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If you can go back in Time,which political "Event" would you prevent/avert ?
- Thread starter Alexander1970
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I.e. troops or support?
The German Empire could not have recovered from Stalingrad. But perhaps they would not have lost at Stalingrad if America had not supported the USSR. China and most of South and North East Asia would be ruled by the Japanese emperor though, I guess.
That would be interesting....maybe.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatherland_(1994_film)
(Withdrawing....not completely "No participation")
I completely agree. That arrogant, egomanical blowhard put his own aggrandizement before party and country. He didn't give a whit for what either of the latter stood for and was instrumental in setting the stage for his purported political enemies to win the following election and attempt to transform the country against the wishes of the majority of voters, whose vote was split - all because of President Dumbass and his insurmountable ego.
Kill Teddy Roosevelt. Save the future.
Prevent the election of Woodrow Wilson - the first Progressive (racist socialist asshole) President of the United States, who won the Presidency with a plurality because Teddy Roosevelt went third party and split the Republican opposition. In keeping out His Progressiveness, we also keep out his obsession with helping Britain in the Great War, which averts the comprehensive defeat of the Central Powers in WWI. If the sides were suing for peace on more even footing (which they were on prior to the intervention of America), there very likely would have been no supposedly "unequal" Treaty of Versailles for a certain more-popular time travel murder target to use to rise to power (with only a plurality of his own) in Germany. No crazy Germans, no (or at least a very different) WWII. In addition to the lives saved during the war, without that distraction (and the absence of the communism-lite Progressives in the U.S. government), we might have been able to strangle international communism in its crib and save the 100 million+ souls those regimes went on to murder in the 20th Century.
Oh, I don't know. Teddy Roosevelt's first term was bad but I'm not sure we have to kill him before he clearly made it all about himself.
Oh, ok, him too
The big bang. This entire shit show was a mistake.
So you ask for censorship of others and get censored instead. Taste your own medicine.
Complete isolation, still continuing lend lease (if not the covert stuff beforehand), shipping things to all parties concerned rather than just the allies?
Canada was also still very closely tied to the the UK at this point so in the spirit of "you're no with us so you're against us" is a possibility you get to consider -- having an enemy world power (naval and military) with a land border for several of your biggest cities a hop, skip and jump away... not a great look, and while I doubt the UK would have been in a position to mount an offensive any time soon (expedition force having been lost already and that kind of massing for deployment would have been difficult on so many levels)
What would Japan have done in this timeframe as well?
That said it is one of the more plausible things on this list. Isolationist sentiment was pretty high.
Yeah I neglected to mention that last time.
If he dies there is a risk someone more competent, with greater military support (if not outright support) and possibly better financials gets into power.
As far as war with the USSR... most communist countries (and the German communists massively disliked the national socialists so that gets to be a fun one, especially as support between the two was more or less equal) tended not to get along -- Sino Soviet, North Korea being appeased, China-Vietnam, all the fun and games with eastern Europe during the USSR which started in the 50s (Hungarian uprising probably being the most known but east German, Poland and later Prague Spring would be in this).
Now if they had actually managed some kind of continued ally status that they had before (see a lot of the dodging of arms embargoes done with them*)... that could be more interesting, and they might actually get some oil (going for the Caucuses being the driving, or indeed not because they had ran out of oil, reasons for the eastern front).
*one of many interesting videos on the matter for those unaware
There is no point.
Happenings take their course no matter how hard you wish to prevent them.
The sooner you accept this, the better.
Happenings take their course no matter how hard you wish to prevent them.
The sooner you accept this, the better.
Possibly a bit fatalistic but I would say incorrect, and even if not (going way off topic but see "The Copenhagen Interpretation" of alternate universes for a starting point there) then whether you go for history repeats itself or history rhymes then knowing why something happened one time can lead to you preventing it from happening again, or at least predicting and acting accordingly for yourself.
