What if Catherine of Aragon had borne healthy sons for Henry VIII of England?

Protestant England has, arguably, had a disproportionate influence on world events in the past five hundred years or so. Protestantism is a much more decentralized form of religion than Roman Catholicism, and this decentralized structure favors individualism, initiative, creativity and democracy. The first modern democracies were in Protestant Switzerland, the Netherlands and Britain. Subsequently, democracy was adopted and expanded by the Protestant United States, a transplant from Great Britain. The more aggressive development of the British thirteen colonies as distinct from the rather limited exploitation of French North America and the Empire of New Spain might well be attributable to the cultural differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, and the effects these have on entrepreneurial endeavor, in general. The Protestant work ethic is fairly well accepted among many historians, as a real social phenomenon. Arguably, as well, more decentralized systems may favor scientific and technological advances more than more autocratic government control. But, curiously, in this particular case, all of this really rests on the fifty-fifty chance of a roll of the dice -- healthy boy, or healthy girl? Because in the early sixteenth century, men were much more important than women, socially. And, if Henry VIII had had one or more healthy sons from Catherine of Aragon, he would have had no need to seek a divorce from the Pope, because he could have rested secure in the knowledge that his own dynasty, and English independence, were assured. Now, these events occurred at a critical period in world history. In particular, Spanish power was at a maximum, in Europe, and worldwide. Charles V was emperor of New Spain, master of the entire Western Hemisphere, he was Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor, making him master of most of Europe, and he had sacked Rome and made the Pope his personal prisoner and vassal. England and France remained independent, but, in the case of England, this was only with great difficulty. And, with only a girl as an heir for Henry VIII, England would almost certainly have become a part of the greater Spanish Empire worldwide. And, this was something Henry VIII would not tolerate, under any circumstances. Even if it meant creating his own religion, a kind of intermediary between traditional Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism, which is precisely what Henry VIII did. So, if Henry VIII has a good healthy son or two by Catherine, no Anglican religion. And, within a generation or two, Spanish power has subsided sufficiently that there is no particular need for it, in future, to maintain English independence from Spain. So, England, remains Catholic, forever. Like France, Spain and Italy. So, what's the world like, now? I would say, first of all, it's much less democratic. There might be no major democracies in the world at all. The great Imperial Autocracies of France, Russia the Ottoman Turks and China are dominant worldwide. Secondly, it's rather less populated. Worldwide population might be only a tenth what it is now, and indigenous populations would still be large and possibly dominant in much of the Americas and Australia. Thirdly, science and technology are perhaps a century or two behind our current levels. All because of a fifty-fifty roll of the dice! Thoughts?

What if, as FDR wished, Charles de Gaulle had been totally excluded from participation in the post liberation provisional government of France?

President Franklin Roosevelt thought Charles de Gaulle was totally insane. Prime Minister Winston Churchill at times considered de Gaulle to be a traitor and signed orders to have him deported from Britain in chains. This habit persisted to the end of his life for de Gaulle. Aside from numerous nearly successful assassination attempts by his own military in France, de Gaulle is most notable in Canada for his "Vive le Quebec libre" speech from a balcony in Quebec City in 1967, when he helped inspire the FLQ crisis in Canada three years later. At the time, then Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau wanted to imprison de Gaulle, but had to be content with deporting him immediately from the country. During the FLQ crisis, now Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared Martial Law in Canada when his Cabinet Minister and friend Pierre Laporte was murdered by Quebec separatists, then had to content himself with having the FLQ leaders board a plane to exile in Cuba in order to have another of his Cabinet Ministers released unharmed. Some years later, with a separatist government in power in Quebec City, they returned in triumph, and their leader was made a Quebec Court Judge. When the Canadian Federal Government expressed objections, the Parti Quebecois said "sure guys, we'll make him a Quebec Senator for life, instead!" And, so it goes. The fact is, Charles de Gaulle was neither a madman nor a traitor. He was a ferocious French patriot, and a brilliant agent provocateur who simply could not be stopped or controlled. And, quite naturally, this was rather unsympathetic, to say the least, to egomaniacal control freaks like President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill or Prime Minister Trudeau. So, let's say FDR gets his way, and de Gaulle is indeed left out of the process of governing France following the Normandy invasion. What happens? Well, first of all, what FDR had in mind was a government of France from Washington, with Washington bureaucrats running France on Washington's terms. It's not entirely clear at all what Washington had in mind for the future of France. Possibly something along the lines of Germany, an indefinite occupation by the U.S., Britain and the U.S.S.R. So, how would the French people respond to this, exactly? Probably not very well, at all. I think the likelihood of civil unrest is very high indeed, perhaps civil war, and likely an ultimate U.S.S.R. backed communist takeover of France. General Eisenhower, of course, simply ignored FDR's instructions and put Charles de Gaulle in charge of things in France. Eisenhower was rather good at going around other people's idiocy, that's what made him such a terrific staff officer. Also, a pretty good President himself.

