The Rest Is History - 32. What if?

Episode Date: March 15, 2021

Counterfactuals are the great what ifs of history. Imagine the Nazis winning World War 2, or the Roman Empire never falling. Is this a valid form of historical enquiry? Or is it simply game-playing? Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland discuss what might have been. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club Adolf Hitler is preparing to celebrate his 75th birthday. So writes the novelist Robert Harris in his hugely popular counterfactual novel Fatherland, which imagines the frightening thought that the Nazis have won the Second World War. Welcome to The Rest is History, with me, Dominic Sandbrook, and Tom Holland. And today we're talking about one of the great subjects of all historical conversations, counterfactuals, the great what-ifs of history.

The Nazis winning World War II, the Roman Empire never falling, England never experiencing the Reformation, the possibilities are endless. But is this really a valid form of historical inquiry, ever falling. England never experiencing the Reformation. The possibilities are endless. But is this really a valid form of historical inquiry or is it just sort of pub game playing? Tom Holland, what do you think? I think it's both. If that's not a weasel reply. It is a slightly weasel. But I mean, I think the, you know, what would have happened if the Spanish had invaded in 1588 or Britain had lost the Battle of Britain or whatever. I think it very rapidly spirals into pub games. But I do think that seen from another perspective, almost the whole process of writing history is a matter of what ifs.

Because you have to write history as though, you know, we know what's going to happen. But the people who are living through the events that you're writing about don't and so you need to inhabit a mindset in which all kinds of possibilities are open wouldn't you say well I think in narrative history an element of uncertainty is often key to the success of your narrative but I think cultural and social as well, don't you think? I mean, culturally, socially, economically, things could go in different ways. But this is the big question, isn't it? Could they have done? I mean, I think if you're writing analysis, you're always going to ask, you know, why didn't they choose option B or C? What would have happened? You know, how could they have averted this crisis?

Especially if you're assessing the performance of, let's say, a prime minister or a king or a president or something. You know, so, for example, when I write about Margaret Thatcher and her economic policies, hanging all the time in the air is the question, well, okay, why did she choose that rather than that? What would have happened? What did they think would happen? And so I think you're constantly… But you wrote a series, didn't you?

You wrote a series of essays for the new statesman on yeah kind of what ifs in recent british politics uh yes there were sort of british what ifs there was four there were 40 of them i think in all and you know they were quite short they're about 400 450 words uh what if england had um what if the anglo-saxons won the battle of hastings you know what if the spanish armada had succeeded what if the f-Saxons won the Battle of Hastings? What if the Spanish Armada had succeeded? What if the Falklands War had gone the other way? But they were quite tongue-in-cheek. And actually, I don't think they were commissioned to be tongue-in-cheek,

but actually, pretty early on... It's impossible not to. I find it pointless and impossible not to. So to ask the question, what if the Anglo-Saxons had won the Battle of Hastings? In 400 words, it's impossible to answer that, actually, in a serious way. So did you write it in English without any French or Latinate words at all?

Basically, what I ended up doing, the historian, the great historian, the former Regis professor at Cambridge, Richard Evans, he analysed my own pieces in his book, Altered Paths, which is about counterfactuals. And he spotted something that hadn't really occurred to me, which is that basically I ended up writing parallel histories rather than what-ifs. So a history in which everything happened as it did happen, but basically the names were changed. So the Cromwells remained the dynasty ruling Britain, but there was kind of George Cromwell in the early 19th century who was very dissolute and drank a lot. And then there was H.H. Cromwell in the early 19th century, who was very dissolute and drank a lot. Yeah. And then there was H.H. Cromwell,

who was Asquith in the 1910s. And then Margaret Cromwell in the, you know, because to start making stuff up just struck me as bonkers, actually, as just sort of pure fantasy fiction. And I think that's the issue with, I mean, Evans in his book, Altered Pasts, divides counterfactuals into,

