perfidy

I've always been fascinated by the treaty talks at the end of the war. The American delegation was well prepared - and had a draft treaty that contained many elements that actually were used at the end of the second world war - go easy on Germany, little reparations, financial assistance, etc. The other allied powers, particularly England and France, wanted to punish Germany.

I wonder what would have happened if Wilson had not screwed up so badly. Wilson gave up basically every sensible point in the American proposal to get the league of nations. Which of course never was approved by the US Senate. If he had not been so obsessed with the League, or if he ahd not personally attended the peace talks, things might have gone better. Once Wilson appeared in person, he was just another leader - but if he had remained in Washington, his influence might have been greater, given the importance of the American contribution to the end fo the war.

A sane Versailles treaty would have had a huge effect on the course of history. WWII would likely have been avoided, and an unemasculated Germany might never have permitted the emergence of the Soviet Union.

The devastation of the war would still have had similar effects on cultural matters, but the context would have been more optimistic, and even hopeful - that at the end fo the most destructive war in history, the victors were civilized, not vindictive. And there would have been less cause for feelings of betrayal in the German populace.

If the US had not intervened, the Germans might have fought on to a negotiated, stalemate peace in the west - which, in the absence of a viable Russian government would have left most of Eastern Europe under Germany's control. However, a bitter peace like that would have led to another war eventually, but its character would have been very different than the WWII we saw.

If the US had intervened earlier, the effect of the war on America would have been much more like it was on England and France, with the casualties, etc. But it might have ended the war earlier, and perhaps more decisively as the US would in all likelihood pressed for invasion of German territory. The unconditional surrender thing was very much a part of the American military tradition at that point.

I once had an idea for an alternate history where time traveling from a parallel world are trying to take over the multiverse. But they want to do it easy, not against heavy and paranoid resistance. Seeing that the world of 2001 or so is two high tech, well armed and paranoid for their taste; they recruit some locals (history grad students, you know, dupes) to go back, prevent WWI, and create a non-technologically advanced, peaceful and calm timeline full of patsies.

The grad students think, hey, what a cool idea. WWI was a tragic unnecessary war, we'll be doing good. So they go back and meddle, and largely prevent the war - it turns into a short, sharp war on the Eastern front, and Europe remains a happy place.

Until they meet the neonazis recruited by the time traveling good guys to put the nastiness back in place to make sure the TTBGs can't walk over another timeline. So the grad students have a crisis of conscience, team up with the nazis, and go back to start WWI all over again.

Interesting, though the obvious question would be - why bother with the grad students? Why not just go back to 1900 yourself and take over the planet then?

Sorry to go off on a tangent there, this is an excellent post (and comments:). I don't really have much to add, except to say that pondering what-ifs is a fun activity, though whenever I start to get really detailed in thinking about a particular what if, I run into lots of brick walls. Too many unpredictable variables to consider.

If Young Hitler was killed on the Western Front in WWI, would someone else have taken his place? Was WWII inevitable even without Hitler? If you went back in time and killed Hitler yourself, would destiny struggle to reassert itself? I don't know, and that's part of the problem with what-ifs. Anything can happen!

Actually, I had thought of that. The technology that I imagined would allow crosstime (between alternates) travel at a fairly low investment of energy, and with little chance of detection by those who know what they're looking for. Upstream travel, within a timeline, would be much more expensive in terms of energy and much less stealthy. So, while the bad guys could ship militarily significant amounts of material from their world, or an outpost over to ours, It would be prohibitively expensive to mount that kind of invasion back to 1900. So, send a couple people back, effect the necessary changes, and reap the benefits downstream in 2000.

As to your second point, it really comes down to whether you think that there really are vast implacable forces of history that have some sort of purpose, or at least momentum, and people are swept along by them; or if you think that individuals really can make a huge difference.

If you fall toward the former of those, then killing Hitler would make no difference because the implacable forces would throw somebody else up as a replacement.

Personally, I lean more toward the latter. There are trends at work, the beliefs of millions of people that influence the course of history. Most leaders follow the expectations of the populace. But some don't. Before Hitler, the Nazis were a grabastic bunch of misfits and losers who had no more chance of taking over a major industrialized nation than the local Spartacus league abck in Columbus.

Hitler made them into a force, and his charisma propelled them into power. I think if you went back in time and offed the murderous little scumbag, WWII would have been prevented.

That isn't to say that some other conflict might not have happened, but without the megalomania of Hitler and his goons, it might have been smaller, less vicious, happened later, or not at all. WWI was the typical European war of position and relative advantage, such as had been happening for centuries. It was just a thousand times bigger thanks to the wonders of large scale industrialization.