What if America's fabulously popular ambassador to Britain, J.G. Winant, had been FDR's VP nominee in 1944?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gilbert_Winant https://archive.vpr.org/commentary-series/gilbert-john-gilbert-winant/ Like most high profile people who committed suicide, this fact of the end of John G. Winant's life tends to overshadow the other aspects of his life. John Winant was a remarkable individual, particularly for an American politician. While most politicians feign concern for the poor and disadvantaged, Winant actually walked the walk, and didn't just talk the talk. His financial problems largely stemmed from his honesty and generosity. He really did let the poor and disadvantaged stay at his home whenever they needed to. He really did talk to workingmen and share their concerns. He really did relate to the British Left, although an American Republican as a highly successful state politician in New Hampshire. He was known as "Utopian John" to FDR and others, because of his idealism. FDR really did consider him as a potential VP nominee in 1944, so John Winant might have become President of the United States on FDR's death in 1945. Of course, with his background as a Republican, and his reputation for idealism and left-wing sympathies, he had few supporters other than his close friend, FDR himself. Still, he was so popular in Great Britain, and so close to Winston Churchill -- he had a long term affair with Churchill's favorite daughter, actress Sarah Churchill -- that it is conceivable that Winston Churchill himself might have made the case that Winant could be an inestimable advantage on the Democratic ticket, in terms of maintaining strong relationships with Britain, Western Europe, and the world as a whole. And, this might have been sufficient to give Winant the VP nomination. So, what happens when FDR dies, and left-wing idealist John Winant becomes President of the U.S.? I believe, this might change things quite a bit from what happened with down to earth pragmatist Harry Truman, as President. And, most of those changes would be for the better! First of all, I think Winant would be horrified by the Manhattan Project, and the A-bomb. I think President Winant might have been tempted to scrap the program entirely! However, I suspect he would relent, and agree to a demonstration of the A-bomb's power to the Japanese, on an unpopulated area, with the warning that it would be used on Tokyo in substantial numbers if a peace treaty was not agreed to immediately. And, I think this might have done the trick. With no need for any actual military use of the A-bomb at all. Ever. I think this type of cautious but firm discretion -- something that Harry Truman was literally incapable of -- would make a very positive impression on Josef Stalin. Also, Stalin being himself an idealist in his own rather twisted way, would have respected Winant's Utopianism. I could see Winant offering Stalin a kind of a deal -- free and fair elections in Poland in return for an exchange of information regarding the A-bomb. And, I think Stalin might have taken that deal! With no "iron curtain" in Europe, the relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are much improved. This allows Stalin to loosen the reigns a bit in the U.S.S.R. It's still a dictatorship, but, the Gulag is deemphasized, and there is more individual freedom. Kind of a Khrushchev lightening of the grip, but, toward the end of Stalin's reign. There is no Berlin blockade, no airlift is necessary. In China, this allows for the possibility of a negotiated solution. Chiang Kai Chek is pressured by President Winant to actually allow a free and fair representation of Mao ZeDong's communists in Chinese elections, and Mao's Communists do very well. There is the real possibility of Mao Zedong coming to power democratically, with the support of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Under these circumstances, Mao Zedong, who was nothing if not flexible and adaptable, might indeed remain what he had largely been in opposition in China, something of a social democrat, rather than a communist Emperor. There's no Korean War, of course. Thoughts?