he says, you know, some of them are wish fulfillment, some of them are kind of dystopian fantasies, or some of them are just completely sort of mad fictional, you know, self-indulgence. I mean, what do you think? the classic what-ifs, I think that a lot of them revolve around battles or wars, because those are kind of testing moments where one side or other is going to win. And if the other side wins, then you could posit what would happen. And I suppose also in your field, elections is another one. What happens if something happens to cause, don't know mrs satchar to lose in 1979 or whatever then but battles battles are more contingent than elections contingent and so so i think it's interesting that um the very first what if appears in the

very first work of history which is herodototus. And he's writing about the Persian Wars. Okay. He invades and attempts to conquer Greece. And that is one of the kind of enduring what-ifs. So what happens if the Athenians lose the Battle of Marathon? What happens if the Greeks lose the Battle of Salamis? And Herodotus is making a point about the fact that the reason the Greeks managed to defeat the Persians is principally down to the Athenians rather than to the Spartans or to any other Greek city. And he says, I know that this is going to be very unpopular opinion because he's writing it against the backdrop of Athenian imperialism, where Athens is very unpopular. But he says, but I'm going to make this case anyway. And to demonstrate my point, imagine if the Athenians had either gone over to the Persians or had packed up all their belongings and sailed away to Sicily to plant a new city, as some were talking about. What would have happened then? And he says, well, what would then have happened is that the Persian fleet would have had free access to the peloponnese so the kind of the

chunk of fork that lies beneath the the isthmus of corinth um they would have been able to land troops wherever they wanted on the peloponnese all the peloponnesians would have surrendered the spartans would either have surrendered or they would have been wiped out doing incredible feats that would ring down the ages but they would have lost and that is why i think that uh the athenians you know basically win the war without the athenians they can't win the war and i think it's really really interesting you know herodotus is kind of groping you know history is something that that he's essentially inventing and i think it's really telling that you do get that right in the very first but let's pursue that for a second because i think that actually raises some interesting questions about what ifs let us imagine that herodotus and herodotus's

scenario you know happened um that greece that the greeks had lost as it were the persian wars and the persians had incorporated mainland Greece or the Greek islands generally into their empire. So what? Would history, you know, Greece and Persia were never, you know, you can sort of take this on. Greece and Persia were always enmeshed one way or another. There was always lots of cultural sort of cross-currents between them. the what we call the greek world or the near eastern world would probably have evolved not massively differently alexander and his conquests basically incorporated the greek and persian worlds and they broke up

with the wars of the successes anyway so you've got the kind of melting pot so in the long run what seems like a seismic what if arguably looks to a determinist like me looks rather less important you know so so i would i would answer that by saying that i think the um the battle of marathon is more decisive than say the battle of salamis because you could imagine the persians occupying greece the athenians and the spartans coming to some form of accommodation rebellion rising up persians being kicked out greek history resuming its course. You could kind of imagine that happening. I think that with Marathon, the aim was to wipe the city out, to kill the men, to take the women and children into slavery and transport them to the depths of the Near East,

as had happened to Greek cities, Miletus particularly, on the other side of the Aegean. So if that had happened, then certainly you'd have had no democracy. I mean, you could argue perhaps, again, some democratic form of government would have emerged elsewhere in the Greek world, perhaps. But also, I think you wouldn't have had Socrates, and you wouldn't have Plato, you wouldn't have had Aristotle. And I think if you didn't have Plato, I think Plato's influence on what becomes Christianity and Islam is so seismic that I think that the course of world history would have been very different. Because I think that the existence of someone like Plato, his philosophy is a kind of contingent fact. Again, you could argue, well, it's something that emerges from the seedbed of Greek culture. Perhaps if there wasn't someone called Plato, a Plato with another name would have emerged.

