If you could change one thing in history.

[West Vandengaarde]

Too many choices...

Well, I could have McClellan's peninsular campaign succeed so that people wouldn't blame him for false information given to him by his hired Pinkerton agents.
I could have Germany win the first world war, securing German supremacy in the world and ruining the chance of having either the second world war or a European Union.
Or I could just have it so that the Saxons completely destroy the British race during their invasions rather than sparing them.

Except the Saxons became the "British race" after driving the Celtic Britons into Wales and Cornwall. Funny, that.

Oh, I know, and the Britons of before became the Welsh, some of whom went to Ireland and Scotland and mixed around there.
So Britons of today: You're really just lost Germans.

[Polinikia]

Somehow prevent the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalni, and the Hawaiian Kingdom.

[Of the Free Socialist Territories]

The Native Americans killing off all the European colonists.

I'll go with that, but the other way round, so it reads "The European colonists killing off all the Native Americans".

[Atalem]

-Blow Zheng He off-course, have him land in Mexico. Contact with China could help the Aztecs and other peoples. Better yet, have the Chinese overthrow the Aztecs and start up a settlement in concert with the Tlaxcalans.

By the time of Zheng He's death, the Aztecs were still restricted to the area immediately surrounding Tenochtitlan, many, many kilometres inland. Are you sure that marching a few hundred kilometres inland through pretty shitty terrain, and toppling a tiny, pretty-much-still-a-village tribe of neolithics makes sense?

No, but it'd be fun to watch!

- The Celts beat the Romans at the Allia and subsequently sacked Rome.
- Hannibal had no reason whatsoever to move east instead of against Rome.
- The Jews were never interested in empire, and even if they were, they hadn't the resources to fight the Persians.
- The Indus Valley civilization wasn't overthrown by the Aryans, it was was overthrown by drought and a shift in the course of the river and declining trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia.

-But did the Celts stay? Nope.
-I'd want to give him a reason.
-Dangit! I'd just have to give them a reason.
-Ah, but no Aryans would allow them to recover, possibly.

Most of these would be just to see how things happen, honestly. Those are all good points, though!

Then again, maybe I'm too curious. You know the old adage about the cat...

[Estrimbaal]

Ensure Austrian Hegemony over Germany, just to see all of Europe collectively shit their pants.

Or

Let Henry V live long enough to secure his throne in France.

Or

Somehow Heal the "Sick Man of Europe".

[Adafdfadfasdf]

I'd have bought two melons this morning, instead of only one.

[Atalem]

I'd have bought two melons this morning, instead of only one.

But why do you need two?

[Nazis in Space]

I'd have bought two melons this morning, instead of only one.

But why do you need two?

Makes petting and groping them seem that much more realistic.

[Prussia-Steinbach]

I'd shoot Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in 1862.

Alternatively, I'd shoot Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

...

Well. Ok then.

[Distruzio]

I'd shoot Abe Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in 1862.

Alternatively, I'd shoot Woodrow Wilson in 1916.

...

Well. Ok then.

What's the problem?

[Qazox]

I'd make sure LeBron James never took his talents to South Beach.

Why? Because now that the Heat won a title with their Big 3; that's all ESPN and the NBA will talk about for the next 15 YEARS!!! It's bad enough they talk about them all the time when they hadn't done shit yet; but now that they got the first of "...not two, not three, not four, not five, not six." titles, they're just going to beat a dead horse about how great they are. I wish this was the '90's again where we didn't have 24/7/365 info-overloads.

[Prussia-Steinbach]

...

Well. Ok then.

What's the problem?

There's no problem. Just an interesting thing to pick. Exactly what do you think that would accomplish?

[Grand Britannia]

Kill the first humans.

Paradox!

[Distruzio]

What's the problem?

There's no problem. Just an interesting thing to pick. Exactly what do you think that would accomplish?

Shooting Lincoln would have eliminated the driving force behind the war after a series of military defeats at the hands of the Confederates, leaving only the Radical Republicans in Congress and Hamlin to carry the war. I think the newly radicalized Union political leadership would have overstepped itself and driven the states in the Union to take drastic action to stymie the march towards despotism. This would be quite dangerous, I think, and I'd have to shoot Lincoln after I'd shot Davis, in order to best foment conciliatory discussions.

Shooting Davis would have prevented his inexorable drive towards centralization and resulted in a politically adept Alexander Stephens ascending to the presidency. Stephens was a Unionist long before the war and managed to satiate Davis' secessionist extremism during the Crisis of 1850. I estimate that his reconciliatory demeanor would have been a boon to the border states joining the Confederacy and to a Union reeling from a series of military defeats and struggling under civil disruption in New York and other states. Moreover, without Davis, Robert Toombs may have been enticed out of military service and back into the political realm where he was more suited. He, although an ardent secessionist, pleaded with Davis to abandon the move against Fort Sumter, rightly considered conscription indentured servitude and immoral, and was quite critical of the nationalized and subsidized railroad industry in the Union. He'd have stood with Stephens in suing for a peaceful resolution.

