NPR crowdsources alternate history

[thnidu]

What if World War I Had Never Happened?

Including

• Health-Nut Hitler
• A Slower U.S. Rise
• No 'God Bless America',
• The drive for equality - through woman's suffrage and the civil rights movement - would have happened more slowly.
• A Farewell To Carrot Cake (And Other Things Lost Without World War I)

Comments

[hms42]

Interesting article. Thanks

[sodyera]

If WW1 never happened, there would have been an ongoing civil war in the Balkans that would have continued to present time w/o much change. European Jews would have still been discriminated against. Israel might not have happened yet. My father would have probably stayed in Virginia working on my grandfather's farm, and my Mom would have probably had a better marriage to someone else. Now I'm going to join the time travellers who tried to prevent JFK from being shot.

[kalimac]

Would "No WW1" mean no Bolshevik revolution? For it was the stress of the war which tipped that over the edge. Oh boy, would that difference ever change things. The first thing, chronologically, that it would mean domestically in the US would be no Palmer raids, and hence (possibly) no rise of J. Edgar Hoover.

[madfilkentist]

Without the terms of the Versailles Treaty, there most likely would have been no Nazi takeover in Germany, and hence no World War II. Without the war's stresses on Russia, there probably would have been no Soviet Union. WWI was a huge disaster not just for its own casualties but for its effect on later history. The entry of the US into the war just intensified the consequences.