Poul Anderson avoids questions about the historical claims of Christianity both in his Time Patrol series and in There Will Be Time. The Preface to Jesus: A Life in Class Conflict informs us of Assassin 33 A.D., in which time travelling Islamist terrorists plan to assassinate Jesus. Crossley and Myles believe that assassinating a single "Great Man" would not necessarily deflect historical and material forces.
Maybe it is a sign of the times that, when we pass from Poul Anderson's time travel fiction to a scholarly work on the historical Jesus, the Preface of the latter work begins by citing a film like Assassin 33 A.D. Let's have film adaptations of the Time Patrol.
11 comments:
Actually, removing a significant individual often does cause massive historical events.
Eg., Franz Ferdinand in 1914.
The decision to start WW1 involved about a dozen men, all German, Austrian-German and Hungarian. FF's death was crucial in both motivating those men, and removing a powerful voice (FF's) who was deeply opposed to anything risking a Russo-Austrian war.
Hitler's another example. A right-wing revanchist government in Germany in the 1930's would have been probable anyway, but if you examine the details WWII required either Hitler or someone very similar to him -- and people with little Adolf's talents are quite rare.
I could go on. Eg., Abraham Lincoln. The Civil War in the US was quite likely anyway, but the way it -turned out- was highly contingent.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I disagree with Crossley/Myles thesis that Great Men, bad or good, do not matter. Individuals do and can matter, and in crucial ways. So I agree with Stirling, and not with Crossley and Myles' false thesis.
Mr. Stirling: Yet again you give us reason for cursing Gavrilo Princip! Assassinating Francis Ferdinand removed a strong voice for maintaining peace in Europe.
I do have one caveat with your comments about Hitler. He was not "right wing" in any true sense of that term. Jonah Goldberg, in his book LIBERAL FASCISM, gives us a detailed examination of Hitler's ideas and beliefs, showing how most of them spring from common left wing beliefs of the early 20th century. What Adolf did was to mix in racism and nationalism.
Yes, the US Civil War could have ended differently. By 1864, after years of war and no apparent end to it, there was discouragement in the North, enough so that Lincoln felt anxiety about his chances of winning the Presidential election that year. If Gen. Grant had been so badly stunned by the horrendous losses of the Overland Campaign against Gen. Lee that he retreated over the Rapidan River, that might have enabled the Democrats to win the election. A Pres. McClellan might well have conceded the independence of the Confederacy.
So it was crucial that Grant relentlessly kept up the pressure on Lee, refusing to retreat, with Lee eventually getting bottled up in the siege of Petersburg. And Gen. Sherman's victories against the Confederates in Georgia were also critical.
Ad astra! Seam
Gavrillo Princip wanted the south slavic peoples out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in their united south Slav nation.
Those dozen men gave him what he wanted, along with millions of deaths in the rest of Europe.
Sean: Re Right Wing & Left Wing
I'm inclined to agree with eg: Jerry Pournelle, that a one dimensional mapping of political views merely leads to confusion. At least two dimensions are needed for any sort of useful mapping, and even that will be far from perfect.
I usually find myself agreeing on some issues & disagreeing on others with almost any party.
Kaor, Jim!
It's not that different today, either! A dozen or so persons around that senescent bungler, "Josip," can make all too similar decisions.
Princip was a member of the Black Hand, a terrorist gang with ties to the Serbian gov't. Belgrade achieved its ambition of conquering the south Slavs, AND then failed, under both the Karageorge dynasty and the dictatorship of Tito, to firmly unify Yugoslavia. Almost all the territories seized from Austria-Hungary have broken away since the 1990's.
Of course I agree that it's necessary to be multidimensional about a person or party's political views. That's exactly what Goldberg was doing while examining Hitler's ideas, showing what a mishmash National Socialism was.
I'm so furious with the monstrous Democrats in the the US that I can't think of anything they advocate that I agree with!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: To be clear, I wasn't saying that Hitler was right-wing. The actual right-wingers in Germany who backed him in 1933 thought he was, or could be used to serve their purposes, but they were (very) wrong.
What I said was that -without- Hitler and his movement, a revanchist and -actually- right-wing government in Germany would have been probable.
In terms of what they wanted, Hitler's foreign policy achievements as of the beginning of 1939 were what your conventional German nationalist wanted and thought possible.
Breaking the Versailles treaty, rearming, reincorporating the Saarland and ending the demilitarized status of the Rhineland, incorporating Austria, destroying Czechoslovakia and annexing the Sudetenland, and making most of Eastern Europe into subordinate German allies.
