Top 5 Overrated “What Ifs” of History

By Cameron Pribyl

            I’ve always felt one of the more entertaining aspects of history as a school subject is how easy it is for historical discussions to become really goofy, really quick.  Many of our most beloved historical figures were absolute nut jobs, many of our most glorified moments in history happened for weird reasons and so many ridiculous commodities were sought after by the masses (Dutch logic: Your tulip petals = the deed to my house!)  So when you get into these weird moments in history, it often makes one wonder, what if Hitler wasn’t completely nuts?  What if Robert E. Lee didn’t say “if practicable”?  What if bodyguards actually guarded bodies?  This is generally how “what if” discussions and debates come up between history buffs.  However, as fun as these articles can get, many people can get a little carried away (like my 9^th grade English paper where I argued that if the Japanese won at Noryang Point in 1598, Japan would’ve conquered the world.  That’s right.  The WHOLE FRIGGIN WORLD) and make horrifyingly farfetched conclusions.  And that is what this article is dedicated to.  This is for everyone out there who thinks that we’d all be speaking German and worshipping Jupiter the Sky God if only a few things hadn’t gone differently… Like 9^th grade me.  I’m going to rank these one through five based on how frequently come up, how ridiculous the conclusion typically is and how little things would’ve actually changed if the “What If” in question actually came to pass.

#5.  Pontius Pilate Spares Jesus

            The extreme predictions:  Christianity never exists, everyone adopts some other weird religion depending on the region and, without the 1000 years of scientific repression, we’d all be riding hover boards while robot minions do our day to day work for us.  And Meg ends up being hot.  (That’s right.  Even Family Guy gets in on the sick game that is “What if”-ing)

            My prediction:  There are a few reasons why this one’s on the bottom of the list.  First of all, I don’t see this one THAT often.  Second of all, there’s a wider spectrum of predictions than the extreme prediction I gave above.  Finally, I think there are some really interesting implications as to what would’ve happened if Jesus lived a full life.

            I’ll start off by saying that Christianity would’ve still existed if Jesus wasn’t martyred.  Why do I think this?  Because most major religions of the world today do not have their main prophet or teacher being martyred.  Buddha, Lao Tzu, Mohammed, Confucius, and all of their equivalents never ended up dying like Jesus did.  So it stands to reason that Jesus’ teachings could’ve still spread without him needing to die as he did.  That said, the concept of martyrdom was (and arguably still is) VITAL to almost every early and medieval interpretation of Christianity.  Early Christians defined their faith, in large part, as something in opposition to the Roman State, or “the State” in general.  In fact, when the Christian faith was made the state religion of the Roman Empire, it created something of a crisis for many Christians, who still felt attached the concept of martyrdom and proceeded to search for ways to figuratively sacrifice themselves.

            And that’s just one concept of Christianity that would’ve changed.  Jesus, as any man would, most likely would’ve changed a few tenets of Christianity as he grew older.  Remember that Jesus was in his early thirties when he was crucified.  Is it really feasible to believe that he never would’ve changed his mind over the next twenty to thirty years of his life?

#4.  Napoleon Wins at Waterloo

The extreme prediction: Without Lord Wellington to defend Britain, Napoleon expands across the continent and manages to restore most of his pre-Moscow empire, leaving America as the only English speaking country left on the face of the earth.

My prediction: I tend to go a bit easier on this one because people tend to be more measured with their predictions on this one.  While there is still an unbearable amount of people who say we’d all be speaking French if Wellington didn’t save the world, there is a significantly larger number of people who say that France would’ve prospered more under Napoleon, who would’ve stopped fighting after Waterloo and restrained from trying to expand again.

Not so fast.

The reason why this one makes the list is because I really don’t see much of a difference between Napoleon winning and Napoleon losing. Why?  Because Napoleon was egomaniacal and ambitious in the extreme.  While Napoleon had his reasons for invading and conquering other places, his main reason for challenging Russia, who at the time had little interest in fighting a general who had already beaten Kutuzov (severely underrated general, probably the only guy in Europe besides Wellington who could’ve beaten Napoleon) many times over, was that he was bored and thought he could do it.  That’s right.  He invaded the world’s largest country because he got bored.  So I hope you understand why I think that, even if Napoleon would’ve accepted a British/Prussian surrender after Waterloo, he wouldn’t have been able to help invading some other hapless neighbor.  He knew he could do it, so he would’ve tried.  But even if it wouldn’t have happened at Waterloo, he still would’ve eventually been bested somewhere else.  By 1815, France was already exhausted from constant war, and didn’t have the resources, men and will to do what Napoleon inevitably would’ve tried to make them do again.  So, as measured as the common prediction above is, I think the difference would be even less pronounced.  Now if Napoleon won at Waterloo AND the Duke of Wellington was killed by a stray bullet in that same battle… now then there might be some more interesting implications.


