History Forum / General / What If / January 2006

    So last night saw History run a show on Eichmann and then
a movie dramatization of the Wannsee Conference.
    As it happened, I had to leave before the movie was over
but a thought occured to me [1]: what if the sterilization people won

With the twentieth anniversary of the Challenger disaster i was
wondering if there had been many discussions of it on SHWI
(just want to say that the news nets focus on Christa McAuliffe in
their "Challenger after 20" coverage is kind of usettling - they

Kruschev grasps that Kennedy's decision not to support the Bay of Pigs
invasion did not indicate weakness, or an unwillingness to use force,
but simply a disinclination to use force unncessesarily.
Castro in Cuba is one thing.  Nuclear missles quite another.  Rather

What is a plausible to have the nation of England severely poorer, less
influential abroad and with no or less colonial possessions in 1700?
~ with a PoD no earlier than 1600 (so no "Spanish armada wins")
~ no ASBs

In short, I have seen some TLs and websites where the independence of
the CSA is just the beginning of more and more parts of the remaining
USA splitting off. The independence of New England, California/Oregon
and even the Midwest is sometimes described.

/Disclaimer- this is thinking aloud and so is completely off the top of my
head- so it's not particularly well thought through or researched in the
slightest/
I've been re-aquainting myself with the fantastic Submission TL, and in

Tobruk is a relatively small town on the North coast of Cyrenaica, with a
superb natural harbour.
In WWII, it fell to a force comprised mostly of 6th Australian Infantry
Division, supported by some British Matilda tanks of 7th RTR and elements

How can we get post-Perry Japan to have a foreign policy where
Pan-Asianism is much more substantive, rather than being the empty
rhetoric of OTL.
The challenge is to make Japanese foreign policy much less colonialist

Instead of leaving for Hollywood, Carmen Miranda stays in Brazil, marries
President Getulio Vargas (the sorta-fascist who became a sorta-democrat) and
becomes the Brazilian Evita.  (The POD here has to be that Darcy Sarmanho
Vargas dies sometime in the 1930s.  As long as she ...

"[It] was the curious hard romanticism of Prince Karl Albert that won
over the hesitating Emperor to the scheme. [...] He was the darling of
the Imperialist spirit in German, and the ideal of the new aristocratic
feeling--the new Chivalry, as it was called [...] The first great feat

I know that Yalta specified allied occupation zones in Germany and
Austria, I'm not sure if it specified that the Soviets would also
liberate territory up to Prague.
Anyway, at the close of WWII in Europe, the Americans don't listen to

The outcome of the 1972 federal election saw Pierre Trudeau's Liberals
with 109 seats, Robert Stanfield's Tories with 107, the New Democrats
with 31 and the Ralliement créditiste du Québec with 15.
During the early counting of votes it appeared at first that the

In 800 Persia has won nearly as spectacular a victory over its Roman
enemy as that won by the Eastern empire some two centuries ago against
the Sassanids. With holdings extending from the coast of the
Mediterranean to the Indus the empire ruled by the Ziebelids is the

WI the Emperor Julian never became a pagan?
In OTL, he became  became a pagan due to the murder of his family by
Constantius II and due to his reading of Greek philosophy. So, if you
will permit me a dual POD: Constantius II massacres his relatives in a

A thought, inspired by some reading, partly for fun, and partly for
Milinda.
What is the benefit of a scientific revolution? I mean, it doesn't seem
to be directly related to technological advances, at least before the