Alternate history is quite the rabbit hole of scenarios both mainstream and obscure, plausible and outlandish. Since I am somewhat new to this, I’ll get a big one out of the way first before exploring other possibilities.
World War II is no mere sacred cow in history, rather it is the sacred cow to end all sacred cows. If you can challenge the official narrative around this war, you can question the official narrative around any war, and I will do so in the most daft manner possible: World War II did not need to happen. However, in order to properly prevent it, one would not set one’s time machine to 1939 or even 1933, but much earlier thanks to a convoluted chain of events. One would need to travel at least as far back as 1898, possibly further, depending on precisely how you want to prevent it.
The world in 1898 was a very different place both technologically and geopolitically from today. Spain, for example, was still a major player, and despite the Spanish Empire being a shadow of its former self, there were still rebellions against Spanish rule at this time, notably in Cuba. Thanks to the 75-year-old Monroe Doctrine, the United States sided with the Cuban rebels. However, this is where good old fake news, or as it was known at the time, yellow journalism, may have played a role in escalating American involvement.
This may surprise a 21st-century audience, but the United States did not always possess the most powerful military in the world. The entire purpose of the Monroe Doctrine was to keep much more powerful European empires from exerting too much influence in the Americas and potentially threatening the sovereignty of the United States. However, the average US citizen probably wouldn’t have supported any military action (unless it was on their own border) without good reason. Grand strategy doesn’t really appeal to the average citizen the way that a humanitarian crisis does, and to this day, historians debate how much of an impact that stories of war crimes perpetrated by Spanish forces against Cuban civilians had on ordinary Americans’ attitude toward the war. However, one instance of yellow journalism contributed more than any other to support for declaring war.
“Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain!”
Even at the time, the explosion aboard the USS Maine was known to have been internal, not caused by a mine or any other weapon. Explosives used by the military back then weren’t nearly as stable as they are today and handling practises weren’t as strict, so accidents were considerably more frequent than they are now, and the effects were always considerably more disastrous. Nonetheless, the newspapers ran with the mine, and despite President McKinley’s efforts to resolve the Cuban rebellion peacefully, Congress declared war two months after the Maine sank. Spain tried to get the other European countries to unite against the Americas, but most of them told Spain to accept US conditions and surrender. The only exception was Germany, which took the exact same diplomatic position as Spain. Had the Spanish took the advice of the other European powers, it could have ended there. Instead, Spain fought US and Cuban forces for another two years, lost, and ceded the last of its colonies to US and German control. Spain ceased to by a colonial power in 1899, meanwhile the United States now had former Spanish territories in the South Pacific Ocean, notably the Philippines, and this is where things get messy.
Even before control of the Philippines was transferred to the US federal government, the Filipinos declared independence. The US could have just let them go, but for whatever reason, decided not to recognise the First Philippine Republic, and that started another war, one which raged on with varying levels of intensity and constantly-changing factions, some supported by Japan and Germany, until 1913. Already you can probably see the alliances that would be formed in later years. Here, therefore, is the point of divergence.
Let us suppose that the Philippines became completely independent in 1898. What happens to the islands from this point on is of no concern to the United States, or even to us. Unlikely though it may be, perhaps Spain reclaims them at some point. As in our timeline, Japan might still invade them at some point, or perhaps the independent Philippines become allies with Japan. If they were allied with Germany and Japan between 1902 and 1913, it is possible that they would also be allied with Germany and Japan between 1941 and 1945. Nonetheless, there is no reason to stay on this topic.
Should the isolationists actually win out in the United States in 1898, then despite all the caterwauling from Europe in 1915, the US would probably never get involved in World War I. It would require a few other divergences, for example Woodrow Wilson could not become president in order for this scenario to work.1 The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 represented the conquest of the United States by the old-world central banking system, and the central banks were all very much in favour of endless wars. Even with this particular divergence, World War I would still happen,2 but the outcome wouldn’t change because American military involvement was negligible. What would change is the geopolitical situation in the immediate aftermath, particularly with relation to the Russian Civil War. In our timeline, the western cabal bankrolled the Bolshevik Revolution with the intent of knocking their single biggest rival off the grand chessboard for good. One must bear in mind that Russia wasn’t just another European empire, but a major thorn in the side of the Europeans, particularly as their own empires were in a state of decline. 19th century geopolitics were an absolute mess of ever-changing alliances, but there was one that remained fairly consistent: the United States and the Russian Empire. This centuries-old plot by the European German nobility to control the entire world by re-capturing the Americas3 and undermining the unconquerable Russia from within will be explored in detail in a book I have planned called The Lion, the Eagle, and the Dragon, which, as its title suggests, will also go over Chinese history a bit, but for now, back to alternate 1917.
Despite its portrayal by capitalists and monarchists alike as some kind of hive-minded blob, socialism is not a cohesive ideology. There are three main types that are divided into numerous other varieties, and they all hate each other, frequently to the point of dismissing them as “not really socialist.” There were two socialist revolutions in Russia just in 1917, the first of which overthrew the Tsar, and the second overthrew the first socialist government, beginning the Russian Civil War. The only reasonable way to prevent this requires another point of divergence, i.e. one where Germany doesn’t put Vladimir Lenin on a train back to Russia, but let’s not get too crazy for now. In our timeline, the Red Army was on the back foot for most of the war, and without any outside help, would have been defeated by the tsarist forces. For more information, I would direct you to the books mentioned in this video, which I have referenced before:
Left to their own devices, the Bolsheviks would be defeated in this alternate timeline, and the Russian monarchy would be restored. Two things happen as a direct result of this: first, there would be no Soviet Union to fund various Marxist subversives and revolutionaries, and second, there would be no backlash in Germany against revolutionary socialism in favour of Eduard Bernstein’s revisionism. In other words, there would be no Frankfurt School. In our timeline, the brutality of the Soviet regime inspired other socialists to develop alternatives to Marxism. In this alternate timeline, Marxism isn’t implemented, and therefore, third positionism is never developed in response to it. Furthermore, the lack of international intervensionism on the part of the United States means that there is much less punitive action against Germany, and a strong possibility that the conditions necessary for a socialist revolution are never created. Because the European Theatre of WWII was, fundamentally, a struggle between two different socialist ideologies, if neither one arises, then the conditions for the war are never created. A popular thought experiment is “if you had a time machine, would you go back in time to kill Hitler,” but this is the wrong question to ask. The right question is “would you go back in time to kill Karl Marx,” because Marx inspired not only Hitler,4 but many other mass murderers as well. However, exploring an alternate timeline in which Marxism never existed is a much more complicated endeavour, so I won’t get into it here. For now, back to the alternate world!