I'd shoot Wilson, assuming I hadn't the opportunity to prevent the separation of the Union, in order to prevent the Union's entry into World War 1. Without the Yanks to flood their ranks, the exhausted European Empires would have had to sue for peace with one another preventing the rise of a Nazi Germany (but not a Fascist Italy) and leaving the continental empires in a much greater position to resist the fledgling Soviet Union in a more appropriate and equitable "cold war" with authority and hegemony denied both the Russians and the Americans. Moreover, without a Hitler to drive europe towards war, the UK would have found itself in a much stronger position to resist Imperial Japanese expansions in the Pacific. With the US and the UK serving as a potent check, Japan would have had to be satisfied (had its expansion indeed taken place given the unlikelihood of being cut off from American resources without the close post-WW1 financial ties that US corporate/political interests had in WW2) with dominating China - which would have prevented the communists from taking over and committing the untold atrocities that have happened under that regime. The Japanese may have been brutal, but they were never genocidal.

All in all, preventing the US from entering WW1 would have forestalled the collapse of half the world under the tragic curtain of communism. How many tens of millions would now be alive were that counterfactual fantasy to have come true?

[Ethel mermania]

It was the spark that set off the powderkeg. Remove the spark and you've still got the powderkeg to worry about. The war may have started off as a war between Serbia and Austria-Hungary, but the alliances pulled in the rest of the Great Powers, some (France) more willing than others.

You're missing the point. There were bound to be plenty of other close calls after the July Crisis to cause WWI. Russia leaving its treaty obligations with France wouldn't change that. Arbuably, Panslavism was still a strong force and not having an unpopular war to rile against, Lenin might well have used it as an excuse to bring the glory of communism to the capitalists in Western Europe. France might well have attacked the Germans from behind given a war in the East.

The point is, with Austria-Hungary fragmenting as it was, tensions between Germans and French, and a failure to understand how warfare had changed preventing people from realizing how bad an idea it was going to be, war was going to happen eventually.

hmmm i would have to go back and reread guns of august among other things, but as i recall, even after the assassination, most of europe thought the peace would continue.

The proximate cause was serbia refusing austria-hungarian demands because of guaranteed Russian support. If russian pulled out of its treaty obligations to france becasue of communism, i do doubt the poincare would have been in any hurry to support the soviet government and there would not have been a triple entante. Now the fears that brought the triple entante into existence would still have been present, but i just cant see the french and the british going to war to support soviet power.

your third paragraph is correct much like the american civil war, the folks on both sides believed the war would be a walk in the park and over by christmas

Having gone back and re-read ms tuckman.... she agrees with you. War was inevitable. She doesn't seem to like the kaiser, nor the german general staff, very much.

[Czechanada]

I'd prevent the fall of the Khazar Khanganate.

[Nordengrund]

Like I said, I would have the Native Americans kill off ALL the European settlers.

Or... I would have Harold Godwinson win the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

[The USOT]

Have Carthage somehow in the first Punic war.

Purely because it would be interesting to see, and so many major butterflies would ensue (e.g. no roman conquest of Britain and a less likely spread of christianity throughout the world, possible becoming a minor cult, or perhaps fizzling out into something more similiar to Messianic Judaism).

War wise it could be an incredibly different butterfly. If memory serves me correctly (not having read up on carthage for a while) they had very large parts of their army as essentially hired mercinaries. This could perhaps lead to the concept of a military being less centralised, and butterfly a fair bit of the events that led to feudal europe.

[Wamitoria]

The Japanese may have been brutal, but they were never genocidal.

Actually, I would say that was untrue. They didn't think of the Chinese as human and would have killed as many of them as they needed to in order to secure colonial dominance.

[Nordengrund]

The Japanese may have been brutal, but they were never genocidal.

Actually, I would say that was untrue. They didn't think of the Chinese as human and would have killed as many of them as they needed to in order to secure colonial dominance.

Well the Chinese killed off all the Mongols.

[Farnhamia]

Actually, I would say that was untrue. They didn't think of the Chinese as human and would have killed as many of them as they needed to in order to secure colonial dominance.

Well the Chinese killed off all the Mongols.

What? Since when?

[Samuraikoku]

Well the Chinese killed off all the Mongols.

What? Since when?

Impossible. We all have a little Genghis Khan DNA. *nods*

[Xeng He]

...I'm a bit loath to alter the circumstances of my own existence, and I haven't been around long enough to do much without possibly screwing that up.

If anything...convince the me of a few years ago to actually commence with the escape plan, and give myself some of the new ideas I've had now, in dialogue form.

[Nationalist Eminral Republic]

I wish kingdoms did not exist

[Trollgaard]

The retirement of the Iowa class battleships. They should still be around, as the pride of the nation!