Not that they wouldn't have -liked- more, but most of them (especially the dominant generals and industrialists) didn't think it was possible for Germany to conquer Europe. And they were right, after all.
Hitler was something much more radical, but this wasn't obvious to German conservatives until it was too late.
If Hitler had had a heart attack and died in January of 1939, there probably wouldn't have been a WW2 -- the German army high command was against it, and only a figure with the charism and political dominance of Hitler could override them.
In fact, if he'd dropped dead in January 1939, Hitler would probably have gone down in history as the greatest statesman in German history, a second Bismarck.
The difference being that Bismarck knew when to stop, and only death was going to stop Hitler.
Sean: it's important not to let dislike of a political figure or party override a case-by-case analysis on policy issues.
I'm not a great fan of the current Administration here in the US, for example -- a number of their policies are ones I very strongly disagree with and think will have bad consequences.
OTOH, I -do- think they're doing a good job on the Ukraine issue, and back that wholeheartedly. There's a bipartisan consensus on that, and on containing China, except for the whackadoodle fringes of both parties.
I'd be less cautious, if I were in charge, but on the whole they've done a good job on the Ukraine war.
Not on a lot of other stuff, but on that, yes. Putin's an enemy of the US -- if you don't believe me, just listen to him -- and of the Western alliance the US dominates and leads. Hence he needs to be smashed down; ideally, in the aftermath of defeat he gets defenestrated and the Russian federation should be broken up the way the USSR was in 1989-91, and then the parts democratized and incorporated into the West.
Then China, but that's a harder problem.
On Russia, the Ukrainians are doing the hard work, and we're just supplying the money and guns, rather the way the Soviets did in Vietnam.
And the amount we're spending is chump change in terms of our overall budget -- less than the -unspent- amount of the funds voted for Covid relief in 2020-21. $30 billion? Peanuts.
Meanwhile the Russians are wrecking their economy, 1,000,000 Russians (mostly young and well-educated) have fled the country, sending their demographic crisis into overdrive, and they're losing around 1,000 dead every day.
Bleeding an enemy on the cheap is a very desirable thing.
My cup of schadenfreude runneth over, and it's very tasty indeed.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Many thanks for your comments. Actually, I agree with them, mostly. If Hitler had either died in early 1939 or been content with the gains he had made by then, he might well have been revered as a second Bismarck.
I agree that the people around "Josip" who had the US supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia are right, on that issue. The uneasiness I feel being concern they are sending so much war materiel to Ukraine that the US armed forces might not have enough if we got into a shooting war with Russia, or even more dangerously, China.
The Biden Administration's inept handling of those Chinese spy balloons does not inspire confidence!
Yes, that ex-KGB thug, Putin, has been a disaster for Russia. His blundering has reversed whatever feeble recovery Russia made from the Marxist-Leninist catastrophe.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the Ukraine war has revealed weaknesses in our procurement process and stockpiles, which are being remedied -- we're in the process of quadrupling artillery ammunition production, for example.
That sort of rundown, aka "unreasonable optimism" happens whenever there's a gap between major wars, because the infrastructure is very expensive. The Europeans are even worse off, but are getting their acts together.
The other shipments are being replaced with more recent models, too -- the last generation of our stuff is miles better than the junk the Russians have... and Russia is dipping deeper and deeper into older and older stockpiles, so their quality is going even further down.
Eg., the Europeans will be sending Leopard II's to Ukraine, and replacing them with the latest version of the Abrams; sending F-16's, and replacing them with F-35's, and so forth and so on.
It's probably also giving the Chinese cause to pause and think.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That does relieve me, the US and her allies refilling stockpiles and armories. I recall someone saying amateurs talk about tactics but professionals talk about LOGISTICS. Because armies and navies can't fight if they don't supplied.
Which, incidentally, was a point made by Aaron Snelund in THE REBEL WORLDS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: it will take a while. This sort of thing has a lot of inertia.
It also means the 'peace divided' from the end of the Cold War is well and truly over, which is going to have inescapable and highly negative economic effects.
Less globalization and less free trade, for instance.
Eg., the US is launching a major effort to increase domestic production of strategic microchips and rare-earth materials.
This is necessary, but it's not going to be cheap and it will put upward pressure on the overall price level.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, we are back to the normal state of affairs, competitive rival powers. And that will have the negative consequences you mentioned. E.g., if China grabs Taiwan that eliminates a major source of those strategic microchips!
I just want those bungling Democrats kicked out! I don't trust them to handle such things well or wisely.
Ad astra! Sean
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