We’re all familiar with the trope of traveling back in time and killing Adolf Hitler to avert WWII and the Holocaust (or at least some of the worst atrocities thereof). But, what very small things, changed in the past, might result in a significantly “better” future (however you define, “better.”)?
I was thinking about this as I was listening to an interview with the director of the Netflix film, “Get Me Roger Stone.” No, I’m not talking about going back in time and killing Roger Stone. I was wondering about the scenario where someone travels back in time to, say, 1951, and smears Roy Cohn as a homosexual (admittedly, a distasteful approach) with enough evidence or innuendo to de-rail his career right then. If he doesn’t make his bones at the Rosenberg Trial, then maybe he doesn’t attract McCarthy’s attention (at which point maybe the McCarthy hearings either don’t happen or are much less aggressive/effective than they were). Cohn doesn’t get to mentor Roger Stone, at which point maybe politics don’t take quite so nasty a turn in the '80s as they did, and neither one of them gets involved with Donald Trump, and maybe he stays a predominantly New York celebrity.
Let’s try to stay with secondary or tertiary historical figures and events that might have out-sized knock-on effects (a la the butterfly in Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder”). Let’s also keep away from outright murder. What’s your plan?
General Joseph Gallieni in WWI. It wouldn’t be hard to convince General Joffre to remove him from command of Paris (Joffre hated him).
Gallieni ordered that attack on the German flank at the Battle of the Marne (Joffre wanted to wait another day). He also organized the French taxi fleet to bring soldiers to the battle. After the victory, Germany withdrew into the trenches.
If there were no Gallieni, the attack might have been too late to stop the Germans. They would have overrun Paris (the government had already withdrawn) and there’s a good chance the Germans win the war. Thus, no “stab in the back” myth that fueled Hitler and WWII.
Why not just prevent World war one altogether by blocking Princip’s view and saving the Archduke?
Or, if you want something even easier, I read that the investigation into the assassination was ready to conclude that it was the work of independent fanatics until the chance arrest of another conspirator cracked the case open. He figured he had been arrested because the others talked- in reality, everyone else had their stories straight and his arrest was a coincidence. A few words to him, he keeps quiet, no wider conspiracy is exposed, the Austrians have no excuse to issue their ultimatum to Serbia, the war never happens.
Any number of small things at the Battle of Gettysburg – if there had been ammunition for the captured Union cannon that Gen. Armistead ordered turned back on the Union troops, if Chamberlain’s bayonet charge hadn’t succeeded, if JEB Stuart’s cavalry had not been absent so long during the first two days of battle – then the South might have won the battle and persevered, taking Washington and getting support from Britain and elsewhere.
This article suggests Lenin might have been a German agent. If the Russians hadn’t let Lenin return perhaps the Revolution of 1917 might not have happened or gone White.
Assassinate Genghis Khan early in his rise to power. Someone else might take his place…but maybe not, and without him, human civilization gets a 500 year leap forward.
(How would you like to be enjoying A.D. 2500 tech levels right now? Star Trek, man!)
ETA: That reminds me of Isaac Asimov’s “The Tragedy of the Moon.” He noted that if Venus had a moon comparable to Earth’s, astronomy might have enjoyed a 300 year head-start.
The classic answer is to accept Hitler into art school.
Or sign Fidel Castro to a major league baseball contract.
An old friend of mine used to say that the first thing he’d do if he could go back into time would be to roll Jimi Hendrix over so he doesn’t choke on his own vomit.
There are several small changes that would have prevented or completely changed the outcome of the Battle of the Metaurus in the 2nd Punic War.
If Hasdrubal had faced only 1 Roman army or if Hannibal and Hasdrupal had faced both Roman armies, the Carthaginians would likely have won and then it would be game over for the Romans. In particular, many more Italian cities would have defected and joined the Carthaginian side.
The effects of there not being a Roman Empire, and possibly having a Punic Empire instead, are mammoth.
One small change would have been if Hasdrubal’s messengers had not been captured. Or if the movement of the 2nd Roman army had been noticed. Or … or … or.
Vigorously disagree! Yes, the Mongols spread some knowledge to the realms they conquered. They also destroyed cities to the very last stone, killed hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, burned libraries, scorched fields, and ruled with savagery beyond anything since – even the Nazis and Communists weren’t as bad. Pol Pot wasn’t as bad, and he’s one of the worst we’ve lived to see.
So, no: not good people, and they pushed Persian and Arabic civilization back 500 years. You might just as well note that the Nazis invented the modern freeway: yes, they did…but they still did about a million times more harm than good, and set European civilization back 25 to 50 years.
Go back to ancient Greece or Egypt.
Find a royal physician and strike up a conversation.
“Have you ever noticed that milkmaids rarely get smallpox? I wonder why?”
Get some basic medical texts. Translate them into classical Greek. Give them to Galen.
The ancient Egyptians and Greeks loved astronomy to begin with. Show them how to make a telescope, and they would run with it. Sure, most of them would use it for astrology, but eventually someone would do something useful.
The effect on the printing press is beyond amazing.
The Chinese had wood block printing. They’d carve a whole page on wood and make a lot of copies with that. So lots of copies of a small number of books. They tried to do a movable type kind of thing but it failed. The language just didn’t fit well. (Yes, I’ve been watching The Story of China on PBS.)
So a “small” change: The early Chinese come up with an alphabetic writing system and that is used instead of the logosyllabic system. They come up the printing press 400+ years before the West. The tide turns.
Complication: China has a lot of languages. They can read/write in general the same system. But an alphabetic system puts up barriers between them. Running a large Chinese state gets a lot more complicated.
While I disagree with the cited author’s (Weatherford’s) claim that “building of roads” was a Mongol influence on Europe and not Roman one, I think you are conflating Mongol warfare with Mongol rule. The Mongols certainly killed millions – BUT if you submitted their iron fist was surprisingly light. Taxation was generally less onerous than that imposed by the local rulers they displaced, and their religious tolerance is well-known. It was when resisting them, particularly by rebellion after submitting, that one encountered their most savage side.
Possibly so…but their rule was relatively brief, and, while it may not have been savagely oppressive, the way their conquest was, they were also not really “governing” but simply tax-farming. They had no means of building a civilization, just leeching off of whatever remained after they’d stormed it.
So, again, they delayed the advance of actual civilization in the regions they ruled.
How about: teach the Romans and/or Greeks to build semaphor/telegraph towers. The news from Marathon could have been signalled in minutes…
Give the Romans a positional-notation number system…
Teach ancient/medieval/renaissance doctors to wash their darned hands…
If Elihu Root had extended aid to Alexander Kerensky’s post Czarist provisional government without demanding that Kerensky continued to fight the Germans in WWI, there may never have been a Soviet Union. [Link]