spoiler|[[Hope Spot]]. Hiyuu STILL LOSES. And the heroes finally answer with their own [[God Mode]] [[Heroic Resolve]] as [[The Chick]] brings everyone back to life, declaring they will keep fighting until they win.}}
* In ''[[Pokémon: Zoroark: Master of Illusions]]'', [[Big Bad]] Kodai almost succeeded in opening the Time Ripple...{{spoiler|but it was an illusion -- [[Spanner in the Works|Zorua had luckily broken his illusion canceler when attacking him]]}}.
** Also, in the TV special ''Mewtwo Returns'', Giovanni came ''very'' close to success.
* In ''[[Project ARMS]]'', Alice has possessed Katsume, Ryo appears to have no choice but to kill them both, Keith White is quickly on his way to being a living god and destroying everyone on the planet to prove it, and the ARMS weapons - the only things that have a chance of stopping him - have been deactivated. {{spoiler|It's only after Kei is able to appeal to Azreal and get the ARMS weapons back up that things start to turn in their favor.}}
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', [[Big Bad|Aizen]] has {{spoiler|fused with the Hogyoku}}, [[Curb Stomp Battle|beaten the Court Guard Squads]], killed {{spoiler|[[Good All Along|Gin]]}}, and is just about to kill Ichigo's friends and take over the universe when Ichigo arrives as a {{spoiler|[[Physical God]]}} and {{spoiler|[[Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu|defeats him at the cost of his powers]].}}
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** ''[[The Lord of the Rings|The Two Towers]]'': Gandalf's arrival at Helm's Deep.
** ''[[The Lord of the Rings|The Return of the King]]''
*** The Battle of the Pelennor Fields, saved by Aragorn's arrival at Minas Tirith.
*** The Battle at the Black Gate - in which most of the main characters expected to die in an attempt to give Frodo a chance - is not the primary eucatastrophe. The real one is Frodo failing at the end of his quest and, in a wonderful twist of fate, Gollum destroying the Ring, which turns everything around by killing Sauron, which also confuses his armies, which allows Aragorn & co to win.
* [[Harry Potter]], which [[J. R. R. Tolkien|JRR Tolkien]] would probably classify as one such "Fairy Story", has tendencies in that direction.
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** So to, the Xindi superweapon in ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' is blown up moments before it was ready to deploy within miles of the Earth's surface.
** Unlike the top two examples, the Dominion actually managed to ''fire shots on the Earth's surface'', and succeeded in [[Monumental Damage|messing up the Golden Gate Bridge]]. Additionally, several shapeshifters made it to Earth and other Federation worlds, causing massive panic. For a moment, it really did seem that the Federation would meet it's first defeat ever.
* The best ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' example comes at the end of season four, wherein Adam is only defeated by Buffy coming up with a spell to tap mystical ancient powers that give her the power, knowledge, and skills of Giles, Xander and Willow.
** The spell required that they be close by (no just popping a spell pill and rushing off to the enemy's lair) so they ''all'' had to infiltrate a fortified underground base safely, then successfully reach a room where they hopefully wouldn't be bothered by the ''rampaging monster hordes'' and then, even when the spell is activated, there's a) the possibility it won't work at all, b) the possibility it won't work as intended, c) the possibility of it not being reversible (effectively killing Giles, Xander and Willow while making Buffy almost a demigod, and the longer the spell is active, the higher than probability gets) and d) the (proven) possibility of bad side-effects. So, it was kind of an ace in the hole, not something anyone really wanted to do unless they had to.
** Seriously awesome when Buffy uses [[Physical God|Willow]]'s power and Giles' knowledge to turn missiles into doves.
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* There isn't a final boss from a ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' game that ''doesn't'' do this. ''[[Super Mario RPG]]'' and ''[[Mario & Luigi]]'' are immune. So far.