#3.  Lincoln isn’t Assassinated/serves his second term.

The extreme prediction:  Lincoln’s Jesus-like godliness makes friends with all of the reconciling Southern politicians, making Reconstruction a breeze and North, South, Black and White spend the next 100 years singing “Kumbaya” around a campfire. 

My prediction:  I’m not going to pretend that this wouldn’t have effected Reconstruction.  Lincoln was a very good negotiator, and most Southern politicians and leaders thought of him as the best person to negotiate with following the war (voters were another story; there’s a reason why Democrats held the South every election for the next hundred years or so).  He also understood, as many members of his party did not, the importance of not punishing the South for the war.  If he lived longer, Reconstruction would’ve been viewed much less as an occupation by Southerners.

            BUT

            Lincoln’s survival alone would not have been enough to calm the many humiliated Southerners down.  This is because the only thing that could’ve calmed them down would be reinstituting slavery, which was simply not an option for Lincoln.  The humiliation that many Southerners felt went beyond humiliation as a result of losing the war and being occupied by Northern troops.  Most of the humiliation was a result of their perception that Blacks, their former social inferiors were becoming their social superiors.  This was obviously wrong on every level, but the sense of cataclysm was still pervasive enough that many Southern people would resist and obstruct any attempt to give freed slaves any new rights.  In fact, one important event often omitted from textbooks was the so-called “Revolution of 1876”.  While this wasn’t another revolt against the government, several Radical Republican “carpetbaggers” in South Carolina were driven out of their homes under threat of violence (quite often these threats were fulfilled) and were replaced by ultra-conservative Democrats.  Not only did the “Revolution of 1876” end reconstruction, but it set a precedent of using violence and corrupt politics to suppress the vote.  While I know a lot of people nowadays consider Lincoln a racist (everyone in that day and age was) there’s no denying he was a man ahead of his time on many issues, including racial issues.  But the problem with being a man ahead of your time is, as soon as you leave the stage, the world goes right back to its time period.

#2.  The Wehrmacht wins at Stalingrad

The extreme prediction:  HITLER TAKES OVER THE WORLD AND THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN IN GERMAN!!!

My prediction:  Ugh… I made a point of trying to disregard WWII as a subject for potential “What ifs”.  Why?  Because they are everywhere.  EV-ER-Y-WHERE.  (In my follow up “Underrated “What ifs””, I will make a point of including absolutely NO WWII “What ifs”) Reading through websites about these, WWII “What ifs” are so dominant, I tried to not include them in this article.  In fact, overly focusing on WWII battles is a real problem in teaching history in general, one that I quite frankly don’t have the time or will to talk about.   But I still had to mention this one because it’s just everywhere.  Everyone thinks that if Hitler took Stalingrad, it would be over for the Allies, when in reality, the city of Stalingrad was only important because Hitler said it was.  If the Soviets lost this battle, they’d have just retreated further back and kept fighting.  And sure, people argue for the psychological effect that would be inflicted on the Russian people once the city bearing their leader’s name fell.  But take a look at what the people of the Soviet Union psychologically endured over the course of the war.  WWII claimed the lives of 40 million people.  22 million of them were Soviet, when you combine military and civilian casualties.  Those who survived might have been captured and worked to near death, or had to leave behind their homes and flee to the Urals to work in factories.  Those who stayed in their towns to help fight off the Wehrmacht had to watch their world be bombed, torn apart by one of the most formidable armies in the world and then watch familiar places fill up with the corpses of their dead friends and family, as well as the countless nameless German, Italian and Hungarian dead.  To say that the people of the Soviet Union would’ve lost the will to fight on after Stalingrad falling is not only utterly wrong, but borderline insulting to what these people endured and prevailed against.  Add that to the material lack of importance to Stalingrad, and I see no reason to believe that losing Stalingrad to the Wehrmacht would’ve in any way changed the outcome of the war.

#1.  CSA wins at Gettysburg

            The extreme prediction:  The southern half of this country remains Confederate and slavery persists to this day.

