BS: What if - history

Subject: BS: What if - history
From: Bert
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 07:12 PM

To get away from the bomb thread I thought it would be fun to have a thread to discuss the What If's of history.

So here's one to start the ball rolling.

What if England had sent Wellington to fight the war of 1812 instead of Packenham?

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: GUEST, a wag
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 07:14 PM

We'd all be wearing Pakies in wet weather?

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: GUEST,petr
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 07:51 PM

or Napoleon was accepted on that naval expedition in the South Pacific which sank.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Leadfingers
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 08:10 PM

This is something that has been well covered in Fiction - The Confederacy winning the war of Southron Independence is one story I recall .

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 09:21 PM

I doubt if Wellington being present would have made much difference to the 1812 war, which was very much a sideshow - and in any case the Battle of New Orleans took place after the war was pover, but the news didn't got down to New Orleans in time, so it's outcome wasn't significant except for the people killed and so forth; I suppose Wellington's absence from what was happening in Europe might have tipped the balance in some way.

One intriguing North American alternative history would have Wolfe getting defeated at Quebec, and the French staying in control of Canada. Which would probabaly have meant that the American Colonists would have been keen for the British garrison to stay on, and quite happy to pay towards the cost, hence no American Revolution. But quite possibly a French Revolution, spreading out from Canada and Louisiana, across a continent still predominently Native American.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 11:04 PM

I gather Packenham was not a very good general, Bert? The War of 1812 was basically a draw. It was, however, a distinct failure for the US in their ambitions to take over Canada. They did have the good fortune to win some small naval battles and to win at New Orleans, which helped them convince the American public at the time that they had won the war. Hardly. :-) Canadians are also under the impression that we won the War of 1812, and have more substantial reasons for believing so, actually, but no one won it in any decisive sense.

I found a neat little online game where you can play the Battle of Waterloo in about 5 minutes. It's tricky, although very simple in concept.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 11:10 PM

Leadfingers,

Who says the South didn't win? Look around!

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Little Hawk
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 11:16 PM

I played the battle of Manassas (Bull Run) today, and the South won bigtime!

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Bobert
Date: 13 Aug 04 - 11:22 PM

Didn't do as well at 2nd Manassas, LH, but sho nuff whopped up on them Yankees first time 'round, plus interuptded the heck outta a bunch of DC folks Sunday picnic outings. How rude!

"Danged, Ralph. I didn't know them folks was that danged serious!"

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Bert
Date: 14 Aug 04 - 02:40 AM

Very good points McGrath.

You are right Little Hawk, Packenham was rather poor. But if Wellington was there he wouldn't have fought The Battle of New Orleans at all. which would have made an interesting change in history. Would he have just gone on to take over America? 'cos he could have.

"The Battle of Waterloo in about 5 minutes." Now that's a lark. Wellington had sussed out the battlefield many years earlier so I don't know how you would figure that into the equation. And the sunken road was a couple of hundred years in building, or should I say digging?

Another what if. What if Eisenhower had had the balls to ensure that Patton had supported Montgomery at Arnhem?

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Sorcha
Date: 14 Aug 04 - 11:54 AM

What if Patton had been allowed to march to Moscow?

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Aug 04 - 12:17 PM

What if Patton had been given all the fuel, supplies, and free rein he asked for after the breakout from the Normandy beachhead? I figure he would have been into Germany and all the way to Berlin well before 1945.

Bert - The game I was referring to has a nice little historical article which alludes to what you say about Wellington studying that place years before and picking it as a good defensive position. The game can be played as either the French or the British (and the Prussians are there, of course, in the middle to late stage of the battle). There are a series of overall decisions to make on either side, which can win or lose the battle. There are other things you don't get to decide about, like Ney's committing all the French cavalry in their enourmous attack on the British line. It's not what I'd call a serious wargame, but it's fun and gives a good overview of the battle.

I would love to find a really good, detailed, turn-based simulation of Waterloo, but I don't know of one.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 14 Aug 04 - 02:42 PM

I sometimes wonder what might have happened, if the Vikings, the first white folk on North American soil, hadda stayed...

Or what if, "Canada" hadn't whimped out after 1812, and given all that land BACK to America.... What if we'd (I say we out of ease... there was no Canada then) done what we planned and given all that land to our "Native" brothers...

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: alanabit
Date: 14 Aug 04 - 03:33 PM

I am not sure that Patton could have gone all the way to Berlin at the speed you are supposing, LH. Parts of the Allied advance were indeed spectacular. I believe Paris was reached within four days of the Falaise Gap breakthrough. However, there were certainly plenty of potential pitfalls on the road to Germany.
Without the help of a resistance man, the retaking of Antwerp could have been very expensive and could have held up the advance through the Low Countries. The near disaster of Hürtgenwald showed the Allies another wrong route into Germany. A direct onslaught on the Eifel - which looks easy on the map - would have been suicide.
Patton was a good general, but he was no more capable of miracles than anyone else. The idea of attacking Germany through the south Eifel and forcing it to defend on two fronts in the West - even as the Red Army was advancing unstoppably in the East - was probably right. Remember, once the Rührgebiet was taken, the war was over within six weeks. There never was going to be a cheap way to take the Ruhrgebiet.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 04 - 06:54 PM

I think if Patten had tried to go on to Moscow he'd have run up against a hell of a lot of resistance before him, behind him, and within the armies he was trying to lead, as well as with some allied governments.