WWII was different. More like the Napoleonic wars, but with the added bonus of sick cult of personality national socialism and genocide. A war of conquest. And that was thanks to Hitler. Mussolini could never have started it, and the militarists in Japan tried to, but it didn't really catch on until Hitler jumped in.

Always fun to think about.

Yeah, good points. Perhaps Hitler wasn't the greatest example - my main point was that once you start changing history and asking "what if?", you can get very carried away and pretty much justify any outcome by adding as many more what-ifs as are needed to make it come about. Interesting nonetheless, but worth noting I think:)

Buckethead, as usual your superior intellect carries the day. But it leads to further questions, the least of which is: without WWII, would the USA have acheived its prominent place in the world, ditto the USSR? And, would the nagging questions of imperial ambition in both Europe and Japan been settled, or been left to fester? Would that have been better, or worse?

I don't think I believe that if original events were altered that other, unpredicted events would surface and yield comparable results. That sounds like Fate to me, which smacks of the supernatural, and I don't believe any of it.

Lots to chew on here, and now that I see the depth of response, not the best topic for blogging. Way easier to talk about it than type about it.

One thing to latch onto is the offing Hitler thing, whether by ambitious chrono-assassins from the future or luckier British artillery at Ypres. The existence or not of Hitler does not seem to have any bearing on Imperial Japan, at least on its early years and initial rampage through east Asia. No world war perhaps, but still a Pacific war (if that makes sense) between the US, Britain, the Commonwealth and Japan.

Another way to look at what-ifs is to consider what might have been had someone lived instead of died. For example, if young Hitler bought it on the Western Front he'd have been just another corpse, buried and forgotten by all but his immediate geneology. But what about the millions of largely anonymous dead from that conflict? Which of them, had he or she lived, could have been humanity's greatest inventor, or philosopher, theologian or doctor?

Or...perhaps a greater force of evil than Hitler ever was?

The best alternate histories change one thing, event, whatever, and try to see what follows. Hitler really is a great example, because with that one change - a lucky shot in the big one, a better placed suitcase bomb, faster acting syphilis - everything is different. Trying to figure out how is the fun part.

Johno, yes to the first, and maybe to the second. And, maybe, maybe and probably better.

Even before WWI, the United States was the largest economy in the world, or nearly so. The great depression did nothing to change that, since eveyone else took a hit too. American economic growth would have continued, and our unique idiom of free-wheeling innovation and trade, trade, trade! would have likely put us on top. I think that WWII accelerated and exagerated the process. Everyone else got tatered in the war, and the huge efforts to develop ever better methods of killing Nazis and Nips was a huge technological shot in the arm. So we ended up on top sooner, and in a huge way.

Russia is a different story. Russia is a naturally rich nation in most respects. But they have been saddled over the centuries with increasingly thumbfingered and retarded economic systems, rather the opposite of the west. Without WWII, and the desperate need to do something that worked regardless of ideology; and the massive influx of technological and material aid from the US and UK, I think the worker's paradise would never have been a superpower in the way that it was after WWII. Dangerous, and a power; but not even remotely equal to the US, and *undevastated* France, Germany, Britain and Japan. It would have been more like China in the seventies - worrisome, but kind of comically backward once you get past the secret police and gulags.

If Hitler hadn't come around, would the Weimar republic have survived? I think NDR might have a better anwer than me, but it could happen. And democracies generally don't fight each other. For imperial ambitions you generally need an empire - and interwar germany before Hitler wasn't that. We see no evidence of Imperial ambitions now - of course, they do remember being stomped flat. I'd say fifty-fifty odds of a war anyway, though likely less tragic in scope, and probably at least ten years later.

Japan would have gone about the same thing - invading China, and generally being evil in a less than German/methodical manner. Would they have attacked the US without allies already committed to war in Europe? Probably not - because both the US and Britain could jump on them without having to worry about Germany. Hell, Germany might have even helped out.

All in all, I think pulling the trigger on Adolf would be an unmitigated good. Any other likely European war, even if just as bloody militarily, would likely not result in the slaughter of millions in the gas chambers.

Thinking of someone living longer - if British PM William Pitt had lived longer, or been in better health longer, the US would likely never have come to be. British leadership in the 1770s and 80s was stupendously shortsighted and lacking in wisdom.

If Lincoln would ahve lived longer, he probably wouldn't be the hero he is today. Even his considerable skills would have stumbled on reconstruction.

Fun, fun, fun. We should have an alternate history category.

Is alternate history like where Bush won the 2000 election?

*ducks*

No, alternate history is where Bush got more popular votes. We have to imagine a fictional universe where we have a droning android environut policy wonk in the oval office.