I don't think so. I don't think so. That's the argument that says if Lenin and McCartney didn't meet, some other British band would have been the Beatles. think that um the emergence of christianity and islam are vastly transformative processes that have shaped the world incalculably and i do not think that the the world that we live in now would be recognizable if they had not if that process had not happened and um and you think that was contingent on one or two individuals i think, no, I think it's contingent on all kinds of things. But you could, you know, if Plato had never been born, I think that the moral, cultural, philosophical, ultimately religious world of Europe and the Near East

would have been incalculably different. I don't know, I mean, if Jesus had been let off by Pontius Pilate, I could imagine things being very different. Well different well see what's interesting about this is that is that what ifs almost always when you start to discuss what ifs and counterfeitures I think you always come back to the question about actually about individuals in history because what ifs are almost always premised on something changing for a particular individual or particular regime you know a battle somebody lives who died or somebody dies who had lived basically kennedy is not assassinated katharine of arrogance first child lives you know these are the sort of the things you play with

and actually i think when you start to dig into them often you find out they're much less changes than you think so i mean the classic example i always bring out when I'm sort of taught to annoy my audiences is I say, you know, if Margaret Thatcher had fallen under a bus in 1978, would Britain be at all different today? You know, the forces that she incarnated, the structural changes that she came to embody would probably have happened one way or another anyway and i think that's actually true of lots of individuals in history that they become as it were i mean we're

going back to our greatness podcast they become they're seen as great actors because they incarnate something bigger than themselves and that's often a force that they become the incarnation of but it's not because they've generated it. I mean, it's a kind of Brodelian perspective, isn't it? That there's the kind of the vast depths of the ocean, that nothing changes, the kind of geography, everything, you know, there's nothing you can alter. And then there's the kind of the, you know,

near the deep tides of economics and social history. And then on the top, there's the kind of the froth. Exactly. I think about the front page of the newspaper and then what's below. The front page could easily be different. But what's below the nuts and bolts of a society, I don't think. I mean, of course, there are some instances that you say, you know, if Stalin hadn't been running the Soviet Union, if Hitler had not come to power in Germany.

But, you know, take the Hitler example if Hitler had not come to power in Germany. But, you know, take the Hitler example. Had Hitler not come to power in Germany, is it plausible that there would not have been a Second World War? There probably would have been another World War, wouldn't there? There'd have been an authoritarian nationalist regime in Germany that would have wanted revenge. There would have been, there were all these problems left over from the end of the First World War.

And actually, the worst happened to Germany. You know, it fell under the regime of the Nazis, millions of people died. And here we are all these years later, and Germany is Europe's economic and cultural powerhouse, once again. So, mainland Europe's economic and cultural powerhouse, anyway. So, in that sense the nazi interlude was a punctuation point in germany's long story and the sort of what if you know maybe in the in the long weird as it might sound maybe it doesn't really matter who was in charge when the second world war happened yeah i i yes i i i accept that and i think that obviously there are throughout the ages through which history has been written, for most of it, people have been governed by a sense that time is moving forwards to a kind of primal one that i think inspires most of the rest but you get it with marxism as well um and i think you've you definitely get it with um kind of well i mean in the very word progressive if if if things are progressive there's a sense that you're moving

forwards inevitably you know that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think that that is something that is very, very strong in our assumptions, that that is inevitable. I mean, going back to the end of history, and we've talked about in the 90s, that history does have a definite end. I do think that the value of counterfactuals is in kind of slightly shaking that up. And I do think that there is a sense in which a lot of history is a kind of sublimated theology. It's an attempt to find patterns that you can trace through. And there is kind of buried in it a sense that there is a kind of inevitable end point. And I think that that's not entirely true. And so in a sense, if you don't have that patterning, if you don't have the sense that you can trace these patterns, then essentially you can't do history because it's all contingent. It's all just kind of one thing after another and everything is chaos. Yeah, you need to impose a pattern to impose meaning. I mean, otherwise you

just have a succession of random events. I agree with that. I think there's people distinguished between different kinds of counterfactuals. I there's a book by jeffrey parker and philip tetlock i think it's the authors where they talk about so there's there's a very limited time limited counterfactual where you say for example it's your kind of battle or it's your emperor who's got a single decision to make why does he choose a rather than b what happens if he did choose b and then there's the sort of spiraling out mad fantasy now that's i think is pure fiction the you know um but i think you can reasonably zero in on a given decision and say well knowing all the variables or knowing as many of the variables as we can you know what can we say about if

