Think of hundreds of years of war under The Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Romans et al. Think of a Holocaust worse than the Nazi Holocaust when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and drove many if not most surviving Jews from Judea. Think how the Vikings stopped pillaging and raping after being converted. The Christian era was certainly not perfect or even that great but it was less violent than what came before or after.
I would visit the battle of Monmouth Courthouse (1778) and give general Charles Lee a whack over his defeatist head with a good stout stick, and let Lafayette and Anthony Wayne, two aggressive generals, run the show. If Washington asks about Lee, I would say, “He seems to be indisposed, General. Please ignore that muffled groaning noise and push on to the shore and drive Clinton’s exhausted army out of New Jersey”.
I’ma take the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. The battle was such a thorough defeat of the Romans that they never again crossed the Rhine in substance, and is responsible for a lot of the culture divide we see today between North and south Europe. In my opinion, there is no more important battle to the history of the world than this one.
Almost any advantage would do, even a simple warning flare. If the Roman column had advance warning of an ambush, they could’ve formed battle lines and easily won. Roman culture would’ve spread all the way to Poland, perhaps beyond, and we’d have an entirely different continent today.
It’s not that hard. Any idiot can figure it out, even an 11B.
It would be fun to be at the first battle of Manassas with modern infantry equipment including a sniper rifle and just pick off rebel leadership. “There stands Jackson like a stonewall!” CRACK, “there goes Jackson’s skull like a piñata!” Then you could drop mortars on rebel positions and when night fell, put on your night-vision goggles and go hunting.
I’d have to be careful though, my great-great grandfather was in the rebel army so we could get some kind of sci-fi logic loop quandary going if I killed him.
Just because I think its interesting speculation and SERIOUSLY NOT BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE THE RESULT AT ALL … and it could make for a really cool sci-fy movie …
dress myself up in all the trappings of a mystical magician, arm myself with a stack of history books and films, and transport myself close to Hitler say 3-5 days before the D-Day Landings. Yeah, my ass is going to end up in Gestapo Headquarters but someone is going to be looking over my stuff. And 24 hours later when it and I disappear ----------------- Hitler, and some of the inner circle, seem to have been strong believers in the occult and magic and Ike may have just found himself in a seriously bad place with the landings being driven back into the sea.
You DO know the Davy Crockett Weapon System was man portable?
Sorry, but the fall of the Byzantines (Romans) to the Turks was, by that point, simply a matter of time. Per the conditions in the OP, it’s highly doubtful you would manage to kill Suleyman himself just with equipment you could carry on your person, and 24 hours to do it, while appearing somewhere randomly behind the walls of Constantinople. And the seige lasted way longer than that.
Similarly,
It’s impossible to trace the rise or success of any of these historic regimes to a singule battle where a different outcome would have definitively prevented it - much less the ability to change said outcome in a specific 24 hour window with only the material one could personally carry (that would not remain in place for later use).
Really, one should start with the mental exercise of “what singular battles defined the course of history”, and then consider how one could change that battle’s outcome. The question of whether you’d WANT to change that battle’s outcome would be secondary.
Constantine losing (or dying) at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, the “In Hoc Signo” battle, could well be one of those. Though again, it could just have been a matter of time before a different Roman emperor embraced Christianity, or even Constantine himself, with a different albeit later scenario that “stuck”.
The Battle of Actium, where Marc Antony and Cleopatra were definitively beaten by Octavius - soon to be Augustus - Caesar? Eh… That too could well have been a matter of time. Octavian was a lot more popular and had a lot more resources at his disposal than Antony; the best Antony could hope for in the long run would be a stalemate where he and Cleopatra retained control of Egypt. And sooner or later, Octavius would have assembled the forces necessary to finish the job.
Hmm. Various historians of central Asia have deemed the Battle of Talas a key pivoting moment, which battle was extremely close. Who knows how truly pivotal a Chinese victory there would have been, though, considering the Mongols pulled a full reset a couple hundred years later?
What about the Battle of Waterloo? That was also very close - by the victorious Wellington’s own account Napoleon could well have won that battle (“the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life”), had things gone just a bit differently, if he had had better intel and communications, or even (by some accounts) not had the shits. And 19th Century Europe, and thus a lot of the context and events the modern era would be built upon, would have been vastly different.
So, if you were a fanatic Bonapartiste and wished to change the outcome of Waterloo, and had 24 hours to do it with stuff you could carry on your person… All you would have to do is to sabotage or to prevent the arrival of the Prussians. Not even have to kill anyone yourself!
The vikings were amateurs in mass murder compared to their Christian descendants.
Wow, 10 posts to get to attempted genocide.
Apologies for being a peace-loving liberal (except that I’m not) but I bet you that history would be much more positively impacted by being able to stop battles that did happen. Like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example. The world would have been far better off had we managed to distract the United States Central Command with a bitchin’ beach party instead of a thunder run to Baghdad.
I guess if I wanted to have a large effect I’d choose the Battle of Hastings, 1066. Personal arms could be a combat loadout with body armor and helmet and FILBE, SAW and maybe a sniper rifle (say a Barrett M107) and maybe an M4 and a sidearm of some kind with a few boxes of ammo for each (since I don’t have to hump it in that far and I get to come back in 24 hours anyway). I was never a ground pounder so I’d need some help getting the load out, but just what a basic combat Marine would have with the addition of sniper rifle and SAW and some boxes of ammo, perhaps some rations and water as well.
