What If?

What if everything you knew about history changed with the alteration of just one little thing?

So many of the most critical junctures of history have hinged upon a single person, a single act, a single moment in time. What if Stonewall Jackson hadn’t returned to camp in the darkness of night? What if Archduke Ferdinand had survived the assassin’s bullet? What if Adolf Hitler’s artistic ambitions hadn’t been quashed so humiliatingly? What if, what if, what if?

Unless you’re a traveler of the multiverse, it’s impossible to know for sure how history would have been changed if just that one thing had been a little different. But it sure is jolly fun to hypothesize anyway!

Hitler

What If Hitler Had Won World War II?

What might have happened if Nazi Germany had been victorious in World War II?

What If Hitler Had Defeated the Soviet Union?

What If the July 20 Bomb Plot to Kill Hitler Had Succeeded?

What If Hitler Had Not Come to Power?

What If Hitler Had Not Killed Himself?

What If Hitler Had Not Been Evil?

What If Britain and France Had Not Appeased Hitler in 1938?

World War II: EUrope

What If Churchill Hadn’t Tamed His ‘Black Dog’?

What if one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers had been overwhelmed by his mental illness and unable to lead his country to victory?

What If France Had Not Fallen to the Nazis in 1940?

What If Mussolini Had Stayed on the Sidelines?

What If Germany Had Invaded England?

What If the British Hadn’t Bombed Hamburg?

What If the Nazis Had Actually Built the Horten HO-229 Jet Flying Wing?

What If Germany Had Developed the Atomic Bomb?

What If Britain Had Made Peace With Hitler?

World War II: the Pacific

Col. Dave Severance, Company Commander of Easy Company of the 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division, became associated with a historic moment in American history on Feb. 23, 1945, when he responded to orders from his battalion commander to send a patrol to Mount Suribachi, the highest summit on the island described by Marine Lt. Gen. Holland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith as a “grim, smoking rock.” Following orders from the battalion commander, the platoon hoisted an American flag on the summit. But it wasn’t the famed image captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. The Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, upon seeing the first flag raised on Mount Suribachi, wanted to keep it as a memento. Thus a second larger flag was raised to replace it, which Rosenthal went on to document to much acclaim. (USMC)

What If the Marines Had Skipped Iwo Jima?

What would have happened if the U.S. hadn’t sent men to take this small atoll, site of that iconic photo? Would it have cost the war?

What If the Japanese Had Won the Battle of the Coral Sea?

What If the Manhattan Project Had Failed?

General Hideki Tojo

What If the Japanese Had Refused to Surrender?

What If the U.S. Had Invaded a Japanese Home Island?

What If Japan Hadn’t Attacked Pearl Harbor?

What If the Tarawa Invasion Had Failed?

OTHER WHAT IFS

Confederates repeatedly turned back Federal attacks on their Vicksburg trenches in May 1863, prompting Grant to lay siege to the city. (Library of Congress)

What If Robert E. Lee Had Sent Troops to Vicksburg?

Why exactly was Robert E. Lee so opposed to sending help to Mississippi in 1863?

What If the Treaty of Versailles Had Succeeded?

What If FDR Had Not Run for a Third Term?

What If World War I Was Just a Tragic Accident?

What If the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia’s Battle Had an Alternate Outcome?