churchill had chosen this rather than that if if hit had done X rather than Y, don't you think? There's a brilliant early one, isn't there, by a French guy shortly after Waterloo who constructs a brilliant thing in which Napoleon wins. He defeats the Russians. He invades England, conquers England, ends up as kind of world emperor. Yeah. And he's on a ship sailing back from the conquest of Africa or South America whatever and passes Saint Helena and the shadow briefly passes

over but that but that of course is total fantasy it's wish fulfillment it's wish fulfillment and a lot of them so they were very very popular in the 80s and 90s among British young British conservative historians so the Neil Neil Fergusons, the Andrew Roberts, John Charmley, and a lot of them were about Europe and Britain's relationship with Europe. And they imagined Britain staying out of world wars and retaining its empire. So you could see them actually, I mean, Richard Evans sort of clearly sees them as a response to, you know, as a sort of Tory response to the loss of empire and to the growth of the EU, that people indulge in these counterfactuals, partly as a sort of political message. You know, it doesn't have to be like this. We could be an imperial power.

We don't have to be just a sort of greater Belgium. But Richard Evans is also, I mean, it's kind of a broad point, isn't it, that you're likelier to believe in the ability of great men to shape history if you're on the right than if you're on the left and you believe that you know there are kind of vast impersonal forces yeah and that's where right and that's where as a as a as you know as a leading left-wing historian um where i actually completely agree with him i think that when you you know you ask those sort of questions you're inevitably brought back actually to the big processes that that meant that history worked out as it did so he gives the example in

this book of somebody who wrote an um an essay about i think jonathan clark wrote an essay about if the glorious revolution had never happened would britain have kept america and he said well and evan says i think rightly well the question is completely mad because the Glorious Revolution happened for a reason. It didn't happen because of a fluke. It's a bit like saying, you know, we often ask these questions of ourselves. If I had been born in Elizabethan England, would I have been a Catholic or a Protestant? Well, it's an unanswerable question because you'd be somebody else. But also the kind of assumption that if Elizabeth I dies and Philip II conquers England or James II defeats the Glorious Revolution, then England will become Catholic. So there's not a huge issue turning an already very Protestant country Catholic. and Muhammad, I do think that they are epical figures because I do, I think that the story of

the crucifixion and the resurrection is fundamental to the way that the kind of the moral universe that Christians come to inhabit. And I think it's so distinctive and transformed so much. And I think likewise with the figure of Muhammad, something mysterious around that um it's so so you could absolutely say that um the the arabs were going to come i think you know the arabs conquer we're going to conquer anyway because they're going to conquer anyway yeah we're going to conquer anyway but but there's there's some kind of peculiar admixture in there that that i think is not inevitable there's nothing there's not there's nothing inevitable about the emergence of what becomes Islam. Um, and so I do think that the, the, the great religions, Christianity and Islam, I really do think that, that a world without them would be

fundamentally different. Who could have possibly expected that Tom would bring the first half of the podcast to a close by talking about Christianity and Islam. We'll take a break. And if you're still with us, we'll go into your questions when we return. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The rest is history on thursday we'll be talking to the journalist and writer jonathan wilson on the way that football has become embedded in our social and cultural history perhaps if we combine this podcast with thursday's podcast we can make a case for england winning multiple world cups what if that Lampard goal had been given? What if Maradona's handball had been disallowed? I could be talking about this for hours. Well, perhaps that's too difficult to believe. Tom Holland, let's have some questions. Yes. So we have an open question from Shane Regan. It's a great question. Why does counterfactual history tend to skew to the negative? What does it say about us that pessimistic alternative history fiction is so popular it's generally dystopian i mean we have the the napoleon one which is obviously a

kind of fantasy but by and large um i guess the answer to that is that um we like to be scared i suppose yes and it's a kind of branch of science fiction in a way isn't it some some it's sort of alternative what do they call it alternative history um and i think but also i think well it's interesting because the the it's almost negative in another way because what if history normally works on something not happening that did happen so hitler doesn't lose the second world war kennedy isn't assassinated you know it's not it doesn't imagine somebody existing who who didn't otherwise exist it doesn't add something to the story it takes something away doesn't it and then what it does is it creates