* Ganondorf in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'' scores a fairly impressive victory during the first arc of the game -- he ''[[MacGuffin Delivery Service|tricks the heroes into doing most of the work for him]]''. He then kills the King, conquers Hyrule and reigns supreme for seven years, while the rightful heir to the throne has to <s>change her gender</s> cross dress in order to effectively hide from him, and [[The Hero]] is put in an enchanted sleep that will allow him to grow up sufficiently in order to put the kingdom back to rights.
** In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|Twilight Princess]]'', Zant and the Twilight took over all of Hyrule except for the backwater province that also happened to be Link's home, and then got beaten back into its hidey hole, only to be later defeated and left slumped in his throne while Link goes to rescue Zelda.
* At one point in ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl'', ''every single playable character'' (and Master Hand) is dead (well, trophyified). Then Dedede's timed badges go off...
* ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', Heavens Feel. {{spoiler|First Saber is gone. Very gone. Then in quick succession, Archer dies, Berserker follows and Shirou loses an arm. Plus, Saber is [[Not Quite Dead]]... but that's not a good thing. Then Sakura is revealed to be the Shadow, plus Zouken Matou controls her. And Berserker is back, plus blind and insane... insaner.}} So many things go wrong that by the time you get to the end {{spoiler|you're down to Tohsaka and Shirou. Tohsaka has a weapon she isn't sure will work and Shirou has severe brain damage plus a limited amount of times he can project before he'll die. Luckily, Sakura}} makes things a bit easier {{spoiler|by killing True Assassin and Zouken for them.}}
* ''[[Mortal Kombat|Mortal Kombat 3]]'': To break it down, Shao Khan revives his dead wife on Earthrealm, allowing him to step through the boundaries separating it from Outworld and claim her, thus forcing a merger of the two realms without the need of the eponymous tournament. Not only that, but he immediately steals the souls of everyone on Earth, and sends out extermination squads to take care of [[The Chosen One|The Chosen Ones]] who had their souls spared. He barely avoided victory, due to his underestimating the power and tenacity of his foes.
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** ''Fallout 3'': fortunately for the good guys, the Enclave doesn't know the code to activate Project Purity which results in the Brotherhood launching a desperate siege and pushing them out of there. However, the Enclave was about to use their [[Kill Sat]] on the Citadel afterwards so it counts as two.
** ''New Vegas'' has this as a ''possible'' ending; depending on how thoroughly you complete sidequests and make friends with folks that have a lot of firepower, the ultimate battle for Hoover Dam is either an unbelievably harsh battle of attrition, or a hysterically drawn out [[Curb Stomp Battle]] as all your allies come rushing in for one [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment after the other.
* At the end of ''[[Halo]] 2'' and the middle of ''Halo 3'', the Halos were activated and charging, and just a few minutes from firing and killing all life in the galaxy just before the heroes could push the off switch.
* The first ''[[Mass Effect (video game)|Mass Effect]]'' game had you racing against time to stop Saren and Sovereign from opening the {{spoiler|mass relay in the Citadel to let the Reaper fleet through and begin the massacre of all sentient life in the galaxy.}}
** Plus, there's still a Villain Victory in the cards, you just DELAYED it. {{spoiler|Soon as the Reaper fleet gets to the nearest Mass Relay, it's on like Donkey Kong, even without their usual instant-win switch. When they finally arrive in ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'', they head straight for EARTH. Thanks a lot, Shepard.}}
* The second Air Gem test in the [[Fan Remake]] of [[King's Quest II]]. The canonical games glossed over this point, but the kingdom is in ruins, the hero's kids have been condemned to death, and the hero himself is close to breaking...then in walks the [[Big Bad]] offering a [[Deal with the Devil]].
** Canonical ones in the series: walking into the wedding hall in [[King's Quest VI]] to see "Cassima" enthusiastically declaring her intent to marry the [[Grand Vizier]]. And in [[King's Quest IV]] when Lolotte nastily declares that Rosella will have the [[Standard Hero Reward]] of marrying her grotesque "son" {{spoiler|turns out he's just a prisoner, too}}, strips Rosella of all her possessions, and locks her up.