As far as the incorrect thing. While it is a somewhat maligned view of looking at history these days then the great man theory view of history (see Thomas Carlyle for the main originator of that, and a very interesting series of political and history books) is one that has its perks. There are times when someone of such great skill, cunning, strength, insight, sociopathy... appears that will likely not be matched by anybody else alive at the time. There are also times where pure random chance causes something to happen that would not have otherwise happened, or would have taken decades/centuries more to happen and at that point things have changed (whether for positive or negative might be debatable).
Certainly I would still continue to spend considerable amounts of time looking into economics*, biology, geography**, human psychology, group psychology, scientific advancement at the time, social structures (granted that might be more economics, biology and geography), philosophies at the time.
*nobody likes being poor, get a population poor and suffering and they tend to revolt. Get one with excess wealth and provided food is there they tend to grow and also have excess such that you can do art, science and more besides.
**I already mentioned the north sea being the precursor to bluewater navigation and most formidable navies compared to the far more predictable and calmer waters basically everywhere else on the planet where people live. Or perhaps more succinctly there is a reason no landlocked nation has ever become a maritime power.
North-south geography of North America is another -- compared to the giant strips of land you can farm on in Europe and Asia with basically the same crops you will find them freezing or burning up in North America with the south not much better. Also no decent work animals survived there which does rather trouble technological development until you get steam engines/coal.
I could continue the list of asterisks but I won't. Videos instead
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I love how futile conversations about changing the past get...
If you go back to change something in the past, you won't be going back to change it and thus nothing would happen.
And even if an alternate universe was created, that'd mean you merely visited this universe yourself and yours is still the same.
If you go back to change something in the past, you won't be going back to change it and thus nothing would happen.
And even if an alternate universe was created, that'd mean you merely visited this universe yourself and yours is still the same.
I fully agree with you mate, let's go back together and prevent that little pop from expanding!
I would wonder if that is a function of age (it might have been a thing that happened before many here were born at this point), trickiness of doing it, or "there are more interesting things to contemplate".
There is also the question of how would you do it. Radical Islam was a thing long before this (1993 World Trade Center bombing if you want to go there) and I don't see a particular way to have stopped that -- population, inefficiencies of government, Sykes-Picot, modernisation efforts (rates of atheism in Islamic countries being rather on the rise, usually in direct proportion to external sources of information), Wahhabism/Salafism/some other fun ism from take your pick of various middle east sponsored places, Chechnya, Pakistan (even ignoring the Bangladesh split then it has been in basically a civil war for decades, and regions are basically lines on an map and almost autonomous), pick of a few places in sub Saharan Africa, might even get something from Indonesia (Aceh is mostly internally focused at this point but still, and I do generally note Indonesia as having the largest Muslim population in the world)...
Or if you prefer
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
So that was 2002 in the letter to the west. The building blocks however were clearly in place long before then.
So you stop it happening somehow (maybe your call they actually take seriously, maybe your black ops team wipes out the pilots a few months ahead of time). A few thousand Americans don't die that day, do we presume they don't have a "real" basis for invasion of places, the US maybe continues thinking itself invincible, you still get a nice housing collapse (the seeds of it sown long before)...
Last of the Neocons vs 90s democrats... political polarisation in the US was already a thing by then so both have equal chances of being elected. Both have enough investment from the then declining military investment ( https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget - flat line + inflation = declining investment) sector that I still see them sticking their beak in somewhere as the sector will seek to preserve itself, not sure if Asia, Africa or middle east though. South America might be an option that could result in something more fun. Probably pointless either way you swing it, though whether a forever war (winning war is easy enough, winning peace is rather harder as basically everything give or take maybe Bosnia has shown). Or if you prefer not like the US has not gone and done stuff basically every year for well over a century at this point regardless of politicos in nominal control (again landslides seem few and far between which means compromise).
Also even if they take your call or said black ops team does their thing... do you want to bet on the whole security vs convenience struggle without a bunch of pain in the first place?
