Sort Of Different

(This is the continuation to the series begun here.)

The United States, invigored by peacetime prosperity, surges ahead of the rest of the world, both technologically and industrially. European nations tremble with fear and envy - especially as the nation begins a seemingly inevitable expansion into the rest of the Western Hemisphere in the 1880s. Cuba, oppressed by their Spanish rulers, gained American 'assistance' and a closely supervised 'freedom'. The Columbian government, refusing offers to sell land for a U.S. constructed trans-isthmusian canal, instead gained a Panamanian rebellion (supported by the US) and a paltry, belated 'apology' payment from the American government. Within the space of five years, half the land between South America and Florida had raised the red, white, and blue.

Domestically, too, great strides continued. For the first time, in 1884, more Americans lived in cities than lived in the countryside. A pioneering German, Karl Benz (whose parents had immigrated to the US in the 1860s to find their fortune) created an efficient gasoline engine; in 1888, another German (Gottlieb Daimler) created the modern assembly line, and with that the beginnings of the automobile industry. Physicists made incredible progress, formulating the beginnnigns of what came to be known as the General Theory of Relativity. A radio transmitter and reciever was patented by 1890; the first heavier-than-air flight was launched in 1894. The exponential pace of progress, begun in the 20th century in our own history, was taking place earlier and faster.

In 1913 - after a prolonged expansion by the United States, from South America to Africa - the Ottoman Empire declared war on the United States after it attempted to steal oil reserves that fell within its territory. A complex web of treaties and alliances swiftly expanded the boundries of the war - by October of that year, it was clear that the fight was to be between the Allies: Britain, France, Japan (which had joined in the hope of plundering Germany's nearby possessions) and the US; and the Central Powers: Germany, Austro-Hungaria, and Italy.
The German gamble was that the US, overcommitted elsewhere (with troops scattered all over the globe), could be ignored while a great push was launched against first France, and then Britain. The ploy nearly succeeded - US reinforcements were few and far between, and came mainly in the form of munitions, rather than badly needed soldiers. German troops came within sight of Paris itself - and seized Calais, that vital link to Britain - before American poison gas and American bombers stopped the "Hun"'s advance. Trench war set in; an American attempt to remove troops from its overseas provinces was met with simultaneous rebellion in the Phillipines, Hawaii and South Africa. Hundreds of thousands of men died pointlessly in the back-and-forth, stalemated fighting.
Then tanks - British-invented, but very quickly American-supplied - came onto the field. Germany countered quickly with tanks of its own, but while America might not have been able to supply troops to the field, its factories never ran short of munitions. Again, though - this time little short of victory - the war slowed to a crawl in early 1916, the tanks incapacitated by clever anti-tank mines and destroyed by pre-packaged grenade clusters. It was widely agreed that this was when America turned itself into the sole world power, as American atomic munitions rained from Allied artillery onto the Central Powers' lines all across the European Front.
The last fighting ended within the month.

(This was part two of three. The third will follow... shortly. I reserve the right to amend, edit, and otherwise change this text as I feel it to be necessary or desirable.)