* In the [[Space Quest]] series : Roger is captured by Vohaul in [[Space Quest]] 2, shrunken down to miniature size, and shoved in a jar while Vohaul readies the launch of his clone army of life insurance salesmen. In [[Space Quest]] 5, Roger is stranded on the bridge of the Goliath, surrounded by Pukoids, and the ship's heading for Confederation space, ready to spread [[The Corruption]] to all of known space. If you prepared for this, then WD-40 and Cliffy show up for a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment. [[Space Quest]] 6 isn't as dramatic, but it is sad. After the [[Big Bad]] tried to kill Roger, Stellar shows up and pulls a [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. He can only bang on the door helplessly as she appears to succumb to the gas. Worse, Sharpei is going to get away with it because [[Screw the Rules, I Have Connections|she is the wealthy and well-connected widow of a famous admiral]] while Roger and Stellar are "just" a janitor and soldier.
* [[Pokémon]] had been slowly hedging in that direction for a while with the villains of Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Diamond/Pearl/Platinum coming ever closer to their goals. In Black and White, the bad guys {{spoiler|got their legendary}}. {{spoiler|They proceed to defeat the league champion}}, leaving them with the firepower and the moral authority to get the region {{spoiler|to release their Pokémon}}. In their castle ( {{spoiler|which has risen from the ground to surround the Elite Four headquarter}}, scientists are {{spoiler|hacking into the Pokémon storage system}}, elevating them to global threat. And while {{spoiler|N}} wishes to face you in a one on one battle first, the Sages are a little more pragmatic {{spoiler|and intend to take you six on one and quite likely kill you before you make it that far}}. And even if you do, {{spoiler|you still don't have, or don't know where to find, the opposite legendary, which might even the odds a little in that battle. You have the stone to awaken him, but no idea where or how to use it}}. Then {{spoiler|your childhood friend Bianca rounds up the gym leaders of Unova who hold off the sages, and the stone you've been carrying all along ends up working at the last minute.}} The rest is up to you.
* ''[[Command
** Of course, whether Kane and the Brotherhood are 'evil' depends on one's point of view.
** In Red Alert 2, the last Soviet mission is a desperate fight to destroy the Chronosphere in Alaska, before the Allies launch an invasion of Moscow.
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** Frankly,the whole premise of the show runs on this trope, the Fire Nation have pretty much won the war at the beginning,it isn't until Aang is rescued from the iceberg that any credible threat arrives
* Played with on [[Re Boot]]: Megabyte takes advantage of the chaos during the Web invasion to get rid of Bob and cripple Mainframe's defense forces, but he's then imprisoned by Enzo at the start of the third season. Because the series follows Enzo's adventures in the Games after that, we don't know what happens to Mainframe until {{spoiler|he rescues Bob and finds a way home - only to find that Megabyte escaped and conquered the city a long time ago.}}
* ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers|Galaxy Rangers]]'' episode "Shoot Out." The Queen has three Rangers in chains, displaying them like a trophy. The fourth is competing for his life in a [[Blood Sport]] where the Queen's new champion has shot and wounded him. The animation where she's on her feet cheering while her captives look on in dismay is wonderfully done.
* [[Transformers Cybertron]] uses this. {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Galvatron]] has the [[MacGuffin|MacGuffins]] in his hands. He knocks out ''[[Physical God|Primus himself]]'', and is on the verge of achieving his desire of [[A God Am I|godhood]]. The universe is literally minutes from being consumed by the Unicron Singularity, leaving Galvatron to remake things in his own image. The Autobot leaders - Optimus Prime, Override, Scourge, Evac, and Metroplex - manage to kick his aft by combining their Cyber Key attacks (leading to him having the following [[Oh Crap]] moment: "[[Gosh Dang It to Heck|Uh-oh.]]", which works beautifully as delivered by [[David Kaye]]). But he's not through yet. Galvatron, in a last act of spite, pitches the Omega Lock and Cyber Planet Keys into the Unicron Singularity. If he can't win, nobody will. But even this fails. Override, Scourge, Evac, and Metroplex recover the keys, and Optimus Prime snatches the lock back from the jaws of the event horizon. The lock and keys couple to Primus' body, fully reconnecting his spark and bringing him back to full power. He uses the massive starship ''Ark'' to channel his power as a [[Wave Motion Gun]], firing it at the Unicron Singularity. The unnatural black hole of doom shudders, contorts, and disappears.}} His work done for now, Primus transforms back into Cybertron. But not as it had been, chewed up by the hell of war. It is reborn as a paradise for humans and Transformers alike. Just goes to show, the closer to ultimate victory you are, the harder you fall when it's snatched away.
