Most people experience history as one damn fact after another in high school. But if you can wonder, "Wow, what if the US hadn't gotten involved in World War II?", you can become enthralled by the imaginary possibilities.

What I have learned from studying counterfactual history is that the law of unintended consequences always kicks in no matter how secure you are in your plan. We have to live with the historical record as it is, like it or not.

If you're a website and you want to get attention, you can Hiterlize anything.

Most people experience history as one damn fact after another in high school. But if you can wonder, "Wow, what if the US hadn't gotten involved in World War II?", you can become enthralled by the imaginary possibilities.

What's interesting is that when you get into the post-war period, many of the narratives in books and movies conclude that if you killed Hitler, you're actually going to make history worse.

Originally the premise of killing Hitler was fueled by deep traumatic feelings of wishing and fantasizing that if only things had been different, we could have spared ourselves all kinds of suffering. More recently it's been turned into a comedic trope. As we go forward, tragedy plus time equals comedy...

The Germans tend to like to blame the Nazi experience on one man who can be scapegoated. If you pile all the blame onto him, you exonerate the German masses from any responsibility.