Alternative Histories

Atop the soon to be windswept Stoa this morning (thank you Irene), I wish to talk about some of the grand 'what ifs' that never were.

Last night there was a show about what the US would be like if the Germans had won WWII. I have actually written extensively about just that topic over the years and I felt the show took a simplistic view of things. I'll assume that you know the history and will simply start running down a list.

The show made the assumption that D-day could have been stopped had Hitler allowed the Me-262 to go into production years earlier, instead of shifting resources into bombers. I have to state that D-day, in its historical form would not have happened. D-day would never have been launched without air supremacy, which, if the Me-262 were already a known quantity, could not have been achieved.

It would, however, have allowed Hitler to have the much needed air supremacy over Britain when he needed it most in 1940. The Battle of Britain would have been won, and Hitler's military could have done a reverse D-day 4 years earlier (Operation Sea Lion).

The show also went on to say that if Hitler had gotten the Atomic bomb first, they would have used sub-based missiles to launch on Boston and New York. Doubtful in the extreme.

The only reason why we got the bomb first was because Hitler drove out all the Jews and non-aryans who happened to also hold advanced degrees in Theoretical Physics, Applied Physics, and Mathematics. They clumped here and allowed us to get there first. The Germans may have discovered Fission first, but their path to the bomb was a dead end. Plus, even the V2 was not powerful enough to deliver the type of bomb they would have been able to build.

Another point I'd like to make is that the American people would not have surrendered so easily. Yes, the loss of life would have been terrible until we could have evacuated the large cities, or increased our naval patrols along the coast to catch their subs. They could also have delivered via long-range jet-bombers, which they were developing, but again, we likely would have been able to catch those.

We are simply too big for them to have controlled, much less conquered. I think the show was just showing what the US would have been if Bush were in power for another 4 years...

Also, the Soviet Union would have likely fallen since there would have been no Western Front with the fall of Britain. He would have been free to pick apart the sleeping bear...and fight his partisan war there for the next 70 years, since the Soviet Union would also have proven to be too big to control effectively.

Now, on to other things.

I do wish, often, that Martin Luther King Jr. had not been assassinated. I weep, knowing that the blacks of today do not live in the vision he preached. His apostles, Jackson, Sharpton, and others have simply used race to enrich themselves and to score chicks. What could have been.... They will have to answer to him when they are called back to the other side. They will have to deal with their failures, if not in this life, then in the next.

I wish that JFK had not been assassinated. I doubt that he would have done 1/3rd of what LBJ did to the economy, Vietnam, and the Black culture. He would hardly be welcomed in the Republican Party of today for his views on Communism, let alone the Democrat Party.

I wish we could have kept up the pace of manned space exploration. We would already be on Mars today and looking to the asteroid belt for natural resources. I am sure of that. Don't doubt me.

I wish that the MSM had kept with the philosophy of Franklin and not become the Marxist mouth piece that it has become today.

I wish that religion were still a part of the American fabric. Many of the social ills facing us today did not plague us when we practiced a religion...any religion.

I wish that the Roman Empire had extended its solid control over all of the Saudi Arabian peninsula. This would have mainstreamed the Arabs of the day. After the fall of Rome, the flow of time would have been such that a Mohammed would likely never have risen to prestige. Think of a world without radical Islam. Heck, all he had to do was fall off his camel and history could have been better.

I could go back wards and look in contemporary years. We all have to understand that you can not draw effective 'what ifs' if you don't look at the broad trends of history. Sometimes history is too big to move. People like MLK are able to make a difference when the world has become ready to listen. There have been lots of people like him over time, but the Civil Rights movement was HIS time. He stepped forward and filled the role history needed of him.

Hitler came to power only after the ground had been prepared for him. His Munich rebellion in the 20's was a good example of this.

Look to affect the future and do not dwell over much on the past. It is prologue. Actively write your own future in today's present.

Live well.

--Zavost