Biggest Alternate History Cliches

Minor one, but technological development progressing at the exact same pace as OTL, despite other factors in an alternate world which would in theory hasten/delay it.

A president/Prime Minister getting absolutely everything right and creating a utopia for their country.

As to Nazi victories...most are not very good. The only ones that are good accept the implausibility behind them and are set decades later, like TNO, which acknowledges how ridiculous some of the things in its universe are, but is well written and details what the reality of the Germans winning would be.

Everybody already pointed out especially Axis victory, Central Powers victory, and Southern victory.

The most overused cliche's I have seen is "What if Britain falls to the Nazis?" and the response is "Simple the Nazis win and invade the United States years later."

Some even had "What if the USSR won the Cold War?" and other one would respond "The Soviets invade Europe and the United States and proceed to take over the globe in one mighty Soviet Empire."

Another over-asked question: "What if Mao invaded Taiwan in 1949-50?"

In circumstances of Central Powers and Nazi victories, the Allies either cave in and accept everything, maintaining minimal forces. I haven't read one where there is a big post WW1 British Army, a maintenance of the huge Ministry of Munitions framework or where there is a realistic naval reaction to still having a threat next door.

Washington Naval Treaty analogues emerge even when there are completely different drivers.

In ongoing Nazi regimes, exactly the same type of aircraft from @ are developed by the Allies, despite a completely different threat.

I remember reading some discussion on what would be a realistic result of a Great War draw a few years ago. I’ll try and dig it out, but it included a standing army of more than 15 divisions plus large reserves, regular training deployments to France and more.

I reckon that the discussion was on Navweaps somewhere before 2012, so am trying to track it down. As such, I’m not sure on the precise composition of the forward deployed forces. I seem to remember it being posted by Mark L Bailey.

The idea of the Jerries getting their colonies back is another bit of a cliche, as there is no way the Japanese would hand over their conquests and no reason to return German New Guinea either. As a further point, the British handing everything back meekly to the Ottomans happens a bit, similarly without reason.

Perhaps the larger cliche out of all these individual examples is that any compromise peace in WW1 must favour the Germans well past the point of an even keel. With the exception of the 1918 Spring Offensive, Germany in general was on the back foot on the Western Front from mid 1915; the localised offensive of Verdun did not occur in isolation from the Somme.

There was that perception in some neutral texts of the time; I remember reading a near hagiographic account of the inevitability of German victory in a text I found whilst searching for Heligoland’s defences. However, even though the occupation of those territories in the West yielded them some benefit, it really was more of an absence for France that was the real bite. There are the extremely vehement types who insist that the lack of American loans in 1916 would mean an utter Allied collapse and then an utter German victory, but that argument doesn’t really work for me; it does seem to be derived from a position of utter American indispensability, which is more of a subjective area in the entire scope of the Great War.

It is somewhat interesting how things tend to intersect like this.