Any perspectives on the life of Russian psychic Wolf Messing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Messing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Messing:_Who_Saw_through_Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKOWiIAmTMQ I've been watching an excellent Russian television series on the life of psychic Wolf Messing, famous for, among other things, predicting the death of Hitler if he "made war against the east", and for being a personal acquaintance of Josef Stalin. I was wondering if anyone had any particular insights regarding this rather uniquely charismatic psychic performer. Was he a charlatan? Did he genuinely have the power to manipulate and read people's minds? Could he really predict the future? Any thoughts or observations on this rather remarkable twentieth century specialist in the paranormal?

What if there had been no Cuban Missile Crisis?

The Cuban Missile Crisis is one of those odd historical events which are considered critical to world history, but in which nothing much really happened. Nothing much was created or destroyed, there was no war, no governments or nations rose or fell, no great men were born or died. It might be compared, I suppose, to the Munich Agreement of 1938 -- there was a conflict, and it was resolved comparatively peacefully. Unlike the Munich Agreement, the peace has been maintained. So, what if there had been no Cuban Missile Crisis, at all? This surely isn't difficult to imagine. If anything, the Cuban Missile Crisis itself required a rather unusual conflux of circumstances to occur -- in particular, two egomaniacal and somewhat irrational leaders in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R respectively, at the same time. With no Cuban Missile Crisis, or some rather comparable event, controls over nuclear weapons would likely be less stringent, as they were before the crisis. No nuclear test ban treaties, in particular. Would this make nuclear warfare much more likely? I'm not really sure. Currently, with the ongoing Ukraine war, many world leaders are saying nuclear warfare is much more likely than it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The nuclear test ban treaties also had a very chilling effect on scientific research on civilian applications of nuclear weapons -- which would no longer be weapons, of course, in purely civilian applications. For example, Project Orion, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) a practical NASA project intended to use nuclear bombs to propel spacecraft, had to be abandoned, once all use of nuclear bombs for any application whatsoever became illegal under international law. Now, this is particularly unfortunate, because development of civilian applications of nuclear explosives might lead to development of much less dangerous and more practically useful designs for nuclear weapons. They might not be weapons, or even particularly explosive, anymore, at all. I think one of the unintended side effects of the nuclear test ban treaties may have been the explosion of research into controlled nuclear fusion -- experimental technologies developed in the lab to produce nuclear fusion in non-explosive form for purposes of commercial energy production. After all, with all nuclear explosions now illegal, nuclear scientists had to find something to do with their time, didn't they? I think it could be reasonably stated that controlled nuclear fusion is the only long term multi-billion dollar industry with no commercially marketable products whatsoever. Commercially viable controlled nuclear fusion has always been just a decade away for sixty years now. So, what if there had been no Cuban Missile Crisis? Any other thoughts?

What are the technical obstacles to accelerating spacecraft to 10 million mph by gravity assist, in this solar system?

We're all very impressed with the capacity of NASA to accelerate the Parker Solar Probe to speeds approaching half a million miles per hour by the gravity assist of the sun itself. At these astonishing speeds, it would be possible to travel from the earth to the moon in forty minutes, to Mars in a few days, to Jupiter in a few weeks. Nevertheless, even at this incredible speed, even the closest solar systems to our own, would be thousands of years travel time away. What if we would travel twenty times faster, at ten million mph? At these speeds, the stars themselves might become accesible. What are the technical obstacles to using the gravity assist technique, in any form at all in this solar system, to achieving speeds this high? Anyone have sufficient expertise to comment on this point?