            My prediction:  This one is number one because not only because the reality is so far removed from the prediction, not only is this one extremely overdone and not only would the war still have ended in the Union’s favor, but because this “What if” is often used to illustrate “how close the Civil War was”.  The truth of the matter is, it wasn’t a close war.  True, Lee consistently won battles in Northern Virginia, and stymied the Union advance on Richmond for four years.  However, when one looks at the Western Theatre (Shiloh, for example), it wasn’t even remotely close.  The first significant Confederate victory in the Western Theatre was at Chickamauga in fall of 1863, more than half way through the war.  By this point, the Union had already conquered all of the Mississippi River, most of Louisiana and roughly 95 % of Tennessee.  Chickamauga was then followed immediately by Sherman’s “March to the Sea”, where a Union army under Sherman burned everything in between Chattanooga and Savannah (both of these cities were spared), including the state capital Atlanta.  This cut the Confederacy in half.  Again.  So the idea that the Civil War was close is far from reality.

            But let’s focus on the Battle of Gettysburg itself.  The argument here is that if the Union Army of the Potomac was driven off by General Lee, there would be nothing stopping him from marching on Washington D.C. capturing the capital and forcing Lincoln to surrender.  This argument not only ignores the fact that Washington DC had around 60 to 70 armed military forts, not only ignores the industrial irrelevance of Washington DC, not only ignores the possibility of the routed Union Army regrouping and pursuing Lee again, but it ignores the fact that Lincoln and the rest of the Federal Government could’ve still run the country from somewhere else.  I would even argue a Union defeat at Gettysburg would hasten the end of the war.  Forced to take the war even more seriously, Lincoln would’ve called for even more troops, put Grant in charge of the Army of the Potomac after firing Meade and encouraged strategies that even Grant would’ve felt were too aggressive. The Union completely eclipsed the Confederacy in manpower, industrial power, communications, transportation, raw materials and fortifications, and even then, many historians believe the Union was not fighting at the same level of effort that the Confederacy gave.  A loss on Union soil would’ve forced the Union to bring their full might to bear, which would’ve doomed the Confederacy in mere months.

            And no, no European powers would’ve done anything beyond economically assist the South.  Most European observers to the war were watching in a mix of awe and fear.  They saw mobilization of troops on a mass scale, combined with new tactics and frighteningly effective new weapons, especially the ironclad.  Were they incapable of competing with American arms?  Not necessarily, but given what they were observing, you can be sure that they had no desire to take part in this new, frightening form of war.  Like Stalingrad, Gettysburg was important because the Union won it, not because Meade and the Army of the Potomac were all that stood between Lincoln and General Lee.

Weird Lucky Things that Made the U.S. What it is Today

By JP Brown 

1. Niagara Falls

All we think of Niagara Falls right now is as a fun tourist destination, as well as the main town in a comedy sketch made famous by The Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello (for your viewing pleasure, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYP1OBZfFK0). The most news it gets is when some Darwin Award-worthy idiot climbs into a barrel and goes over the Falls. Its biggest impact, however, is what it does to the northern North American freshwater system. You’ll notice that it comes on the Niagara River, between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. That’s important.

Canadian settlement occurred up the St. Lawrence River, to and including Lake Ontario. From there, though, there are fairly few ports and settlements on the Great Lakes in Canada. The biggest Canadian standalone port on the Great Lakes west of Niagara Falls is Thunder Bay. Seriously. The western part of the Great Lakes was largely settled by later, 1800’s-era expansion from both the United States and Canada. Canadians didn’t go there earlier because they would have had to portage (transport goods overland around) Niagara Falls, which is expensive as hell, and it was so cold that the land wasn’t good enough to make overland transport reasonable. The western Great Lakes area, and really almost all of the Midwest, was cut off from shipping by major obstacles to the eastern seaboard. These were the Appalachian Mountains and Niagara Falls. As such, the cheapest way to transport goods from this entire area was to ship it on various rivers all the way to New Orleans, out through the Gulf of Mexico and from there up to whatever port it was going to. This situation eventually got fixed by the Erie Canal, making it profitable to ship through Appalachia and connecting the Midwest to the eastern seaboard.

Consider what would happen if there were no Niagara Falls, though. Expansion from Ontario would have continued south and west, and odds are the people there would have been less than enthusiastic to join the United States at the time of the Revolution. Today people in Chicago would be complaining about the crowdedness of the local Tim Hortons and be enthusiastic about the Blackhawks year-round rather than just at playoff time if Niagara Falls were simply a flat stretch of the Niagara River. With all that shipping going through Toronto and Montreal rather than New York (not to mention the entire Midwest being part of Canada), the argument can be made that Canada would have become the major power in North America, if it just hadn’t been for Niagara Falls. (Now, we’re neglecting discussion of Canada’s near-century-long delay in entering world markets camped to the US, and their cold climate, but still.)

