Counter-factual History
Counter-factual history is a fancy term for playing “What if?” with history: What if the Nazis had won World War II? What if the USSR had won the Cold War? And so on. Niall Ferguson wrote a book on many such counter-factual scenarios. My reaction to all this? C’mon, the world is too complex. If you start your counter-factual with Hitler winning World War II, it can branch in a million different ways from that point onwards . As a character in the movie, The Counselor , said: “Actions create consequences which produce new worlds, and they're all different.” You just picked one branch; what about the others? How do you “know” which branch to pick? Another question I have is Why? Why come up with counter-factuals? What’s the point? Ferguson wrote that they help refute the “idea that events are in some way preprogrammed, so that what was, had to be.” C’mon, I thought: who believes history has a direction, other than Marxists? And hasn’t Marx lost all credibility any...