** But there's still more. In the next episode, it's the [[Final Battle]]. {{spoiler|Optimus Prime versus Galvatron, to the death. Galvatron has Optimus knocked flat on the ground, face in the dirt of one of Cybertron's moons. As he brings his sword down for the killing blow, Vector Prime uses the planet map (his last physical link to the linear universe) to block Galvatron's blade as well as give Optimus Prime his sword Rhisling. Optimus uses it, combined with the power of the Matrix of Leadership, to [[Impaled with Extreme Prejudice|skewer Galvatron]], killing him. Galvatron gives his fitting [[Famous Last Words]] [[Final Speech]]: "[[Transformers: The Movie|I still function]]... you haven't... won... not while my... spark... still burns... [[Evil Laugh|ha ha ha ha ha ha...]]" before crumbling to ashes that are swept away by the lunar winds. }}
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== Real Life ==
* [[World War II]] would probably have looked like one at the time (to someone who hadn't studied the whole economics of the situation): by June 3, 1942, Japanese carriers were running all over the Pacific on a conquest spree, Britain was the only nation still fighting Hitler in Western Europe, the Soviets were giving ground before the German army, and Rommel was advancing across the African desert. Over the next six months, the Axis learned all about places named "Midway", "El Alamein" and "Stalingrad".
** Similarly, the events of 1939-1940 that led to Hitler bowling over all opposition in Europe, except a small island (and a tiny part of another). Then came the German's first undisputed major defeat at the Battle of Britain.
** Let's not forget the millions of dollars in weapons, munitions, food and other essential supplies that that "small island" had coming in from its estranged stepson across the pond.
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** There's one crucial operation that saved Britain right after France fell. While most people who have heard of [[WW 2]] will know that Britain's navy was one of the strongest in the world they wouldn't realize the incredibly precarious position they were in. In May of 1940, Britain's Indian and Far East (Southeast Asia) fleets were busy guarding against the Japanese, the U.S. was [[Heroic Neutral]], and Germany now had access to their own High Seas fleet, the Italian fleet, the French fleet, and it looked like they might gain access to Spain's ships and ports if Franco allied with Hitler openly. Britain's navy managed an amazing sneak attack wiping out the French fleet. This convinced Franco to not become an active ally to Hitler and the difference in naval strength and inability to use Spain as a launching zone convinced Hitler that an air attack against Britain would work best.
** Amazing as it was it was also a ''huge'' [[Shoot the Dog]] moment considering the French sailors had been their allies merely weeks earlier and ''1,300'' of them were killed in the process. As much as the practical benefit it was also a display in front of the whole world about how strongly Britain was committed to fighting.
** Then there's the [[wikipedia:Dunkirk evacuation|Dunkirk evacuation]]. A series of Allied military blunders in May 1940 allowed the Germans to break through the French front lines and catch the Allied troops totally unprepared. The British army, in particular, was in a terrible defensive position at that moment. If General Guderian, the German commander who led the breakthrough, had been allowed to follow up his success, he could have swept north and rolled up the entire British army. Instead, his own CO chewed him out for taking "foolish risks", and Guderian resigned on the spot. He was persuaded to rescind his resignation and resume command, but several days had passed by that point, and the opportunity had been lost. Britain evacuated their soldiers from the continent in one of [[Awesome/World War II|WWII's most awesome operations ever]] (only D-Day qualifies as more awesome than Dunkirk), and the war continued. But its still a stretch to say the Nazis came amazingly close to winning [[World War Two]] outright. If the Dunkirk evacuation had failed, the Battle of Britain would never even have been fought. The British would have politely packed up and said "Well! That's that then! Cheerio!"