 

2. 1700’s-era religious conflicts in Europe

We all hear that the Puritans left England because they were persecuted due to their religion (this was true) and that they founded their colonies on the basis of freedom of religion (partially true; it was more freedom to be Puritan, and they weren’t much more liberal with their Puritanism than the English were with their Anglicanism). Nonetheless, by the time of the American Revolution, religion was not much of an issue, and the outrage at England was largely directed at economic meddling, better known as taxation without representation (we ought to note that the British were awfully hardheaded about this; the small representation in Parliament that the Americans would have been afforded would have been able to do nothing about the tax, and would have removed the major American argument for independence).

It’s also generally known that we picked up big help from France and Spain during the Revolution. They were quite happy to see Great Britain humiliated, due to historical British opposition. This was largely due to British self-interest. Britain is always strongest on the European stage when the Continent is decentralized, and France was the country most likely to centralize the rest of Europe under its rule (see: Bonaparte, Napoléon). Spain was always France’s most secure ally in Europe and naturally followed France in its rivalry with Britain. However, another major issue was, simply, religion. In Western Europe, the great Protestant country was Great Britain, and the great Catholic countries were France and Spain. Great Britain especially had major issues with religion in the past, and its strong Protestantism under its Dutch- and German-derived monarchs made it naturally antagonistic to France and Spain, particularly as their colonial claims tended to conflict. As such, the French and Spanish eagerness to embarrass their Protestant rivals resulted in their aid to a United States that, then as now, was majority Protestant!

 

3. A swarm of gnats in Philadelphia

We generally accept the Declaration of Independence as an outstanding piece of prose, composed largely by Thomas Jefferson over the course of seventeen days in June 1776 when most of his time was taken by other things. It is possible that he may have spent as much time writing it as a procrastinating college student like me spends writing his term paper at the last minute. After the Continental Congress resolved to declare independence on July 2^nd, 1776, they turned to the actual text of the declaration the Committee of Five (Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston) had submitted to them. They ended up cutting out about a quarter of it, some of which got nasty and personal in criticism against George III (the point was to attack the system in general and not just the present head of it), and some of which condemned the slave trade, which was generally supported by the southern half of the new U.S. The Congress at large also made a few typographical changes and such, but generally left alone what is possibly the greatest state paper in the history of the world.

Once they had got it to this stage, however, there was an impetus by some Congress delegates to substantially rewrite the thing, which would likely have changed it into some ridiculous form of legalese gobbledygook, and deprived the nascent American republic of its major statement of principles (the Preamble of the Constitution came 11 years later and, to be honest, doesn’t come close to the Declaration). However, the weather on July 4^th came to the rescue. Much of the American eastern seaboard at the time was largely built on swamps (the eventual site of Washington D.C. was a particularly malaria-infested little hellhole, which did not really become developed until the 1860’s or so), and Philadelphia was no exception. It was also unbearably hot in July. Even worse, the Congress was working in a hall without such modern conveniences as air conditioning or electric fans, which meant the only possible escape was open windows – but the Congress, desiring secrecy, had ordered the windows shut during debate. This led to a warm, stuffy, hall, which meant a lot of the delegates just slept through the proceedings, and many others were angry and fractious. Worse still, on the 4^th of July a swarm of gnats descended on Philadelphia. As such, many of the delegates were eager to get to the relative safety of their boarding houses and the alcohol they contained. One delegate then rose and said he was plenty happy with the Declaration as it was, which unleashed a sort of domino effect and secured the approval of the resolution as-is. It was then sent, on July 4^th, to the printer, and independence was proclaimed that day using our familiar “When in the course of human events” language. Even though the actual vote to declare independence occurred on July 2^nd (the best guess of the time for that vote is 6:46 pm local time), we celebrate our national holiday on July 4^th instead. (Incidentally, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4^th, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. The two had been estranged political rivals but in their old age reconciled. Jefferson’s supposed last words were “This is the Fourth?”, although he probably did mumble a few words to doctors or servants after that before he died. Adams’s, meanwhile, were “Jefferson still lives!”, untrue as Jefferson had died a few hours earlier. James Monroe also died on Independence Day, five years later. I believe they are the only Founding Fathers at all, let alone just the presidents, to die on July 4^th. They have been the only presidents to die on July 4^th; only Calvin Coolidge was born on that day.)