For the most part in this sort of thing we generally suspend the time travel paradoxes and alternate universe physics debates, possibly even handwave the "your friends and family would not exist" thing as well.
Can also be read as "What pivotal moment in world history sent us down a lesser path?" if you prefer.
You may or may not want to expand on what you expect to happen there.
He was 78 at this point and this was 1940s India at that (not that anywhere in the world would have done too much, none of his kids lived particularly long lives either, way shorter than that actually but I don't know if this is sudden rich kid syndrome at this point, and his wife was already gone).
Jawaharlal Nehru then got to take over (him dying in 1964 from bad health so how much he could have done also gets questioned). Being as a Hindu nationalist did the deed it became a pretty decent casus belli to go after them and in turn it became decidedly unfashionable. Without it then that would have probably lingered with some force for a bit longer.
So if we say give him another 10 years of reasonable health (no dementia, no slip and fall in the shower) and no real concerns for political stability or scandal (a decided possibility, or if you prefer see many modern histories on him and questions raised, might have been even worse had things come to light back then). What would have realistically changed?
India and Pakistan were things by this point, and already splitting fairly violently (to say nothing of the formation of Bangladesh afterwards). Some might even say his assassination ultimately led to a bit more peace than had he slipped in the shower (again 78 in the 1940s). I don't particularly see scope for a united India either (see provincial lines to this day and going back centuries here), doubt he would have been able to do much against the caste system.
Sino-Indian splits were pretty much inevitable from where I sit and doubt he would have been able to do much there.
Industrialisation... don't particularly see a better timeline there, indeed I reckon it would have been worse on the farming/green revolution as I doubt Lal Bahadur Shastri would have been able to do his work as well (equally mechanisation of farming and matching chemical tweaks in India in the 1940s-1950s... tricky).
Export market and world player. Doubt it would have been more than primary goods which never get you rich and with the internal conflicts and immediate neighbours I don't see much in the way of world grade statesman.
Political stability in general. I am not really sure how that would have played out. Him doddering on through politics, maybe being the wise old man to consult if he stepped back. Even without his assassination I can't really see anybody but those from his main circles taking over for a while (Vishwanath Pratap Singh in the late 80s being the first without links to him and his inner circle), and maybe without the whip to crack to get things done either if there was not as much unity caused by his assassination.
Now the assassination of Indira Gandhi. That could pose some interesting questions.
way too much hitler here. it is not that hard to find singular persons trough history that have been responsible for way more deaths than hitler
i personally would remove the uk existence from history, even if i have to go all the way back to pangea and sink the whole thing with a manual showel. bonus points because it also prevents burgerland from being born
i personally would remove the uk existence from history, even if i have to go all the way back to pangea and sink the whole thing with a manual showel. bonus points because it also prevents burgerland from being born
Take it back 3 billion and piss in the primordial goo. Fuck this disaster. No more Kardashians or robocallers.
Not because I thought it would change anything, I just thought it was senseless and he probably deserved better at that point. I'm also about as convinced that Godse acted solely as I am that Oswald did.
Are we taking Ireland with that? No real reason it would not become the UK without it, give or take maybe the lack of land compared to the rest of it that could sustain enough of a population to matter (even in current space year with modern tech and a rich scientifically focused country and it is some 6 million on the island of Ireland, compared to the 60 something million in the UK), and variously it was part of it until relatively modern times (can probably just about find someone that remembers it being part of it). Or if you prefer see the religious schisms that formed with Ireland being isolated and doing its own thing, no reason all other politics would not roll that way. If Ireland did carry on then whoever gets their act together on the continent as far as boats gets to use it as a training level instead of the UK, and then a nice place to go cool off when it gets too hot, few more resources and resupply for their wars, then probably a staging ground.
So anyway no big island off the coast of Europe (maybe it went with the rest of doggerland).