The alternate 1930s aren’t going to be all that different in terms of geopolitics from our own timeline. The Spanish Civil War would still have the same outcome on account of the republicans being in an unwinnable position. Considering that, contrary to popular notion, Francisco Franco wasn’t a fascist, then in this alternate timeline in which fascism never exists, the only real difference from our own timeline is that Spain never serves as a testing ground for German and Soviet weaponry.
Meanwhile in Asia, the Japanese Empire still expands. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 still happens, is still incredibly one-sided, and the failed 1905 socialist revolution in Russia still happens. Despite the United States being more isolationist in this alternate timeline, it is still highly likely that President Theodore Roosevelt mediates the peace negotiations between Japan and Russia, that reasoning being the alliance between Russia and the United States which had loosely existed since before the US even existed, but was cemented in 1861 thanks to an ambassador named Cassius Clay.5 The Japanese Empire would likely continue to expand during the 1930s, only stopping at the borders of other empires, such as Russia, British India, and French Indochina. The reasoning here is fairly simple: in our timeline, the Japanese had ambitions to expand into Siberia, but were stopped by the Mongolians and the Red Army at Khalkhin Gol in 1939, and Japanese expansion in the south was halted by British ground forces, notably the Nepalese Gurkhas. In this alternate timeline, it is likely that Japan would be even weaker without support from any western power trying to fight the British and French on multiple fronts. However, without American involvement, the Japanese would keep whatever territory they did manage to take. Without the Soviet Union, there would be no communist uprising in China, not that the Chinese Communists did anything to fight the Japanese invaders anyway. In our timeline, they avoided fighting as much as possible, letting the nationalists exhaust themselves fighting the Japanese, this way they wouldn’t put up much of a fight once the Japanese were gone. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Japan’s war ends in 1945 just as it did in our timeline. In an alternate late 1940s, there will still be rebellions against the Imperial Japanese, for obvious reasons, but they will be nationalist, and communism wouldn’t even be in the vocabulary of any Asian country.
So, where does that leave us today? What would this alternate 2024 look like? Well, if the United States stuck to the original Monroe Doctrine, and not try to transmogrify it into a justification for meddling in the affairs of other nations as Wilson did, the Global American Empire would not exist. Obviously. Western Europe probably would still look like it does now, on account of the fact that most globalist totalitarian ideas originated there, but eastern Europe and and Asia would look very different. Russia would most likely be a constitutional monarchy and would be much wealthier, both per capita and overall. Former vassal states such as Finland and Ukraine would still be independent, as they had broken free in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and should the Russian monarchy be restored, there would be little motivation to wage a war of reclamation as the Soviets did. Well, unless we got another Nikolai II somewhere along the way… that guy sucked. On a lighter note, the AK-47, despite being an icon of communist revolution worldwide in our timeline, would probably still exist, given that Mikhail Kalashnikov liked American weapons and took inspiration from the M1 Garand for his own design. Back to geopolitics, Asia would be just as much of a mess as it is in our timeline, but instead of Communist China being the dominant power exerting influence where it isn’t wanted, it would be Imperial Japan. One could argue that this would be a better world, but I’ll let the weeaboos and commieboos argue that one amongst themselves.
This has been the most hare-brained thing I’ve ever written. I must outdo it at some point and confuse even more people. Na shledanou!
There is one other alternative, i.e. Theodore Roosevelt gets a third, albeit non-consecutive, term as president, joins the war in 1915 as he admonished Wilson for not doing, and defeats the Central Powers so quickly and decisively that Europe is not left as an utter ruin during the 1920s. You can watch that scenario here:
I once said that the only way to prevent World War II is to prevent World War I, but I no longer hold this position, obviously.
Most, if not all, European royal families originate in what is now Germany. The British royals are no exception. Neither are the Romanovs, but they went rogue in 1762.
This is your weekly reminder that Hitler was a Marxist until 1919 and Marxism has more in common with National Socialism than adherents of either are willing to admit.
Russia was allied with France against the British during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), which is known in the Americas as the French and Indian War. France supported the American colonies during the Revolution, and some of the liberal ideas gaining ground at the time made their way into Russia. Catherine the Great, the reigning Russian monarch at the time, toyed with abolishing serfdom within the Russian Empire, but changed her mind after hearing of the brutality of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Abolition of serfdom would be revived by Tsar Alexander II in 1856 and codified in the Peasants’ Reform of 1861. That same year, on the advice of Clay, also a staunch abolitionist, Alexander the Liberator told Britain and France, which he had just been at war with five years earlier, that he would declare war if they so much as recognised the Confederate States of America.
At first it seems the course of world history can be changed by a flap of a butterfly's wing but then it turns out there is one more commie to remove, and then another...
This is why alternate histories are the hardest for the period between 1848 and mid-20th century when helicopters became widespread.
Oh, what might have been… English might not have become such an all-pervasive global Lingua Franca either.