Search results
Go to the Listen Again page: The Radio 4 discussion programme which re-writes history. Professor Christopher Andrew and guests consider what might have happened if important moments in History had ...
- Follow This Link to Find Out More and to Listen Again
Subscribe to the BBCi History Newsletter: PRESENTER: photo:...
- Programme Archive
HISTORY NEWSLETTER: Subscribe to the BBCi History...
- Follow This Link to Find Out More and to Listen Again
- 9/11 is Foiled. 9/11 is the most significant event to happen to the USA since Pearl Harbor. The collapse of the Twin Towers and the murder of nearly 3,000 people in NYC, Washington and Pennsylvania effected everyone who was alive to witness it on some deep, fundamental level.
- Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI Escape the French Revolution. The French Revolution of 1789-99 put a powder keg beneath old Europe and exploded it with the force of a thousand atomic bombs.
- Rommel Isn’t Absent During D-Day. Erwin Rommel was many things: a good strategist, a highly-decorated commander, and one of the most influential people in the Third Reich who wasn’t also a complete scumbag.
- Napoleon Doesn’t Invade Russia. Sticking with megalomaniacs and foolish plans to invade Russia, let’s look at the 19 Century’s most-foolish megalomaniac of all.
The alternate history textbook For Want of A Nail by Robert Sobel is such a scenario, exploring what if the United States had lost the American Revolution. Or, as this textbook from an alternate ...
- Samuel Arbesman
Russian militarists realized that if they wanted the Soviet Union to not collapse, they needed to create enemies to unite the Soviet people. Therefore, the Soviet Union suddenly declared war on the United States in 1990. For the Soviet Union, the war with the United States was a war of survival that led to the existence of the Soviet Union. 69 43.
- What If The South Won The Civil War?
- What If Charles Lindbergh Were Elected President in 1940?
- What If Hitler Successfully Invaded Russia?
- What If James Dean Had Survived His Car Crash?
- What If President Kennedy Had Survived The Assassination attempt?
- What If Christianity Missed The West?
- What If The Beatles Had Broken Up in 1966?
- What If The Romans Won The Battle of The Teutoburg Forest?
- What If The Protestant Reformation Never Happened?
- What If Napoleon Had Kept Going?
Effect: America becomes one nation again… in 1960. Explanation: In a 1960 article published in Lookmagazine, author and Civil War buff MacKinlay Kantor envisioned a history in which the Confederate forces won the Civil War in 1863, forcing the despised President Lincoln into exile. The Southern forces annex Washington, DC — renaming it the District...
Effect: America joins the Nazis. Explanation: Philip Roth’s bestselling novel, The Plot Against America(2002), gives us an alternate history in which Charles Lindbergh, trans-Atlantic pilot and all-American hero, becomes the Republican presidential candidate in 1940, defeating the incumbent Franklin Roosevelt. President Lindbergh, a white supremaci...
Effect: The Fuhrer is revered in history as a great leader. Explanation: In Robert Harris’ novel Fatherland (the basis for a 1994 TV movie), Nazi Germany successfully invades Russia in 1942. Learning that Britain has broken the Enigma code, however, the Nazis play it safe and make peace with the west. Through the magic of propaganda, Hitler is reve...
Effect: Robert Kennedy survives his assassination attempt. Explanation: Jack Dann’s 2004 novel The Rebelportrays a history in which film star James Dean survives his fatal car crash in 1955. “I just changed that one thing,” said Dann, who copiously researched his book, making it “as factual as I could… By exploring Dean as he matures, I'm able to c...
Effect: Republicans win every election for the next 30 years. Explanation: The 1963 Kennedy assassination is a popular event of alternate history, inspiring novels, stage plays and short story collections. In an essay in the book What Ifs? of American History(2003), Robert Dallek, a Kennedy biographer, suggested that Kennedy would have successfully...
Effect: The Enlightenment starts early – and lasts a thousand years. Explanation: French philosopher Charles Renouvier’s book Uchronie(1876) suggested a history in which Christianity didn’t come to the west through the Roman Empire, due to a small change of events after the reign of Marcus Aurelius. In this history, while the word of Christ still s...
Effect: Ronald Reagan is assassinated in 1985 (obviously). Explanation: Edward Morris’s story "Imagine" (published in the magazine Interzone in 2005) is written as an article by the legendary rock journalist Lester Bangs, which reminisces about Beatlemania – and the Beatles being banned in California after John Lennon controversially states that th...
Effect: No one would speak English. Explanation: In What If? (1999), edited by Robert Cowley, historians pondered what would happen if historical events had turned out differently. Many of these were popular questions — What if the Americans lost the Revolutionary War? What if the D-Day invasion had failed in 1944? But an essay by the late Lewis H....
Effect: Christianity would continue to rule the world. Science, not so much. Explanation: Renowned novelist Kingsley Amis entered alternate-history territory in 1976 with his award-winning novel The Alteration. In his imagined history, Henry VIII’s short-lived older brother, Arthur, has a son just before his death. When Henry tries to usurp his nep...
Effect: Revolution in South America. Explanation: Probably the first book-length alternate history, Napoleon and the Conquest of the World: 1812-1823 (published in 1836) imagined that Napoleon, rather than freezing in Moscow in 1812, sought out and destroyed the Russian army. One chapter mentions a fantasy novel in which the Emperor suffered a majo...
- Mark Juddery
An hour in WW3, we would all be dead or dying. World War III will NEVER happen because war is illegal under international law now. The history books were shut in 1945. There will never be any war ever again thanks to MAD; proxies, police actions and 3rd world nation building, Yes, but total war is gone forever.
People also ask
What happened in the first 'how few remain' book?
Is history a true story?
Do world changing 'what ifs' take place in the distant past?
Why is history so messy?
Should historians be skeptical of counterfactual history?
What if major turning points in history had taken a different turn?
May 5, 2022 · It’s perhaps counterintuitive, but it’s a fictional story that shows us the moral consequences of fictional history. Richard J. Evans, “’What if’ is a waste of time,” The Guardian, March 13, 2014. Yoav Tenembaum, “Counterfactual History and the Outbreak of World War I,” Perspectives on History, May 1, 2015.
Stream Your Favorite HISTORY Documentaries, All Commercial-Free. Start Streaming Today For Only $5.99/Month.
