So much history turns on the most routine detail or event--Hitler napping while his generals needed him to release the tanks to repel the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944 or the determination of the 300 Spartans to resist to the death the invading Persians.
There are, indeed, so many possibilities--some realistic, some fantastic--that an entire body of study known as counter-factual history has arisen.
In "What If? The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been," we get a sense of real possibility, how a single event swung a key battle, a war or a movement that ultimately proved decisive in how history has developed.
Essays from Stephen Ambrose, John Keegan, David McCullough and James M. McPherson, among others, examine 20 plagues, wars, battles or other events that were decisive in determining how things turned out and what might have happened if things had gone otherwise.
The examples span vast lengths of human history, starting with 701 B.C. when an Assyrian army attacking Jerusalem was hit hard by a mysterious plague, severe enough to convince the besiegers that they should move on.
Had they not and had the Assyrians succeeded in capturing Jerusalem, that may well have been the end of the struggling Kingdom of Judah. Author William H. McNeil surmises that the surviving residents of Jerusalem would have joined their brethren as part of the Lost Tribes of Israel and that Judaism would not have survived in its current form. McNeil believes this the greatest might-have-been in recorded history.
Historians have tackled the question of Alexander the Great, his death at 32 and the possible consequences of a., his dying earlier, ending the spread of his empire and Greek culture or, b. his survival past 32 and the impact on the Asian cultures he conquered. Not surprisingly, the experts reach vastly different conclusions. Arthur Toynbee wrote that had Alexander lived, Greek science would have grown and uncovered all kinds of new technologies, entire cultures would have thrived and the Greek empire would have dominated the world for centuries to come. The flip side of the argument for the effect of his survival is that his cruelty and crushing of local warlords and kings would have permanently ruined Asian culture. Similarly, had he died much earlier in battle, as he nearly did, would his empire have immediately collapsed? Would the shift of peoples drawn to Greek society have continued?
And so the assessment goes, with no right or wrong, of course. Just thought about what might have happened. The questions are endlessly intriguing.
The Europe we know was saved from the invading Mongols by the death of Ogadai, a son of Genghis Khan. Mongol armies were at the gates of Vienna when the khan died, forcing the Mongols to return home to choose a new leader. They never returned to Europe. Had Ogadai not died when he did, Vienna would have most likely been destroyed and there was little to stop the Mongols from overrunning the rest of Europe.
What if Cortes had failed to conquer the Aztecs? Would the Aztec empire have survived intact for a few more centuries and how would it have dealt with the United States? Would the Spanish have abandoned all thought of colonization? And what would the other European powers have done?
If the Spanish Armada had been successful, would the English have succeeded in the New World? What would have been the impact of the Catholic Spanish on England?
Then, of course, is the topsy-turvy American Revolution, where it seems the rebels simply got lucky on several occasions. Thomas Fleming writes, “The American Revolution is practically a laboratory of counterfactual history. There is hardly an opportunity for an alternative scenario that doesn’t exist in those eight years (1775-1783).”
Among them: a British soldier had Gen. Washington in his gunsights but didn’t fire; Washington and his army slip across the fogbound East River to escape certain capture in Brooklyn and escape to fight another day; the Continentals succeed in attacking the British on Christmas Eve and persuade supporters that a rebel victory is possible and on and on.
Similarly, the Civil War had its truly special what-if moments: A lost order stopped Gen. Lee from beating the Northern army and led to the battle of Antietam; had the order not been lost, historian James M. McPherson speculates, the outcome of the war could well have been entirely different. And what if Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated? Would the South have gone through the Reconstruction in the same way? If not, would southern resentment have been mitigated and the freed black population treated better?
The well-documented events of World War II come in for a great deal of justifiable attention in this book: had Hitler not invaded Russia when he did but instead gone farther east, captured the oil fields before turning on Stalin, would he have succeeded? Had Churchill not been so resilient and the Battle of Britain lost, would England have sued for peace? Been invaded? Would the United States have even entered the war?
This book is a wonderful collection of good thinking. The events, the possible results of different outcomes and their significance to our history are spelled out in simple, clear language. No special background is required to understand what the experts are saying.
The best part of this kind of counterfactual study is that it disabuses of us a sense of cultural superiority and inevitability. Unless you believe a divine power always intervenes on the side of the righteous—and I don’t-- it’s pretty clear that events often can go either way and we—if we’re on the winning side—are just lucky. But it is undeniable that minor events shape historical outcomes with consequences that can decades or centuries to assess.
Counterfactual history is a fascinating topic, especially when written by experts. I developed an early love for history at my local library where I discovered a series of “We were there” books that put kids at historical moments, giving me an eyewitness perspective on events.
Thank goodness for that library, my refuge from home turmoil and for the now-forgotten librarian who recognized my interest and allowed me to take out books from the sections set aside for older readers.
I recently discovered this listing of the series, though don’t know if they’re still in print; I know that I read nearly all of these:
We Were There at Pearl Harbor
We Were There at the Battle for Bataan
We Were There at the Battle of Gettysburg
We Were There at the Battle of Lexington and Concord
We Were There at the Battle of the Alamo
We Were There at the Battle of the Bulge
We Were There at the Driving of the Golden Spike
We Were There at the First Airplane Flight
We Were There at the Normandy Invasion
We Were There at the Oklahoma Land Run
We Were There at the Opening of the Atomic Era
We Were There at the Opening of the Erie Canal
We Were There in the Klondike Gold Rush
We Were There on the Chisolm Trail
We Were There on the Nautilus
We Were There on the Oregon Trail
We Were There on the Santa Fe Trail
We Were There with Byrd at the South Pole
We Were There with Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys
We Were There with Lewis and Clark
We Were There with Lincoln in the White House
We Were There with Caesar's Legions
We Were There with Richard the Lionhearted in the Crusades
We Were There with the California 49'ers
We Were There with the California Rancheros
We Were There with the Mayflower Pilgrims
We Were There with the Pony Express
We Were There at the Battle of Britain
We Were There at the Boston Tea Party
We Were There when Grant Met Lee at Appomattox
We Were There when Washington Won at Yorktown
We Were There with Charles Darwin on H.M.S. Beagle
We Were There with Cortes and Montezuma
We Were There with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea
We Were There with Jean Lafitte at New Orleans
We Were There with the Lafayette Escadrille
This review is part of http://www0.epinions.com/content_5173846148”>laurashrti’s National Library Week write-off; check out all the entries.
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