The plan would be basically to shoot William the Bastard and as many officers as I could hit fairly early in the battle before Harrod gets an arrow in the eye and then to hurt the calvery element as much as possible. Pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to turn the battle and drive off the Normans.
And how does address the OP, exactly? If you are going to change history, change history. I would truly love to know how one person could, in a battle, alter the invasion of Iraq one iota.
Well…I guess you could drug both Bush and Chaney (I was going to say shoot them, but we have to do the love thingy), get some prostitutes (male and female) and take and publish a bunch of photos with them both before the run-up to Iraq really gets rolling. A huge political mess would probably derail Iraq if you timed it right…I THINK that would make John Dennis Hastert president, and afaik he didn’t have any great desire to invade Iraq, especially not after such a scandal.
But I agree…to really change history I think some folks would have to die somewhere along the way. I’m unsure how the US not invading Iraq would really change things in any case…certainly not a fundamental shift in history, at least not from where I’m looking at it now.
Oh, I’m sure I could figure out how to fire the thing, presuming my weak flabby muscles can lift it. The concern is that I want to hit a man-sized, possibly moving target - and I have no confidence that I could accurately hit the broad side of a barn from inside the barn.
I don’t recall what the verdict was on suitcase nukes, but if you accepted your inevitable death and just set one off the moment you arrived anywhere near the field of battle the entire remainder of the decade would be significantly different - even if you didn’t start world war three!
I think that like guns he has pretty much whatever you desire, limited to modern technology of course (though that’s pretty arbitary, he has a time-machine after all)
Absolutely, its certainly something I never considered, but if you can carry it, sure!
Yes, after going on a rampage in a tank 
(but seriously I agree)
That’s something I’ve never heard before, what advantages would come from having a dominant southern European culture and a non-existant northern European culture?
Not to be picky, well OK totally to be picky, you have to arrive at the start of or during an ongoing battle, at that point in time was Hitler anywhere near a combat area? Interesting idea though!
How difficult would it be to find and identify a specific person though? Are records of the American Civil War accurate enough to know that if you got to a specific time and place Stonewall Jackson would be there?
I do know that most internet sources seem to suggest it was man-portable by a team, not by an individual person.
I certainly couldn’t carry this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/DavyCrockettBomb.jpg
This was the kind of thing I was envisaging with the OP, but all the answers are interesting, thanks everyone!
btw what happens if you use up all your ammunition and you haven’t managed to drive everyone off How long could a single person put up a fight for with weapons and equipment they’ve carried themselves? Genuine question, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a soldier.
I think you can bring them, they really aren’t particularly powerful in terms of nuclear weapons though. It would be pretty impressive to see but the actual real death and destruction would be only a few hundred meters radius…I think.
Ah, but the point isn’t to actually kill everyone. It’s to fire off a nuclear weapon in the vicinity of the US army on Iraqi soil. You can be reasonably certain that my nuke wouldn’t be the last one fired off, by any stretch!
Opppsss yes I see, that…wouldn’t end well…
I don’t have to drive off everyone. I actually think killing William would be sufficient by itself, but certainly killing William and some of the officers (read: nobles who have a stake in winning) and at least hurting the cavalry would be sufficient. It was the cavalry in the late stages that turned the tide of the battle, since Harold’s forces on the right flank (IIRC) pursued down the hill when the Norman left routed, which caused a gap and allowed the Norman army to push cavalry and move up their own bowmen (thus shooting Harold in the eye). It was pretty close until then. I figure that with William dead and several of his officers in a similar state and with the cavalry malled by the SAW that should do the trick of routing the Norman army and sending them packing back across the channel, especially if you do it in the early stages while Harold’s army was still fresh and pretty much holding its own on the high ground.
As far as killing off a particular person, in ancient battles that shouldn’t be too hard since the commanders carried banners and so on, the whole point of which was to identify where the commanders were to their troops so they could exercise command and control.
To murderate Alexander the Fair to Middling, you just set up a light machine gun and fire at concentrations of people riding horses and waving banners on the Macedonian right flank.
Even after Constantine’s conversion (which, BTW, might not have been as complete at the time of the Milvian Bridge as he later made it sound), and indeed his entire career, the way the early history of Christianity in the Empire played out was far from a done deal. That history is greatly dependent, I think one might say, on at least three battles, all of which, as it happens, involve the death of a Roman emperor. The Milvian Bridge (where the dead emperor is Maxentius, although he’s not really important per se) is probably on the top of the list, but you might also have some fun tinkering with the others.
Number two on the list is the Battle of Samarra, in 363. Dead emperor (spoiler alert): Julian, aka the Apostate, who was Constantine’s nephew. Julian was an old school pagan who couldn’t stand Christianity, and when he became emperor, he set about reversing everything that his famous uncle had started. Except that, oh yeah, he also set aside some time to go off on a completely unrelated and very much half-assed military adventure in Mesopotamia. And that was where, only a shockingly brief two years into his reign, he got himself killed. Whoops. It is of course impossible to tell whether Julian, had he ruled a few more years or indeed decades, would have been able to turn back the tide, but as what-ifs go, it’s a pretty big one.
Number three, an old classic that is famous for totally different reasons: Adrianople, 378. Dead emperor: Valens. So what is up with this one? Well, when Valens died, the guy who got his gig was Theodosius. And especially under the influence of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, Theodosius became a Christian extremist. Constantine, in his day, promoted Christianity, but he never actually made it the only game in town. Making it the state religion? Banning paganism? Shutting down the old cults, and closing the old temples? That stuff was all Theodosius. And it goes to show, I think, just how swingy the pendulum was in the early days.