Historical Inevitability Is Inevitability Wrong

As a student of history, and a writer or alternate history, there are always certain events that many fellow history lovers and counterfactual creators consider inevitable. Empires that are powerful will fall. Morally corrupt and decadent dictators will be overthrown. Democracy will always prevail. Hitler could never win the Second World War. The Soviet Union was doomed to collapse.

But to me, this is a rather hindering, and possibly dangerous idea to say that history is on a certain track, and it’s always upwards and forwards: it encourages complacency, and allows threats that are “impossible” to grow up the ranking to “improbable” and eventually, in turn, “inevitable.” The election of Donald Trump in 2016 shows what happens when his “inevitable” defeat was instead turned into an improbable victory. For the longest time, it was “inevitable” that the USSR and the USA would launch their nuclear weapons and civilization would come to an end. And yet, the Soviet’s are gone, the US is struggling to find their balance in a multi-polar world of competing nations and terrorist groups, and nuclear war is the furthest thing on most people’s mind. Now, it’s “inevitable” that climate change will flood our cities and doom our civilization… but is it? Really?

When it comes to the genre of alternate history, it can be downright detrimental to think of certain historical events as inevitable, and handicap the writer to look for unlikely and crazy answers to solve “inevitable” outcomes. Instead, writers should look at events from a different angle, how they could have changed but a single decision, a single point of divergence, intervened.

World War Two is the subject that I know the best, and the one that has been studied to death since the battleship Schleswig-Holstein opened fire in the early morning hours on Danzig 79 years ago today (September 1). And there are many events that would most likely have happened regardless the decisions made by certain people: Had the Polish mobilized quicker, would they have halted the Blitzkrieg? Incredibly highly unlikely, but maybe they could have held off longer. But what if Poland agreed to hand over Danzig to the Germans? It wasn’t inevitable that Poland would refuse to give in to Hitler’s demands. And considering the previous three years and the escalation of crisis after crisis over the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, is it possible, despite the agreements made by France and Britain, that one or the other would back down, wiggle their way out from their offer to help Poland if Germany attacked? They did it before over the Sudetenland. Or what if France did attack a virtually defenseless western Germany in September? It wasn’t inevitable that France would sit behind the Maginot Line waiting for the Germans to come to them.

War in 1939 wasn’t inevitable: only now, with historical hindsight and the knowledge of how things turned out, and all the details on all sides, that we can say why it happened: Hitler’s megalomania and thirst for war made war ever more likely, but Britain’s Chamberlin could have just continued to give more and more of Eastern Europe to Hitler to sate his greed to avoid said war. Appeasement was unpopular by the time Poland was attacked, but still had it’s supporters in Britain, France and even America.

That is just a quick look at the first month of World War Two. There are other events throughout the war that could be seen as “inevitable” that in reality were anything but. The Battle of Britain could have seen the destruction of the Royal Air Force had the Luftwaffe continued bombing airfields and aircraft factories and not let the RAF recover as they turned their attention to bombing London and other major cities in retaliation for a bombing attack on Berlin. Several more weeks of attritional warfare may have been enough to destroy RAF Fighter Command’s ability to fight back, giving air superiority to Germany which they could then use to force a peace, or, however unlikely, even institute Operation Sea Lion. While the plan itself had a lot of major flaws and drawbacks that made it’s outcome unlikely to succeed, it was not forever “inevitable.” An attempt by the Germans to stretch the Royal Navy thin and sink it’s ships by air and U-boat could have been enough, had enough time and planning gone into it.

There are dozens of other battles that were not inevitably a defeat or victory for either side. The economics, while usually touted as a reason for victory on the side of the Allies, doesn’t mean it’s inevitable either. There are many times in history when smaller, weaker powers defeated more powerful ones, usually by possessing superior tactics, higher morale, or advanced information of what the opponent is thinking of doing. While the fact that the US could outbuild all the other nations of WW2 combined went a long way to helping the war, it wouldn’t matter at all if German U-boats, strategically deployed and utilized as they were by Admiral Karl Doenitz in the mid war, could have prevented a majority of it from reaching England, and starve Churchill and the British into surrender.

Now, I’m not saying that even right up to the end that Hitler had a chance, however increasingly slim, to turn the tide and win the war. By mid 1943 and Operation Citadel, the infamous Battle of Kursk, the writing was on the wall. Had the D-Day landings failed (as they could have, again, not inevitable), it wouldn’t change who won or loss the war, but it could change how the post-war world looks. It was because of all the events in the previous four years leading up to that point that lead to the desperate situation the Nazi’s were in. Just a few changes: Rommel reaching and cutting the Suez Canal, delaying the attack on the USSR another year until Britain was knocked out of the war, not declaring war on America after Pearl Harbor, a more efficient and organized war economy, clear strategic goals instead of vague ideas of Lebensraum: any of these could have turned the tide for the Nazis, or at least changed how the map would look and who would be in charge.

The same with Japan. Not attacking Pearl Harbor or the Philippines and instead going after the beleaguered European colonies had a better chance of not bringing in America, and allowing Japan the time and resources it needed to take on the US later, possibly with a Nazi Germany that had crushed the USSR and Britain. Had luck gone slightly better for Japan, though could have won the Battle of Midway, and possibly bought themselves enough valuable time to win the war.

The idea of the “inevitable” outcome of history is what makes some alternate history uninteresting and boring, or downright implausible and difficult to make happen without Alien Space Bats or out of character decisions by major players. If you have to resort to aliens or wizards or time travel or Hitler’s sudden epiphany that everything he did was wrong to give the Nazi’s a chance to overturn the “inevitable” course of history, then the scenario you are creating is at best going to be something that will require suspension of disbelief to work. Not that it can’t work (Guns of the South and Wolfenstein are great examples but even those ideas have been done to death, and only work well because the characters are well written and the story action packed and entertaining otherwise. But much more likely will result in the story falling apart and you being lambasted by poor internet hacks like me.

Tyler "tbguy1992" Bugg

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Writer of history, alternate history and other fiction.

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