** Actually, there was a [[WW 2]] [[Near Villain Victory]] that outclassed even Dunkirk: the Battle Off Samar. Part of one of, if not ''the'' largest naval battles in history, this battle was a total mismatch: the Japanese Center Force, a battle group comprised of dozens of heavy cruisers, destroyers, battleships, all of which was led by the largest battleships ''ever constructed'', ''Yamato''; the American task force, "Taffy 3", was just a support force made up entirely of ships known as "tin cans"--because they lacked any armor. Six light escort carriers, three light destroyers, and three destroyer escorts (these destroyers had a few torpedoes each, and between two to four 5 inch guns, whose shells would literally ''bounce off the hulls'' of the Japanese ships). Taffy 3 was taken completely by surprise, but responded quickly, throwing up a smoke screen with the light destroyers while the carriers launched all of their planes, in spite of the fact that none of them were equipped to fight ships--in many cases, they ''didn't even have any bullets'', and would just fly straight at the bridges of enemy ships and look threatening. Then the captains of the light destroyers, of their own accord, charged straight at the Center Force, ignoring the fact that the many dozens of Japanese guns outranged theirs by miles. They closed the distance, launched torpedoes--their only effective weapon against the Japanese ships--and sank a few heavy cruisers. Then they continued forward, firing hundreds of five inch shells at the upper works of the heavy ships, whose [[Irony|armor-piercing shells went straight through the armorless light destroyers without doing much damage]]. Eventually, the light destroyers were pummeled to death, a carrier was critically damaged, and reinforcements were at least many hours away. Just as the Center Force was on the verge of total victory (which, on top of annihilating every American ship, meant that they could bombard the crap out of the American landing force and most of their supplies at Samar, which was critical), they turned around and retreated. What happened was the result of several unintentional bluffs and a single bad case of intel--the Center Force thought they were facing an ''entire American Fleet Carrier Battle Group'', due to the smoke screen concealing the carriers from view, hundreds of American planes swarming the Center Force like crazy (and looking like they were dropping bombs or torpedoes, but were in reality fuel tanks or depth charges), light destroyers charging a vastly superior force without hesitation and ''actually sinking or heavily damaging many ships'', and a Japanese intel report that an American fleet carrier force was supposed to be in the area at the time--causing the Japanese admiral to call for a withdrawal, believing that they could at best achieve a [[Phyric Victory]], especially considering the incorrect Japanese belief that battleships were still roughly equal or even greater than carriers.
* [[World War One]] had one that if anything looks even worse with the inclusion of economics, and it occurred pretty much at the tail end of the war in 1918. To wit: the entire Eastern front collapsed with the [[Romanovs and Revolutions|Bolshevik Revolution]] pulling Russia out of the war, forcing the surrender of Romania, and generally stranding any and all Allied forces in Eastern Europe in hostile territory (like the fate of the British Baltic sub fleet based in Finland caught between the Germans and the at-the-time pro-German Soviets), handing the Germans effective control of Eastern Europe and its resources, and even worse freeing up a few million veteran German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers to be shifted to the Western Fronts in Belgium/France, the Alps, and the Balkans. The Bulgarian and Turkish armies were suffering from heavy battering but were still fighting on and tying down hundreds of thousands of men, as was von Lettow Vorbeck in Eastern Africa. While the Turks and Bulgarians had been defeated by the time the transfer had been completed, Germany and Austria-Hungary still planned two massive strikes designed to break the back of the Western Allies and force them to capitulate as they had Russia and Romania with the Operation Michael in the West and the Austro-Hungarian Spring Offensive towards Venice against Allied forces that were greatly stretched thin. All the while the untried US military was still on the wrong side of the Atlantic. The result was that the Germans almost smashed their way into Paris and the Austro-Hungarians nearly breached the last defensible line before an evacuation would have been necessary. And within a few months, both enemies had been defeated in what must be one of history's greatest turnarounds.
