In other words, what is one event in your country’s history, that could plausibly have gone differently than it did, and you think would have made your country a better place?
Inspired by Frederick III of Germany:
His premature demise is considered a potential turning point in German history; and whether or not he would have made the Empire more liberal if he had lived longer is still a popular discussion among historians.
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Sweden didn’t let Norway buy Volvo shares in exchange for Norwegian oil shares, some kinda deal along those lines.
That quote brought back memories of watching BBC’s Fall of Eagles (1974). That TV drama is full of these types of moments.
Cathtrine the Great’s son, and the next tsar of Russia, was against partitioning Poland. Poland was partitioned in 1795, Cathrine died in 1796. If she only died one year earlier, or waited a bit longer, Poland might have never disappeared from the world map, because Prussia and Austria probobly wouldn’t be able to defeat Poland without Russia
Hungary here. We joined the EU and instead of building a modern country, we opted to create a Russian-style oligarchy instead.
I guess not really a missed opportunity but if only our Parliament would have been allowed to rule effectively in 1907-17 by St Petersburg, we would surely have avoided a very bloody and traumatic Civil War in 1918. There were lots of reforms voted for but vetoed by that imbecile Nicholas II and his government.
Vorarlberg wanted to join our Federation after WWI, but our government declined because they didn’t want to shake up the german/french:reformed/catholic balance. For similar reasons, we have no Chablais and no Valtellina.
There are legends that there were secret discussions for a federation between Bulgaria and the Ottoman empire, after the liberation.
The traitorous maffia band of Orbán Viktor in the past 20 years has completely fumbled the opportunity that the European Union provided.
I guess that would be the proposal to elevate Ruthenia to an equal partner within the Commonwealth in the 1600s. Because we did not do that fast enough, the Cossacks revolted against Poland, Russia backed them, Sweden attacked as well and Poland lost a third of its population in the ensuing war, most of which were burghers, noblemen and Jews, so the most productive and educated people. We had never really recovered from that population loss as it was directly it that led to foreign powers meddling in Polish affairs which led to the Polish succession war which led to a downward spiral that ended up with the Partitions.
If only Polish elites managed to secure the Cossacks’ loyalty through concessions instead of blind suppression, we could’ve kept Russia firmly on the other side of the Dnieper and avoided all the misery that befell Eastern Europe because of Russian expansionism.
I think that instead of pushing for Czechoslovakia, Czechs during the WW1 should have pushed for a Central-European Federal Republic, or something like that. I understand that Slavic population within the Austro-Hungarian Empire felt suffocated under the Habsburg rule. Austria-Hungary sucked, my father’s family is still hilariously obsessed with hating Franz Joseph, but I think that the solution didn’t need to be the creation of smaller, weaker countries and dissatisfied population along the borders. Get rid of the Habsburgs, create a federation, something like a more connected mini EU with stronger and deep historical ties. Don’t call it anything that makes any nation feel slighted. Get rid of discrimination. Make the languages equal. Not everyone would want to stay, sure, it wouldn’t be the same borders as the empire, but if it was a different model of a country, it could have worked. Perhaps Czechia, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary would have stayed in one federation as an interesting counter-balance to other big countries in Europe. I think it could have been a better model for a prolonged peace.
Poland is a country of missed opportunities throughout history but to pick one I will go with:
Elected king Stefan Batory who not only reformed Winged Hussars into a proper heavy cavalry, but also properly reformed Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s infantry into a modern (at the time) conscription and equipment system and managed to make nobles listen to him. His plan was to rally both nobles and cossacks in order to lead an invasion against the Muscovites, however his too early death led to abandonment of such plans and unrest among cossacks as they were promised payment and expansion of the cossack registry (which was kinda like a merge of citizenship [simplification term] and being considered officially employed as PLCs soldier for them); this unrest further strained relationship between PLC and cossacks.
The death of the Catholic Monarchs’s only male child, Juan, his posthumous daughter, and then their grandson, Manuel de la Paz, between 1497 and 1500, giving the Iberian kingdoms to the Habsburgs.
Then the proposals to replace the continental American colonies with four or five “independent” kingdoms united by dynastic alliances in the 1780s-1800s.
And Espartero turning down the Crown in 1870. Even if it just led to a foreign king being invited after his death in 1879, it may have solidified the system established after the 1868 Revolution and avoided the III Carlist and Cantonalist wars.
The Warsaw Uprising, still controversial topic to this day. It did achieve literally nothing, except of total destruction of Poland most populous and most important city. It was poorly organized, conditions for it’s success weren’t met, it was badly coordinated with the allies and with the government in exile (stationed in London). It relied naively on possibility of cooperation with the Soviets, while their goal was to completely take over Poland, install puppet government and physically exterminate whole opposition. Uprising forces were terribly understaffed and under-equipped. We lost around 200,000 people, including many of those who should have become elite of the country in next years. Most of those killed were civilians and it was well known, given previous conduct of Germans that it will go this way. More than half milion were exiled and forced to live in terrible poverty. Rebuilding of Warsaw required tremendous amount of labor and costed country massively in poverty ridden post-war years. The decision was literally in hands of very few men, who very easily could have chosen not to start it.
did someone mention wrexit?
and how we (we were brits once) missed the opp to investigate what Carole said…
*Cadwalladr exposing the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Her reporting revealed how Meta/Facebook allowed the harvesting and misuse of personal data by the political consultants linked to both the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum*
I guess for my country it would be that William 3 had no kids a personal union between Britain and the Netherlands would have made interesting history
For Ireland, I guess it would be the collapse of Home Rule in 1914.
There was a lot of support for it in 1914 from Nationalists and even the British parliament as a Home Rule Act was passed in 1914. There was opposition from Unionists in Ulster though.
Had Home Rule been passed then Ireland might have avoided a decade of violence and bloodshed in the following years – from the Easter Rising, to the War of Independence, to the Civil War, to the Army Mutiny, to political assassinations such as of Kevin O’Higgins as Minister for Justice.
Johann Georg Elser almost succeeded with his assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. On November 8 1939. The bomb worked just fine, but Hitler left the hall fifteen minutes early.
During the interrogation after his capture he was tortured and beaten so severely that the local head of police later stated that Elser wouldn’t have been physically able to confess even if he wanted to. Elser was executed at the Dachau concentration camp just weeks before the end of the war.
The Gestapo was so impressed by the design of his bomb that they later copied it for their own use. Elser, who had been a carpenter, had taught himself how to build it.