What If...?

Rating:
Summary: Delicate Balance between Fiction and Reality
Review: Unlike "What If? 1", which was entirely about military counterfactuals, "What If? 2" has the additional merit to consider military and non-military counterfactuals. To his credit, Robert Cowley manages again to put together a "dream team" of historians. As Cowley correctly points out in his introduction, events manipulate great men and women probably as much as great men and women manipulate events. Over time, men and women unfortunately tend to drift from one extreme to another in their approach to history. Action or inaction of great men and women, the impact of the environment on their behavior as well as broad social, economic and political trends are ultimately equally important in understanding history properly.

Unsurprisingly, readers will probably perceive the counterfactual essays to be of uneven quality in both volumes of What If? Some history buffs could blind themselves to their supposed knowledge of specific events about which speculation is made. The participating historians are usually efficient at first explaining to their audience what really happened and then exploring counterfactuals. This approach generally has the merit of making history accessible to a wide audience. In evaluating each essay on its merits, readers could follow the advice that Geoffrey Parker gives in his contribution about the counterfactual victory of the Invincible Armada in 1588 to "What If? 1": 1) Only small and plausible changes should be made to the actual sequence of events and 2) After a certain time, the previous pattern may reassert itself (pg. 151-152).

As a side note, Cowley and his team of historians could eventually write a "What If? 3" which focuses on the Middle East. Some thought-provoking topics that they might consider could be for example:

1) What if the Spanish Umayyad dynasty had been able to contain the Christian Reconquista?
2) What if the Mongols had not taken Baghdad?
3) What if the original U.N. plan for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two apparently viable states had been implemented successfully?
4) What if a viable Palestinian state had evolved into the "Costa Rica" of the region?
5) What if Reza Khan had followed the example of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk?
6) What if one side had won the war waged between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s?
7) What if the coalition had invaded Iraq in 1991 instead of 2003?

This new "What If?" sequel could serve two different but complementary purposes: 1) Look at an alternative course to past events and 2) Influence the shape of the future from thinking out-of-the-box. This "What If? 3" could become quite possibly a best seller on Amazon because of the current events in the Middle East and the overwhelming focus on the Western world in the first two renditions of "What If?"


Rating:
Summary: Here's a 'what if' for you...
Review: What if in 1963, Rudolf Hochhuth, hadn't written the libelous play The Deputy? We may have been spared having Pope Pius XII becoming the official whipping boy of the anti-Catholics. I give this a book a 1 for a couple reasons, and not just because of the Pius XII essay. First of all, the "good" essays are mediocre at best, especially if you compare them to the works of the original What If? Second of all, some of the essays are really asking you to stretch your imagination past believability. The whole point of the 'what if' scenario in these books was to give a depiction of a crucial event in history and explain what probably would've happened if it had gone different, with as much plausibility as possible. That's what made the original What If? so great.

However, the final nail in the coffin was the Pius XII essay. It ignores the fact that before the war Pius XII (or Eugenio Pacelli as he was known when he was the Vatican Secretary of State) was a well-known opponent of Nazism. In 1935, he gave a speech that denounced Nazism at a time when people like FDR and Churchill (both big government guys themselves) didn't think Hitler was such a bad guy. Pacelli said in his speech that the Nazis "are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false concept of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult."

Dr. Joseph Licthen, a Polish Jew and official for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League wrote: "Pacelli had obviously established his position clearly, for the Fascist governments of both Italy and Germany spoke out vigorously against the possibility of his election to succeed Pius XI in March of 1939, though the cardinal secretary of state had served as papal nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929. . . . The day after his election, the Berlin Morgenpost said: `The election of cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor.'"

The appeared "silence" of Pacelli, now known as Pope Pius XII, is a misconstruction of facts based upon a play. Pius was hardly ever Hitler's Pope, as some "historians" are leading people to believe. Pius knew that he'd have to be careful with everything he did or Hitler would tyrannize the Jews even more and go after the Catholics as well. His statements were carefully distributed, but still urged Catholics to do what they could. The appeared silence occurred after the Nazis arrested Catholic priests in Denmark for opposing the Nazis. Catholic and Jewish friends of the Pope urged him to be careful or Hitler might start targeting him.

The essay also ignores much of the Pope's humanitarian work and his efforts to help the Jews. Pius hid a lot of Jews in the Vatican and on his summer estate and would even pay the ridiculous fines that Jews had to pay to keep the Nazis from taking them from their homes.

There's so much scholarly evidence that shows that the image of Pius XII has been misconstrued, and misunderstood. Unfortunately though, anti-Catholicism is an attitude that is still widely tolerated. I end this review with a quote by Albert Einstein, a quote he said about the Catholic Church's efforts to help the Jews.

"Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty."

Rating:
Summary: Clever Counterfactuals
Review: What If? 2 continues the work of What If? 1 by offering interesting looks at alternatives to known history (counterfactuals) written by well known historians. What If? 2 is even better than its predecessor because it does not stick to military issues, but examines a wide range of cultural and biological possibilities. For example, the most intriguing chapter is a look at what would have happened had Jesus not been crucified, but lived to an advanced age. The postulated result is a true Judeo-Christianity imposed on the world by an apparently permanent Roman Empire. Another remarkable chapter describes the probable impact of a Ming Chinese trans-Pacific voyage of discovery in the 15th century. Military affairs are not entirely neglected, as there are discussions of alternate endings for the Battle of Hastings, the Franco-Prussian War, and World War I, among others. Finally, there is a fine examination of the role of the potato in history. I hope there is a What If? 3, 4, etc.