What if Stalin had accepted FDR's wartime proposal for a permanent Soviet port in Narvik, Norway?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/259866 During WWII it was President Roosevelt's policy to give the Soviet Union whatever it wanted, and particularly, whatever the U.S. wanted it to have, since the USSR was sustaining 100 times the casualty levels of any of the other allied nations. One of the "presents" offered by FDR to the USSR was a permanent port in Narvik, Norway. This offer was rejected out of hand by the Soviets. Why, exactly? I suspect that the Soviets really didn't see any great advantage to Narvik over their existing ports in Murmansk and Leningrad. They also saw no reason to further complicate their relationships with Scandanavia in particular and Western Europe in general by imposing unnecessarily on their territory. Contrary to popular opinion, the Russians have no particular obsession with Lebensraum, their desire for territory is functional, limited and pragmatic. No doubt the Soviets would have been delighted, and would readily have accepted control of the Bosphorus and Istanbul, in Turkey, but, even FDR was hardly likely to offer them that! But let's just suppose, hypothetically, that the Soviets decided to "humor" FDR and accepted the offer of Narvik, Norway. How would this have changed history, if at all? Any thoughts?

End Game in Ukraine

As it becomes increasingly clear that Ukraine is quite incapable of fighting the Russians much longer, even with hundreds of billions of dollars in the best of NATO weapons, it is also becoming increasingly clear that we're nearing the end of the line in Ukraine. President Zelensky is demanding more and more weapons, which seem to be having less and less effect. Let's face it, the Russians are good! Also, the Russians are winning the war of attrition with President Zelensky. Although he won't report on it, the Ukrainian military has been totally decimated. They simply haven't many men left to fight with. It is significant now, that NATO leaders are consistently saying in response to Zelensky's demands for top of the line F-16 fighter aircraft, "no, not until the counteroffensive is over." Now, why are they saying this, exactly? Surely, Zelensky is correct, that large numbers of F-16's would help to nullify Moscow's air superiority, and might help them to fight back. So, why not give him these aircraft in large numbers? Well, aside from the enormous expense, there's the possibility of Ukraine using these aircraft to attack deep within Russia itself, thus expanding and escalating the war. And, NATO leaders do not want this. As well, if Ukraine requires the most sophisticated and expensive of weapons systems, in huge numbers, to have a chance against the Russians, then, effectively, Ukraine has no chance whatsoever against the Russians, whatever they do! This level of warfare is not sustainable by Ukraine, the Ukrainians have lost, even if they don't know it! All Vladimir Putin really wanted in this war, was a friendly government in Kiev, and the ceding to Russia of Donbas and Crimea. Because of the massive airlift of weapons to Ukraine, particularly early on by Britain, the Russians were not able to score a quick victory. At this stage, it looks increasingly unlikely that the Ukrainians will ever be friendly to the Russians. So, the Russians will require more Ukrainian territory, and a weakened and hobbled Ukraine, that isn't a threat. They will now require Kherson Oblast and Mariupol Oblasts as well as Donbas and Crimea, effectively 2/3 of the entire Black Sea coast. At minimum. Now, when NATO leaders say that they will give Ukraine F-16 fighter aircraft when the counteroffensive is over, they mean when the war is over. They mean when Ukraine has come to terms with Russia, acceptable to the Russians. In other words, the NATO leaders are about to pull the plug on President Zelensky. Enough is enough. While the NATO leaders would be perfectly happy to have Ukraine drive the Russians completely out of their country, there's really no point in trying to do that if it requires limitless funding, forever. Because, that cannot be done. It is financially impossible. So, the question is, will President Zelensky accept, rather shortly now, that the game is up. If he wants to stay President of Ukraine, he has to agree to cede about 25% of his country, and a third of its population, to the Russians. Then, he can do whatever he wants. Join NATO, fight the Russians again on his own, live in peace, whatever he wants. Because if President Zelensky does not agree to cede the best 25% of his country to the Russians within the next year or so, MI6 will kill him. The British made him, the British will destroy him.

What if Hitler hadn't invaded Vichy France in response to Operation Torch, in November 1942?