I would wonder at geographical concerns here -- Ireland and the UK being on the end of the gulfstream do act as a bit of a sink, Scandinavia might be a bit warmer and I don't know what goes for the North Sea either. Alternate geography is probably out of the question though as it makes things way too complicated so I will handwave that.
Islands in prehistoric (and even to this day) makes things really hard to invade*; there is a reason longbows were often considered a favoured weapon in the things that would become the UK and part of that was lack of worthwhile opponents on land borders (see the rest of Europe and history thereof) where you get to worry about that as well as peasant uprising.
*D-day landings in the 1940s barely worked and with the industrial might of the US and UK, Russian distraction, bad intel/setup on the part of Germany and practice in Italy (and maybe North Africa) beforehand to work out the kinks. Before that you have what the couple of technical Dutch invasions (the last of which was basically an invite), 1066 (which was also somewhat lucky), a few raids, Danelaw, Hengist and Horsa in the fifth century...
Would the Celts have survived or been a forgotten thing in Northern France, Basques and what goes there, would the Roman empire have stretched itself to that degree or gone another way (England there was not particularly lucrative for them and took a fair bit of resources that could have gone for Germany, Russia, east, south...)?
Europe without the UK playing mediator at various points means it is probably going to be the Germany (I will assume they unite rather than being the source of princes and proxy wars) vs France show, maybe with some fun from the Spanish, Italy is fine for the early game in civilisations but sucks for the later one, Austria-Hungary... hahahaha. Also France without the UK... that is 1000 years change there, if not more if the Saxons decide not to go for the UK (the Normans that did 1066 themselves being vikings that settled there after all) and instead focus other directions. France, England, Scotland, Ireland all pulling all sorts of focus in all sorts of ways here, including the US (war of independence there being influenced by a war with France considerably on various fronts).
Vikings in Asia is also a potentially different story here if there is more reason to make more of a dent there.
No UK for time of empires other than the US (more on that shortly). India would probably have been a French dominion (it was in the early days) as the others were more about trading empires, though maybe the Germans would have got it together to get something. Mughals would likely not have been able to hang on in there.
Would the industrial revolution have kicked off without the UK or would it have been delayed by decades/centuries? Sources of coal and metals are a thing still, a lot of stuff appeared in Germany (de re metallica, something you could happily do quite well with for mining and basic metallurgy, being the 1500s in Germany).
As far as the US appearing. Given it was varyingly vikings, Spanish (who sent an Italian) and more that would have discovered it, with most of the rest of northern Europe in good stead to give it a go (not like Portugal and the Netherlands did not have maritime empires crossing further distances) and go off in search of India. Outside chance of Chinese look into things (see existing US history for timelines here, though I doubt they would have it together to do westward manifest destiny), or maybe Polynesian, Japan was still being isolationist and rarely had a good navy, don't know what goes for Russia here (Alaska was a thing but eh...), Korea potentially an option but again navy a bit lacking and also lack of the north sea to train up on.
Now it adopted UK common law along with some interesting enlightenment/classical liberal concepts rather than French law (which in turn was basically Roman law and similar stories for most of the other possibilities for Europe here) which is a bit of a change. That might be interesting -- whether it would be large Quebec or large New Orleans I don't know, the Spanish and Portuguese might even stick around (doubt the Dutch could have). With the possible exception of the Polynesians then the natives would have been steamrolled by disease either way and then we get massive land grabs, probably followed by a fracture as a 4 months to send ships and weapons means independence probably always going to happen pre steamships and telegraphs. That or it all looks like south America does today (debatable from where I sit as geography influences culture somewhat, especially in pre industrial times).
Leaving aside questions of panspermia (life arrives on a comet) and likelihood of life evolving independently again or taking hold (the whole thermal vents thing).
The bacteria likely in that (they are the ones that clawed up nature's 3 billion year corpse pile) would potentially do some considerable boosting of evolution if they were able to survive at some level. Even without that the complex proteins there would probably have some fun.
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