Divergent history. What if WW2 had not happened?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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A touch of mental masturbation here. Say, WW2 never happened, Hitler died without rising beyond a paper hanger, genocide against the Jews never occurred, Japan never attacked anyone.

From WW2 we have the space programs, antibiotics, radar and then microwave ovens, dehydrated foods, several types of ATV’s, newer food preservation techniques, emergency medical techniques, synthetic oil, synthetic rubber, and more. As spin offs we have super strong plastics, computers, synthetic cloth, magnetic imaging, deep diving exploration subs, robots, television, Cablevision, compact tape recorders, to CDs. From WW2 we have the communications satellites invented by A. Clarke, scores of science fiction books which contributed to the development of space exploration, TV movies and various inventions.

WW2, believe it or not, benefited the world more than injured it, as awful as it is to say.

So, if WW2 had never happened, and with the bit of direct and indirect causes and effects I’ve given you from it, where do you think we would be today?

I think we would not have home computers, cell phones, communications satellites, the advanced cars we do have, computers in car engines, microchip answering machines, or even answering machines. Phones would probably still work on the old mechanical click and bang switches, there would be no optical fibers, no cable TV, no microwave ovens, no pen lasers and nothing like magnetic medical imaging.

We’d probably still be driving cars similar to the ones in the 60’s, perhaps a little better, but without the advanced plastic construction used today. TV would be free and transmitted via radio waves to antenna, like in the 60s, probably better, though, than what there was. We’d still be buying vinyl records played with a synthetic crystal needle. The great intercontinental airliners of today would probably be turboprops, much slower and carry less people because of no computers, no jet engines, no space age plastics, and no fiberglass. Fabrics might still be heavy and dull because synthetic fibers came out of WW2 which were later developed into lighter, more colorful fabrics.

We would not yet have been to the moon. We might just be experimenting with nuclear energy.

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The depression of the 1930’s probably would have lasted longer. The economic hardships of the era encouraged political extremism so there may have been more totalitarianism not less.

Without the strain of war and occupation, the colonial empires of Britain, France, the Netherlands, and other European powers might still exist.

The war brought both the United States and the Soviet Union out of the domestic isolation and made them global powers.

The appalling atrocities of the Holocaust extinguished the more general lower level of anti-semitism which existed in pre-war society.

Television might have arrived earlier. It was just starting to establish itself in the 1930’s when it was generally suspended during the war.

And of course any one of the tens of millions of people who died in the war could have lived to make world shaking changes.

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**Adventurious82 wrote:

A touch of mental masturbation here. Say, WW2 never happened, Hitler died without rising beyond a paper hanger, genocide against the Jews never occurred, Japan never attacked anyone.**

The problem is, WWII was not an isolated incident. It’s roots are deeper in history than simply the 1930s and 40s. Some historians would argue that WWII is simply an extension of WWI with a 20 hiatus.

What if coporal Hitler died in the worldwide flu epidemic of 1918? While we know what he did later on, his death at the time wouldn’t have affect events around him to change the course of history greatly. WWII would have still happened, with someone else in power.

I agree with you, the many things that came out of WWII wouldn’t have developed, or would have come about in significantly different ways. But to “dismiss” WWII would take a major re-write of history.

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There’s a whole lotta ifs involved in this speculation, and, of course, nobody really knows the answers.

If Hitler’s bid for power had not succeeded, someone with equally malevolent ideas may have come to power in his stead. Perhaps the Communists? One way or another, the Weimar Republic was a 97 lb. weakling from the get go. It’s difficult to envision, but I guess the Social Democrats could have somehow wriggled Germany free of Versailles eventually. But, for the sake of speculation, let’s say Germany did not start a European war.

It’s more trying to imagine what course Japan might have taken that would not have lead her into confrontation with the U.S. and Europe. Japan was a late comer to the colonial game and had every intention of forging ahead. In any sort of what if speculation about the course of history you’re always going to be dealing with the question of how far back do you go to change a critical series of events. The stage for the European conflict was set by the outcome of WW I, which can be traced in part back to the Franco-Prussian War. In the east, well, perhaps if Commodore Perry had not made it to Tokyo Bay…

The OP begs several questions:

[ul]
[li]Would the British, French and Dutch (and whomever else I’m forgetting) still be colonial powers?[/li][li]Would the Soviet Union have been able to consolidate the hold it had on Eastern Europe?[/li][li]Would something like the U.N. have appeared on the heels of the failed League of Nations?[/li][/ul]

And so many more that I’ll just stop here.

It’s hard to imagine the Korean War without WW II as a setup. The European colonies were already feeling independence-minded, so colonial wars might’ve been fought if WW II had not been. The Vietnam War may well have ended at Dien Bien Phu; the thinking there is that if the U.S. had not become a global military power during WW II, and the Soviet’s expansionism had not been accelerated as it was by the outcome of WW II, the U.S. would have had a lot less motivation to become involved.

Ack! There’s just too much to address.