this very gloomy dystopian scenario um i think because we love to be you know we because it'd be very difficult to do it another way wouldn't it you couldn't write a utopian what if it it actually serves to cheer you up because it reminds you of the fact that you know we're not living under a nazi tyranny so that's cheerful whereas if you write a whole book in which everything's brilliant and then you come back to well exactly you know so you know a a history in which covid doesn't break out i mean it would kind of be depressing to think of you know everything we've missed yes that's right that's a very good point and actually the nazi what if histories they're the fruits of victory aren't they they're the indulgences that

you allow yourself if you've escaped that if you've escaped that reality which is why i guess that most of them are written by british or american yeah authors i mean i would write because it's a german writer writing i mean the germans know the french yeah you know because it's a German writer writing. I mean, the Germans know the French. Yeah. You know, it's quite depressing. Yeah, exactly. OK, Mark Hobbs, what are your favourite alternative history novels and films and which of any put forward the most plausible scenario? Well, these are that's a good question. So we've talked about this, I think, in historical fiction episode, maybe.

Yeah, we do. So I like Kingsley's book, The Alteration, about a sort of Catholic England. I also think about it on TV and so on. I mean, I liked the world of The Man in the High Castle. I was entertained to see that realised on screen. I think Len Dayton's SSGB is a pretty pretty good one not as well known as fatherland um that was televised wasn't it it was i didn't i only saw the first episode of that but i think it was better on the page actually and what about you you must have the did you ever read those books about what if the roman empire still existed yes i'm quite i'm quite quite a glutton for them

but right the problem the problem that i have with them is that um the roman empire was never gonna hold together yeah it's just a ludicrous it was never gonna hold together and and the and the other problem i have with them is that almost invariably um the roman empire kind of continues along the technological progress, technological road that modern Western Europe does. So it's a Roman empire with cars and planes and things. And I don't think there's anything inevitable about that at all. Because actually, one of the interesting ways, there's a strand of technological what-ifs.

So I remember Arnold Toynbee looks at what would happen if Alexandrian engineers had developed the steam engine. So they do develop the principle of steam power, but they use it for kind of special effects in temples. And Toynbee imagines Macedonian soldiers in steam trains steaming across Mesopotamia. And then there's the uh the difference engine i don't know if you've read that by william gibson and bruce sterling which is a world in which um

babbage and ada lovelace invent the computer and um victorian england is um run by you know computers it's it's it's become technologically advanced and again this is impossible because the past just isn't there um and i think that that really brings home how it is essentially fantasy i mean the difference engine is very very self-consciously science fiction and i I just, you know, technology is bred of very, very specific cultural, economic, social circumstances that can't just be kind of transplanted to different periods. But Tom, have you read that book?

I've only read reviews of it. There's a book, isn't there, that argues that basically the Roman Empire needed to fall for Western... Yes, Walter Scheidel. Walter Scheidel. The Escape from Rome, which is essentially, it's fascinating because it's one long engagement with the principle of what if. And his thesis essentially is that the Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without the collapse of the Roman Empire,

because it's the collapse of the Roman Empire that generates a fragmented Europe. And it's the fragmentation of Europe that generates the degree of competition that enables industrialization to arise. So that's quite a right-wing argument to an extent, I suppose. To an extent. But so he, this requires him to demonstrate that the Roman Empire is a freak, that it emerges at a particular junction of time, that it's the only moment where it could arise. And actually, he goes back to another ancient counterfactual, which was proposed by Livy, the Roman historian, where he talked about what would have happened if Alexander the Great had lived and had invaded Italy. Would the Romans have been conquered or not? And Watershidle goes

through and he essentially says that there's something unique about Rome, the culture of Rome, the militarist culture of Rome that makes it incredibly expansionist. But also that the way in which there's a lack of viable opposition at the time where it's expanding through the Mediterranean that enables it to conquer. But essentially his argument is that never again are those circumstances there, and that essentially, it's impossible to impose a unitary empire on Europe. And so he goes through a whole series of what-ifs, essentially, to illustrate that, that, you know, Philip II would never have conquered Europe, that Louis XIV would never have done, that Napoleon wouldn't have done, that Hitler was bound to lose the Second World War, that even if the Mongols had penetrated deep into Europe, they would never have subdued it. And it's, you know, he's a brilliant historian, brilliant historian. And essentially, the what-if

is fundamental to the entire exercise. It's very interesting. That is fascinating. I'm definitely going to read that book. All right, well, let's move on. We've got tons of what-ifs. Chet Archbold, who's, I think, a long-term fan of the show, asks the classic, you know, what if Archduke Franz Ferdinand hadn't been assassinated? Would Europe still have gone to war before 1920? What would the world look like if there hadn't been two cataclysmic world wars in the 20th century? Do you want to answer that, Tom?