* Another example is the so called "Long Night" coined by Western intelligence in the [[Cold War]], dating from 1956 to 1979 more or less. It started with the fiascoes of 1956 - including the humiliation of the fall of Budapest and the Ike-induced rifts between the US and the Anglo-French -, continued straight through Vietnam and the resulting bloodbath, and ended with the fall of the Shah and the loss of one of the last remaining Western outposts in the Middle East. During this point in time, the general consensus amongst historians and strategists - West, East, and neither - was that if the Soviets rolled the dice, they probably would have won. That, or triggered an [[Earthshattering Kaboom]], all depending on whether the West was willing to retaliate.
* This is what the first part of the [[Korean War]] looked like: the North Koreans marched south, destroying or pushing away any and all Western allied resistance, to the point where they were trapped in a tiny split of land around Pusan fighting desperately to hold on to their final foothold on the Korean mainland against vastly superior North Korean forces, living hand-to-mouth for weeks under intense pressure. Termed "looked like" because (as many have pointed out), Pusan could have been evacuated in fairly good order if it were not possible to be held, and the amphibious invasion force that would eventually launch at Inchon was already well underway in planning and organization, so it is questionable to see what effect the actual conquest of Pusan would have had.
** The Pusan Parameter was defended by the US 7th Cavalry, which has a history of fighting to [[Near Villain Victory|Near Villain Victories]].
* Mid-1920 in the Polish-Soviet war looked very much like this: after the Ukrainian offensive had collapsed due to arriving Soviet reserves, the Poles and their surviving Ukrainian allies were pushed deep into Poland itself, outnumbered, outgunned, and logistically cut off. The supplies it was dependent upon for survival were being waylaid by pro-Soviet forces (including but not limited to an Anglo-French dock strike, a rail strike in Czechoslovakia, and pan-Germanic inspired strikes at Danzig), the Soviet army had seized Prague - a suburb of Warsaw- and was now planning to take the main city, Budyonney in the south was moving towards Lwów, the Polish military was ill-equipped, outnumbered, and divided, and the Soviets only needed to break through the final line of Polish resistance before making it to the German mainland in preparation for what they believed would be a great, unified proletariat revolution, which the Western Allies - weary from the strain of WWI and beset by internal dissent - would have struggled to survive and overcome. Then ... well, the Miracles of the Vistula and Zamość happened.
* Speaking of Poland, the Second Siege of Vienna looked a lot like this at one point. A massive Ottoman Army was steadily advancing towards the city, blowing up its defenses with gunpowder and slowly starving and exhausting the city's inhabitants to death by cutting off all supplies and keeping the attack going day and night. To this day you can see cannonballs in the side of St. Stephan's Cathedral. Previous Austrian cities that had surrendered had gotten massacred, and it was looking like Vienna would follow suit. Then King Jan III Sobieski of Poland came roaring in with [[The Cavalry|the largest cavalry charge in history.]]
* Institutional racism against Black Americans. Considering that degenerates like William Lynch actually studied methods to keep blacks enslaved and useless as functional human beings, and that his diseased ideologies managed to spread to near every corner of American life, it is a miracle of the status black Americans in the United States have today. However, today's gains make it easy to forget just how dire the plight of black Americans were. There was a time that it was simply impossible to have any kind of bank give you money for any venture. Everyone from the local law enforcement to the KKK could rape, kill, and beat blacks with impunity. And if that weren't enough, blacks were only given jobs that guaranteed they'd risk life and limb. And now ... we have [[Barack Obama|a black president]]. Life is funny that way I guess.
* The Mongol Empire would have likely smashed through Europe and then the renmants of Asia had Ogedei Khan not died suddenly.
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