What If...?

What if the Persians had won at Salamis? What if Christ had not been crucified? What if the Chinese had harnessed steam power before the West? What if Hitler had won in Russia? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

This last counterfactual speculation is not difficult to imagine. In October 1941, Stalin wanted to leave Moscow for his dacha in Kuntsevo. His chief of security, Beria, talked him out of it, saying the dacha was rigged with explosives should it have to be destroyed. Had the usually iron-willed Stalin gone anyway and Beria's worst fears realized, the death of Stalin would probably have enabled the Germans to win Russia. The weak-willed Politburo may well have made a compromise with Hitler as had Russia during World War I, trading European areas of the Soviet Union for continued existence east of the Urals. Hitler told Goebbels in August 1941 such an "Asiatic Russia" was acceptable and would be of little interest.

Hitler would have gone on to enslave 150 million Russians, eliminate 11 million European Jews, and finally achieve the conquest of Great Britain. Had he still declared war on the United States, we may have used atomic bombs on German cities after we had demolished Japan. Or maybe not. A more detailed article is here.

These speculations on history point out how fragile various outcomes are, how easily things can end adversely. The book contains many of these, and the War Historian website has more.

Actually, Germany winning in Russia might have been closer than we think. Operation Barbarossa was delayed 6 weeks because of an insurrection in Yugoslavia, instigated by British Intelligence. The Russian invasion finally started on June 22, and reached its high water-mark in the Moscow suburbs when "General Winter," as the Russians call it, with help from General Zhukov, halted the Germans.

Enjoy! These are academic exercises of the past, and of little import. But, what if the Obama moves to salvage the economy do not work as hoped? What if the world falls into another depression? Not as much fun, but of greater import, I think.

Or we are being forced into nation building when we acknowledge that we're not very good at it. We shall become so, or we may cease as superpower, following the Spanish and British eras into history. The next voices from the moon shall speak what language? Zai jian.