Eucatastrophe: Difference between revisions

* 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.]]

* The Mongol Empire would have likely smashed through Europe and then the renmants of Asia had Ogedei Khan not died suddenly.