May 21, 2007
THE DUMB OXONIAN:
Why a Famous Counterfactual Historian Loves Making History With Games (Clive Thompson, 05.21.07, Wired)
What if the great events in history had turned out differently? How would the world today be changed?Niall Ferguson wonders about this a lot. He's a well-known economic historian at Harvard, and a champion of "counterfactual thinking," or the re-imagining of major historical events, with the variables slightly tweaked. [...]
Ferguson was approached by Muzzy Lane, a game company that had created Making History -- a game where players run World War II scenarios based on exhaustively researched economic realities of the period.
As he played it, he realized the game was good -- so good, in fact, that it forced him to rethink some of his long-cherished theories. For example, he'd often argued that World War II could have been prevented if Britain had confronted Germany over its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. France would have joined with Britain, he figured, pinching Germany between their combined might and that of the Russian army. "Germany wasn't ready for war, and they would have been defeated," he figured. "War in 1938 would have been better than war in 1942."
But when he ran the simulation in Making History, everything fell to pieces. The French defected, leaving Britain's expeditionary force to fly solo -- and get crushed by Germany. His theory, as it turns out, didn't hold water. He hadn't realized that a 1938 attack would not leave Britain enough time to build the diplomatic case with France.
The game, in essence, helped him think more clearly about history. "I found that my scenarios weren't as robust as I thought. And that's really exciting, because normally counterfactuals happen in my head," he says. "Now they can happen on the screen."
What sort of historian doesn't anticipate the French stab in the back? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 21, 2007 3:50 PM
Well, the Germans weren't ready in 1939, either, and, sure enough, they were defeated. Now had they waited until 1944, they would have had modern weapons in quantity, while the democracies would have fallen further and further behind.
The factor which is hardest to game out is not economic, but spiritual, or in this case, geistlich. It may very well have been that Hitler had concluded that he needed to keep on the offensive to stay in power. This would have been a major factor in his falling into the Anglo-Polish trap of commencing general war before he was ready.
Posted by: Lou Gots at May 21, 2007 5:00 PMNazism didn't work. They'd have lost no matter when the war started. They could never have beaten and controlled Russia, which is all they cared about.
Posted by: oj at May 21, 2007 6:48 PMThe Nazis came very close to taking Moscow and Leningrad and Stalingrad, which the Russians might well have never recovered from. Just change a few things: don't delay Barbarossa to pick up after Mussolini in the Balkans, don't try to make the ME-262 into a bomber, etc.
Posted by: PapayaSF at May 21, 2007 10:23 PMThe Me-262 story demonstrates the point. It being that it is very difficult to switch to new technologies in the middle of a war. The United Stats could do it, but hardly anyone else.
An excellent illustration of this is the way the British got stuck with an 1892 main battle rifle and cartridge until the mid-1950's.
Before both WWI and WWII they had moved toward replacing the obsolete .303 Enfield with a rimless cartridge round and a more modern rifle action. In each case, the progress was set aside due to the exigencies of mobilization.
Now this is exactly the mechanism which crippled the Germans in WWII with respect to jet aircraft. Their strategic need was for a counter-measure to Anglo-American strategic air power. Their immediate concern, however, was the tactical situation on the ground, so the 262 was steered toward CAS and away from its inteceptor role.
Posted by: Lou Gots at May 22, 2007 2:39 AM
The Me-262 and the V-1 and V-2 missiles weren't mature technologies. They couldn't build enough of them, and have them work reliably enough, to replace the existing technology (Bf-109 interceptors and He-111 bombers) with something better. The jets and missiles ended up being a net loss.
Posted by: Mike Morley at May 22, 2007 7:44 AMThe Nazis biggest mistake (and I've said it countless times before) was the decision to make 2-engine bombers rather than 4-engine bombers in the late 1930s.
Posted by: Bartman at May 22, 2007 8:22 AMTheir mistake was their ideology. The rest follows.
Posted by: oj at May 22, 2007 9:03 AMCounterfactuals are interesting, but so much depends on one's assumptions. Especially in brinksmanship scenarios, little factors make big differences. The factors built into Making History aren't necessarily better or worse than Ferguson's own, but are different. Another question is how many things must one change until you get the scenario you require.
And counterfactuals completely fail once you move beyond the immediate timeline impacted - you might as well be writing science fiction at that point.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at May 22, 2007 10:46 AMRe: The .303 Enfield -- On the other hand, though they wanted to "catch up" and adopt a rimless cartridge, the Lee Enfield didn't exactly underperform in relation to most other main battle rifles. There just wasn't an absolutely urgent need for them switch, though they were inclined to do so.
Wasn't the Bren gun chambered for .303 too?
btw, I've got a No. 1 Mk. III SMLE made in 1918. Pretty gunn -- there's so much wood on it, it's like furniture!!
Posted by: Twn at May 22, 2007 11:38 AM