I've got my answer. I think that's you. That's you. Okay, so Franz Ferdinary doesn't take a wrong turning. It could easily happen. But the tension between Austria and Hungary and Serbia, it's hard to imagine it not resulting in conflict at some point. That sort of fracture zone in the Balkans of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires

I think was bound to produce tension that might end in war. The various policymakers in Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg, and so on, most of them thought war was coming. They were gearing up for it. So this is the trigger, but some kind of trigger could well have emerged it's very hard to imagine a scenario in which there is no such trigger in the next 10 20 years and he says you know what might the world look like if there hadn't been two cataclysmic wars in the 20th century well i think this goes to your it's not dissimilar from your point about technology tom the wars happened for good reason they didn't happen um by by fluke or by mischance they happened because the conditions for war were there and you know you can change the characters and the events but the conditions

would still have been there and the wars would have happened i think so if you've got if you've got a cellar full of gunpowder and you have people going around lighting matches at some point at some point it's some point it's going to go off so i mean this comes back to the point about about about wars in the first world war episode wars were a common feature of european life so to imagine the 20th century of that war is basically to imagine the 20th century without european human beings i think yes okay so we've got quite a lot of questions about um about the second world war and about the roman empire we might come back to them if we've got time but here's one that interesting

one anthony saunders if henry v had lived to a ripe old age would england and france have stayed one kingdom for how long so that is a good question isn't it i wrote that as one of my what what new statesman mad what if essays uh what conclusion did you come to he marries joan of arc um oh yeah i i had it where so so what i think i imagined in that scenario was that england and france were united um french because france was so big and rich that french influence became predominant and that ball became the national sport of england and you know people wearing berets and you know so this is a very set this is a very serious that French influence became predominant and that ball became the national sport of England. Right.

And, you know, people wearing berets and, you know... So this is a very serious... Seriously, Dominic, what do you think? No, I don't think it would have stayed One Kingdom. I think probably some sense of... I think, you know, the fragmentation of the Wars of the Roses suggests that the pressure for some kind of fragmentation was probably too great. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to imagine, let's say in the 16th century,

England and France being one kingdom and people not trying to break away. Don't you think? Yeah. It doesn't make any difference, away don't you think i mean i think yeah it's it doesn't make any difference i don't think yeah i mean i think the more interesting counterfactual from the same period by the way is about henry viii what if henry viii does have a son and does catholicism stay entrenched in england because it did in france a very literate society with a lot of Protestants, you know, with a really vibrant intellectual culture.

And yet Protestantism doesn't become entrenched in France. So it didn't have to become a civil war. Yeah, but that's, but, you know, you could argue the conditions for Protestantism were always there in England, the trade with Flanders, with Germany, the passage of Bibles, the merchant class, all those conditions were there, but they existed in France as well. And so the implication of that is actually that what-ifs perhaps work better in dynastic periods, in monarchical systems, where the future of kingdoms really are swayed by whether people marry, whether they die, whether they have children,

rather than the kind of more democratic state where elections are not going, you know, I mean. Does any election matter? I said, you know, that's the kind of, that's the question. I mean, obviously sometimes they do, but taking a very long view, you know, Britain since World War II, does it really matter who was in power at any given moment arguably so there is on that there is another one from lucinda who asked what if elizabeth i married and had children no union of crowns no active union england scotland never united i mean england would

would then have been dragged into the snarl of of dynastic politics on the continent far more than than it was yeah but were england and scotland not likely to unite at some point i mean you know this is one for your scottish nationalist listeners um was the act of union inevitable and in a sense even if the act of union hadn't happened england and scotland surely would have been so tightly enmeshed because of the protestant shared protestantismhed. Because of the shared Protestantism. Yeah, and because of once the Industrial Revolution happened and economic links and all the rest of it.