Operation Torch was General Eisenhower's invasion of French North Africa, in an effort to open up the Mediterranean to the Allies, and totally eliminate the presence of the Axis powers in Africa. Because the U.S. had maintained relations with the government of Vichy France, it had been expected that the French would not fight or contest this American invasion. The Americans were disappointed. The French fought hard and well. General Patton commented that if there had been any Germans backing the French up, the Americans would never have even gotten onto the beaches at all. After a week of heavy fighting, the French agreed to a ceasefire, but only because the Nazis had just invaded Vichy France in direct response to Operation Torch, and they felt they'd been stabbed in the back. Even so, the French only agreed to maintain the ceasefire on condition that Admiral Francois Darlan -- an out and out Nazi -- could remain as governor of French Africa. Darlan continued his policies of exterminating democrats, free french and jews in French Africa, with General Eisenhower's full approval, because Eisenhower didn't have the manpower to conquer French Africa if they continued to resist. Perhaps not entirely surprisingly, Darlan was assassinated just a month later by a free french agent, probably with support from British and American intelligence. So, what if Hitler hadn't chosen to stab the French imperialists in Africa in the back, by invading their base in Vichy France? Did he really have to do this? I suspect that Hitler didn't realize how much in sympathy many people in France were with him, at the time. Hitler's dream had been for the French to join him in declaring war against Britain. Actually, Operation Torch might have gotten them to do just that. After all, what did they have to lose, they were already being attacked, and invaded. It's perfectly possible General Petain might have been persuaded by operation Torch to declare war on Britain and the U.S., thus offering the possibility of millions of new soldiers, hundreds of new military divisions, to Hitler's war machine. Furthermore, if France had ceased to be neutral, but become an active belligerent on the side of the Axis, it might have been impossible for Francisco Franco to maintain his Axis leaning neutrality. With both Spain and France on the side of Germany, the entire calculus of the war becomes dramatically altered. With hundreds of new divisions available, Hitler almost certainly retains control of Stalingrad, or is able to retake it, in Russia, and makes further conquests. Any invasion of Western Europe becomes impossible, Hitler has perhaps another 100 million people to draw on for military manpower. I'm not sure if Hitler actually wins the war, but, he might not lose it. Some sort of negotiated peace seems likely, under these circumstances.

What if Louis XVI had proceeded from Varennes across the frontier, in 1791?

The French Revolution left King Louis XVI a virtual prisoner of his own people at Versailles, and eventually in Paris, leading, ultimately, to his inevitable execution at the hands of Madame Guillotine. However, he had numerous opportunities to escape. Most notably, in 1791, he and his family did succeed in fleeing from Versailles to Varennes, near the frontier. He was starting to be recognized, but loyal French hussars could certainly have forced their way through to escape, if he'd ordered them to do so. Louis XVI refused to do so. Why, exactly? Why was King Louis so unwilling to use force against his own people, even when his own life was clearly at stake? Certainly, neither of the other best known regicides of Europe -- Charles I of England, and Nicholas II of Russia -- showed the slightest reluctance to kill their own people in defense of themselves, or their regimes. Just the opposite, in fact. However, their ruthlessness didn't save them. Perhaps, King Louis was simply hoping that a kinder and gentler approach might be more effective. Maybe, ultimately, the problem was simply stupidity and incompetence. Failing to understand when force would be effective, and when it wouldn't be. So, let's suppose Louis does accept the support of his loyal troops and proceeds across the frontier, with a limited use of force, and successfully reaches safe haven in the hands of his Austrian/German allies and supporters. What happens next? I suppose we would have an allied intervention in France, along the lines of what occurred in any case. And, that, probably would have been unsuccessful, as it was OTL. The French people will successfully defend France from the counterrevolutionaries. Effectively then, Louis will simply remain, along with his family, an exile. Otherwise, things may remain largely unchanged from OTL -- terror, dictatorship, Empire and, ultimately, defeat and Restoration.