I think the gist of the OP is that the war boosted development of technology; it did. WAGging ahead here, I’ll speculate that the Space Program would have come into being somewhere as would the development of nuclear technology. Both of those would provide some boosts to the development of technologies that would find their way into civilian life. And the digital revolution would come down the pike eventually, as well.

So, yes, we might not be where we are technologically, but I think we’d not be far from it and on a similar path.

I see on preview that Little Nemo and Freyr have both made points that I did. Hell, I’m going to post this anyway.

Nemo makes a good point about the potential contributions (and horrors) never to be seen from those millions who died.

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I could see how WWII could have been a non-event. The big factor is taking Hitler out of the picture; not really a problem as there was a number of occasions in his life where he could easily have died. Let’s say that he was one of the millions of anonymous infantrymen who died in the trenches of WWI.

Hitler was a unique figure. Even amongst the other Nazis there was no one else who could have taken his place in history. Without Hitler, the National Socialists would have been just another one of the dozens of extremist parties in post-war Germany. Germany probably would have become a dictatorship; most of the Eastern European countries of that era were. But a Germany without Hitler probably wouldn’t have been willing to risk a new war.

And while Japan had a long standing expansionist policy which predated both world wars, without the distraction of the German threat, there would have been far fewer opportunities to act on. Britain, France, and the other imperial powers would have been able to commit enough forces to Asia to deter any Japanese hopes of overruning their territories.

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If I remember correctly, the Japanese wouldn’t have wanted to overrun the other colonial powers’ territories to begin with. Japan was busy building its own colonial empire in China: it had already overrun Taiwan (1895), various (albeit small) Russian Far Eastern territories (1905), Korea (1910), Manchuria (1932), and the east coast of China proper (1937). If WWII hadn’t happened, perhaps China would have fallen relatively quickly (no Flying Tigers, no Joe Stillwell). Japan might then begin extracting oil from China’s far west–and the need for oil was the reason that Japan invaded Southeast Asia to begin with (along with a preemptory strike against its only rival military power in the region–hence Pearl Harbor).

If Japan were able to successfully consolidate its hold on these vast territories, it could then begin expanding into Siberia with little complaint from the Western powers, and likely with little resistance from Joe Stalin far to the west. Siberia would yield even greater mineral resources, cheaply extracted by China’s vast colonized population.

If WWII hadn’t occurred, we might be facing a Japanese superpower.

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[slight hijack]
If you’re interested in other scenarios like that, there’s a book edited by Robert Crowley called ‘What If?’ you might be interested in. It takes about 20 historical events and give possible outcomes assuming one little thing was different. Sorry for the interuption.
[/slight hijack]

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Unless you’ve extensively studied Germany political scene 1918-1939, don’t be so sure. (I haven’t to any great detail, so maybe you know more than I do.)

My points:
First, you have Mussolini, who certainly seemed to give some inspiration for the Fascist movement in general and no doubt traded notes with Hitler. Second, Hitler killed off a good number of his political opponents in the early days of the Reich, leaving a casual observer with the impression that he was the only leader capable.

I’ve always thought it would be quite the bitter irony to send someone back in time to kill Hitler and end up making the world worse for it. Perhaps someone who was strategically smarter would have succeeded where he failed.

The question of whether or not the war would have happened without Hitler is an impossible one to answer. No doubt the war in the Pacific would have happened without a German war, though it certainly would not have played out exactly the same.

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To Zarathustra: it is no real mystery why Japan decided NOT to take on Russia in the Far East> In the mid 1930’s the japanese Army in China attempted a mini-invasion of Mongolia (which was a Russian ally). Two major battles were fought, the name of one was “Khalkin Gol” as I remember. The result? The Japanese (dispite fanatical courage) were severely mauled, both times. I believe that the japanese forces were msotly infantry-they rashly decided to take on a Russian armored division 9with artillery support). They were ground into mincemeat by the Russians (the Russian commander was the famous gen. Zhukov). That is really why the japanese elected to move into the pacific and SE Asia-they know that they were NO match for the red Army!

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I think one of the main effects would be that about no one who has lived in the Western World from 1940-present would have been born.

WWII is probably the only event in Western history that effected EVERYONE who was alive at the time in North America and Europe.

Without WWII, there is no baby boom and events would be so different that the chances of your grandparents meeting would be near zero. And even if they did meet, the chances of them conceiving your parents at the exact same time as they did with WWII would be even closer to zero. WWII simply effected too many things related and not related to the war itself for those things to happen without it.

That’s why sending someone back in time to stop WWII would be a really, really bad idea. They would probably negate their own existence and the existence of some 3 billion people.

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Anyone wanna venture a guess at world population today? Imagine if everyone who had died - or had otherwise been rendered inable to procreate - in all wars since 1930 had instead squatted out their 2.3 kids! Would we be eating Soylent Green Twinkies today?

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What if WW2 never happened? Well, i wouldn’t have been born.

Yay history’s weirdness!!

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We’d likely be typing these posts in another language. The potential lack of destruction of the European economic infrastructure would have surely propelled that sector into industrial and cultural dominance, continuing to dwarf the US, and absorbing the UK. Sprechen anyone?