So again, I think that's probably kind of surface froth, isn't it? And the deep tides are moving in the same direction. Yeah, I would argue. Underneath. So Bill Jones has a question for both of us yeah one for me what if hannibal had taken rome uh and one for dominic what if the argentinian air force had had bombs that actually exploded when they hit ships so if hannibal had taken rome um well he wouldn't have he he he wouldn't have wiped rome out the Romans subsequently wiped Carthage out. I think

the Romans would have come back. I think that, you know, they were just too... I don't think Carthage could have imposed a long-term victory on the Romans. If they had, would Carthage have emerged as um you know would we all be would they be speaking a semitic language in france and spain again i don't think so because i don't think the carthaginians were interested in that kind of imperial project it was it was a very specifically roman one um yeah i mean i'm on that war for a reason right yes yeah yeah so so again i think that's a kind of interesting one where it seems like a huge, you know, what if Hannibal had taken Rome after the Battle of Cannae? But ultimately, I don't think it is. I think Rome would have emerged victorious anyway.

Okay, I buy that. And as for the Argentinean one, I mean, this is a classic one that people say, you know, the Argentine bombs didn't all explode when they hit their targets, a lot of them. So could the Falklands operation have gone differently with huge consequences for margaret thatcher um you know there is a what if there but of course the reason that the british won the falklands war was that britain was a much richer more powerful um country than than argentina with a much more professional uh highly trained better equipped military so we win that war not because of a fluke but because you know once we the British had had traveled the vast distance the odds were always in their favor yes the Argentines could have got lucky um but they didn't and you and you in a sense you make your own luck in wars

you know the reason that their bombs don't explode and the reason they didn't and you and you in a sense you make your own luck in wars you know the reason that their bombs don't explode and the reason they don't enjoy more success is because they're not a better army um and i think yeah you know and again even if you widen if you sort of come back out let's say that um the britain the the operation had gone incredibly badly for the british so the falklands would have probably been lost, or they'd have had to have some face-saving deal. Mrs Thatcher, would she have been crippled? I mean, possibly.

But equally possibly, people might well have said, well, this has been a dreadful moment, but let's not rot the ship. I mean, there's an interesting one, because there you might say, well, there was a big psychological boost to British exceptionalism. Would she then have lost the next election, the 1983 election? No, I mean, this is one of the what-ifs that I don't counten say, well, there was a big psychological boost to British exceptionalism. Would she then have lost the next election, the 1983 election? No, no. I mean, this is one of the what-ifs that I don't countenance, actually, because the polls are already moving in that direction in the early months of 1982. And all polling data suggests that people were not going to vote for Michael Foote's Labour Party. It's possible the Tories would have won a smaller majority.

But again, then you ask the bigger question, well, so what? And indeed, even if Michael Foote's Labour Party have won a smaller majority. But again, then you ask the bigger question, well, so what? And indeed, even if Michael Foote's Labour Party had won a massive majority, again, so what? Would the course of British life have been ultimately that different? Would the big economic changes of globalisation, consumerism, individualism, all those things, would they have been taken off the map? Of course they wouldn't. They'd still have been, they'd have played out perhaps slightly differently or different kind of you know um different progenitors but but they would have played out all the same that's my answer okay um frank scott has a great one um not least because um we're going to have camilla tanzan author of a fantastic new history of the Aztecs coming on in a few weeks, I hope.

And Frank asks, what if Cortes fails in Mexico? Most of his expedition dies from virulent local disease, new to Europeans and the remainder are massacred or enslaved. The Aztecs upgrade technology and destroy further incursions on the beachhead. So Cortes, you know, it's a close-run thing yeah um you could imagine it failing well surely another spanish expedition follows a year or two later and uh and i think the aztecs aren't going to upgrade technology i was just about to say those words the aztecs upgrade technology are doing an awful lot of heavy lifting. I mean, that's slightly sort of computer strategy game.