I suspect the outcome might well have been a Communist West Europe, and an Isolationist spasm back in Fortress America

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Raedwulf
Date: 14 Aug 04 - 07:30 PM

"What if"? Oooooh, fun!! Now where was that book I was reading the other day... *g*

Seriously, one of the "what if's" was on the subjct of what if Eisenhower hadn't been so damn cautious & given his generals more rein. I'll get back to you when I get back to work...

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 03:44 AM

What if the line hadn't broken at Battle, Hastings and we'd beaten William the Bastard of Normandy?.....


I like this game!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 06:21 AM

It wouldn't be the same "we".

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Wolfgang
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 12:12 PM

What if that big asterois that ended the dinosaurs would have missed the earth?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 01:04 PM

What if the Vikings had a culture based on law AND greed, as did the documentation-obssessed Spanish and the maturationally delayed British. Then the Battle of 1812 would have been a REAL war. I think that not being a culture based on law (relatively), with its incentives to gain and maintain great wealth, made the difference.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: kendall
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 01:59 PM

Liz, in that case, I might not be here. My ancestors came into Hastings with that lot!

Now, what if man had come to the truth eons ago that war doesn't decide who is right, only who is left?

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Bert
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 04:41 PM

Right on there Squeaks! Then England wouldn't have had to celebrate 900 years of occupation in 1966.

I really don't think that Patton would have tried to go on to Moscow. I know he was a bit crazy, but he was too good a student of history to try to repeat the mistakes of both Napoleon and Hitler.

As for Ike giving his generals more free rein; His real problem was that he couldn't control his two primadonnas, Patton and Monty. They both had good plans but Ike was too gutless to choose one and ensure that the other one backed it up.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: kendall
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 04:59 PM

So, Bert, doesn't England get even by occupying part of Ireland for the last few hundred years? (Running for cover)

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: greg stephens
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 06:21 PM

Not letting Pakenham fight the Battle of New Orleans would mean depriving us of a great Lonnie record.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Aug 04 - 10:26 PM

I think Patton's desire was to kick the Russians out of Germany and Czechoslovakia, not go all the way to Moscow. He thought it would be a good idea to rearm the German troops as quickly as possible, incorporate them directly into the Allied forces, and drive the Russians back to their own borders. There were a whole lot of Germans who would have been delighted to join in an effort like that (like about 95% of them, I suspect), but it was a notion that was politically absolutely unacceptable in 1945 and it would have cost another couple of million lives, at least, and it might not even have succeeded. The Russians had a very powerful land army in 1945. The Allies' best bet in such a conflict would have been their extremely capable air force, but it would have been dicey, whatever way you look at it.

Probably a good thing they put Patton out of the decision-making position on that one. That man loved to fight. He was not designed for a peacetime lifestyle.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Bert
Date: 16 Aug 04 - 02:14 AM

That was the Norman ruling class Kendall, not us Celtic-Saxon mixed slaves.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 16 Aug 04 - 02:32 AM

~Kendall - you aren't here anyway, you're a colonial!!!! Or would be if George III hadn't been talking to trees and peeing blue water at the time.

As a blonde, blue/grey eyed, Saxon jawed peasant, I have to agree with Bert.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: kendall
Date: 16 Aug 04 - 03:26 PM

hehehe

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: GUEST,garydon
Date: 16 Aug 04 - 05:11 PM

What if Cromwell died at birth?

Lots of changes in the English monarchy and the Emerald Isle.

Gary®

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: Gurney
Date: 17 Aug 04 - 05:32 AM

Liz has got it. If Harold/Harald, hadn't hurried ahead of his army, the language of England-America-Canada-Australia-New Zealand would likely have been German. Possibly two world wars wouldn't have happened. The ramnifications of the English language not being developed are huge.
Heric, I understand the Vikings DID have a culture based on law, and which remains, blended with English law, on the Isle of Man. the problem was, it was only for Vikings. The greed was visited on everyone else.
Why do you say the English were 'maturationally delayed?' Who were mature sooner? Most other cultures were serfdoms or slavocracies, regarding everyone who wasn't 'us' as labour.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Aug 04 - 11:06 AM

If Harold/Harald, hadn't hurried ahead of his army, the language of England-America-Canada-Australia-New Zealand would likely have been German.

Can't see why. Far more likely French, assuming it wasn't a less Frenchified version of English.

Subject: RE: BS: What if - history
From: alanabit
Date: 18 Aug 04 - 04:01 AM

I wonder what would have happened if Constantinople had not fallen and the documents which helped to unleash the Renaissance had not appeared. What would the world look like if there had been no Renaissance?