 

4. A folded-up copy of a speech

The 1912 Presidential election was one of the most bizarre in our history, plagued by the split of the Republican vote. This came when the progressive Republican ex-president Theodore Roosevelt attempted to wrest the GOP nomination from incumbent William Howard Taft, seen as more conservative (Taft’s administration was actually far more aggressive in breaking up the trusts than Roosevelt’s had been, but he had always personally been a friend of some of the leading Republican bankers and his rhetoric was less fiery than Roosevelt’s). When Roosevelt couldn’t get it, he went and formed his own Progressive Party, which quickly became known as the Bull Moose Party after the nickname Roosevelt gave himself.

Roosevelt ended up doing significantly better than Taft and gained 88 electoral votes, while Taft got only 8, allowing the Democrat Woodrow Wilson to get 435 electoral votes and the presidency on only 41% of the popular vote. This all might have been very different, though. In October, some nut shot Roosevelt in the chest while he was at a speech. Rather stunned, the rugged Roosevelt, who knew a lot about anatomy, figured out that he was not coughing up blood and therefore the bullet had not gone into his lung. It lodged in his chest, just missing killing him. The bullet had passed through his eyeglass case and a 50-page, single-folded copy of his speech that he had kept in his pocket, almost certainly slowing the bullet enough to save his life. Roosevelt’s first words after that, addressed to his adoring crowd, were “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know if you are aware that I have just been shot, but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.” His hordes ate it up, and he proceeded to give his full speech, lasting an hour and a half. He passed out the bloodstained pages of the speech to admirers as he was hauled off afterward to a hospital, where it was determined that it was safest to leave the bullet in Roosevelt’s chest. It made him unable to do his usual exercises and contributed to him growing obese later in life, eventually ending in a heart attack that denied him the 1920 GOP nomination that would almost certainly have been his (although his breakfasts, which routinely consisted of a dozen eggs and a gallon of coffee, might’ve had something to do with it as well).

Had Roosevelt died, the fortunes of the Progressive Party would have probably died with him, as the enthusiasm that it engendered was more about his charisma than his policies. The Progressives would have probably shifted back to their natural home in the Republican Party, and Taft would probably have shifted his rhetoric a bit to get their votes. Had all the Progressive votes gone to the Republicans (not a guaranteed proposition, certainly, but let’s go with it), Wilson would have been reduced to about 150 electoral votes or so, almost all in the South, and Taft would have won in something near a landslide. Instead we got eight years of Wilson, arguably the most transformative president between Lincoln and FDR.

 

5. A slight lack of Viking resolve

There is no dispute – none – that there was transatlantic contact between North America and Europe before Christopher Columbus persuaded everyone that the earth was round (actually, he was trying to sell people on a different, and wildly incorrect, measurement for earth’s circumference; no serious scholar thought that the earth was flat at the time and the myth that they did is really pernicious).  There are persistent legends of various explorers going before Columbus, and it is thought that English fishermen were getting their fish off the coast of Newfoundland in the 1480’s.

Uncontroverted evidence, however, was discovered in the 1960’s at L’Anse aux Meadows, a cape on the northern end of the island of Newfoundland. There was found there the remnants of a Norse village, positively identified based on structures and artifacts that were incredibly similar to those found in Greenland and Iceland from the 10^th and 11^th centuries. The site is identified as the winter camp of Leif Erikson, who came to “Vinland” in 1000 AD, as well as the reused camp of other explorers in years that followed. “Vinland” almost certainly means “wine-land,” and as such was thought to be in an area no farther north than Massachusetts, which is as far north as grapes grow. However, L’Anse au Meadows is in an area where berries grow, and there is evidence of Norse people making berry wine. This moved the hypotheses of where Vinland was, or at least where it started. The L’Anse aux Meadows site also shows interesting signs of culture. For one, there exist remains of an iron smithy, a carpentry shop, and a boat repair place. Also, there have been found a knitting needle and remains of a spindle, suggesting that women were at this site as well as men. Even more interesting is the presence of butternuts. The natural range of this species does not go farther north than New Brunswick, suggest trade networks from L’Anse aux Meadows south at least into the St. Lawrence River or into the Bay of Fundy, and probably farther south than that.

The thought is that the Norse eventually abandoned the settlement due to the harsh winters; Greenland and especially Iceland were more attractive places, closer to established trade networks and resources and with better resources themselves. Still, one’s gotta wonder what would’ve happened if the Vikings had stayed – would any other Europeans have bothered to send expeditions over at all if a Norse empire had formed itself in America?