Great debates can be made with alternate histories about most cases. Would love to hear some examples.

  • pdxfed@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Waterloo.

    Napoleon’s tactical errors leading to a ton of his skilled and valuable horse soldiers self inflicting and defeating themselves basically made it easy for wellington to triumph though he did enough to earn the w. That is just from memory 20 years ago when I read from Les Miserables, there is like a 100 page section–maybe 150 just on the battle of Waterloo which isn’t that critically tied for the plot. Victor fucking Hugo, ladies and gentlemen.

    Napoleon’s defeat led to alliances across Europe for protection, which led to WW1, which guaranteed WW2 due to unsustainable concessions for Germans leading to Hitler’s rise, which led to USA being gifted a churning economy almost undamaged and populace relatively unscarred by war compared to devastated Europe. Baby boom, relatively equal wealth distribution and a GI bill built the US might that is now imploding under it’s own fetid weight of corruption and ignorance, as many empires fall to, but it’s all pretty linear imo from Napoleon.