h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How would modern history have panned out.

No Nazis, therefore no WW2?

No WW2 therefore no cold war.

I don't think I know enough early 20thC history to make an informed speculation.

Rob Newman did a brilliant stage show, broadcast on the BBC and visible here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQhhrzHKMhI

In it, he makes a case that WW1 was basically a competition to see who'd get to invade and control Iraq. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems...

Well....... If we assume the reason WWI didn't happen is because Ferdinand wasn't killed, it doesn't change all those complicated alliances, which were the real cause. It's pretty likely Germany would have tried to find some other excuse for a war with France and just about anything would have triggered those alliances. But nevermind that, we're saying WWI doesn't happen at all.

So........

I wonder if Lenin wouldn't have had the chance to set up the Soviet Union. Russia's monarchy almost certainly would have fallen one way or another, but they might have set up a democracy instead, so yeah, no cold war. But Germany would have remained an extremely powerful state in central Europe and, I assume, politically opposed to Russia and France. Meanwhile, America's military would have remained relatively small, unless it still went to war with Japan, which does seem likely.

Certainly the Depression would have lasted longer than it had, but it would have ended eventually. Millions of people still alive because the Holocaust didn't happen. On the other hand, massive racism, discrimination, and potentially an even worse Holocaust still possible because the Holocaust didn't happen.

That's everything that springs to mind, anyway.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSTuMqVK7P4

Hang on, wasn't the depression *after* WW1 not before?

A generation of Europeans wouldn't be dead. That's millions of potential Lenins, Hitlers, Einsteins, Thatchers, Alan Sugars...

I don't think it's possible to speculate what'd happen to be honest, too many variables.

That said, the Ottoman & Hapsburg Empires would've disintegrated differently, potentially defusing a few powder kegs along the way.

The changes to British Society may have not happened as fast. Women's liberation was often as a result of the huge changes that happened as a result of WW1.

Was it the start of cynicism?

The class system would not have changde as fast either.

Technology and medicine would not have been as advanced. Would the flu epidemic have happened?

Would Ireland still be British?

Without the colossal, bankrupting effect of the two wars, where would Britain be today economically?

The demise of the Ottoman and Russian Empires were caused by factors outside of WW1, the war merely accelerated them. The Balkans would have continued to have been a nightmare but without its two great rivals the Austro-Hungarian Empire might have been able to carry on for a bit longer.

France and Germany would have eventually gone to war with each other: France was determined to recover Alsace and Lorraine, whilst Germany was determined to get a larger colonial empire. Without the threat of a war on two fronts Germany probably would have won.

Britain likely would have consolidated its hold on most of the Middle East but with Germany having significant influence in Anatolia and Iraq. A war between Britain and Germany in the Middle East and Caucasus becomes a possibility. The USA would have continued with its policy of non-involvement at least until it was attacked by Japan (that does seem fairly inevitable).

I play far too much Civ...

Not sure the IRA would have existed as soon as it did. Didn't Germany give them weapons during WW1?

~*~Hang on, wasn't the depression *after* WW1 not before?~*~

Yeah. But the Depression was *ended* because of the need for war-material in WWII. Accepting then that WWII was a semi-direct result of WWI, it follows that if there was no WWI there would be no WWII, which means there wouldn't be the same need for war-material, and THAT means that the Depression would have gone on much longer before the market fully recovered.

The problem, as I see it, is that a war between Germany and France was almost certain, and any war between Germany and France would've triggered the exact same alliances that caused WWI in the first place.

Come to think of it, development of atomic weapons would've been severely pushed back, and without the Cold War there'd be no space race and generally more primitive technology all around. That's sort of depressing, right?

Indeed. I hadn't thought of that - no space race, no moon landings. No global environmental movement (often attributed to the "earthrise" photo). No satellite communications. No Sky TV (don't joke - it's great! Especially if you live in the boonies and can't get normal telly.) No accurate weather forecasting. No Google Earth. No GPS.

And no WW2, no Station X to break the Enigma codes. No Bombe. No Colossus. No programmable digital computers. No nuclear weapons, no cold war and no computers = no internet. And no computers means no... most of the things we deal with most days. Mobile phones. Car with ABS, stability control, all those things.

Also, no WW2, no redirection of what would have been the defence budgets of Japan and Germany, so no boom in manufacturing. So all that engineering excellence (or most of it) directed into weapons instead of cars, electronics etc.

Other stuff would have happened, of course, stuff we can't hope to predict. But still, if someone popped up in front of me with a time machine and said they were going to go back and stop WW1... I'd get a time machine and go back and make sure they didn't invent the time machine.

Er... no, hang on...

Oh yeah, one more thing - no Station X, no way for Alan Turing to become a (secret) national hero, almost single-handedly responsible for shortening the war by years. Instead, in a world where German intolerance for difference was a more acceptable attitude across Europe, and where the forces of the far right in the UK likely held more sway, it's even conceivable that Turing would have been hounded for his homosexuality to the point that he committed suicide.

Oh.

Hang on.

As has been pointed out, it all depends on what circumstances we set up that prevent WW1, not least because a whole variety of conditions were driving Europe towards a war anyway. Unless you find a way of teasing apart all those conditions, the simple answer is "a world war, but starting a few years later, over something different".
Come to think of it, this is a rather more interesting and important historical lesson than the one I (for one) was taught in school, which was all about the specific sequence of events that led to WW1 starting.

I'm not 100% sure we wouldn't have personal computers at this point, but they certainly wouldn't be as advanced; how much less advanced I can't say. It does seem fairly reasonable to assume that there'd be no internet, or if there was that it would still be at the infant stage.

The internet came about as a result of the desire to have a network that would continue working even if a massive nuclear strike knocked out most of the infrastructure.

No WW1, at least on time, then no WW2, at least on time, no Manhattan project, no nuclear weapons. Or not... the state of scientific advancement wouldn't have slowed, so the theories for making nuclear weapons would have been in place. The question is, without a world war to drive it, would any nation have made the colossal investment in time and manpower to crack the not-inconsiderable engineering challenges, especially if, given the absence of an existential threat, you might have had a harder time convincing the big brains that making such a thing was an imperative. Many of the participants in the making of the first bombs regretted it afterwards, and doubted themselves even at the time, but had at least the driver of the nightmare possibility of the Nazis getting the bomb first. In peacetime, you'd find, I think, far fewer scientists and engineers ready to make such a thing.

Before WW1 there was an arms race between Britain and Germany over the construction of battleships, at huge cost, with considerable public support. With this in mind, I'm far from certain that other arms races couldn't happen in a time of no official war.

~*~the state of scientific advancement wouldn't have slowed,~*~

I think it would have. Historically technology has always advanced more quickly during warfare than it has during peacetime. Arms races encourage research into creating better weapons than your enemy has, which is only afterwards applied to civilian applications.

Regardless, the best scientists on the Manhattan project were German refugees and they were putting forth the effort with the goal of kicking out the Nazis. Without WWII, as you pointed out, they simply wouldn't have the motivation, to say nothing of the (I think it was) $2-billion worth of resources and time that America put into its development. Therefore, if atomic weapons were created at all it would have been much later, perhaps by a matter of decades. And the internet, as you pointed out, was originally created as a redundant communications system in the event of a nuclear war. Logically, therefore, if atomic weapons and ICBMs in particular were delayed in development, the internet would be as well.