The Aztecs press the upgrade technology button, and suddenly they all have muskets or something. Yeah, I think the European conquest of the Americas is a great hinge point in history that happens because the Europeans have the technology to cross the Atlantic. You know, they're always going to do that at some point because the Portuguese are going to India. You know, they're sailing around Africa. They are on the move. They have the equipment.

So it's going to happen. And if it doesn't happen in 1492 and afterwards it'll happen in 1530 or 1560 and the aztecs and the incas have evolved as they have for you know for deep historical reasons and they're not going to have steam engines and the stuff too yeah so yeah the spanish have got canon and the aztecs have not yeah okay okay i think we're coming to a close, but one last, it's a classic question. And this is a lightning rod for so many things that we've talked about, beginning with the very first episode on the idea of greatness.

The McCry case asks, what if Churchill had died when the New York taxi struck him in 1931? That's a great question, isn't it? I mean, I'll go first if you like, Tom. So he could have died, you know. The taxi could only have been a few feet further out and it would have hit him and killed him.

Well, you know, does Britain seek peace with Hitler in 1940? So we need a podcast on the summer of 1940 to sort this out. If only I had a brother who... So let's say we did. Let's say we do do a deal with Hitler. Well, first of all, Dominic, first of all, Churchill's dead. Yeah.

Would someone else have emerged to play the churchillian role that's an excellent summer of 1940 so excellent to take the lead against appeasement um you know is there someone else who could have played that role nobody quite like churchill i suppose but somebody would have played that role i mean there would have been the anointed spokesman of the anti-appeasement camp but probably nobody with Churchill's heft I suppose and Churchill's military experience which is key in um persuading people that he was the kind of man to run a war effort so that's suggesting that he he he really is you know in in in global terms we are talking a kind of great man shaping history then. Well, if you think that it's really important that Britain fights on in 1940,

and maybe there's a heretical argument that that didn't matter. Now, I'm not going to make that argument now because I haven't really thought it through and I don't want to develop it on the spot. Well, that's the John Charley argument, isn't it? It's a conversation worth having. Yes, that Britain could have done a deal in 1940. Nazism might have imploded anyway. And actually, the world in 2021 would not be so different.

I'm reviewing right now a book about Stalin and World War II through Stalin's eyes. And this book argues, effectively argues, that the Allies, that Britain and America made fools of themselves. They should never have done a deal with Stalin. they should possibly have done a deal with hitler instead that you know millions of people died but they died anyway and they were always going to die so there's nothing you can do about it and the outcome they basically spent 40 or 50 years having to undo the mistakes they made in 1941 by jumping into bed with stalin which is a really interesting. Okay. Anyway, go back to Churchill.

Go back to your, give us your answer about Churchill. I think that May 1940 is one of the very few choke points in history. I don't think there are many of them, but I do think that is one of them. I i do think that if britain had had sued for terms um i think it would have become a satellite state i mean that's what churchill said i mean he's churchill posits a what if in in in the debate he says you know if we have if we negotiate terms then we'll have to give up the fleet um and we'll have mosley imposed on us as prime minister um and essentially will become a kind of shadow thing and it's that that's the world of um cj sansom's um brilliant counterfactual novel which i think is actually you know we were asked what's the best counterfactual novel i think that's the best one um because it's it's a kind of

it's a kind of shadowy it's a satellite britain um in which you know the nazis are dominate europe and and britain doesn't really have you know it's finland it's been finlandized um so i i do think that that is that is uh a really decisive point where hitler could have won the war and if hitler had won the war then i think um i think things would would be very very different um so to that extent um i think it's i'm happy to say that that is a that that is a what if worth exploring well on that note one of the few one of the few we will come back to the summer of 1914 i think the latest podcast but for the time being that's it for today thank you for listening to the most successful most powerful podcast in the world oh sorry that's the

counterfactual you've actually been listening to The Rest Is History. Small, but I like to think perfectly formed. We're back on Thursday with an examination of football and history. Don't miss it. See you then. Bye-bye. thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad free listening